Baton Rouge Southern - Chapter 2

[Philip H]

Fair points. I am not done yet.

[Philip H]

Taking a break from track work (!) I decided to follow @davefoxx and install some working grade crossing signals.  Looks like I'll have to scratch build the one for Highway 61 (as described elsewhere), but I had this one in a $15 Bag-O-Details I bought last year off flea-bay:

Its an old NJ International with the big grain of wheat bulbs, but after I painted it silver, and the base concrete, I think it looks pretty good.  Right now its driven from a Dallee Electronics circuit I bought in Bedford last August.  as for detection - right now its a single pole, single throw toggle switch I had laying around.  It will give the kids something to do watching daddy's trains.  I may scrounge up a push button at some point.  And yes, the hole I drilled in the scenery and benchwork to install it is too big.   :face palm:  I'll bring it up to level when I install my road . . . .

[davefoxx]

Very cool, Philip!

[Philip H]

Lack of posting for over 3 month doesn't mean I have abandoned the layout - as noted elsewhere I've been working a U30 CG rehab and a few other odds and ends. I've also spent time fine tuning all the track work related to that bridge you all love so much - and trying to figure out how to really do bald cypress trees justice in n scale. I also had a kid graduate high school, and my youngest is now one (!) so I think I'm proceeding at a life appropriate pace.

In order to finish the conversion of Lee's former Elkins yard to the KCS Baton Rouge facility (https://goo.gl/maps/5gg2x), I need to add some diesel service facilities that call to kind the operations I have photographed And railfanned. I started in that direction this week by scratch building a concrete fuel and sand pad out of styrene.

First, scraping off the cinders and gravel to get down to "earth" or in this case the surface of the HCD:

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Then rummaging in the scrap box to get an appropriate substrate:

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Which Is backed by some HO 6x12 styrene strip, and voila - semi instant fuel pad:

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It fits nicely just below the rails on top of the ties, and should give me plenty of space for a couple of fuel hoses and an old tank car converted to a sand house -meaning I'll probably get around to finishing my last TRW building challenge! The one downside to this work is I finally had to breakdown and clean my airbrush - idled over a year now. But even that is progress.

[Philip H]

With the airbrush cleaned but my Polky Scale Aged Concrete in need of filtering (& my wife having just replaced all her nylons) I decided to finish a project that I could paint without filtering. Three nights of light coats later, and some hand painting, and I got this ready for layout duty:

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The server behind the counter is just a Prieser unpainted figure with a skin wash for face and hand as my research indicates Whote Tower servers wire "nurses" uniforms. The gentlemen in the counter stool is painted as an African Anerican - hence the dark complexion. In South Louisiana modeling modern day scenes requires it. Now to see if I can figure out how to light the thing with a surplus Atlas light board.

[Philip H]

Where did the winter go? Most of mine has been devoted to house repairs, sick kids, and travel for work.

In addition as the family grows the Domestic COO and I have been renegotiating space use. The room where the BRS is currently located has now been claimed for a kids crafts space and above ground storage - to include a freezer for all the food we need to keep the brood fed.

In return I've been doing a lot of reorganizing and trashing in the basement, and while @wm3798 will attest that it's more cave then man cave, new ROW is in fact being acquired.

Pictured below is 10feet 6 inches of 16 inch wide bench work that is now installed as - once the HO roadbed is removed - ready for foam and such:

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This is a set of unused Freemo HO modules I picked up for free locally. My intention is to use it to model the US 61 chemical plant corridor in Baton Rouge using FreemoN standards. We'll see how that turn out.

The good news is I will have space to reuse the current bench work segments for the BRS yard and the as yet unbuilt Bucky's dome. So we'sort of back in the saddle. Stay tuned

[wm3798]

Now you can fix that damn bridge.

[Philip H]

Bufkin's bayou will return in some form . . . .

[Philip H]

What do you do on a rainy day?  Well if you are home with a sick 5 year old, you try a new scenery technique!

Over the last several months I've been following and watching Luke Towan's Boulder Creek Railroad vidoes on YouTube. He recently did one on HO hay bales and since I need some hay bales for my N scale layout, I decided to see how they scaled out. I gathered my materials, poured some coffee, and ran the video again to make sure I knew what I was doing.



Then I started. Since I'm working in N scale, I shortened his 22 inch piece of tape to about 6 inches. I cut the twine with kitchen sheers, and rolled it together per directions. Once glued up it looked like this:



Here's one without the ruler:



Then, to be both radical and scale appropriate, I cut the bundle in half. Here you see the two halves with an Atlas N Scale Ford pickup truck, and a keychain John Deere tractor. I think they scale out nicely this way, and will work well as large rolled hay bales in my scenery.




My thanks to Luke for showing the way. Now to make about a dozen more for my dairy farm!

[svedblen]

@Philip H, I don't see any pictures. Just a "no entry" sign where each pic should be! Have you posted them on some non-public area? Do you other guys see any pics here, or is it just me?

[davefoxx]

@svedblen, all four pictures were visible to me earlier today, but now I can only see two.  The first and last photos are no longer visible here.

That said, @Philip H, what I saw earlier was really a cool detail that was well executed.  A pile of those hay bales will look fantastic and are not a detail often seen on model layouts.  Good job!

DFF

[Philip H]

Not sure what all happened - I'll check the codes tonight and see what's up

[davefoxx]

Not sure what all happened - I'll check the codes tonight and see what's up

Haha!  Now it's worse; I can only see one out of four pictures.  Did you travel back to 1955 and screw with the timeline?   

DFF

[wazzou]

I see all 4.

[Philip H]

Haha!  Now it's worse; I can only see one out of four pictures.  Did you travel back to 1955 and screw with the timeline?   

DFF

While I DO have a birthday this week - I'm not that old . . . ..