Ok, lots of miscellaneous things being worked on at the same time. At least it keeps it interesting and varied...
I started preparing a base for an AYA Enterprises Wildwood house that I built. I like to try and get the buildings sitting in the ground (as opposed to on top) so I usually use lightweight flexible spackling as a base so it can be sanded smooth and remains flexible (to an extent) and less prone to crack and flake:
I used the wood roof section that come with the kit but added an overlay of styrene that I ran through the cutter to etch in shingles that were scale correct and a little different. You can find more info on the house kit (as well as others) here:
http://www.blastedmirror.com/buildings.htmlI bought some GC Laser Innovations pergola kits a while back and thought it would look cool to add this detail to the house. You can find lots of nicely designed stuff here:
http://www.gclaser.comSo I glued it together, painted it reefer white and then added some Silflor Flowering Meadows pieces to try and make it look like roses or flowers growing on the trellis:
I'm going to add some vines on the bottom out of magnet wire next.
The Franksville Oil build is still coming along. I needed to make an oil truck similar to this:
I ended up building two oil trucks out of Classic Metal Works Ford F700 oil trucks. The first one I tried to get away with just brush painting and while it turned out ok, it was blobby in places and paint coverage was spotty. So I built a second truck where I disassembled the whole thing, primed it and painted it with an airbrush (which made the project three times as long).
I made the Franksville Oil decals on an ALPS printer that I haven't used in almost two years. That was a complete cluster to deal with as I had to find an old PC laptop running Windows XP since the drivers don't work on Mac OSX and aren't really supported on anything newer. After screwing around for almost two hours I finally figured out that the version of XP had to run SP2 (not the newer SP3) as the printer won't work properly on SP3. I was ready to throw the laptop and printer out the window but eventually got it to work and now have it set up to print properly. I can't wait till someone else makes a white toner printer (or the price comes down more). I also made the Conoco logo for the oil tank and added the detailing to the pump house doors (another cluster trying to use the cutter with very thin styrene. In the end I cut them out of card stock instead and all was well.
I also cut out the pieces for a maintenance building that will go next to the Franksville Fuel Co. and did rough assembly.
So the Milwaukee Road signal diagrams we have show that there was a signal in-between the mainline and the bottom siding between A-68 and Franksville:
While we thought about signals when we originally did the wiring for the modules ages ago, we didn't have the signal diagrams till recently. This means I had to rip up the siding track to shift it slightly to leave enough clearance for equipment to get around the signal. The white base in this photo is our mounting base for the signal and the track has been lifted (which required shifting the feeder wires as well):
We checked various equipment and left some wiggle room and I'll do more clean up to glue it back down and then re-ballast later when I ballast Franksville North (new module). Which brings me to the next project...
We wanted to extend the south siding to make it longer and the benefit for me is the addition of not only yet, another project (ha, ha) but a sixth module that can be boxed up evenly with the others. So I went to Google Earth and looked at the current mainline between Franksville and Caledonia and found this section which I cropped to our standard straight module size:
There is rolling farmland, plowed fields, a stream with bright green algae bloom, a pond and LOTS of trees. This is perfect actually as it will help create more scene separation between Franksville and Caledonia. So I tiled out the overhead google view, cut them out and placed them on the module to get an idea of where everything will be. This is a nice visual reference. I had to bring the pond in a little closer to make it fit as I rather have it contained on the module than running off the edge. Here is an overhead view with 4 mile road on the module just north of it:
The siding that used to be there in the 1950's is obviously no longer there today, so that needs to be factored in obviously. The new module is built, has cork down, feeders wired in and track glued down. I've drawn the profiles on the sides with pencil for now to get an idea of how it will be shaped.
That's all for now. More as I get time to document it...
-jamie
