N Scale Hi Rail - Retro Hollow Core Door Layout

[wm3798]

A little more progress on Cornersville...

[OldEastRR]

Aha! The great void is sealed up! Now we await to see what scene covers it -- urban build-up or sweeping mountain vistas?

And, the saga of the Wandering Water Tank continues .... will he ever find a place to settle down? Is he destined to provide a station stop top-off or a mid-route refill? Stay tuned!!

[wm3798]

Someone check the basement for a body snatcher pod...

[davefoxx]

Is Hell freezing over? 

DFF

[Point353]

Is Hell freezing over? 

DFF

Not yet. That'll happen only if he gets some Chessie equipment with 'WM' sublettering.

[wm3798]

And that's not going to happen.

[OldEastRR]

Lee -- where'd you get the nifty stonework printed paper for underneath the Atlas stone bridge?

[wm3798]

It was tucked in and amongst the decades worth of stacks of stuff.  I think it's an old Faller Building Sheet that I had scanned.  I may go back and redo it with something more along the line of the cut stone of the arches, though, and maybe color it darker to make it less in your eyeballs from that angle.

My new challenge with this scene is I just upgraded to a Samsung 20, and the damn lens is at the top of the phone when held as a landscape, so the WM bridge is all up in my grill when I try to shoot this angle.  I took these with the old phone, which fortunately still works as a wifi device when I'm in the house, but it's got all those old phone issues, such as a very touchy touch screen, a quick-to-die battery, and scratchy viewer (and probably lens after 4 years!).



The new view.
Lee

[wm3798]

In other news,


Downtown PawPaw  is undergoing some urban renewal...
Lee

[dem34]

In other news,


Downtown PawPaw  is undergoing some urban renewal...
Lee

The finescale modeller clawing its way out? Demanding that road go somewhere? 

[wm3798]

That and a maddening desire to scratch bash an entire block of buildings!  I've been monkeying around with a bunch of ideas all evening...

[Chris333]

Needs a furniture store that is "going out of business" 

[wm3798]

Or perhaps  one that  is already out of business that now purveys sandwiches, beer and live music!
142 Appalachian Hwy
https://maps.app.goo.gl/W5DBadV1z34qpUZW8

[OldEastRR]

In other news,


Downtown PawPaw  is undergoing some urban renewal...
Lee

I'm liking that hairpin grade!! But the lower half is MUCH too shallow a grade for Appalachia mountain towns. And be neat to have some building down at the foot of the grade with a ground frpnt entrance and then another entrance on an upper floor out on the same street. I suggest you move the top of the road so it crosses between the two switches instead of the frog on that one.  To keep the road from looking like an inclined RR maybe start the grade down next to that billboard. You might want to make this whole area out of a block of foam half the height of your upper level carved to fit the area shown in the photo. Then cut away the hiway ROW, and add or remove foam in places as needed. The whole face along the lower tracks  be a rock cut.

You might replace those green trees with a rock mass filling the same volume of space the trees do (Then put the trees on top of it).  With a big shoulder of rock between the upper and lower tunnel openings, and the upper half of the road in a rock cut. that would help scenically separate the two tunnels. And not look like the bedrock  graciously stopped short of where the road wanted to go, but was an obstacle it had to be cut through. Hmmm ... could this be a road that rises here, winds all the way across the upper level and comes out at the urban corner? "Yah cahn't get theah from heah". A road that travels miles between two points separated by much less. E.g., an Appalachian back road.

These are all suggestions, of course. If they help spark new ideas for you, great.

I must say, this seems to be the most enjoyable layout you've had during the time I've been on TRW. You had some other misfires that never seemed to coalesce. But here you said "f**k it, I'm going to throw down four loops of of track on two levels and just run stuff." And from there you've been adding scenic touches, spur adjustments, town arrangements just as you think of them and it's all working out beautifully. This is a very good example of an evolving layout -- not the usual work in progress that has many stages of construction during which it always looks half-finished. You can stop fiddling with this  at any time and it would still look completed. Yet it could still be "under construction".

[wm3798]

It really has been fun.  The challenge of the relatively generic run for four different trains is keeping a check on my train budget!  Not to mention the piles of interesting stuff I need to find space for.
Thanks for enjoying the ride.
Lee