Night Fever

 With major combat operations over for the season, I decided to get out my good camera and take some shots of the layout. What better way to show off all the lighting I installed than by taking some long-exposure night shots. Enjoy!

This is Johnstown's Business District. The building at right is The Oasis, a notorious spot that's often padlocked by the police.

The TO agent at SF tower enjoys a smoke break as M1a #6720 barrels past with a mixed fright. The building in back is the Ezell Safety Products Company.

The Superior Paper Company looms over Johnstown.

The Broadway Limited vanished into the darkness of Portage Tunnel.

Som reefers with perishables from California have just arrived at the ice house.

And that's a wrap for this season!

Well folks, after a short but busy construction season, it's that time of the year again. The weather is warming up, yard work is coming into the picture and I'm ready to shift over towards running some trains. It's the same thing every march. But this year is different. Most seasons end with me stuck on some major task that can't be put off any longer and I don;t have the energy left to take them on. This year, I managed to knock out those two last projects.

First and foremost, I plastered up the remaining roads and sidewalks in Johnstown. It took me the better part of two afternoons but I got it done. Once that was done, I went ahead and drilled the holes for the lights.I finished things off by getting all the plaster work painted.

emboldened by my success, I decided to go ahead and get all the lights installed and wired up. I started off with a pair of Busch operating traffic lights. Then I installed some incandescent street lights along the main streets in the Johnstown business district. The buildings are lit with a mish mash of LEDs and incandescent salvaged from my last layout, whatever was on hand.

For the industrial areas, I used LEDs except for Water Street Freight Terminal. I used a pair of Model Power highway lights for Superior Paper and a pair of Goosneck Lamps for the freight station.

Now, I had planned to use a pair of NJ International crossing flashers. I did start the process of stalling them. But wen I tried to untangle the rat's nest left over from the last layout, things got ugly. The resistors on each signal decided to come unsoldered. After a bit of fighting, I gave up and tossed the lights and PC boards into a box for next year, if I'm desperate.

The last thing I did was apply some turf to a few spots and then spent a few hours cleaning track and trouble shooting. The K4 and M1 needed only a few spots cleaned. But on my first attempt at running the centipedes, they went stumbling and stuttering down the track like a misfiring car! The I1 wasn't too happy either and there was a lot of work with the bright boy and alcohol and rag.

So that's it for this season. I'm sure I'll get the itch to tackle the odd project or two here and there, but the heavy lifting is done for a while. Before we know it, it'll be fall and I'll have the itch again. Until then, have a nice summer everybody!