AC&Y - Ohio's Road of Service

[SAH]

I've been wanting to upgrade the valence lighting for some time now.  I've been using the same point source bulbs strung together for the last 20 years.  The LED light strips of today are light years of where the commercial offerings were then.  I also ditched the double thickness cardboard reflector covered for 4mm white coroplast sheet.  Should have done so years ago.  I'll add a second strip to bring the intensity up some but I already like the even light levels.
 

[SAH]

I added highway crossing signals to protect OH Rt 301 on the Spencer FreeMoN module this week.



Here's a closeup.  It's a paper/styrene combo construct.  Making the flasher hood was a shortfall of a prior attempt some 20 years ago.  Learning to use paper as a building material has been a real advantage for my modelbuilding efforts.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Whoa.

How Chandwellian!

[Lemosteam]

Learning to use paper as a building material has been a real advantage for my modelbuilding efforts.

Quite interested. Please 'splain?

What is paper on the signal?

[SAH]

Plastic parts in the photo:  Flasher "lens", cross arm to hold the targets, and, not shown in this photo, the pole and base.


Here's the target production facility.  I don't know about Chandwellian.  Maybe Blacksmithian.


The artwork sheet is spay bombed with matte finish, both sides, which plasticizes the paper.  The lens hood is one of the disks cut in half, rolled with the small diameter brass tube, then attached to the end of a styrene rod.  Cut the rod behind the hood.  A bit fiddly but not difficult.  I'll photo doc one if the description is not clear.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

In case anyone isn't familiar with my Chandwell reference: https://www.youtube.com/c/chandwell

[SAH]

I stumbled upon the Chandwell site a few years back.  Such creativity, not to mention fine modelbuilding. 

I've started the expansion to the General Tire facility this week.  I'm actually building the original part of the plant, so prototypically speaking it's not the expansion.  I've already built the expansion, but hey, the existing model is built as a mirror of the prototype, so anything goes right.   

The build will mostly be paper.  Perhaps a separate thread is in order?  The brown block against the backdrop is the target of the build.

[basementcalling]

Congrats on the MRP article. Nice to see some backstory on how your plans and layout evolved over time.

[SAH]

Thanks Peter.  A little bit of humor helps one through the hard lessons learned.  I hope the lighter side of a MRRing life shone through. 

[basementcalling]

Thanks Peter.  A little bit of humor helps one through the hard lessons learned.  I hope the lighter side of a MRRing life shone through.

Ya have to be able to laugh at yourself.

I kept turning pages though expecting to see General Tire. You need to submit another article. I assume that one was sent in several years back?

[SAH]

Dirt & dust wait on no man. 😎

@CRL chided me, good naturedly of course, about not weathering the new building.  That was five (!) years ago.  I replied it will happen in time, more-or-less.  I wasn't kidding.

Today it happened.

[Curtis Kyger]

Really nice job on the buildings.  Most excellent!  I'm very impressed with the colorations on the concrete loading dock too.

[CRL]

Loading dock looks good. I like the occasional broken windows look too. I’m pretty sure the photos don’t show some of the more subtle weathering, so some of the facility still looks pretty “clean” to my eye, but that’s also very subjective to personal taste and I tend to prefer heavy weathering for industrial facilities. Nice job though on what’s visible in the photos.

[SAH]

Thank you Curtis.  Honestly the loading dock weathering turned out way better than I expected.  Sometimes you get lucky.

I understand the personal preferences when it comes to weathering @CRL .  My visits to different manufacturing facilities over my career probably number well over 100.  If it is a going concern it was well maintained in my experience.  Steel mills are the dirtiest by far.  As model RRers I think we tend to over do weathering and highlight decrepit conditions.  We can thank John Allen and narrow gauge modelers from the early days of the hobby for that.  Again, my opinion.  Let dirty things be dirty (the carbon black conveyor environs in my case) but let the weathering unify the structure appearance makes sense to me.  Every one has a different approach though.

[LKOrailroad]

Speaking of modeling dirty.... you should cover the entire area in a layer of black soot around 4:00 in the afternoon each day when Goodyear Plant 1 cleared the stacks. Growing up in East Akron downwind from the rubber plants during the 60's and 70's was wonderful /s

Your modeling is excellent BTW.