Lighting fixes

 The other day, I noticed my streetlights in Johnstown were unusually dim. At first, I thought my low-voltage power supply had gone bad. However, after swapping it with a know good, that proved not to be the case. I ntoiced the PC board became hot within moments of current being applied.

I moved to the barrier strips that distribute power and noticed a small plume of smoke coming from one. Long story short, when my wife was stashing some of her stuff, she bashed to wires into each other, creating the short. This fix was dead simple. Now my N Scale motorists can stop treating the Busch traffic lights like a four-way stop!

Some more lighting in Gallitizin had glitched out on me. Namely a street light and the office light at the cement plant. The street light's wire had come loose, that simple fix. The office ultimatly required a new LED.

Unfortunately the Altoona end of the layout is pretty much dead in the water until all the stuff I ordered arrives. In addition to the structure kits, I've also ordered up a new urban backdrop from eBay. seller a.b.b.r_81 (link). More on this when it arrives.

Finished Ballasing the Mains

I'm proud to report every inch of main line track on this layout is ballasted. All that remains now is  the Altoona yard tracks and the tracks by roundhouse. Then I can kiss the ballast goodbye until the next layout. However, that will have to wait until I can get to the hobby shop.

In other news, the Pittsburgh Staging yard has gone from procrastination purgatory to almost finished. Five of the six tracks are glued down. To honest things weren't as smooth as I expected. I must have gotten a bad batch of rail joiners because I had more than a few that simply would not go onto the rail!

If you're wondering about the white blotch in the middle of the otherwise brown table top, well, the soldering iron had something to do with it. I used a bit of Dap patching Patch'n'Paint to fill the hole Talk about a bone headed move.

Full Steam Ahead!

 

 

 Today was a productive day on the layout. First and foremost, I decided to try and return my I1 to service. It had stopped responding to the throttle and then one of it's tender trucks fell apart. I put it on the programing track, addressed the decoder and, when tested, the locomotive moved! Thank God! with ongoing chip shortage (damn pandemic) getting a replacement may be a tall (and not to mention costly) order.

After the I1, only my T1 and Alco FB remain out of service.

 

 

 

 Next on my list was ballasting. Now, all but about ten feet of main line are ballasted. That just leaves the yard and a few tracks in the Juniata Shop. That will have to wait until I get to the hobby shop.

Another project, painting the fascia burnt umber. It looks so much better in a neutral color.

 

 

I finally started laying track in the Pittsburgh staging yard. About damn time! The track is the old Atlas code 80 stuff.

 

 

Lastly, I added some turf to a small area near Altoona with some help from  Victor.

This is about all I can do until all the stuff I ordered arrives. I swear waiting is the hardest part. Didn't Tom Petty write a song to that effect?

More Buildings for Altoona

     I stuck with my Altoona plan for a whole ten seconds. I was going to leave the whole area inside the Altoona loop undeveloped. Well, the more I thought about, I realized there were some structures I really wanted to include.   

    To wit, I have ordered up American Model Builders' "Railroad Rooming House" and Blair Lines "Green Door Lounge" kits. Both should lend a nice seedy, wrong-side-of-the-tracks vibe to the area. I've always wanted to include the former on a layout. Perhaps I'll add a few more structures and make a few blocks long area. I'll add a few businesses and a few houses.

    I've also realized I goofed when it comes to the mountains. The shops are south of the tracks and the city is to the north! Um, oops! I guess I'll need to hunt down some generic city backdrops. On that same note, I went ahead and moved Alto Tower to the north side of the tracks.

    Lastly, I thought the shop complex needed a power house. Thankfully, I had Model Power's "Coverall Paints" building sitting under my layout. This was salvaged off my last layout. I previously removed the base, painted it Floquil "Boxcar Red" and did the mortar effects. So all I had to do was pull off the "Coverall Paints" signs, plunk it on the layout and call it a day. Eventually I will add roads and parking areas.

Ballast and Backdrops

I managed to paint the backdrops last night. The project took all of about 10 minutes. I took some Apple Barrel "Holly Branch" green paint and mixed in black until I got the real dark green of distant mountains. Then I mixed up a darker batch for contrast. I slathered onto the wall with a big old paintbrush and that was that.

I've managed to ballast about half of the mainline tracks around the Altoona loop. The process seems to be going smoothly, so I can't complain.
 

For my last trick, I resoldered the feeder wire seen in the bottom right corner of the photo.

The Altoona Endgame

 Hey everybody! I'm back and boy do I have a lot of excuses for all the tumbleweeds blowing through this once-active blog. Want to hear them? Well, I'll tell you anyway (I know I've used that joke before).

First off, for a good little while, my wife and I were seriously considering putting our house on the market. This would necessitate removal of the layout. And there's no point in working on it if you;re goning to tear it down. But, the good news is, we decided to stay put.

Also, as mentioned elsewhere in this blog, I was just getting kind of burnt out on the whole thing. Part of that was not knowing how to finish Altoona and having a lot of unpleasant items on the to-do list. And that, my friends is the subject of this entry.

My plan for Altoona is to finish the shop area, paint some backdrops on the wall, build a bit of mountain along the wall, add turf to the flat areas and call it done. I know, that sound like I taking the easy way out, but hear me out.

I'm building this layout for operation. That means operators in Altoona will be reaching over things and any building in the way stands a high risk of damage. Hence the minimalist approach.

In service of that goal, I painted the rails in the Altoona yard. Normally, rail painting is something I can only stand to do a little at a time. But today? Baby I was in the zone! I knocked it all out in a few hours. And let me tell you, it came down to the last few drops in my bottle Polyscale Rail Brown.

With that, every inch of track on this layout is painted save for the Altoona yard turnouts. I'm not going to bother. In the past, when I've painted them, no matter how careful I am about cleaning them and avoiding the contacts, it results in some very balky turnout operation. Looks may suffer but, I'll take reliability over aesthetics any day.

Now on to ballasting!

Leafing Through It

 I was running trains last night and I noticed some areas of the layout are starting to show their age a nd look a bit dusty, dull, and lifeless. One such area is around Gallitzin. I solution I learned from Bob Hayden is to simply apply more turf over the existing turf. However, the area I wanted to rejuvinate is a forest.

If you've ever been in a forest, you've no doubt noticed the floor is rarely green grass. I'd experimented in the past with using ground up leaves to mimic the look of fallen leaves, but I wasn't fully sold on it. But I decided to give it another try.

I must say the results are quite convincing, at least to my eye. The trick I find is to late some of the green turf bleed through. 

To make this stuff, I gathered fallen leaves from my maple tree, put them in the blender (please don't tell my wife) and let her rip. Once the leaves were chopped up fine enough, I put them through a strainer to ensure I used only the finest material. As of yet I haven't glues it to the layout but, I may do so in the future.

Another part of the project was cleaning up all the clump foliage my Woodland Scenics trees had shed over the years. Other trees were leaning quite badly and needed a few drops of CA to help them stand up straight.