I have created a layout tour video and its on You Tube now:
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I'm looking forward to watching this after work tonight, Dave!
RalphComment
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Nice video and layout Dave. I've been wondering what the rest of the layout looked like.
Thanks for posting this!Comment
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Very nice video presentation Dave, and the layout is really coming along nicely also. Thanks for sharing.HO ScaleComment
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Had another op session last week. Finding more things that need work than work in some cases.
Dispatching is still a work in progress, I have some concepts but still need to work out the details.
Paul De Luca switches Coatesville while my son Andy turns his engine.
Doug Good works the 6th Ave yard with Bruce Hochberger working the Maryland Ave Job gets somespot cars out of the yard and Tim Bennett switches Ketmere in the shadow box switching area.
Last edited by dave1905; 09-24-2021, 08:36 PM.Comment
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Dave, I need to drive out to Nebraska with Michael Whiteman, pick up Allen in Lincoln, and visit your layout!
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Latest projects are finishing the backdrop behind Birdsboro and working on some of the buildings.
Birdsboro has a helix behind it and there are two wyes with the tail tracks that feed into the helix. Therefore I have a lot of curved back drop. Also I have a lot of places and a couple switches that are pretty far from the front of the layout, and several scenes that are pretty deep. Because of that I decided that I needed a removeable backdrop, both for the main backdrop and two smaller pieces that would allow access to the switches on the tail tracks of the wyes.
I built a wood frame and covered it with 0.030 styrene. Very light and reasonably strong. There is the main backdrop and the two smaller pieces that allow access to the switches.
The first picture is the frame, then it being covered with styrene. The next two shots illustrate the removeable switch access piece in and out.
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I then painted it with sky color and roughed in teh tree line in darker green as an undercoat for eventually painting the final tree line.
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The next big project was upgrading some of the structures around Wilmington. Both the Maryland Ave and 6th Ave areas had building that were raw placstic for years and I need to improve that.
The Maryland Ave area had three buildings in particular. The freight house had been kitbashed from DPM kits and only had three sides and a roof that was a folded piece of paper. Lindly Kent Lumber had a lumber shed that was only two walls adn bare white plastic with no roof and the Swift Meat Co. was just a plain plastic building taped together.
I gathered up some of the leftover DPM kit pieces and built the rear wall of the freight house and painted it brick with P&R chocolate and vanilla doors. Teh roof is matboard until I can get enough stick on shingles to put a proper roof on it.
The loading dock is scratch built and recycled from a freight house on a previous layout. It is based on the loading docks with stone piers and wood decks I saw at several P&R freight houses.
At Lindley Kent, I added loading docks and an enclosed storage area, with some minimal detailing inside the loading dock, all from styrene, adding a styrene roof, also waiting for mee to buy shingles.
The shed was painted to represent weathered yellow wood. The head house was finished and painted. I still have glazing, signage and other details to add.
The Swift Meat building was a Model Power kit (a funeral home) that had the top floor windows blanked out to be the meat storage cooler and a loading dock added. I put a door in the upper level and a beam so they could hoist the meat up to the storage area and added some side of hanging beef made from Sculpey. Most of my brick buildings are Rust-Oleum primer red with various color washes of craft paint for mortar. For this one I used a terra cotta base color for some variation.
The loading dock is one half of a loading dock base from a Model Power freight house with a new strip styrene deck.
While Maryland Ave is definitely not finished I think that upgraded the look and feel of the area.
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At the other end of Wilmington, 6th Ave, I had several buildings crying for some attention. The bright yellow Betts Machine Co was almost painful to look at it was so bright.
The Superphosphate Fertilizer plant is kitbashed from an old Model Power brewery building I bought used and assembled, a Walthers background building warehouses and a Walthers smokestack, plus the other half of that loading dock from the used model Power freight house. The brewery kit was disassembled and unfolded to form a longer building. The loading dock was put aside for another use and a the lean to was added to the end. I scratch built the raised seam metal roof. The real SuperPhosphate building had a sign on the top. I found a little marquee sign at Michaels and used those letters, along with Evergreen strip styrene to make the model sign.
The loading dock got a skirt and new decking of styrene strips.
The Betts Machine Co was also bought as a used structure. I added the brewery loading dock to it.
I added an 18" high strip of styrene around the base to make a stone foundation. The roof was primed with grey primer and the building red primer.
The roof was corrugated metal but the corrugations went from the peak to the eaves, about 21 ft. I drew horizontal lines every 7 ft across the width of the roof and then lines every 4 feet down the corrugations. I then used a hobby knife to cut seams along the 7 ft Iines. On some panels I cut at the 7 ft mark, on some I cut a couple inches above and some a couple inches below. I then scribed seams down the corrugations, some on the 4 ft mark, some one corrugation to the left, some one corrugation to the right.
The walls had a mix of grey, brown and black craft paint applied to the bottom foot or two of the walls. When that was dry I painted the walls redd and dry brushed the wall color down on top of the grey to look like peeling paint and water damage on the bottom of the siding. The loading dock was painted with a mix of brown, tan and grey paint, then dry brushed with brown to bring out the grain. I added scribed styrene doors on each end.
The doors and windows were painted brown. and the stone foundation was painted on. I took brown craft paint and drybrushed it very lightly on the roof panels from the bottom edge up and at a few of the seams on the sides to highlight the panels and make it look more like individual pieces. I still have to add details on the loading dock and signage.
All in all I think it greatly improved the look of the 6th Ave industrial area.
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