Thought I would post some images of the construction of Scalescenes small terrece houses. I had lots of fun building these; as with all scalescene the instructions are very clear and construction is straight forward. The first two I did are complete with the interiors all done up and the front walls are removable to see inside. The last two I thought would be done as if if they were still underconstruction, so no windows and the roof is under construction. The wood and flooring is strips of balsa wood, not to scale but it looks ok. Just awaiting some construction equip. and workers to show up to finish the cameo.
foundations
in place
interior shot
front wall on
building the roof
in place, just waiting for workers to come and finish their job
So the missus is out at the school board (bored ) meeting and I put the boys to bed. Then off to the train room. Here are some quick snaps off the phone of tonights progress. Hopefully some proper pics tomorrow
Took a little break from building baseboards today and played trains. Fiqured out a panoramic function on the camera that stitches pictures pics together on its own. . Here is Gloucester Road stitched into two pictures.
the original board
the extension
Not to bad when you consider the camera is on the mobile phone and it stiches automatically.
Also today a parcel arrived that had in it what surely must be some of the best RTR weathered wagons to date. The weathered silver bullets are amazing. Freightliner 66610 was seen pulling them through Brimsley and Upper Brimsley.
and the "wagons on the web" type of shot.
I was a little hesitant to purchase these as my luck with Dapol locos has been less than good, but these seem well worth it.
I have decided to start building the Scalscenes Small Corner shops; at first it will be just the shop fronts finished in low relief and will then move onto the corner shop full size. Progress can be followed in a new thread under the Scalescenes tab in the skills and knowledge section.
Knew this time had to come sooner or later; have become disgruntled with the current layout Gloucester Road. Though not finished i have begun to look else where and want the challenge of something new. The current layout is 7 years old and is starting to show its age, scenery is looking tired, track (points specifically) are starting to fail, not sure i still want a roundy roundy as the boys are getting older and into operating as opposed to watching, and i have a feeling my skills have moved on and i could do a better job. Not to mention some of the great N guage layout on here are providing insperation. So decisions to make.
First one was made last night when i started playing around with some track planning software from Atlas. The property that was awarded to me for this potential adventure is 12ft by 3ft. Have been messing around with point to point plans with sweeping curves in the aloted space.
Second decision was made today. Code 55.....what else is there, to say it looks amasing!!! Drove 90 minutes round trip to the "local" hobby shop and purchased two points and four pieces of flex track. There is one cautionary tale as the owner said some locos dont run well/derail on code 55, and for this reason atlas has stopped making code 55 but he has plenty of points and flex track, so i better come up with a plan. Once back home and having checked some things off the "honey do list" we started on a test track. Farish and Dapol locos and wagons run (powered by the mysterious hand) and look stunning on the track; first time through the atlas point and my heart sank, the wheels of the locos failed to go through the atlas frogs. oh @@@!!!. After some time thinging and studying out came the Dremmel and we opened up the frog and guide rail a bit and presto!!!
So thats where we stand.
Might also change to a thread format to, as that format seems to apply to discusion and interacting about potential issues. Anyway off we go.
Took some time to trainspotting today and caught 56074 out earning revenue. Will be interesting to see the Dapol class 56 compares to the old Farish one.
56074 in Brimsley, with what looks like Thomas lurking in the background
56074 passing the the signals which need wiring in
passing through Upper Brimsley
heading into the tunnel
arriving into Gloucester Road
Though I did some modelling, see Scalescenes thread, it is nice to sit back and watch the trains run sometimes.
The Missus had a Ladies Christmas party last night so I disapeared to the train room for several hours last night. My rake of four Farish HHAs need to be weathered so out came the powders and some transfers of grafiti. Then this morning my yougest said "Dad lets play trains", who can pass that up!!!!
2 pics of the HHA
the rake was then seen passing the unfinished portion
passing out of Upper Brimsley
then several pics in Gloucester Road
And finally the happy driver
The next thing on the list of things to do; there is a lack of housing above the station in Brimsley. Have completed one set of low relief buildings from Scalscenes (see earlier entries) and so last night set to and started on two more sets.
Had some time to myself today and did more work on the Flats. Things left to finish, maybe tonight, complete elevator shaft, curtains and bed into New Street.
The weekend after Thanksgiving there is an event in Southern NH and Eastern Massachusetts that this year involved 23 open houses/layouts that you can visit. This year on Saturday there were 11 open in MA and on Sunday 12 in Southern NH the event runs from 9-4 on both days and allows one to visit layouts that are not open to the public. It is rather fun to sit down and plans one attack, then with mobile, camera, map and two excited boys we left mum (who looked rather pleased at our leaving) to enjoy driving and visiting layouts. The highlight this year was seeing Tom Oxnard's Boston & Maine layout which was featured in the December issue of Model Railroader. There was also an n guage layout set on three levels and completely controlled via computer. We managed to see 5 houses in six hours, and returned home about 6pm tired and happy. Pictures will follow here and in the Gallery section.
Joel Ditrolio HO layout
Not the final name for my small layout, but I got tired of calling it unnamed; so for now this is it. Took it outside for some naturel light, WOW ! More than pleased with how they turned out.
autumn sunshine
the first delivery
class 57003 shatters morning peace
All these and some others have been put in my gallery.
So finished rakeing the leaves off the lawn today. Many people come to New Hampshire to the view the leaves as they change change colours, however they leave when it comes to cleaning them off the lawn. Decided to have a go at my shunter 08921. Had thought about taking off the couplers on one end, like on my other locos, but figured that might effect how usefull it would be as a shunter. Was going to put the included pipes onto, but they got in the way of said couplers so. I weathered it lightly instead, there are some before and after pictures here and in a new gallery.
Its been awhile since I have made any updates, and here is one reason:
Chloe an Australian Cattle dog, texas heeler mix, she is nine months old and taking to training well, our three cats are less certain of the latest addition
The other reason is spring has sprung so work in the garden and cycling has started up, but purchased the "small corner shops" and started putting those together. It will be low relief on the backscene at Brimsley (shops only) and full size with pub in Gloucester Road, replacing some off the old farish buildings.
With the warmer days and nice weather my other hobby has taken over. During the spring, summer and fall seasons I try and get 200 miles in a month on the bike, it is a Jamis Ventura....a nice ride. Just got back from 47 miles in preporation for a planned 120 miles on Thursday. Here is the bike
The railway has not been neglected as there has been much playing....errr operating of the trains, but no modelling to speak off so enjoy the bike picture.
Will see how things go on Thusday. Im going south from New hampshire to Connecticut so it should be downhill right!!!!! The map doesnt seem to think so. Oh well
Happy New Year to all. A big thanks to Andy and his efforts to get (and keep) rmweb up and running.
Progress on Gloucester Road has been slow over the Holidays, but as things start to settle back down into routine work is picking up. Have done some more work on the backscene behind Brimsley and purchaed the Station Structures from Scalscenes. YGA and YGH wagons arrived for Christmas; these are great wagons and I have started to add all of the details. Also 47474 arrived, this is a vast improvement on any class 47 that has been put out before. Details will be added and both the loco and wagons will be weathered in due time.
Well the bike ride did not go as planned. 30 miles in had a puncture followed by a bent rim.... Oh well will try again. Came home to try and do some work on the layout and got fed up with a strectch of track that was not working, tried all i could to fix it in place and then just pulled it up.
So some track laying will commence the next week i am home.
Having passed my annual checkride and with six months to relax before my next one I decided to do some weathering. 67027 was the victim, as the pictures hopefully show I added the buffer detail and added the front valance. I seperated the valance from the bogies and reattached it, now when the bogies turn the valance doesnt go with it. Found a picture of 67027 online and went to work with my powders. I am fairly happy with how it turned out.
Have been lurking around for sometime now, both on the old RMweb and here on the new site. I am still having image issuses so I won't put any on here till that is resolved, but there are pictures at www.freewebs.com/nguagingwilliam. I have been interested in modeling trains for some twenty years and have built several over the years, some good some not. All have been a learning experience; now my two boys are interested and we spend time together playing and modeling. Gloucester Road is not based anywhere, its just trying to get the feeling of home which we visit every other year. Living in America one relies on trips, photos, memories and the internet for modeling inspiration and now, hopefully, feedback from fellow modellers here on RMweb.
I have two layouts at the minute, one is Gloucester Road and the other is very portable (unnamed at the minute will take suggestions). I was inspired by all the fantastic boxfile layouts, mine is in a shadow box and uses Scalescene products exclusively. My hope is to take it out much as Sandhills does with his portable layouts.
Gloucester Road began towards the end of 2003. Built in N guage it measures 6ft long and 2 ft wide; all track is Peco with isolating switches. Buildings are from Graham Farish, Hornby, Metcalf and Scalscenes.com with rolling stock from Farish, Dapol,ATM, Peco, Minitrix, and N-Thusiast Resprays. Starting last year an extention was added that adds anothe 6 foot branch line.
Thanks to some links posted in the weathering section found these two images i hope to use. Hopefully the wagon will be a reasonable copy when finished.
Have been building some more of the Scalescene low relief houses, ran out of glue so the roofs will have to wait. Also test fitted some above the retaining wall on New Street, I think they will look good here too, but maybe as store fronts at the end of a road. Might also put the new low relief flats here instead, havent made up my mind yet. With the new corner shop and shop fronts some of the old Farish store fronts on Gloucester Road will also be replaced
Ran out of glue
workers have gone for the day
from station platform looking up
these ones still to go
test fit for potential shop fronts or flats on New Street, not sure which.
Did some work over the tunnel that leads to Upper Brimsley, grass and heather has grown and filled in nicely. Just tried uploading an image and got an error so will try again later.
So managed to spend some time yesterday weathering a YGA per the pics in my lasr post, then today took some photos on "New Street". Happy with how it turned out.
Here it is being shunted. This side was made to look like the upper picture on previous post
Here it is from the other side, tried to replicate the lower picture from previous post
I think they turned out pretty close to those in the pictures, three more to go. Finally here is an overall photo, really should put grass in the front right
So the postman delivered a package from Osborns today that contained a bulldozer and an exteneded crane. They are both very convincing models , though the crane is much taller than i thought it would be. Anyway they have been weathered and added to the housing site, I think they finish off the scene nicely. Any thoughts?