Office Shelf Layout Update

With the weather getting nicer around here finally, other than the few 30 degree nights lately (gotta love Michigan weather), I have less and less free time for my two hobbies, but I still try to at least make some time for them when I can at night on the weekends. I usually end up working on this and other modeling projects between 11:00 pm and 2:00 am on Friday and Saturday nights. Keeping to that schedule has worked pretty well lately. Sure I could use this time to sleep, but I'd rather get some time in on the layout, even if it is just a few hours once or twice a week.

Anyway, tonight I took all the weights off the layout and found that the glue worked pretty well for holding down the track and paved area. There are a few high spots in the paved area, but nothing that isn't manageable, so I'm happy with it. With this done it feels like I've finally made some real progress.

A look at the layout with the track and paved area glued in place.

Another thing I've been working on is what to do with all the dead space to the right of the commissary building. A few weeks ago I bought some DPM modular building pieces to try and mock something up that would sit flat against the back wall. I don't want to take up too much of the depth since I wanted to have a parking area and a few vehicles. 

The plan for now is to get enough pieces to make a two-story wall that runs from the edge of the commissary building all the way to the other end of the layout. I haven't worked with any DPM parts or kits in the past, so this will be a learning experience, but I'm looking forward to it.

A look at the beginning of my DPM modular mockup.

These things are actually pretty neat and I'm really hoping they will work out as planned. There is definitely some cleaning up and fine-tuning to do once you cut all the pieces from the sprue, but that's not so bad given the amount of freedom you have designing with them. 

A closeup look at some of the DPM panels in place on the layout.

So far I like the look of the panels I'm working with. They seem like they will blend in nicely with the commissary building. The only issue I see right now is that the DPM sections have brick all the way to the ground, while the commissary has a concrete base. Not a huge deal, just something I noticed. Another thing I need to figure out is how these new pieces will interface with the commissary. I'm thiking about just butting it right up to the existing wall and have it set just enough off the back wall to meet the narrow column of bricks on the commissary.

Office Shelf Layout Update

Lately I just haven't had as much time as I would've like to work on this project. I've been busy repainting the kitchen in our house, which turned into a bigger project than I had planned on. That's taken up the last two weekends and the weekend before that I was out of town so I just haven't had any decent stretch of free time for modeling until this past Saturday night. After putting some finishing touches on a few areas in the kitchen, I decided to put in some work on the layout. In my last post I left off with the main paved section cut and glued together. 

Since then I've made a few changes. I ended up cutting a new top layer to include a lead up to the track for the loading dock section to go between the two tracks. Doing this ensure there would be no visible seams in the paved area. By that I mean seams between pieces of poster board that I wouldn't be able to blend together very easily. I know because I tried with some spackle and it just didn't work at all. After cutting the new top I glued it to the other layers and painted it. This is how it looked before I glued it down to the layout.

A look at the larger paved area for the layout

Its hard to tell in this picture, but the whole piece became very warped as the acrylic paint dried. The ends were noticeably lifted up, which had me tempted to scrap the entire thing and start over with styrene. Instead of starting over, I decided to put some heavy weight (approx 50 lbs) and let it sit for a couple of days. That seemed to help a lot so I decided to keep things the way they were.

The next step was to secure the paved area and the track to the base cork layer. To do this I just used Elmer's glue and left the 50 lbs of weight resting on top of everything.

Found a good use for my 1000's of hockey cards to help glue the track and paved area

I'm going to let this sit probably until Friday night when I can get back to modelling. Until then, I need to get online and order a few more detail accessories  for the project. Things like chain link fence, the loading dock, and a switch stand. Progress is definitely slow, but its nice to always have something to work on when I am bored with my other hobbies.

Prototype Pic of the Day #19

Adrian & Blissfield GP9 #1760 | Image Courtesy of Steven McKay via RailPictures.net

Today's picture is another Michigan railroad that I am somewhat familiar with. This picture shows an Adrian & Blissfield GP9 traveling through Mason, MI. What's neat about this is that I know exactly where this picture was taken as I've driven by that location hundreds of times. As a modeler, there is a lot going on in this picture that could easily be incorporated into a nice scene.

Office Shelf Layout Update

Progress has been relatively slow on this project, but with the way my schedule is right now I can only work on it late at night on the weekends, so I get maybe 4-6 hours a weekend to work on modeling projects. I'm not as far as I would like to be, but that's ok as long as I'm always moving at least a little bit forward.

Since my last update, I've gone ahead and glued the cork layer to the baseboard, finished painting the rear track, and almost completed the layout of the paved areas. What I've been doing for this is cutting layers of cardboard, from old cereal boxes, and stacking them up to be level with the top of the rails. There are six layers of cardboard and one layer of poster board, which is red because I happened to have that laying around in the basement. All it needs is a couple of coats of acrylic paint then it will look just like concrete.  

Layout of cardboard and poster board for the paved areas of the layout.

This layering technique for doing paved areas is not the most efficient, but it works for me and that's all that matters. To keep the layers together, I am just using an Elmer's glue stick. I haven't decided how to glue them to the cork just yet, maybe white glue will work. That won't happen for a while though so I can make sure I have the layout of the paved areas just right. I still need to add a location between the tracks on the left side for a loading dock and then another section crossing the tracks for forklift access to the dock.

A closeup look at the layered cardboard method I'm using for my paved areas.

I'm at the point now where I need to order a few things so I can keep going. I need the loading dock for between the tracks at a minimum and I'd like to get some other detail parts to combine shipping and have a few more options to play with for this layout. Below is a picture showing a couple of cars parked on the two tracks in front of the commissary building. The hammer is in there to help keep the corner of the cork down while the glue dried.

A quick mockup of two cars parked on the two tracks.

I'm hoping to get some more time in on the layout this weekend and maybe get the rest of the cardboard cut and glued together for the paved areas under the loading dock. Other than that I really need to think about gluing the track down so things don't move on me. The contour cut of the cardboard follows the track so I don't want that getting messed up.

Prototype Pic of the Day #18

Lake State Railway Alco C425 #1280 | Image courtesy of Ron Cady via RailPictures.net

Continuing with the Alco theme again, today's picture is another former Detroit & Mackinac locomotive. This one is a great shot of 1280, also known as "The Blue Devil" and "City of Grayling" running between streets somewhere in northern Michigan. I like the look of the blue sky in the background and the flowers in the foreground make this a perfect picture for this time of year. Now it just needs to actually be as nice outside as this picture looks.

Scratch Building Some Road Signs

Lately I've been thinking of ways I could scratch build some simple items for my office shelf layout and one of the easier things I came up with was to make some road signs. I will need at least two cross buck signs and maybe some other warning signs for the layout, so rather than pay to get a large pack of pre-made ones, I decided to try it for myself.

Some examples of the signs I wanted to try to make.

The first step was doing some research on how big these signs are in real life. After a bit of searching around, I found some good resources and decided to go with 36" diameter for the round yellow sign, 36" x 36" for the stop sign and approximately 50" x 50" for the cross buck. 

Once the sizes were determined, I found some good drawings of each sign online and copied them into my vector graphics program, Inkscape, and resized them to scale. Then it was as simple as creating a few copies of each then printing them on my home printer. I tried printing them on regular copy paper as well as some thicker fancy paper. The latter ended up being the better choice just for the rigidity of the end result. The copy paper just seemed to be too flimsy. Here is a look at one of the printouts.

A look at the printout with some signs already cut out.

One they were printed I just needed to cut out the shapes. The first one I tried was one of the round yellow signs with an xacto knife. That didn't work so well on the round shape so I did the other two with scissors and that seemed to work better. The stop signs were pretty easy, although I kind of messed up the first one and did not include the white trim. The cross buck proved to be difficult just because of the interior corners, but came out looking ok.

Once the sings were cut, I needed something to stick them to. For this I chose to use some 0.010" square brass rod from Hobby Lobby. The only thing I did was cut it to size and paint it silver using a metallic silver paint marker. I then glued the signs to the posts using an Elmer's glue stick. This seemed to work pretty well.

Then to address the issue of the backs being white from the paper, I first tried coloring them in with a silver colored pencil. This worked ok, but was not perfect. I then tired the same idea with the metallic paint marked and that came out much better. In the bottom picture the first two on the left are just the white paper, the two in the center are the colored pencil, and the two on the right are the metallic paint marker.

A look at the front of the first batch of signs.

A look at the back of the first batch of signs.

These turned out much better than I thought they would. There are some things I would like to improve for future attempts, but nothing too major. I think the best thing would be to find a way to cut the circle shapes in one cut with some kind of punch. That would get rid of the rough look to the overall shape.

Prototype Pic of the Day #17

Penn Central Alco C425's #2441 and 2443 | Image courtesy of Robert Farkas via RRPictureArchives.net

Today's picture may seem like it has nothing to do with anything here, but with a little investigation you would find that it has a lot to do with something familiar here. This photo was taken in Altoona, PA back in 1972 and features two former Penn Central Alco C425's. The trailing unit, #2443 is actually Detroit & Mackinac #181 while it was still hauling freight for Penn Central. It's interesting to note that the logo and name are missing from the sides of the long hood.