On to Galltizin!

Hurrah hurrah hurrah! Horseshoe Curve is largely done. I finally girded my loins enough to make a trip through the access hatch to finish with the ground cover. Yes, the area still needs some more trees, but I'm pondering the whole situation. So until then, I feel the curve is in enough of a state of completion that I can move on. So yay, I  finally get to scratch the whole "I want to do something else on this layout" itch.

It turns out that "something else" is going to be Gallitzin. Gallitzin is a small town and home to the famous tunnels of the same name. Now, up until this point, the area I've been modeling has been rural with few structures. Well, that's going to change in a big way as I start modeling an actual town. All of those Model Power house kits I've put together over the past year or so will find a home here. 

Adding to the challenge of modeling Gallitzin is the topology. Nothing is level. In fact the whole town kind of resembles San Francisco only without the cable cars and hipsters. Each of the aforementioned houses will be set into the hillside. 

Now, as with previous parts of the layout, I won't be trying to duplicate Gallitzin exactly. Rather I'll merely attempt to capture the flavor of the area. This will also allow me to add some industry to the area and give my local freights something to do.

One of those industrial areas will be served by the eastbound tracks and will include Model Powers Brewery, which I've expanded with American Model Builers Transfer Building kit and Cornerstones "Medusa Cement." The westbound tracks will serve a metal fabricator and a feed, seed and implement dealer.

I'm setting the boundary for this section of the layout at PA Route 53, which is where the center peninsula returns to the walls. When this section is finished, about half of the layout will be sceniced.

Sound-Equipped Locomotives

Up until just recently, the idea of sound-equipped locomotives never much appealed to me. Admittedly, my previous experience with them was in O-Gauge and they made such racket that the novelty wore off pretty quickly. Also, when I started converting my fleet to DCC, I decided to splurge and add a sound decoder to my N&W J. I have to say, I way pretty underwhelmed. I mean how much sound could you really get out of a dime-sized speaker?

Then, a couple of weeks ago Bachmann surprised us all when they announced a sound value K4. Needless to say I snapped one up. Unlike my J, the sound on this loco was impressive. It's just loud enough to be heard but not deafeningly so. Just yesterday, I finally took delivery of my Broadway Limited E7s, which also are equipped with sound. These two are impressive with sound at just the right volume. Suffice to say, I'm hooked. I can't wait for my BLI M1 to get here so I can further increase my stable of sound-equipped locos.

Here are the BLI E7s leaving Johnstown:

The K4 Rounding Horseshoe Curve:

In other news, I haven't done much of anything on the layout itself lately. But I really need to get myself motivated to finish Horseshoe Curve and move on.

The Bachmann K4 Has Landed

I took delivery of my Bachmann K4 Pacific today. All I can say is wow, this locomotive is awesome. The paintwork is crisp, the detailing is incredible. It makes my Minitrix K4 look pretty crude by comparison.

My K4 Pacific fleet. The new Bachmann model (right) makes the old Minitrix (left) look completely dated.

If looks weren't enough, the model also comes with a factory-installed Soundtraxx decoder. Up until this point, I've been pretty underwhelmed by N Scale sound. I mean come on, what kind of sound are you going to get out of a dime-sized speaker? Well, I can tell you the sound on this loco is amazing. I could hear clearly anywhere in the train room and even down the stairs!

My only minor annoyances with this loco are the whistle, a very high-pitched European-sounding one. This "banshee" whistle may be accurate for PRR freight steamers, but passenger engines had a much deeper three-chime whistle. The another annoyance was the trailing truck was out of gauge and would consistently hop the rails on a few turnouts.

Tree Trimming at the Curve

I finally took on a project I've been dreading for a while, redoing the trees at Horseshoe Curve. My first pass at the foreground trees was a product of my desire to finish the scene before my son was born. And the more I looked at it, the more I decided it just didn't look right to me. The trees were too tall and as such made the curve look too small. Also, some were the wrong color

The "Before" picture with oversize trees.

Unfortunately for me, pulling the trees wasn't that easy. It was no longer possible to climb up on the layout to get to them, necessitating going in through the access hatch. Not pleasant but survivable. I removed the trees, repainted some of them and trimmed them down to size and started replanting them.

The "After" photo. Much better.

I had another "ah ah moment" came when I was thumbing through noted railroad historian Don Ball Jr's excellent book Pennsylvania Railroad 1940s - 1950s. Back in the 50s, trees at the curve were much more sparse than they are today, owning no doubt to the constant procession of steam locomotives spewing cinders into the air. 

With that in mind, I'm keeping the trees clustered into a few distinct stands and kept further back from the tracks. Anyway, other than trees, all that's left for the curve is turfing a small area. Then I finally get to move on.

Hell Freezes Over

If you've been following this blog since its inception, you're no doubt aware that the lack of Pennsy steam in N Scale has been a perennial favorite topic for rants. So imagion my surprise when I log onto Facebook and see this posted in the PRR N Scale Modeling Group:

That's right, Bachmann has announced a K4 Pacific in N Scale with DCC and sound less! Now how can I pass that up? If anything it makes me feel a little but foolish having spent all that time and money to upgrade my old Minitirx engine, but oh well, two K4s are better than one right?

If that weren't enough, Broadway Limited, no doubt feeling some heat from the recently-lit fire under their fannies released this:

Yup, that's a painted prepoduction model of BLI's much-anticipated M1a. While still scheduled for a November 2015 delivery, it's somewhat reassuring to see them update their delivery schedule and not push this thing back another two months.

Back to the Curve

The new access road for Kittanning Point Station. A pair of Cornerstone crossing gates guard the crossing.

Overall view of the valley. The brown area at left will require going through the access hatch to finish.

Note the reservoir spillway at left.

After what seems like months, oh wait, it has been months, I got back to work on Horseshoe Curve. Anyway, I was in a mad rush to get the area around the Curve done before my son was born. And I came quite close. But towards the end the "I wanna do something else on the layout" bug bit me hard. As a result I ended up doing some work at the Altoona Shop (which I am currently redoing) and started the switch to DCC. 

At any rate, I started things off by painting most recently installed plaster in preparation for turf. I have to say, it was nice to see the area look a bit more natural after looking at grungy white plaster all this time.

The next thing I did was finish the road from the Curve to the front of the layout, along with a short access road for Kittanning Point. As usual, I used Woodland Scenics paving tape and patching plaster. Now, here's where the fun starts. I grabbed my cheap poster paint and mixed some white with the black to create a nice dark grey color of a faded road. But not only did I not get an opaque coat, I got a weird blue color! I tried going over it with straight black, still the white bled through. 

Eventually, I tossed in the towel and went downstairs for the night. Today, however, I went out and bought some acrylic paint, and that was the ticket. For my next trick, I went about applying the Woodland Scenics turf. I stared with green fine turf, then moved on to patches of yellow and finally coarse turf. For application, I brushed the area with a coat of matte medium, applied the turf and sprayed it with more, diluted matte medium. 

While the glue was drying, I went ahead and added some grade crossing gates to Kittanning Point station. Next, I have the whole tree issue to ponder.

Finished two more houses

I knocked out another two Model Power house kits. The first one I took on was "Moving In."

I've come to the realization that these kits look better in darker earth tones. The last time I painted this kit, I used Floquil "Antique White" and I think it ended up looking a bit toylike, akin to a Plasticville building. Anyway, this time around, I went with Floquil "Tuscan Red" for the walls, "Antique White" for the windows "Grimy Black" for the roof and doors and Testors "Flat Olive Drab" for the shutters. 

As threatened, I only placed shutters on the front windows. Most of the houses I see only have them on the front, so this is prototypical. Also omitting a large portion of the shutters made the project go much faster. assembly took maybe 20 minutes as opposed to 90. All in all, I'm quite happy with how it turned out.

The next kit, "The Grabitski's" proved to be a bit of a challenge. The kit is a house that's having an addition being built. Therefore it would take more than a coat of paint to differentiate it from its earlier incarnation.

After a bit of head scratching, I decided to do some kitbashing. My brilliant idea was to turn the under-construction addition into a carport. I started out by taking the side wall of the addition and chopping it down to one story. Next, I used some Plastruct styrene pieces to fashion a footing for the wall, rafters and a roof. 

Now, the addition also comes with a wood floor and its own foundation pieces, I assembled these and stuck them to the back of the house, creating a back deck. I finished it off by adding some Woodland Scenics figures.

For paint I used "Grimy Black" on the roof, "Roof Brown" on the carport supports and deck and "Concrete" on the carport footing. As for the walls and windows? I wasn't in the mood to brush paint them. But the only model paint  had in a spray can was silver and Olive Drab. But then I realized "Who says I have to use model paint?" I grabbed two cans of Krylon spray paint and knocked the walls and windows out in seconds. I used some unnamed shade of maroon for the walls and "Meringue" for the windows and doors. As advertised, it was dry in 15 minutes. 

I omitted the shutters entirely on this house. Honestly I don;t miss them. They don't really add a lot to the building and are a tedious pain in the ass to put on. 

In other news, I have begun purging my locomotive fleet of non-PRR, Conrail, PC, NS equipment. I originally thought I would keep it to run once in a while, but the switch to DCC has made me rethink that. After all, I never ran these engines before the switch, why would I install decoders in them? Besides, DCC is expensive and I could use the cash infusion.