Milwaukee Road in KCMO Industrial Layout (ex Midway Ind.)

[milw12]

Chris, I'm glad I'm not the only one! I like that story, it reminds me of something that I can't quite put my finger on- I remember similar advice once, most likely from my crash courses in electricity and electronics? Probably for the best that I completely forgot it, more of a last resort attempt, you don't want to try to blast out a sizable short

Wrapped up the track painting this past weekend:



You can see where I tested some green paint like a smart a$$ to try to alleviate the "Battle of the Somme after a heavy rain" look and get some color.

I love it.

It's hokey no doubt. It (intentionally) reminds me of my brother and I's H0 layout growing up, with it's over-under figure-eight on a piece of 4' x 8' chip board, brass track, bachmann engines and questionable functionality. We loved it obviously. The folks painstakingly painted the grass green, ballast under the track and even a lake with a small creek. It was big deal when they bought us some expensive (to us) nickle-silver turnouts so we could have a siding or two. Happy memories! Those were more innocent times, and I don't think it will work with my attempt at (semi)serious modeling. Plus I haven't decided on a season yet, so I'll put up with muddy fields for a while longer 

All together now:



The extra spur really sells it for me, it looks more 'balanced' in my mind, even if it's a questionably necessary team track. Another thing to cross of from the arbitrary and subjective mental checklist of 'does this match my goals for my model railroad' 

As for what's next, I've been pondering it for a while now. It would be nice to throw some earthy grout other ground covers to start a base for scenery, but given how messy that is I'd like to tie it in with ballasting, which is on hold until the track work is proven. I might experiment with the roads, and structures will come along when they do.

I've been debating a rolling stock improvement program, setting up enough cars to operate the layout with:

BLMA trucks
Lowering where necessary
Body-mount Z-scale couplers
Added weight
A shot of dullcote to kill any shine and provide a base for a first serious attempt at weathering.

I've singled out 8-10 cars, enough for an operating session with extra, with the idea to bang out a solid fleet base that can be added to as time goes on, in easier 1-3 car chunks. It'll be slow going as I gather materials but there is plenty of futzing around  to do.

[Curtis Kyger]

For consideration:  To me "operating" involves switching cars.  When uncoupling, I use a "pick" (home made version of Rix Products Uncoupling Tool) to uncouple the cars.  It's hard enough to do so with N-Scale Micro Trains couplers that I cannot consider using Z Scale couplers on my layout.  I know the Z scale looks better, but the practicality of operational uncoupling with a hand tool dictates I stay with the N-Scale couplers.

[jpec]

This weekend, the rainy weather allowed me to dial in the foamcore mock ups closer to the final product, followed by wrapping them in construction paper with little scale doodles for windows and doors. I was inspired by Tim Horton's mock ups on his BCR layout

Those are nice...on @seusscaboose 's layout we just wrote "hourly motel", "meth lab", etc. on the foam mock-ups...

Jeff

[SSW7771]

This little layout is looking good. 

[p51]

Great work so far! Reminds me of the switching layout I built when I was a kid. I just wish I'd known more about car cards and operations back then.

The golden spike:

If I had any major regrets on building my current layout, the biggest would be not actually running a colored nail as a golden spike of my own or at least being aware where the golden spike would have been. I can't even recall what section was the last track to be put into place as I was working on two sections at the same time when the last of the track got hooked up.

[milw12]

For better or worse, we are recovered from the photobucket nuke! Edited in all the new image tags, let me know if anything strange is going on. Hosted by flickr for now, against my best judgment, or at least until something better rolls around. Yahoo gives me the creeps 

Good point Curtis, and that is something that has crossed my mind. I wonder which coupler has the best compromise between functionality and appearance? I feel like there must be an in-depth a Railwire thread out there, time to go on a search 

Thanks Jpec, too funny! And not out of place for the area I'm modeling. Although meth might be a little too recent,  a crack house would be more era appropriate 

Marshall, thanks for the compliment, must be doing something right! Like I said, I enjoy your layout and it's been something of a inspiration.

Lee, thanks! I may have to paint an unobtrusive spike gold now that you mentioned it 

Given that my layout has a total of five flex tracks and two turnouts, and could have been done in a dedicated afternoon compared to the weeks I spent, I'll admit golden spike thing was purposely silly. It was still a satisfying feeling though, and I can only imagine what laying that last piece of track in a room-sized layout or bigger like yours would be like. Someday! Maybe not room sized, but a HCD is on the list of things to do when I have the space.

Thanks for looking!

[milw12]

After being impressed by @MVW  Jim's new roads I starting messing around with my own. Originally I was going to try the DKS-style sanded styrene trick but due to a lack of talent I couldn't quite get it right, but it works since the rough surface will help when it's time to paint.

Started with the grade crossing, re-purposed scale 16' ties did the trick, in the first shot they have only had a light coffee stain- too light for my tastes. Plus it ended up smelling like old coffee 



The stale coffee smell has aired off by now, thankfully

Tackled it with some India Ink, a first for me, much better:



It took some tricks and filing to get the wood to work with the code 40, but it functions well now

It may be a little too dark, but I'd rather try and hide the imperfections/out of scale factors.

I also cut out the road patterns from .060 black styrene that I sanded earlier. What worked well is that one mid-sized sheet perfectly fit my plan and did the whole works with minimal joints. We'll just say I planned that all along 





Started on sidewalks using 1/4" 0.040 sidewalk pattern sheet with 0.040 square rod for curbs. It's hard to tell in the photo raw but hopefully it will show with paint. It's absurdly difficult (for me) to get anything close to reality concerning sidewalks, so giving up on the 3 City of St. Paul civil engineers that might be impressed by photo-accurate 1:160 sidewalk modeling, I 'selectively compressed' the works, throwing ADA compliance out the window and gunning for something that at least looks believable. I nabbed this shot from Google earth to show the bar (and sidewalk) that have diligently been serving as inspiration for the bar scene. Simply put, there's a lot going on that I don't think it will scale well/be within my abilities. The ADA ramps and corresponding curb work, the concrete pours, etc etc. Not to mention this image is almost 30 years in the future from my time frame.

I just looked it up, the ADA didn't pass until 1990, and '85 is my rough guideline. So that's my new excuse and I'm sticking to it 

The next two images are comparisons for the layout of the 'town.' I was hoping to use the most understated DPM building that the LHS had to add some variety to the structures, plus an attempt to avoid scratch building a brick building. In reality there is a mix of development all in the Midway area, with ancient brick buildings next to modern and everything in between, so a little structure like this wouldn't be out of place in my mid-80's timeframe. Perhaps with contemporary glass front doors, the large store front windows boarded over and sided, AC hanging out a window or two. That was the thought process at least.



Immediately something seemed off. First the two-story building was taller than my warehouse mock up, which scales out at around 30' high:

mlayoutskyline001 by shrubs 350, on Flickr

The warehouse on the right is at least 30' tall, which struck me as appropriate when I was building it, I didn't want anything too tall, and that should be plenty of height for its purpose. The green-striped building on the left has always struck me as too short, but it was an attempt to have some variation between the two largest buildings on the layout, which will be addressed when the buildings are finalized. To have a two-story background building, in an older architectural style, didn't seem right. I'm not implying that it isn't completely implausible, but for my visual goals it's out of place. And now I'm questioning the scaling of DPM buildings

More importantly, between the building density and sidewalks, it really made me realize there was too much going on, it looked more like a downtown than an in-between industrial area. So I pulled the buildings and sidewalks across the tracks, and tried to get a similar angle:



In the spot where the DPM was, I'm imagining a undeveloped vacant space, perhaps with some vegetation, some scrubs and maybe a few low trees to blend into the future backdrop. Kind of the other-side-of-the-tracks demarcation, where the light commercial zone in the front transitions to the industrial park in the back. I'll put curbs in to maintain the street width and ease the transition, just without sidewalks.

That was long winded! But I thought I'd explain my though processes as to why some things are the way they are. Thanks for looking!

[MVW]

Good to know I helped boost a fellow Minnesotan! 

I'll be interested to hear if you think the curbs are worth it. I still may add 'em.

Thanks for sharing your thought process on the design. I always love that type of post. Looking forward to watching this come together!

Jim

[SSW7771]

The grade crossing turned out great!

[milw12]

Thanks Jim and Marshall!

Road painting is on hold until Tropical Minnesota breaks, naturally I was busy last week on the one afternoon after work that a normal humidity/dew point. Until then, I've been working on some other projects, which of course now need paint as well

The big warehouse:



Nothing like a photo to show the little, easily missed quality issues! The fire door needs the top squared off 

Doors,stairs and roof will be added after painting, hopefully some textured spray will help make it look like pre-cast concrete.

The other end:



Large precast warehouse in the back, needs a few details and clean up at seams, etc. I used HO (or larger, if it's not N scale it all looks the same to me  ) board and batten styrene for an alternative precast concrete tip-up look.

Overall the gabled building is exactly what I'm looking for, but the quality came out sub par, but now I have a slightly more detailed mock up until I take another crack at it. Might lower the roof a smidgen too, after all it's a generic light industrial building. A small non-rail production shop perhaps.

I'm also trying to come up with was to mimic sheet metal roofing in N scale, short of gluing tiny individual strips at 3/16" intervals, because all the metal roofing material I've seen so far is way too large for N scale. I know you can't see it, but the roof is scribed at intervals, but uniformity turned out to be harder to achieve than originally thought. This plus some other QC issues helped decide to try again, luckily being balsa and styrene keeps the cost low, and practice makes perfect 



And a behind the scenes shot to see how I tackled this project, lots of balsa and wood qlue 

As an aside, the bar has been in the back of my mind for the past week. It's totally justifiable, there are a few bars in odd industrial areas here, but I'm wondering if, like the 'town' buildings I've axed,  that it's trying to put too much into too little space. The gabled building is taking up a larger foot print than I envisioned and I'm leaning towards leaving the bar a vacant lot, and if it seems like it will fit, I can add it later, and if not, I can avoid having to scratch build a difficult brick building 

I also taped some paper up as a mock backdrop until I figure out the backdrop dilemma, and I'm hoping it will help with color balance and overall picture quality. I'm trying to come up with a shallow, easily removable desgign that won't warp like crazy when painted, otherwise I'd throw a sheet of sky-painted 1/4" MDF, but any lumber bracing would push the layout off the book shelf. I'm thinking either a piece of MDF, patiently painted on both sides to minimize the warp, or some thicker sheet metal hemmed to the back. Or actually an 8" x 63" piece of vinyl or styrene.

The trick with the styrene isn't getting it, I have plenty of sources, but finding a piece that's at least 5'-3" so there are no seams to hide. Things to ponder.

Thanks for looking!

[SSW7771]

Looks good! I like the balsa wood frame. That's a lot lighter than the plywood/MDF cores I used on mine.

[milw12]

Thanks Marshall, I wish I could claim credit for it, but I nabbed the idea from one of Chris333's threads way back. Using 1/4" square balsa like I did is tricky trying to keep everything square, where using your cores would be easier. I'd say the method depends on what's on hand/easily available.

The zoning committee was out recently, and the west end of the layout reflects the ongoing changes now:



The whole town aspect is being nixed for a more general light industrial feel. More to come soon, after a bit of paint and if I can improve my depth of field with the camera.

Also this is the last of my yellowish photographs. It's embarrassing to admit, but apparently it wasn't the lighting quality in my new north-facing (that artists usually prefer?) apartment. At some point between when I moved ans started taking photographs again I fat-fingered a dial to a 'painterly' setting on the camera and never noticed. One click over and the colors are normal. It took this long to notice, almost eight months? 

A recent bout of nice and timely weather allowed for some painting. First, Jim @MVW asked about curbs:



I'm ecstatic. Model Master light grey and light India ink wash, and it's really easy to glue a .040" square strip to the edge of a sidewalk sheet, which is 1/4" square in the photo fwiw. To top it off I'm not planning on sidewalks anymore. another Might have to add them in anyway, but we will see.

And the road crews have finally finished the roads after all these months:



For the concrete Rustoleum light grey primer base and then misted on with Sandstone textured paint. Black color pencil lines sanded to blend, with India ink to taste. I used the great discussion in Jim's thread for reference, but I couldn't get the weather down with just ink. I think some powders might help to get the typical contrasts down the centers of the lanes, etc. In case you missed it and are modeling roads, check out MVW's layout thread, especially the discussion starting after the linked post. I'd say the rest of his work is worth checking out too, but unfortunately it appears he's been photobucket'd as well.

Thanks for looking!

[MVW]

Thanks for the kind words, milw12. And those curbs look outstanding! I wasn't planning on using 'em, but I think I'm going to have to at least try it out.

Looking forward to seeing what you dream up for the west end!

Jim

[milw12]

Thanks Jim! Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

Finished up the non-rail industry along the backdrop, after a few different layers of paint + India ink to get it to a point I can live with:



Details will come in time, I found some rooftop unit kits I'd like to add, among other details. It's not perfect for various reasons but for a simple backdrop and trying some new techniques it'll do for now, and it will be easy enough to try again down the road. So I'm satisfied 



And a more general aerial shot of the west end, much more simplified than the original plans and I'm happy with the overall coherence (if that makes any sense  ).

As always, thanks for looking!

-Lucas

[jpec]

If you're looking for a bar, here's one from Downtown Deco that wont overwhelm the scene...it has a 3/4" x 2" footprint.