SonOfMike

A couple more - A Woolworth's from bits in the scrap box and a Dapol petrol station kit modified to be an auto repair shop. The close-up of the repair shop makes it look far more weathered than it does in real life; the dark stains are ctually much more subtle. Honest Guv!!

I have done, and may still go for some street running but the current plan is to have the road running parallel to the tracks.

Despite the signage, I'm not 100% sure what goes on here. They are, however, owned by the same parent company as Pulsons Amalgamated Munitions...

The row of buildings made from the backs of the previous ones.

I wanted this to look like the kind of place you really wouldn't want to eat seafood in. I plan to add lots of trash and other horrid things in the alley to add to the effect.

Recently, I are been mostly building buildings. I managed to get hold of a Walthers Merchants Row kit and Row House kit for about half the usual price of Merchants Row (another global online shopping behemoth pricing glitch I think). Although rather ubiquitous, I decided that I'd get them on the basis that I couldn't scratch build them for that price, and although my kit building follows a similar "impressionist / done with a palette knife in the dark" style to my scratch building, there is always a slightly greater chance of things being almost perpendicular and at right angles when I build from a kit. I also had a Dapol Modern Shop and Flat kit which I thought I could use for something, Due to me being such a cheapskate, I decided to cut the sides of the Row House more or less in half and combine them with the back sections of the other kits to create additional structures. I used photos similar to those in the backscene to create rudimentary frontages to the buildings - they won't be seen as they face the backscene but I wanted to have something there in case I later take any photographs from non-viewing angles that may capture some of the frontages. I also managed to knock up another industry to hide what will be the entrance to the fiddle yard. This one was scratch built from bits and bobs in the scrap box. I still have plenty more to do. There now follow some rather cruel closeups of said buildings...

Useful information - thanks for that. The phone number on the ad is actually meant to be tongue in cheek: it is actually made up of the mysterious numbers from the TV series "Lost". I just decided to use them to see if anyone recognised them. Of greater concern to me is the spelling in the ad. It really should say "sulfur" but somehow I managed to use the British spelling ("Sulphur") but with a typo - an e instead of a u. I should change it but I can't be bothered just now.

And finally a picture of 10 mile bridge connecting Jemima with Cannassitt, where reality is all a bit too obvious. Maybe one day I'll replace it with a removeable scenic section.

I've given up sticking the hand rail posts back on every few minutes

Whilst happily playing trains this afternoon, it occurred to me that I haven't posted any photos recently, so I decided to take a few of the burgeoning town of Jemima. There is no scenery yet, and the track is still to be painted and ballasted. There are also no 3D structures other than the station, the turntable, the water tank and the low-relief roundhouse (still under construction and featuring a low-relief Shay). There are however, a number of background "flats" made from photographs which hopefully will make the town look a little fuller once some more 3D buildings are in front of them. Anyhoo, here are the photos...

The burgeoning town of Jemima currently boasts a Dapol turntable (it's a GWR design but the ChatGPT robot was able to find some US prototypes of a similar enough design). There is also a Walther's Cornerstone water tank and a Walther's Trainline depot which, due to some kind of pricing malfunction on a well known prime online shopping site, I managed to get for £10 and £5 respectively. I couldn't have scratch built them for that!. It's all wired up and so far it all works. I'm currently working on a scratch built low-relief Roundhouse to go to the left of the turntable and provide a scenic break that hides the other end of the lift-out section (known as Ten Mile Bridge as in my imagination it represents at least 10 miles between Jemima and Cannassitt).

If the 'gators don't eat you alive, the mosquitos will! Welcome to another place the Jemima & Gulf RR (Ship and Travel the Swamp Rat Route!) navigates as it winds its way along: Cannassitt Bayou (The name works better if you say with with either a Birmingham or Black Country Accent). There isn't much here apart from a bait shack, a boat repair shop, a trailer, and various nasty things that like to bite you, but we can't go under it and we can't go over it and nobody wanted to spend the money to go round it, so we have to go through it. It's a small corner section where the fiddle yard used to be. The backscene has warning stripes on the rear (to remind real-life me to go round it and not through it) and at the right-hand side it connects to a lift-out section which then links it to the town of Jemima (under construction) which takes up the opposite side of the garage. The fiddle yard is now located to the right of Jemima. There now follows some photomograffs which may help explain what I'm wittering on about: