Productive Weekend

I took some time this weekend to do some work on the layout. Main mission was to get some track work redone to accommodate the new 8ft. section I put on. I took out the pads for the transloading facility and extended that area to make it a runaround track. I also plan on putting a small crew office there and my locomotives will sit there when not in operation. I got this idea from a Google Maps search of an industrial park area and thought it may be a good idea to put in.

This is a shot looking towards the curve to the bakery. 

The siding that was installed will be leading to an industry.

This is first two feet of the new section that was added. 

The siding installed will be leading to the future home of Blue Star Cement.

Tonight I also took some time to work on some trees. I am using the Scenic express SuperTrees. I bought these maybe two years ago and they were sitting in the box. As I started to pull some of the trees out, I saw that the trees were all together and took the shape of the box. I have the box open and have been taking them apart carefully and slowly to see if I can get them to not hold the square shape. I took some of the smaller ones and started trimming them up. For these trees I used two methods. First was just taking the tree and spraying them with a spray adhesive. For that I used Locktite. (You could use any kind. I recommend Locktite or 3M). Once the spray adhesive was applied I took some blended turf and sprinkled it on. I placed a small basin below my area to catch the extra turf. I that way you can reuse the stuff that fell. Once the tree was covered, I took some hairspray, any kind will do, and sprayed the trees to seal the work. I would suggest unscented, unless you want your trees to smell. After making some trees I placed them in a foam piece to dry. I also used the same method as above, however I sprayed the trees with brown camo spray paint first. I didn't really notice a difference.   I have included a YouTube video from D. Glass. Great guy and great modeler. 

I plan on ordering some leave material from Scenic Express. Once i get that in i will see what that looks like on some of the trees.

Mr. Glass' YouTube video below.

Track Down...Feeders installed

Last week I was hit with being sick and had some remnants of that this weekend. Today I was feeling much better and decided to hit the train room. First up was some cleaning and organizing with a deep clean of the area rug that is in the room. After that I decided to organize some containers with my rolling stock. You never realize how much rolling stock you have until you go through it.

I then decided to break down and do my least favorite, but most important, part of model railroading. The wiring. I guess because my soldering iron skills aren't the best is why I shy away from it. But you only get better with practice. I practiced on a couple pieces of track a few years ago and the results weren't bad but nothing like the guys that have been doing this for years. So I decided to solder directly to the rail as opposed to soldering to the rail joiners. I saw in some places that this was frowned upon because you do not have the best electrical connectivity as you would going direct to the rail. Plus this method was mentioned in the book How to Build a Shelf Layout (http://www.amazon.com/Build-Switching-Layout-Lance-Mindheim/dp/1453811346/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1450061846&sr=8-3&keywords=lance+mindheim.)

Got a little too close with the soldering iron and melted some of the foam. 

I will fill it in with foam putty.

I also worked on another industry for the layout. Not sure what it will be. This is a City Classics kit. Its a pretty easy build and one of my favorites. I painted it using rattle can paints from Rustoelum and Valspar. The concrete color is tan camouflage paint and the brick is the brown primer. The door are a light olive type color from Valspar. I tested out the car entrance and I need to lift the building a bit to achieve rolling stock making entry.

Stay tuned. Hoping to have the wiring completed this week!

Moving Along!

Hey Gang! Sorry for not updating as usual. I got hit with sickness truck and was unable to get anything done. I am feeling better so it's back to the train room.

I clear coated the warehouse building of the paper company. I need to just install a roof section and paint it, clear coat the building and that will be ready for some details decals and some weathering. I also added a second story to the food processing/bakery plant. I also reconfigured the silos to go along with the track plan i had in a previous post. I mounted the background building to a piece of 1/2" thick foam board, then I glued some plastruct metal siding to the top to match the original structure . I still need to add some more details and weather the top. I am also working on an unloading area for grain and tank cars. Still in the planning stages with this not exactly sure what I want to do.

(I was taking the picture at a weird angle)

I also go to gluing down my track. I am now about 85% done. After that hoping to start installing feeder wires and have some trains running soon. The sickness put me back a few days.

A view from the paper plant side of the layout.

Update

Hello everyone! I apologize for the absence but work has been keeping me very busy and not helping with hobby time!

Since my last post I have installed some lighting and put down foam on the hollow core doors. I have been tooling around with track plans and it has been the most time consuming, an frustrating, thing. I have seeked help for at least two people for ideas and nothing seems to strike my fancy. My issue is that I want to have minimal amount of industries but maximize number of cars and car spots. HOWEVER, I do not have the space I really want for what I want to do. SO it as back to the drawing board.

I narrowed it down to about 2-3 industries. I wanted something unique but fun. First I drew up an idea for a paper plant. Things were looking great. I was doing research, Google Earth, Bing Maps and even some of the Trackside Industries books. IN the one book I found a plan for a paper plant. I was pumped, until I got the measuring tape out. I couldn't do it for the space I had. SO back to the drawing board.

A few weeks passed and I got the urge to try and get something figured out. So I started hunting again. This time I saw a cement plant. I had a number of cement hoppers and I started looking again. I figured the cement plant would be the center focus, with some smaller industries to keep it fun. Issue was that I couldn't achieve what I wanted. This time the space was too big for what I wanted to model.

This brings me to my other friend Google Search. I just started typing keywords for small HO switching layouts. I dug around and found some of Lance Mindheim's blogs. I have read them before but haven't really kept up to date. Well I poked around and did some reading and I found something that fit the mold. It was a simple "L" Shaped layout that had one siding and a major industry that took 3 different car types. (Boxcars, Grain hoppers and tank cars). I read the article some more and it made sense! Keep it short and simple. Easy track plan with Atlas track that can be upgraded to Micro Engineering (OR Hand-laid track). So I went and dug through the cache of rolling stock to see if I had the necessary items at hand, which I did. ( I had been building for a paper plant prior.) So next step was to start looking for a building kit. I knew I would either need to kitbash or scratchbuild. While looking through the collection of building kits, I found a Magic Pan Bakery Kit. With that I started thinking, maybe I need to make a low relief building of this and go from there.  So looks like a little more research will be in the works for me.

While looking at the picturs some more, I really wanted to have a cement and aggregate facility as well. (I just recently purchased some Blue Star Ready Mix tractor trailers for gravel hauling) SO I will be modifying the plan I saw, but who knows, I may just keep it short and simple.

 

Photo from Lance Mindheim's Blog

 

 

 

If anyone has feed back they wish to provide please let me know. I have been trying to have a functioning layout for over 3 years and I just keep getting frustrated over track work and a plan.