Here’s another of my “winter” projects. This is a European house for the residential section of my town.
Continue reading European House
Category Archives: Scenery
Sidewalk cafe scene
Whilst it’s too cold out to run trains (23 was this morning’s lovely number, with 18 mph winds) I’ve been working on some indoor projects.
Now that the town is mostly laid out, I want to add some interest to the main street. My idea was to add a set of tables with umbrellas in front of one of the “cafes” on the street with some figures dining there. But because of the high winds here, I didn’t want to use plastic umbrellas. So here’s what I came up with:
Continue reading Sidewalk cafe scene
Laser cut window panes
I tend to buy used G scale stuff, because my railroad is on a shoestring budget. A couple months back I bought a couple of Piko shops that were badly in need of repair. One thing they needed was new windows. The old plastic was brittle and opaque, so I thought about casting new panes and using acrylic for the glass. But getting a good casting for something so fine turned out to be harder than I thought. So I decided to laser cut a set.
Harp stand
I’ve been wanting to have a visual indicator for switch direction and I decided on these Ozark Miniatures harp stands. The points are being moved by a servo on the other side of the track, which also moves the harp stand.
Factory outside
I’ve completed the factory interior and put it out on the layout. It’s set above the level of the terrain so that the loading dock is at the correct height for flat or boxcars to load the motorcycles.
Shop Window Details
Here’s how various interior parts were made…
Bookstore
The book spines are a mix of sizes of styrene glued together and painted, and some images printed and stuck to styrene and sprayed with UV resistant spray. The books where you can see the covers are also styrene with images attached. I tried to find images of older books (the 1920’s E.R.B Tarzan books for example, in German) and posters to use. The open book in the center was cast from a HistArts set of molds that I bought to create dining car and warehouse interiors
Continue reading Shop Window Details
Main Street Buildings
Here are a set of CMS structures I’m finishing up for the main street in my town.
Sand house
Locomotives increase their traction by applying sand to the rails. The sand is carried in tanks on the loco and directed to the wheels through a series of tubes. In order for the system to work (not clod) the sand must be dry. Thus the sand house, a building where sand is dried before being pumped into the sand tower for loading on the trains.
I saw this online:
and really wanted one.
Continue reading Sand house
A Pond?
The hole you see here
will be a pond in the rear of the layout. Once I scrape together enough money for the materials, I’ll cut the concrete roadbed you see at the back of this image and remove it, replacing the on-the-ground track there with a bridge.
Still not much actual “garden” in the train area. You’ll notice that the weeds are doing fine, though 🙂
Garden RR Progress
Here are two additional bits of progress.
The first is the pad for my factory and warehouse. I’ll put the buildings out once it’s dry, possibly tomorrow.
And here’s a dirt/gravel road idea I’ve been wanting to try:
That’s two pieces of plastic door trim, painted with exterior paint to protect from UV, buried in the soil. Then I dug out between them and added rough sand to serve as gravel. I hope that these edges will help keep the sand in place so the road doesn’t disappear in the first rain.
Factory Warehouse Interior
Here’s some stuff on shelves that will be the interior of the “warehouse” building part of the factory layout.
Motorcycle Factory
I’m in the process of converting a Piko brewery into a motorcycle factory
The building doesn’t have a loading dock or other provision for getting motorcycles into the boxcars, so the first step was to raise it enough that the floor of the factory came out near railcar height. I accomplished this by building a box and topping it with a scored and painted piece of plastic to represent the wooden dock deck. Then I faced the lower portion with cast stone. There also wasn’t any way to get out the back of the building, so I added a roll-up freight door made ot styrene strips.
Lighting Buildings w/ Removable Roofs
I have a few of the Pola buildings on my layout and am in the process of building a couple more. I enjoy detailing the interiors and I also like to add lights, which makes a removable roof important–it’s much more difficult to replace the lights or fix anything that goes wrong in a glued-shut structure (ask me how I know 🙂 ) However, this is tricky here in central Kansas, where the prairie winds regularly gust to 40mph and a roof can’t just sit on top of the walls. Continue reading Lighting Buildings w/ Removable Roofs
CMS Storefront
This is the initial building of a set of Colorado Model Structures‘ Market Street buildings.
This particular unit is the corner store of the three-building set. I haven’t put on the door or done the windows yet, and the coreners are unfilled and it’s unpainted. But it gives you an idea of what it looks like.
Lighted at night
The new station all lit up
I really like how this turned out. There are two post lights, two interior lights, and a light under the platform.
Continue reading Lighted at night