Weekend Update 3/2/14

[up1950s]

[PAL_Houston]

Richie:

you got a little carried away on the intro to this weeks "WeekEND UPdate"!!
Really?  "Inspect your bottoms"??

"Butt" don't feel obligated?

"In the hole"??

"Puffer"??

"Failed potato chips"???

"blow away"??

I predict you are gonna catch all sorts of crap!!!!

[John]

LOL

[eric220]

With MC busy with his own Free-moN modules, I turned my attention back toward my basement empire. I busted out the pieces that have been sitting around (Digitrax UR92, RR Cir-kits tower controller and two 8-block occupancy cards, some long loconet cable, and a power supply) and put them all together so that I could connect up the wires that the Gandy Dancers installed from the current sensing coils. I now have occupancy detection for all of California and the Ruby Canyon in Colorado. To test it, I pulled out the Q2 with a nice long freight.



The two lit red LEDs on the circuit boards at the bottom of the photo show the blocks occupied by the locomotive and the caboose.

Edit: Side note, I know the Q2 was built for speed, but that thing is DAMN sexy hauling a decent length freight through the snaking curves at speed step 25. Pure PRR porn.

[peteski]

While the man in the hole, in the intro photo, is impressive (I would not want to be in his shoes with low hanging equipment approaching  ), I'm just as impressed with the double crossover in the background.  I heard that railroads tried to avoid those as much as possible.

[Iain]

Drew up the hood for a Lima switcher; more info in the Lima thread.  I ordered one from Shapeways to test fit on the mechanism.  In the meanwhile, I'm drawing up the cab and etched parts.  The cab roof, stack, and a few other details will be tied together on a fret to be printed separately from the hood.  I'm hoping to make the fret contain parts that are common to all Limas except the big center cabs.  It looks like things like the cabs, number boards, etc. were common among them.

This weekend is the annual New Bern, NC train show.  I have the advantage of being from the area, so I don't have to pay for a hotel 

[davidgray1974]

DKS last weekend had a great solution for a section of my track that needed a bridge to help carry it over the river.  He suggested I use a double bridge portal and Chooch flexible rock wall.  I just happened to already have both in my possession.  What luck!  I used Styrofoam sheets and a hot wire cutter to form the width of the bridge and then hot glued the portals to the outside.  Then added the flex wall to the bottom of the bridge. 




Then added a coat of E/L Gray, India Ink wash and then highlighted with L&N Gray and CSX Tan. 


Here is a couple shots of it in place.



Once I add sculpt-a-mold to blend it in with its surroundings, I think it will look good.  Will try and get most of this done this weekend.  Will post more photos later this weekend if all goes well.

Thanks for looking!!

David

[mark dance]

I managed to finish assembling the Farr Creek bridge this week (phew! 250 interlaced links made my head hurt).



Because I finished earlier than I planned I had the opportunity today to make up the piers and paint and weather the bridge.  I still need to do final weathering on the piers and then place the whole thing in the scenery, which is in bad need of updating.  Oh, and install the running and guard rails of course.  It was a beautiful day here so I took the opportunity to shoot the bridge in the sunlight coming into our living room for some "dramatic" shots .  Thanks for indulging me!















And then I propped the bridge into place in front of the mock up bridge to get a feel for the scene.  I can't wait to replace those deciduous trees with Supertrees.  Next week's project!



Have a great weekend!

md

[Mark W]

Welp.  That's it.  You've won N Scale. 


Guess we can all go outside now... 

[craigolio1]

Mark that is absolutely a work of art.

[DKS]

Welp.  That's it.  You've won N Scale. 

Yep. Jaw-dropping.

[GaryHinshaw]

This is the money shot.  And this work comes from a guy who claims not to be a modeller.  [I give him a hard time about that every chance I get. ]  Stunning!

That stone bridge turned out great too David Gray!

[up1950s]

I hope Mark makes a book or DVD on all his bridges and hints at technics he uses that might be of help . Mark , how many so far , and how many more gems to go ?

[nkalanaga]

The double crossover makes sense.  With two hump leads, one would like some way to feed cars to both halves of the yard from both humps.  That in itself is interesting, as most of the hump yards I've seen have either a single hump, or two humps each serving its own yard, basically making two independent yards.

I don't know how the NP inspected their cars, but the Pasco yard certainly didn't have a car inspector under the hump.

[PaulP]

Been working on some loads this week.
First up pipe loads for my new BLMA pipe flats.
I know I have some BLMA pipe loads on order and Protoloads make some really nice pipe loads but
I enjoy trying to attempt to models these things.
My banding machine broke so when I get it fixed I will get back to banding them. LOL


Next up is a couple of Pole loads.
I know the flats are not correct but we dont have many to choose from in nscale.
Cleaned off the TOFC goodies from some MT flats and build some bunks.
Painting and weathering and tapering more poles yet.


And last some BLMA pipe flats on clearance? I had to have a few more.
They need loads so after whittling for an hour I think I am on to something.
I think with some effort I can get this into a master for casting.
2 blades to 3 flat cars. Fun stuff


Paul