The Carolina Sandhills Lines in HO Scale

[crrcoal]

Well worth the effort! Amazing!

[SargeE7101st]

Did you ever finish your A&R?

[davefoxx]

Did you ever finish your A&R?

If you’re referring to the A&R branch on the layout, no, I haven’t.  It still needs the track painted, base scenery, lots of trees, and ballast.  And, maybe some backdrop flats or something on the backdrop near the staging yard.

Thanks,
DFF

[SargeE7101st]

I’m pretty new to Model Railroading and model A&R but I’m no where near your level.

[John]

Dave's layout is featured on Trains.com

https://www.trains.com/mrr/how-to/model-train-layouts/built-by-others-dave-foxxs-ho-scale-carolina-sandhills-lines-layout/

[wm3798]

Nice article!

[Pomperaugrr]

That was a nice article!

[chuck geiger]

Awesome article and new shorts are great.

[sschnabl]

That article actually popped up on my phone last week.  I started scrolling through the pics, and I was like "Wait a second... I've seen this layout before!"

Well done.

[davefoxx]

Thanks, guys!  I appreciate the kind words.

DFF

[davefoxx]

You may recall the warehouse that has sat unfinished for years on the ex-original Norfolk Southern line in the middle of my layout.  This one in the background at top center:



Well, over the past several weeks, I finally put some effort into it with a lot of sponging and the hand-painting of individual bricks with a half-dozen colors of red and orange craft paints before applying lightweight spackling as mortar.  This is what I would consider a background structure, so I used this building as practice, because I have a couple of foreground brick buildings that need to be finished.  I’m pleased at the results.

I hand-painted all of the lintels and window sills with gray craft paint.  Thankfully, for this model kit, the windows were separate pieces, so I was able to spray paint those before installation.  Then, I weathered the heck out of the structure.  Oh, and I tried using black construction paper behind the windows to hide the huge void that is the interior.  That was sorta meh, so I pulled that out and used scrap 0.060” black styrene sheet to build a false interior of walls and floors.  I’m particularly proud of the three warehouse doors at the loading dock in which I hand-painted the individual boards with a few different colors of tan and gray craft paints before applying brown and black washes.







DFF

[packers#1]

Looks like a lot of the old brick buildings around here Dave, well done!

[chessie system fan]

The concrete at the bottom looks really great, too.

[davefoxx]

Thanks, guys!  I appreciate it.

DFF

[davefoxx]

I finally did something about the lack of crossing protection on the Southern Pines side of the layout.  I spent years waiting for NJ International to bring HO scale crossing signals back into stock, but I gave up and went on an internet search.  I found these signals by Tomar Industries, and they’re pretty nice.  They paired well with a Grade Crossing Pro by Logic Rail Technologies that I had left over from the Seaboard Central 2.0 more than six or seven years ago.  The Grade Crossing Pro gives a nice flashing signal that has a prototypical fade in/fade-out.

Before anyone asks why the SDP35 sounds like it has a steam engine whistle, that’s a Hancock Air Whistle that was installed on some Seaboard units in the 1960s.

DFF