AC&Y - Ohio's Road of Service

[SAH]

Oops.  I see LED in a MRR post and immediately go to "strips".  A few years ago the low wattage daylight CFLs I started with were becoming harder to find as the LEDs came down in price.  I have used a few LEDs and will no doubt go that route as the need arises.  The color rendition is different but I've found a "daylight" LED from one manufacturer to the next is different too.  I'll deal with it when the time comes.

[SAH]

Lots of changes and progress this week.  A simple cardboard shield was installed on the back side of the General Tire end of Spur 4 to hide the light source.  Now I'm not blinded by the light when I enter the room.  Since I've decided to concentrate on General Tire and not bother with the Brittain engine house section it works fine.  The turnout was moved from the back side to General Tire side too.  More on that later.


All lighting valences are up.  Temporary structures in place to give a feel of how things will look.  Once I figure the actual building depths I'll set the rest of the backdrops.  The Spur 4 sections are deeper than they need to be to support Spur 4 alone because in the GSO plan the AC&Y main from Brittain Yard was to run behind the structures to get to the rest of the AC&Y main. 


The temp structures will be replaced with a scratchbuilt version of General Tire.    The only fly in the ointment (aside from the fact that I haven't built a structure from scratch in 15 years ) is that in reality General Tire was on the South side of Spur 4.  The South side of my modeled Spur 4 is in the aisle.  I moved GT to the North side and will build a mirror image of the structure.  Lots of fudging as far as placement of details in store but if I can get the right look most folks will never know.  The entire General Tire site is a vacant lot today.  Thanks to the summitmemories.org website for enough photos to make the project possible.  Akron is in Summit county.

[SAH]

Building mock-ups are a wonderful thing.  Most useful is how they uncover my wrong-headed thinking about how things will fit together.  General Tire will be built as a mirror image.  The points of the spur switch are backwards to how they existed, which kind of messes up construction of the structure layout as a true mirror.  Not a big deal.  The mock-up is a rough go at the corner.  I don't think it will screw up the feel of place.
The mock-up drawing will be fed into my computerized cutter.  Finally, my first use with a REAL project!  Warning:  Learning curve ahead. 

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Nice use of a blob!

[SAH]

I think this will work.  I shortened the depth of the office building by one bay and set the face of the warehouse/factory out from the end of the office building to accommodate the reversed curve.  I need to figure out a size for the 2 story building (probably the original Admin / Engineering offices) because it will impact the location of  the main building face.  Restoring the third bay might be the right answer.  We'll see.  I'd forgotten how much I enjoy building structures.  This is fun.


The blob works (and is very necessary) due to space limitations.  In the long run layout plan I hope to double the length of the warehouse/factory face and separate the General Tire property from Brittain Yard with the Akron Expressway structure, just as it did in real life.  The orientation of the expressway and General Tire will not be correct but the sequence of structures viewed as a train leaves Brittain to serve Spur 4 will be.  That's the plan  anyway.

[SAH]

Wow.  The computerized cutter learning curve has been way steeper than I imagined, but I am making progress.  Cutting thin stock has not been a problem.  Cutting 0.030 chip board, styrene and such:  Not such a high success rate.  Based on what works well and what "kind of" works, a plan is coming together.  It's not the plan I started with but that's life, right.


The first 0.030" chip board cut on top.  Not so good but I think I know how to make a good part after a bunch of trials.  I ran out of materials however.  The white part is heavy cardstock.  Nice clean lines.  I'll laminate it to the chip board to get the wall relief I'm looking for.  The brick sheet is a home print using Evan Designs Brickyard software.  Probably not the exact style I will use.  More experimentation ahead.

Steve

[SAH]

Funny.  I finally got around to reading the "What's in DKS's Tool Box" thread.  I too have a lot of his list at hand, but the table saw . . . . . Hmm.  Never thought of that.  I've decided DPM parts will work just fine of the original General Tire Admin building, with some hacking and sawing of course.  And yes, that resin is a PITA to work with.  Ah, but that table saw.  I think there is one n my future.  Thanks guys.

[SAH]

I'm starting to figure this cutter thingee out.  Waiting for my color expert to come home from choir practice and select the proper brick color.

[SAH]

Things are quite literally, coming together.  The layers from top to bottom:  Canson 185# Ivory colored paper, brick printed on matte photo paper, windows and doors printed on vellum paper, 0.050" board stock.


The layers are not glued together yet but you get the general idea of how they fit together.  I haven't decided what adhesive to use yet.  It needs to be permanent but adjustable during the layering process.  Maybe good old stick glue.

[SAH]

Here's the East wall assembled.  The blue pen was a find at Michael's.  2 way glue with a chisel applicator, similar to a hi-liter tip.  The tip makes it easy to get adhesive between window sections.  It goes on blue and dries clear.  If you join the parts when it is blue it a permanent bond.  When it dries clear the parts can be re-positioned.  Pretty cool.  From Zig Memory Systems, Kuretake.

We went to Michael's searching for markers that will color styrene.  I wanted an off-white color for the window lintels to match the concrete frame.  Prismacolor markers will work but they did not have the right color.  I tried alcohol based Copic sketch markers without success, but they work great at coloring the white cut edges of the brick sheet.  I've also colored strips with a Painter's Touch spray bomb.  Good results but until the solvent evaporates the apartment stinks.  It's a workable solution though.


Here's the test fit.  A few misses here and there but chalk it up to learning.  So far so good.

[wm3798]

That's going to be a signature scene there.  Incredible work.
Layering up thinner stock was the answer for my Cumberland station, along with a little vertical and horizontal bracing to keep everything tidy.

Can't wait to see how this progresses.  But I have to ask... Interior lighting?  Surely there's a third shift...

Lee

[C855B]

Here's the East wall assembled.  The blue pen was a find at Michael's.  2 way glue with a chisel applicator, similar to a hi-liter tip.  The tip makes it easy to get adhesive between window sections.  It goes on blue and dries clear.  If you join the parts when it is blue it a permanent bond.  When it dries clear the parts can be re-positioned.  Pretty cool.  From Zig Memory Systems, Kuretake. ...

Thanks for this, very much! We just returned from the closest Michael's (an hour away), on a mission to find this miracle glue pen.    They were out of the chisel and large tips, but they did have the "thin" version in a rollerball-type pen. I did a test with some paper - this stuff has quick tack, so I can see lots of uses for it.

Helpful hint: it's not with the glues, and not with the other Zig products in the artists' pens aisle. With help (customer service! yay!) we located it in scrapbooking supplies.

[SAH]

You are most welcome Mike.  Come to think of it the glues pens WERE in the scrapbook section.  I bumbled upon them while Cynthia was looking for stationary/envelope sets.  No fine point applicators at our location though.  They would be useful I think.

Lighting.  The short answer is no.  While I enjoy seeing illuminated model buildings and scenes, doing so myself would be a distraction from my goal of building a rendition of the prototype (the AC&Y and their customers in my case) and replicating operations of same.  Ya gotta pick your battles.  I did toy with the idea of drawing white dots or lines of diminishing sizes on the backer board to represent light sources as they might look receding away from the window face.  Nah. 

That said, here's a beautiful photo from the summitmemories website illustrating the cool factor Lee suggests.

[C855B]

I know this is a silly suggestion for illumination, but something we're playing with is UV paints. I have some Wildfire "clear/white" as part of our night sky experiment. It dries clear with a slight gloss, but under UV it fluoresces as an almost bright white. Robyn suggested painting structure windows with it... nothing less than genius. I'll try that tomorrow on a tower I acquired as a temporary stand-in and see how effective it is, maybe snap a pic or two.

Downside of the Wildfire paints is while they're by far the best UV line, the best can be very expensive. The clear/white from a stagecraft vendor was $50 with shipping for a mere 4 oz., and it was hard to find. Good thing that tiny amount will last us a lifetime for our projects. Other Wildfire clear (invisible) but glows in color paints are slightly more reasonable, $14 for blue and $23 for yellow from art dealers like Dick Blick.

EDIT: Never mind, momentarily. I had a few minutes to try this experiment, and the clear/white won't lay down on the clear plastic windows. The mullions glowed very nicely however.    Also, the glow color was a little too blue anyway. I think I'll pick up some clear/yellow on the next Blick's order, and then try something different with the clear plastic (sanding it, maybe?) to get the paint to stick.

[dem34]

I know this is a silly suggestion for illumination, but something we're playing with is UV paints. I have some Wildfire "clear/white" as part of our night sky experiment. It dries clear with a slight gloss, but under UV it fluoresces as an almost bright white. Robyn suggested painting structure windows with it... nothing less than genius. I'll try that tomorrow on a tower I acquired as a temporary stand-in and see how effective it is, maybe snap a pic or two.

Downside of the Wildfire paints is while they're by far the best UV line, the best can be very expensive. The clear/white from a stagecraft vendor was $50 with shipping for a mere 4 oz., and it was hard to find. Good thing that tiny amount will last us a lifetime for our projects. Other Wildfire clear (invisible) but glows in color paints are slightly more reasonable, $14 for blue and $23 for yellow from art dealers like Dick Blick.

EDIT: Never mind, momentarily. I had a few minutes to try this experiment, and the clear/white won't lay down on the clear plastic windows. The mullions glowed very nicely however.    Also, the glow color was a little too blue anyway. I think I'll pick up some clear/yellow on the next Blick's order, and then try something different with the clear plastic (sanding it, maybe?) to get the paint to stick.

Could it work with a clear surface primer?