Finished Rslaserkits' Outhouse

I picked this kit up at the Hub City Railroad Museum for $2. It comes with a trio of outhouses. I figured the folks visiting Horseshoe Curve could use some kind of facility for, in the words of Bachmann Turner Overdrive, takin' care of business.

I started out by hitting the kit with a coat of Minwax "Special Walnut" stain. Once it dried overnight, I cut the pieces from their sprue and proceeded to glue them together. This was my first laser-cut since Branchline Trains "Tower House." (Link)  That kit was a total knock-down, drag-out slug fest. This kit wasn't nearly as bad, but it did remind me of why laser kits are challenging.

The glue kept wanting to stick the pieces to my fingers and not each other. It ended up demolishing the damn thing several times before getting it put together. So that explains all the glue shmootz on the walls. But since this thing will be viewed from about five feet away, nobody's going to notice.

So that's that, a lot of blather for a four-walls-and-a-roof kit.

Tree Experiments

I was reading fellow N Scaler Spookshow's blog and at one point he decided to add some larger trees to his layout to represent older ones. I read that and thought "a good idea's a good idea." But then, when I visited Altoona this past summer, I realized a lot of the trees near the tracks were on the small side, no doubt their growth having been stunted by years of steam locomotives dropping hot cinders.

With that in mind, I decided the smaller Woodland Scenics trees were appropriate for about 95% of the layout. However, I did pick up one large tree kit and placed them in areas away from the tracks. I placed a few in Johnstown, the farm area and in Gallitzin. And I must say, they do look quite realistic.

Now, I have to say, these Woodland Scenics trees are just one hell of a tedious pain in the ass to assemble. The prescribed method is the shape the plastic armatures into something tree-like in appearance, slather on the "Hobby Tack" and then attach the "foliage" (essential ground-up Nerf dyed varying shades of green). Well, this is what I did and I had one hell of a time getting the trees assembled. Turns out Hobby Tack is great for sticking foliage to your fingers. But for affixing it to plastic tree armatures? Not so much.

I assembled about five trees my first go around and was quite peeved to discover nearly all of them had shed their flocking a day later. So on the second time, I let the Hobby Tack dry a bit before adding foliage (another Spookshow idea). This worked marginally better but I still had issues.

On the last few batches of trees, I had tried Elmer's spray adhesive. It made for easier assembly but, it didn't last. I have a layout full of trees losing the foliage! So anyway, I still have 114 small trees to build and plant (God help me). Here's hoping I can unlock the ancient Chinese secrete to doing it right.

Road Work Ahead

 

It's that time of the year and I've got the bug again. Tonight, I decided to take on a nice, simple project, repainting the roads in Gallitzin.  I initially painted them light gray. After living with it for a few years, I decided I didn't like the look. After all, this is Pennsylvania, not Florida.

I had a small bottle of Apple Barrel "Pavement." I managed to exhaust my supply of it on two streets. But, the stuff is cheap and readily obtainable at Walmart. So there you have it, a nice way to ease back into things.

As for my trip to Altoona, well, it was awesome! I shot tons of photos and video and I'm still sifting through them. But a highlight was seeing the Pennsy Heritage Unit on the curve. 

A Blessing in Disguise?

After not running trains in months, I decided to spend a rainy afternoon doing just that. And things did not go smoothly. There were a whole lot of derailments and shorts and other issues. But the worst was when I ran my I1 into a turnout set against it and fried the decoder.

Suffice to say I was not happy. The stream of obsenities that left my mouth sounded like a Lenny Bruce routine. I set the locomotive on my display and went about running some other stuff. Eventually I got the layout's creeks worked out and things ran smoothly.

Once I cooled off, I realized maybe this wasn't such a bad thing. First off, if any decoder was going to get fried, better the cheapie DZ-126 in the I1 than one of the expensive sound decoders in my BLI locos. It could've been worse, right?

Second, I realized this is an opportunity to do things right. The initial decoder install on this beast was a nightmare. It took me a good two weeks of tinkering to get the locomotive to do one lap around the layout without derailing. A big reason for that is the wires running from the tender to the loco are too stiff. I plan to replace them with more flexible wire that's colored black.

While I'm replacing the decoder, I plan to make some other upgrades. Chief among them is replacing the tender trucks with Bachmanns, which feature all-wheel pickup. Right now, the drivers pick up power from one rail and the tender wheels pick up power from the other. As such the locomotive has a tendency to stall on turnouts, even with powered frogs!

And as long as I'm replacing the decoder, why not go all out and add sound? This will be a nice upgrade.

I wouldn't be making these upgrades had I not fried the decoder to begin with! So maybe this is a blessing in disguise. The accident forced me to quit kicking the can down the road.

In other news, I've published my first eBook. If you're wondering what I've been spending my spare time on while I'm not working on the layout (or burning up DCC decoders), this it. So now, I'm oing to try and sell you something. If you buy my book for the low, low price of $1, you'll get to read a really cool story and you'll help finance further layout construction. Check it out:

Multiple formats including Amazon Kindle can be found here:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/821410

And you Nook users can get it here:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cataloosa-island-alden-bauers/1128568803?ean=2940155234418

Hope you all enjoy.

A Tree Grows in Johnstown

Wow, four months since my last entry. But it's summer and you know how that goes. Honestly, today was the first day I ran the trains since March. Now, on to what I actually did.

This project took all of about five minutes. In involved me going to Hobby Lobby, buying a 14-pack of Woodland Scenics prefab trees and scattering them about the Johnstown part of the layout. Now, I tried my best to situate the trees in odd-numbered groups. I read on Spookshow's site that trees tend to look better this way and I tend to agree.

 

Another project I'm in the midst of is making high-voltage transmission towers. They'll run from the Model Power susbstation back to the wall. When I needed transmission lines in Gallitzin, I opted to use HO telephone poles. But, I decided not to half ass things this time.

I bought some basswood dowels and square sticks at Walmart. These looked about the right size in the store. The next step was staining them with Minwax "Special Walnut." While the stain was drying, I built a jig to speed assembly. I fastened everything together Gorilla wood glue.

The wire supports and insulators came from my Model Power substation kit. They're held in place with some Testor's model glue.  

Here's the prototype:

In other news, I'm planing a trip to Pennsy country at the end of the month. I'll be staying in Altoona and visiting many of the places I've modeled. The last time my dad and I made the trip was 2010. So yeah, long overdue.

My dad and I basically came to the realization that it was now or never for making this trip. He's not getting any younger and my list of responsibilities isn't exactly getting shorter. With that in mind, this will most likely be our last father and son trip to Altoona for quite some time. So this is bitter sweet.

At any rate, I plan on shooting tons of photos and video while I'm there and I'll be making a full report when get back to the Palmetto state.

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!