Cumberland Station TTrak and Other Adventures

[wm3798]

I suppose I'll come prepared for either eventuality.  It will be fun to stretch the legs on some of the vintage stuff I've been accumulating, as well as blow the dust off of the DCC equipment that's been dormant for lo these many years...

Now, for an update...  The public works crew has been busy on streets and sidewalks lately...


Looking up Mechanic Street


Overview of Mechanic Street in the foreground, and Canal Street to the rear.


Canal Street behind the station, with the new building of the Cumberland Times-Record on the left.


Baltimore Street


Station parking lot.

There's a couple of more buildings that need to be fleshed out, and I have to pick up a couple of new paint pens for the road striping.  After that, I'll work on the structure lighting, finishing up the river channel west of the beam bridge, and that will let me commence on the ridiculous level of detailing I want to do...  Humans, mailboxes, benches, signage, maybe a dog or two, and of course a couple of Easter eggs for the gawkers...

Lee

[wm3798]

Last little bit of trim carpentry to install a fascia board, followed by some wiring as long as she's teats up on the work table...

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Have you given any thought as to how to protect them in transit? Don't forget about that!

[wm3798]

The sky boards are permanently affixed, and I'm going to glue the structures in place, or otherwise secure them, once the lighting is situated.
My plan is to build a crate that nests over the module that uses the base and skyboards as two sides.

I had originally planned to make them so the bridge module could nest over the station module, but since I want to display the station in my office on a particular shelf over my desk, the skyboards are only 10" high... which creates some clearance problems.

But yeah... that's an important part of the project that's still a bit murky in its execution...  It'll come, and I'm sure it will be over-engineered and bullet proof.

Lee

[Ed Kapuscinski]

The sky boards are permanently affixed, and I'm going to glue the structures in place, or otherwise secure them, once the lighting is situated.
My plan is to build a crate that nests over the module that uses the base and skyboards as two sides.

I had originally planned to make them so the bridge module could nest over the station module, but since I want to display the station in my office on a particular shelf over my desk, the skyboards are only 10" high... which creates some clearance problems.

But yeah... that's an important part of the project that's still a bit murky in its execution...  It'll come, and I'm sure it will be over-engineered and bullet proof.

Lee

It's a topic I've become well acquainted with. One thing to keep in mind is that you want whatever you make to easily get out of the way while not in use. Think about hinges/fold up/easy knock down. Have you seen the boxes my dad's built for the Kapuscinski family modules?

[wm3798]

I did a little test... if I cut 2 squares of plywood about 16" and notch them to clear the ends of track, I can flip one module over the other and create a crate.  I can screw handles to the end plates for safe handling.
I'll document the experiment as it unfolds...

[DKS]

I did a little test... if I cut 2 squares of plywood about 16" and notch them to clear the ends of track, I can flip one module over the other and create a crate.  I can screw handles to the end plates for safe handling.
I'll document the experiment as it unfolds...

A friend of mine and I did exactly that for our paired N-Trak modules. Worked very well.

[wm3798]

The fascia board is now installed and painted.  I went with Hunter Green to provide a nice subtle frame for the scenery.


And continued working on the streets, adding some lines and what nots, as well as working on a few more buildings along Mechanic and Canal Streets.







I've got to build a roof for the Cumberland Times-News, and work out a couple of other structure issues, but it's now time to start sprinkling more details into the scene to really make it pop.

I think I like working a couple of square feet at a time...

All the best!
Lee

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Looking great!

I'll say this about the frame though: black generally seems to be the standard color. There's no problem with something different though.

[wazzou]

Green is the new black.

[wm3798]

I prefer the dark green for my home layout, which this will be clicked into when not on display, so that's going to be ruling factor.

I've got to put some thought into the skyboards, though.  For now they're white, but I'm debating doing some sort of blue from the top fading to white toward the bottom.  I also have to work out how to address the gaps where the streets pass into the 5th dimension beyond the skyboard...  Some sort of printed image, I believe, but I want it to look reasonably good from any angle...

Lee

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I prefer the dark green for my home layout, which this will be clicked into when not on display, so that's going to be ruling factor.

I've got to put some thought into the skyboards, though.  For now they're white, but I'm debating doing some sort of blue from the top fading to white toward the bottom.  I also have to work out how to address the gaps where the streets pass into the 5th dimension beyond the skyboard...  Some sort of printed image, I believe, but I want it to look reasonably good from any angle...

Lee

Photos man, photos. Sadly Google's streetview stuff from the area is terrible. Seriously, it's like they shot it with my camera phone from 2005:
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.6508651,-78.76442,3a,60y,98.26h,89.45t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s-90tYSAVygEsnGkPxEbpFg!2e0!7i3328!8i1664

Because that view could've made some real hay for ya. This photo, for example, uses a background downloaded and printed from Google Streetview:

[wm3798]

Maybe it's my retro ethos, but in addition to serving as a photo platform, whatever I do has to work from the viewing angle of a visitor.
One trick I deployed on a long-ago layout was to clip photos from Model Railroader of street scenes on the model railroads that were featured.
Since the images were of models, they blended remarkably well with the foreground models, and the artificial layout lighting in the magazine easily tricked the eye into blending the 2-D with the 3-D.



A little hard to see, but the scene at the backdrop end of the bridge was snipped from a magazine.  The green hills were brush painted onto the paper backdrop.  Today I'd have the advantage of being able to scan the image and resize it to meet my particular needs.  Back then, I had to scour a number of issues to find just the right view.

Oh, and you might recognize that highway sign...



I built that sumbitch in 1989... New lettering, (circa 2011) but the frame is original.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I like that idea of using model photos.

I had an idea about that once: actually building a scene specifically to be photographed for use as a backdrop. Never actually did it, but I think there's something to the idea.

[wm3798]

A few more inches of forward progress.  Detailed and put a roof on the Cumberland Times News building... Still needs a sign and a few other odds and ends...





And started experimenting with some backdrop images.  Thanks to the May 2004 edition of Model Railroader, I found this gem...



It fit right out of the magazine, but I wanted to add a bit to it, and tone down the big signs... so into MS Paint it went... With a few flats around it, and a couple of more tweaks to get the pavement to line up, I think this will work just fine.



Lee