Weekend Update 11/10/24

[craigolio1]

I'm confused as to why the guy has his carpet bag out (maybe he broke down and he's hoofing it) but the locos, bridge, and scenery are beautiful.

Thank you.

His car broke down. He’s got $10k in the bag from moonshine sales, and it’s some distance to town. No way he’s leaving that kind of cash in the car.

[CNR5529]

He’s got $10k in the bag from moonshine sales, and it’s some distance to town.

That doesnt have something to do with "dock workers" in Vancouver does it?   

[Jesse6669]

From there we went east and caught the Landisville's breautiful SW9 switching the NS interchange in perfect light.

That is a serious horn setup on that SW!
 

[Wolf N Works]

That is coming along very nicely. Great modeling.

More slow progress on the Pueblo Union Depot project. I test fit the 34” of buildings on the Tennessee Pass layout this weekend
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[TrainCat2]

Last night I got the COB LED's installed. The actual lighting is nowhere near as bright in the pics but at 18sec for the shutter, they look super bright. Need to play around with taking layout photos at night. Lesson learned that the inside of the structure will also have to be painted to block light from coming through the plastic in photos.

[flight2000]

I spent some time adding decoders and then renumbering and weathering this set of Rapido GP38's this past weekend.  The numbers Rapido did didn't last very long on Conrail, so updates had to happen to match the late 80's and early 90's versions and 7927 got the white sill added as well.  Besides the number selection, Rapido did a great job on these. 

Cheers,
Brian

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[peteski]

Last night I got the COB LED's installed. The actual lighting is nowhere near as bright in the pics but at 18sec for the shutter, they look super bright. Need to play around with taking layout photos at night. Lesson learned that the inside of the structure will also have to be painted to block light from coming through the plastic in photos.

18 seconds?!  Wow.  What camera? Was that on automatic exposure?  Try shorter shutter speeds and use some dim ambient illumination to illuminate the building's exterior.  Shorter exposure time will take darker photos, which will lover the overall brightness of the photo. That way it will still look like nighttime, but the windows will not have a nuclear glow!

I sometimes chuckle seeing old black and white TV shows (like Perry Mason).  Sometimes when they show night scenes you can tell they filmed them during the day, but either used higher f-stop on the lens or had a dark filter over the lens to make it appear like a night scene.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I spent some time adding decoders and then renumbering and weathering this set of Rapido GP38's this past weekend.  The numbers Rapido did didn't last very long on Conrail, so updates had to happen to match the late 80's and early 90's versions and 7927 got the white sill added as well.  Besides the number selection, Rapido did a great job on these. 

Cheers,
Brian

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Sploosh.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

That is a serious horn setup on that SW!

It sounded rad too.

They need it for the three grade crossings the have, lol.

[pmpexpress]

18 seconds?!  Wow.  What camera? Was that on automatic exposure?  Try shorter shutter speeds and use some dim ambient illumination to illuminate the building's exterior.  Shorter exposure time will take darker photos, which will lover the overall brightness of the photo. That way it will still look like nighttime, but the windows will not have a nuclear glow!

I sometimes chuckle seeing old black and white TV shows (like Perry Mason).  Sometimes when they show night scenes you can tell they filmed them during the day, but either used higher f-stop on the lens or had a dark filter over the lens to make it appear like a night scene.

Another one of your numerous talents; photography?

[peteski]

Another one of your numerous talents; photography?

I'm not sure I call it a "talent", but thanks!  I try to educate myself about every task I try to accomplish, in order to do it well.  I'm a also very curious and inquisitive by nature. That helps me to understand how things work.  In the end I do dabble in all sorts of things.

[pmpexpress]

I'm not sure I call it a "talent", but thanks!  I try to educate myself about every task I try to accomplish, in order to do it well.  I'm a also very curious and inquisitive by nature. That helps me to understand how things work.  In the end I do dabble in all sorts of things.

You're welcome.

Really like your your very old school (i.e., pre-Internet/smartphone era) ideology.

Maybe it's a part of not having grown up with the Internet, smartphones, and in some cases television, despite all of the advanced technology that surrounds us, as a whole, the general populous seems to have become rather complacent and uninterested in garnering knowledge about subjects such as history, science, and technology.

Your point of view is certainly refreshing.

[craigolio1]

That doesnt have something to do with "dock workers" in Vancouver does it?   

Possibly. But if it were he’d more likely be riding a Harley. That’s all Hell’s Angels turf.

[milw156]

A while back, there was a discussion about using Fusion Scale Graphics Amtrak Phase 1 stripes, specifically applying the entire stripe the length of the car intact, rather than measuring segments to fit between windows. Well, I finally got up the courage to try it and I would call it reasonably successful. I tried the stripes as is on the first car, but the white outline stripe seemed to be the Achilles heal of the process, namely, there wasn't enough of it above and below the windows to stick effectively. I had originally painted these cars probably 6 or 7 years ago when only MicroScale decals were available, and since that set (at least at that time) did not have the white, I masked off the window bands and painted them white. So, I cut off most of the white stripe above the red and below the blue strips, and laid them across the car, which allowed the red & blue to fit in between the window frames and gave a much cleaner finished product without decal goo here and there. The fluted dome less car, and the smothside car were the unaltered stripes, the fluted car with the dome was done with the modified stripes as can be seen in this picture

showing the modified stripes

the whole lineup (wish I'd added the white strip to the smoothside way back when  )



next up, a Brass Car Sides great dome, probably in BN colors, as I have all of the predecessor roads covered, but nothing green and black for an earlyish (ie:SDP40F era) Amtrak Empire Builder. When the Railsmith cars drop, these may become surplus, but for now...