Seville Avenue, Vernon, CA

[F-UnitMad]

 

The unmade old MDC Soo Line box may be a little out of territory but I do so love that white and red Soo livery

 

Cheers

Nick

A man of taste!!

I wouldn't worry too much about it being out of territory - US stock wanders far & wide. The only thing is that for modern times, that Soo box should be a right old rust bucket by now.

[Vanrouge]

A man of taste!!

I wouldn't worry too much about it being out of territory - US stock wanders far & wide. The only thing is that for modern times, that Soo box should be a right old rust bucket by now.

What about something like this

 

 

Without the snow obviously! 

 

Cheers

Nick

Edited May 10, 2017 by Vanrouge

[F-UnitMad]

Yep, like that. Or worse

Edited May 10, 2017 by F-UnitMad

[Conrail76]

I've always found that full size mock ups are a good way of working out a trackplan and placement of buildings as to what works and looks good. Also it's always a good idea to work out all the switching moves you will be making when operating the layout as well because anything overlooked in the trackplan, clearances, length of switching leads etc can come back to haunt you [ask me how I know about this!].This looks like a good project and I will be interested to see how this develops. I've been building a 7'x 6' L shape [+6' staging] 3 turnout switching layout for the last three and a half years now but it's a fairly generic industrial scene with no 'giveaways' so I can run anything I like as long as it's within the timescale of the last ten years or so. Keep up the good the work, look forward to seeing more of it.

Edited May 26, 2017 by Conrail76

[Vanrouge]

Trackwork pretty much laid! Only a short section of track to add in to finish off the switching lead at the E37th Ave end of the layout, extend the trackage at Ancon Transportation and construct a removable “fiddle stick” at the E. Vernon Ave (4 Season Foods) end to provide the switching lead for that

 

All the feeder wires now in and I even did a bit of soldering (have I ever told you how much I hate soldering!!!!!)

 

The above photo shows the thin MDF plate that I have used at the baseboard joints to connect the various hollow core “dominos” together

 

It also shows the feeder wires from underneath. I used a long 2.5mm bit to drill through the cork  and both skins of the hollow core and opened it up underneath with a larger diameter standard bit to aid feeding the wires through the bottom skin of the door (I originally tried using a Forstner drill bit to do this but it caused so much mess that I gave up on that method)

 

Next on the to do list is, finish off laying the remaining track, install the wiring bus, connect in the feeder wires and then test!

 

Cheers

Nick

 

[Vanrouge]

Bit of a lull on the modelling front for the past couple of weeks thanks to some good weather and a whole weeks hols.

In the meantime  I having been thinking of how to give the layout some more context with regards to the geographical area I am modelling, but thanks to Google Images I came up with The City of Vernon water tower

 

 

There is no current kit that is anywhere near its construction however Cornerstone do this and I am happy to replicate it with this little puppy from Walthers

 

 

Close enough for me for this project. Got this from Model Junction, first time purchase from them, very impressed with the price and the service

 

Below a closer view of the seal and lettering on the water tower

 

 

And a closer view yet of the lettering on the tower

 

 

I tried matching the font using one of the free online resources and it came up with Extended Sans, unfortunately I was unable to get this font as a freebie

However a quick search on Google Images for City of Vernon Seal and I came up with this

 

 

To create the decal I inserted this image in to a power point document and set the view at 100%

I then played around with the actual size until I was happy and then copy & repeatedly pasted aligning them to give me 4 images (some built in redundancy). I then inserted a text box to create the ”City of Vernon” text. I originally tried an Arial  Bold font but  it was just not right and ended up using Arial with a bold highlight and I am happy with the results (copied and pasted again to give me multiple images).

Knowing I was going to use the photo laminating technique for buildings I purchased reasonably decent printer for around £99 quid new on ebay. It’s an HP Inkjet 7612 and I think a certain Mr Mindheim does/ did use something similar so when in Rome… Given we can pay 40 quid for a freight car today I think that’s pretty decent value.

 

 

I have to say I am pleased  with the results, I bought the print media  from Amazon from Mr Decal Paper, 5 pages of transparent,  5 pages of white, can of gloss varnish and a can of matt for around £18. I have used only about a 6^th of a page of the transparent to one

 

 

I attached the decal paper to some cardboard with Blu-tac in order that it may be sprayed vertically and then gave it a few light passes with Paint Factory All Purpose Varnish. I then let it dry for 30mins and then flashed it over with another few blasts. Sprayed this outside and left in a warm well ventilated room (this stuff stinks).

 

Will update  furthur once the kit is built painted and weathered (hopefully next weekend).

 

I have also decided to install another turnout to give me two tracks at Ancon Transportation as it will be more representative of the facility and will add to operational interest. Number 5 turnout on its way from Hattons, great price and excellent service.

 

Cheers Nick

Edited June 5, 2017 by Vanrouge

[shortliner]

Nick - Since you are doing your own decals I came across this by accident and thought it may be useful  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BaNKfZBtNA  (NB the guy is a bit of an ar$e so skip through it to about 6:25) and look at the truck trying to turn into the street lane at the lights from the right  - Not sure if it is a 4Seasons one, but it would certainly stand in for one (especially the rear) - so it may be worth picking one up to do a repaint/decal job for either the road or the carpark - hope it helps

Best

Jack

Edited June 6, 2017 by shortliner

[Vanrouge]

Hi guys major interrupt in postings but..  Good (and not so good weather stopped play) some fairly major garden projects took precedence but truthfully If it’s nice outside I ain’t going spend time inside. However I have not been entirely idle on the Seville Ave project, I will try to do a few updates this weekend.

Water Tower Progress

Following receipt of some Tamiya liquid cement I commenced on stitching the two halves of the water tower together. A trial fit of the two main pieces indicated that the moulding had been ejected without being sufficiently cooled and as a consequence there had been some deformation of the moulding prior to it gaining dimensional stability.

IE when the two halves we put together there were some sodding great gaps between the two pieces where as it should have been a perfect fit… bummer.

Having sought some advice from a military modelling friend of mine, working up from the base I basically glued the sections together a few cm’s at a time and held the two pieces together firmly as I let them set before moving on to the next section.

By following this process I was able to close the gaps together fairly well but it necessitated running a brush of the liquid cement over the joint line between the two halves in places to help fuse awkward gaps together. This resulted in loss of some of the fine rivet detail on the model, but given there was a heavy ridging in quite a few places on the joint line due to the two halves having to be forced together, that fine detail became an irrelevance. In order to counter this a serious amount of sanding was required  and I used Flex-I-File Flex Pads of various grades to get an acceptable finish anyone unfamiliar with these little marvels here is a link.

https://www.scalemodelshop.co.uk/manufacturers/e-f/flex-i-file.html

I haven’t bought from these guys before (I picked mine up at a train show somewhere) but looks like they have a good Feefo rating. They are

also available as sets from the likes of Amazon.

Anyway after a lot of faffing around I am fairly pleased with the result the fine detail lost is barely visible close up never mind at normal viewing distances.

 

The next lovely surprise I got was that the moulded “flashing beacon” part was missing from the kit (not sure if it came from Walthers like this or it was a “Masterstroke” by my goodself), after a bit of head scratching I thought, why not fit an actual operating flashing light (not the greatest leap of faith)  some Google time later I came up with this

http://www.modeltrainsoftware.com/warningflasher.html

Originally I purchased a 3mm unit but decided that this was a bit over scale and opted to get the 1.8mm unit instead - they work out at $8.05 shipped to the UK, but do yourselves a favour a work out whatever other LED’s you may need as their prices are fantastic (4.5 bucks of this was shipping) and order them all at once.

 

I’ve tried it and they are nice and bright with a realistic slow speed flash, lots of other flash rates and colours are available along with many other types of LED’s. All in all a really good buying experience

Edited September 9, 2017 by Vanrouge

[Wendell1976]

A model railroad that is based in my hometown of the Los Angeles area. Nice! I really would like to see this layout when it is completed(with scenery).

 

Wendell

Edited March 8, 2018 by Wendell1976

[shortliner]

This is a "Great Minds" post - I was only thinking, just yesterday, that we hadn't heard of any updates to this thread lately - Hope that all is okay with Nick (Vanrouge). and that the project is still on-going. I know that I am a serial layout builder, with a grass-hopper mind, and a short attention span - so if it has gone elsewhere I quite understand!

Edited February 24, 2018 by shortliner