More Structure Lighting

All but one of the town building are illuminated. Dang, these LEDs are night-into-day bright! The gas station roof is glowing despite the black paint. In addition to the building lights, I took a Model Power Y-Shaped street light and bent it to resemble a 1980s-style gas station light.

As for what's going on across the street from the gas station, that's going to be a used car lot. The office is an old Nucomp Miniatures trailer. I'll elaborate on this scene more when it's finished.

Next thing on my list is finishing a partially-completed Model Power house kit. That will do it for the structures on this layout.
 

Finished City Classics' "401 Crafton Ave. Service Station" Kit

 I scored this long-discontinued kit off eBay. It's too bad City Classics didn't expand their N Scale line because this really is nice kit with lots of interesting details.

I started things off by spraying the inside of the walls with some cheap black spray paint. This is necessary with structures to keep them from glowing when they're lighted. Unfortunately, some of said paint bled onto the front of the building. I sprayed the front walls with Rustoleum white primmer. The door and window frames are Floquil "Conrail Blue." The roof? You guessed it, Floquil "Grimy Black."

The structure base and pump islands are painted Testor's "Flat Light Aircraft Grey," my go-to concrete color. The Pumps are Testor's Flat Red and Floquil "Coach Green."

The next step is to pain the parking lot, add some lighting and details and then we're done. After this, I have only one more structure to finish.

Wired Up Some Buildings

 You ever have one of those days where it seems like all you do is spin your wheels and get nothing accomplished? Yup, that was me today. I came up to the train room all fired up to get going on the wiring project. Well hit the first roadblock when my drill battery died almost instantly. That delayed my plans.

Unable to drill holes, I took a whack at wiring up the turn table. I had pre-drilled the holes years ago, so routing the wires was no problem. And the turntable didn't work. Stymied, I came back later.

This evening, armed with a fully-charged battery, I drilled holes and snaked the wires through the table top, one of my least favorite tasks. I managed to get everything hooked up to a barrier strip and - nothing. I tired switching the polarity, no change. With nothing else to try I switched the polarity again, and tightened down the screws, this worked. 

One building is sitting on a wooden base so I glued it down. In very fitting end to this day, it warped! So yeah, today was a bit of a battle, but Altoona is one step closer to the finish line.

Finished With the Backdrops

 I knocked on item off the to do list tonight. I finished mounting backdrops. I took the section I'd mounted to foam core board last night and blackened the edge with a black magic marker. Then I stuck it to the wall. Next, I carved the final section of mountain with my hot knife, painted it and glues on the remained of the lichen. I added turf around Alto Tower and the area between the wall and tracks was done. 

While I was turf slinging mode, I decided to go ahead and cover up the area behind the roundhouse and the area where the two sets of tracks diverge. The upper photo really illustrates the difference between the new ground cover and the stuff that was put down in 2014 (on the left). The latter has become quite dusty, dull and lifeless looking.

Roads, Backdrops and Turf, Oh My!

 I've been stuck in this "I don;t know how to finish Altoona" quagmire for what seems like years. Oh, wait, it has. But I', turning the corner on it. For a while, I've been dreading finishing the roads, but today, I was determined to get it done. And wouldn't you know it? I found a much easier alternative.

In one of the massive boxes of crap under the layout, I found two sheets of brown Creatology foam I'd purchased years ago. Turns out these foam sheets are the same thickness as Woodland scenics paving tape! So rather than do my roads out of plaster, I simply cut them out of foam. I used this for the parking lot under the shop powerhouse and the the road leading out of town.

In the town itself, I really took the coward's way out. I painted the roads directly on the base. It definitely passes the "good enough for government work" test. However, I did use a foam sheet to create a sidewalk layer for the buildings to sit on.  

Doing the roads ended up crystalizing my needs for the town. I decided to add one more building, a gas station. and that's it. After all this supposed to be the outer fringes of the city. The city proper lives off the layout.

I also applied more turf to some areas around the shop complex. Since it's industrial, I went heavy on the dry grass turf.

The last thing I did was mount the final section of backdrop to a piece of foam core board. All that's left is painting the edges black and it's ready for prime time.

Despite the work I've done, there's still quite a bit on the to do list. to wit:

-Wire all roundhouse tracks and turn table

-Finished the remaining mountains.

-Mount remaining backdrop section.

-Assemble final building

-Wire building lights

-Install street lights

-Ballast remaining yard tracks

-Finish turf

-Add trees.

-Add details

Once this is done, I can declare major combat operations over for the layout. Stay tuned.

My Layout's Got 99 Problems and a Switch Ain't One

 Well hello there! I know, it's been forever since I've posted. But I've been working on the layout in fits and starts. As you can see from the above photo, I've gotten most of the Altoona yard tracks ballasted and am starting to apply ground cover. 

My most recent project involved my turnouts, chiefly, the double crossovers at each end of the layout. My trains were consistently stalling on them. Nothing kills my enthusiasm faster than balky trains, so I finally attacked the problem.

The Achilles heal of these Peco Electro Frog turnouts is their reliance on the points to ferry current to the rest of the turnout. If you point rails don't make perfect contact with the stock rails, your turnout becomes a dead spot. Painting the rails and ballasting, no matter how careful I am, tend to gum these turnouts up. 

It took a few hours of careful cleaning with Goof Off and tweaking, but now my trains run around flawlessly. It was well worth the effort. 

The main fruit of my labors was being able to teach my son Victor to run the trains with the DCC throttle. Talk about a proud papa moment!