East Tennessee & Western North Carolina RR ("The Tweetsie") branchline in On30

[p51]

I like it, but maybe try a second cell phone with the "blue light" to hit that dark spot at back left.

I actually did, but something about the loco's headlight or other lighting oddness wouldn't read the blue that far back for some reason...

[p51]

I was looking to make a cow fence, using the type of gate my parents described to me in use through the 60s or so. People would make pockets for boards to go across an opening as nobody could afford a 'new fangled' gate of any kind. Here's what a real gate like that look like along the ET&WNC, around 1949 or so:

As I put the fence on my cow pasture onto the layout, I tried my best to re-create that. Here it is before the glue dried:

[svedblen]

Looks good! Nice touch.

I recognize the style. It has probably been used all over, throughout history.  Here is a similar gate at a "historical farm" in Sweden.

[p51]

I moved the civil war memorial into some trees, and I think it looks way better there.

Adjacent to that, I just completed a cow field, complete with hay pen, water bucket and cow pies. All I need to do now is to finish painting the two cow figures I have for it:

[narrowminded]

I LIKE this!

[p51]

It’s not exactly an update on the layout itself, but I consider the room as part of it, as the layout dominates the room instead of being a little part of it. For over a year after the layout took shape, the back wall in the room was totally bare. Before the layout was there, this room was mostly for housing/displaying my WW2 collection and looked like a small museum, so for me it was odd to have a bare wall for so long. With that in mind, I got some RR-related stuff (added to 1940s-related stuff as the layout takes place then) over the past few months and decorated the place to look more display-friendly.

The 'war job' poster is a reproduction, added to the wall yesterday. The number plate on the right of that was nabbed very inexpensively off eBay. It’s made from a plastic-covered foam substance. It's as light as a piece of like-sized cardboard and was easy to hang up and looks great on the wall (I assume it will fool a few people who see it without knowing the story ahead of time) and is a great replica of the ET&WNC's # 9 number plate. The reproduction 1939 poster to the right of that came from the Avery County Museum in NC. It dropped right into an inexpensive frame I bought on the following morning and it was up on the wall in a few minutes. Dir3ctly below that is an original 1880s ET&WNC stock certificate. The certificate to the right of that is an original stock certificate from the Linville River, an ET&WNC subsidiary. The painting above that is a Howard Fogg print. The 1943 builder's plate to the right of that is an inexpensive aluminum reproduction which I painted and weathered. And to the far right is a frame with various pins from railroads, museums and various places I've been (including unit insignia from my Army days on the bottom row).

[davefoxx]

Excellent collection, not to mention, the layout!

DFF

[p51]

I took these a couple of hours ago with my cell, noticing the afternoon light...

[p51]

I finished these figures yesterday, one 1940s boy scout and two GIs in their Class As and a pilot. The pilot, I really don't think works on a stateside RR in the South during the summertime, but I have to remind myself that plenty of non-Air Corps people in the Army wore A-2 jackets anyway. I think I'll keep him on the front of my Whitcomb locomotive for now...
The painting was done with the smallest brushes I could find but I might go back and re-try to the SGT stripes on the two eventually.

[p51]

FYI: Now that Photobucket has made it insanely expensive to host photos to 3rd-party site ($400 a year, they say), you soon won't be able to see any of these photos.
I currently have an ongoing membership I paid for, and I'm sure once that runs out, none of these photo links will be visible.

[davefoxx]

FYI: Now that Photobucket has made it insanely expensive to host photos to 3rd-party site ($400 a year, they say), you soon won't be able to see any of these photos.
I currently have an ongoing membership I paid for, and I'm sure once that runs out, none of these photo links will be visible.

Yeah, several of us have had our threads destroyed without warning.  Thanks to , you can post your photos on the Gallery here on TRW to link to your posts here.  That won't fix your thread without work, but it solves the problem going forward.

DFF

[p51]

I just painted these two cows to look like the normal breeds in that area in this timeframe (a Jersey and a Guernsey). I couldn't get a link to post as an image here, though...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/53587910@N05/36325086516/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/53587910@N05/35534042204/in/photostream/

My folks have been great with all the 'historical' advice, remembering all the details I needed for things like this. What book would tell you what breeds of cows were common in rural Tennessee during WW2? Without their excellent memories, I wouldn't have gotten nearly the details right on this layout, as they grew up in the area I'm modeling (they have known each other since they were kids, growing up very close to each other), and would have been about 7 years old at the time.

[p51]

I noticed that my ET&WNC caboose from a kit is now featured on the kit mfg's website: http://www.deerfieldriverlaser.com/DRL-O-116.html Talk about validation!
I was happy to see that as I'm eternally grateful for them making a kit of a caboose that would have been a nightmare to scratch-build.

[davefoxx]

I noticed that my ET&WNC caboose from a kit is now featured on the kit mfg's website: http://www.deerfieldriverlaser.com/DRL-O-116.html Talk about validation!
I was happy to see that as I'm eternally grateful for them making a kit of a caboose that would have been a nightmare to scratch-build.

Quite an honor!  Kudos!  I've been to that site, so I knew exactly which caboose kit that was.  Once I get back to On30 after the HO layout and my daughter's N scale layout are built, I'll definitely order one of those caboose kits.

DFF

[wm3798]

That's some beautiful work.