Weekend Update 12/25/16

[John]

Just the other side of my door layout


I was able to add 48x20" rolling stock drawers to each side of the layout.

I love this scene ..    can you add an overhead shot on the car drawer?

[Chris333]

These are photos before I touched up the paint.
https://goo.gl/photos/CpKpy4S5dtWHETn7A
https://goo.gl/photos/zBKtAHnUGPnVvkeo9
https://goo.gl/photos/b5ukywWNNbwehokc9
https://goo.gl/photos/kSmqrNURUnii52Lt9

The frames are 1x2's with a 1/4" hard board floor. I used sticky weather strips to make the rows.

[thomasjmdavis]

Chris, that is just wayyyy too simple, and brilliant.  I can stop beating my head against the wall on how to design storage for my collection of cars.  Three or four of those simple drawers under the staging tracks should suffice.  I even have a 50' roll of peel and stick foam left over from working on the house.

Now, all I need is a layout to go over the drawers.

Tom D

[tom mann]

I like the black fascia @Chris333 . I bought a can of semi-gloss black for the Hinshaw Valley that I'm a few projects away from applying. 

Where did you get the background?

[peteski]

I like the black fascia @Chris333 . I bought a can of semi-gloss black for the Hinshaw Valley that I'm a few projects away from applying. 

Where did you get the background?

I swear I recognize those cloud shapes!   They look like they were airbrushed using paper stencils from some company which made them for clouds and mountains.  Friend used them on his home layout (paint the blue sky first, then stencil in the clouds with white paint. He used white spray can paint and his do not look as good as Chris' - I suspect Chris used an airbrush.

Here is my friend's backdrop (clouds and the mountains are stencil-painted.


And the other side of that backdrop.

[Angus Shops]

Chris, your layout is one of the finest N scale layouts I've seen. For me the lessons I get are the attention to fine quality trackwork, neat and tidy ballast and a clean right of way, and the detailed, realistic scenes that refrain from trying to stuff too much into the scene. Back in the day the big railroads had strict standards for right of way maintenance, and, in most cases, both the railroad and the surrounding property owners had enough space to be able to develop their properties without the need to cram up against their neighbours. This is particularly true when the cities and towns grew up around the railroad; if the railroad got there first the could claim as much ROW, often in the prime locations, as they thought they ever could need. Even if a town was established before the arrival of the railroad, the railroad could choose to develop on the edge of town to avoid having to pay speculators prices for land in the established centre of town, and the commercial town centre would migrate to the railroad over time. Bottom line, it looks to me like Chris's layout reflects these ideas with style.

Of coarse this all goes out the window on the east coast, where urban development was way ahead of the arrival of the railroads...
Geoff

[Angus Shops]

Oh, and another exception to my 'needs space' diatribe above: things get a lot tighter when geography constricts the amount of available developable land. I'm thinking of those classic eastern coal lines...
Geoff

[BOK]

Thanks for posting shots of your, fine layout, Chris. They are always an inspiration.

Merry Christmas,

Barry

[BOK]

Dave, that's a nice little narrow gauge layout with well done scenery and the Colorado look.

I hope you will feeling better soon and still have a great Christmas.

Barry

[sirenwerks]

Woo hoo! Congrats! I'm glad that's finally wrapping up for you.

Personally, if it's been a while, I'd recommend a door before tackling anything more ambitious. Baby steps hombre.

Don't worry, I'm just thinking about modules in a door scaled up scenario.  Just want to be able to incorporate the major components of what is done now into the next big thing, when the next big thing happens years down the road.  I just am not keen on using HCDs, despite the convenience, so modular benchwork seems the best solution.

[Chris333]

Where did you get the background?

The sky was made with stencils like Pete said, but I didn't buy them. Just looked at a photo of them while drawing  so they might look similar.

The other little bits of images from ScenicKing http://www.sceniking.com/CATZN.htm

[bnsfdash8]

Chopping up a perfectly good FVM GP60 to make a GP59.

[mu26aeh]

I was down by the tracks earlier and heard horns blow at the crossing before me. Caught me off guard for a train on a Saturday. I caught this picture as the train passed. I think I found out where those snickerdoodles ended up from the other night Merry Christmas from the CSX Hanover Subdivision !

20161224_150923 by Adam Henry, on Flickr

[Philip H]

Christmas came a little early (yesterday) in a package from the inlaws - opened before we began to celebrate with my folks:

[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

Looks I'll be catching up on some important reading before New Years!

[up1950s]

Chris , what great work as always . A thought just popped up . I wonder if a foggy hill and dale backdrop could be made using stencils . The need for blue above wouldn't exist but the hilltops would naturally get lighter and the further the range would all but vanish .

Something like this