Involving specific sites mentioned in daily posts
As the author makes note of on his website: “Styrene when used to represent wood in the model world eliminates the limitations of wood. Wood has its own grain and color. Styrene is a blank palette which can be manipulated“. I agree with his sentiment wholeheartedly.
Site 1: Making styrene look like aged wood
This great tutorial shows you how to use plastic card to simulate wood in many ways. It’s a great tutorial and worth the time to read.
They’re something that we’ve all seen, and make the models we build better for being in the background to provide a place anchor or the foreground as a load. But making them is not as simple as it seems. Today’s site may well change all of that.
When the author needed to make logs for cribbing on his layout he decided not to whip out to the backyard and take his chances he decided to go the route of scratchbuilding. Follow along on this simple (and simply amazing) tutorial and build yourself a log or 50.
After a mammoth 10 year £4.2 Million rebuilding program spearheaded by the National Railway Museum, who bought her for £2.3m in 2004, Flying Scotsman is back on the rails again. Work to restore the locomotive began in 2006 with Flying Scotsman undergoing an extensive restoration in the workshop of Riley & Son (E) Ltd.
The locomotive is in its BR green livery as 60103. Flying Scotsman’s return as a working museum exhibit sets another record for the oldest mainline working locomotive on Britain’s tracks occurred yesterday 25/02/2016. As you can see from the videos below, there’s a bit of hoopla going on at the moment:
Flying Scotsman chasing down a spark, being chased in turn by three helicopters.
Flying Scotsman doing what she was designed for – running fast on the mainline
To find out more about what the Flying Scotsman is up to this year head over to her website (http://www.flyingscotsman.org.uk) for more.
For those of you who’ve been following the blog for a while you may know that I am rebuilding two Weaver GP38-2s. In the process of rebuilding I had come to the conclusion, due to the difficulty of getting parts help from several of the USA suppliers, that I would have to build a lot of O scale parts. Then Lo and Behold – American Scale Model Professional Services comes on the scene on eBay; more in a second.
Site 1: American Scale Model Professional Services (eBay Store – page 2)
So here’s what I bought:
When I saw these little babies on Flea Bay I thought all my Christmas’ has come at once. Because these parts were going to be a Royal Pain in Diaz to manufacture. I can do it, but with dragging feet, toes in the dust and all, I just “din wanna”.
Not only are they better than I thought they’d be in the flesh, they appear to be far better than I’d hoped.
In addition the shipping costs were pretty good and the service was outstanding. Ordered the 8th of February they arrived the 24th February. I got gouged by the fallen Australian dollar – but that was not the owner Bill’s fault. I blame the bloody Chinese economy for that! I’m going to keep Bill’s details in my diary and contact him again when I need more parts. Hear that Bill? Done in my best Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator voice – I’ll be back.
And yes, those are decals in there. I’ll be putting on the magnifier and taking a look at these later on. Later gator.
My long-suffering, patient and very lovely wife of many years is from the Lone Star state. My first train experience in Texas was in late 1997 just after arriving in the US. After pulling into a little gas and go station to get a soft-drink (soda) for each of us and something for the car on Airport Boulevard near Highland Mall.
While sitting in the car after filling her up, the Longhorn RR’s GP9 pulled up right behind the store (the little gas station is gone now, but it sat between the rail line and Airport Blvd), the crew got off and bought themselves a soda before remounting and chugging off up the line back toward the yard at McNeil.
It is not a bad way to be introduced to North American Shortline railroading. Being less than 10 feet away from the loco and it’s train was mesmerizing. I think the crew even waved as they walked by. I do however digress, onto today’s site of interest.
Site 1: The Texas and New Orleans, Southern Pacific Railroad slide show
The Southern Pacific gobbled up a lot of other railroads in its time, before being consumed itself in 1997 by the UP. Among the most interesting legacies of the constituent railroads were the station and depot buildings whose architectures varied widely, depending on the local flavour. Among my favourite SP depots is the San Antonio depot. While not shown in this set I have some colour photos of the San Antonio depot during an open day showing the stunning stained glass window above the depot stairs leading up to the first floor. A wonderful Spanish Mission style depot it is only one of the eclectic mix shown in the set above.
There’s more than just depots and other buildings in this lot though; there are also lots of locomotive pictures, location pictures and more, and the most of them are in glorious black and white. I hope that you enjoy.
It’s been a busy month here at the HVL. Unfortunately much of it focused on the business of making a living and not making trains. A necessary evil, I am sure that this too shall pass. Now off to the races.
Site 1: Brian Moore from Plymouth, UK – Quisling, CA
Brian has a set of images that are growing of his HO scale modules over at his Flickr site.
There’s 70 images in the set so far, and some great modelling to view as well. Enjoy.
Site 1: Switching/Shunting/Shelf “Small Model Train Layouts” (Facebook group)
Glenn Sanders runs a very tight-knit and helpful group over on Facebook. I’m pretty sure that you need to be a member of Facebook to view the group, and you have to be added by Glenn, but since joining I have found some of the best modellers on there. Ray O’Neill of HELM and 59th and Rust fame is just one of the great modellers on the group. It is also a great place to share ideas and plans for your industrial switching layout (ISL) too. If you get a chance drop by and see what’s going on. Very layout focused.
Site 2: End of the spur!
For those of you who might know Ray O’Neill through his 59th and Rust layout, he has another underway at the moment that I wanted to share with you. End of the spur is an industrial switching layout (ISL) set in an inner city industrial area, using combined motive power moved because there is no run-around as in the image left, there is a lot of switching to do and surprisingly a lot of space to get it done in with 12′ (feet) of run and 14″ (inches) of depth. There are some great ideas that I’ve seen in this build that I’ll be using on my layout too. Among them the switch frog polarity controller – which is genius.
Have a great Saturday.
In my previous post I discussed an industry that I am hoping to add to the layout extension when that gets built later in 2016 or early 2017.
Wolfgang Dudler MMR (who passed to the great layout in the sky on 26/08/2012) still has a great site and some fabulous videos on YouTube also. In the scrap vein I feel that his scrap industry is the model to beat when it comes to realism.
Take a look at the video and the overall impact of the scene. Wolfgang was a master model railroader for a reason.
Wolfgang’s site is still up and going as of this post. I don’t know how long the site will be up so I would suggest that you head on over and take a look at the man’s modelling. It is inspirational.
Well the modelling illustrated in these videos is all about scrap.
One of the industries I’ve considered for my new (home) layout was a small scrap dealer. On the layout extension that industry will I hope get a run. On the main layout at the moment there is simply not the space needed to make even a small one. Thankfully ChessieFan2 has done almost all the hard work for me by producing two videos that take you through the stages of building the industry. Additionally he has made another video where he discusses making loads for your scrap gondolas too. Enjoy.
Watch this video through until 14:57. Beyond is talk about the layout in general.
It’s the load ’em up and lock ’em down edition.
If you’ve ever wondered what a load should look like inside a boxcar (I know that this is specific to this particular load – but I am certain that I can make up some realistic looking loads using these principles) then watch the video below; it is fascinating.
No longer should you boxcar doors open with nothing inside of them. I’ve gotten some ideas out of this one for a small project.
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