Thanks John, Sherrel and Keith, for the comments and encouragement for the little wife. Keith I think you are right about their attention to detail as it seems sometimes I cant do anything right. Also great to the others posting pictures of their efforts, thats is what this is all about!! No matter if you enjoy and 8" MRR or a mile MRR. Great work Dale and Jim great to see your efforts I learn something from everyone's modeling skills.
Thanks Steve, Tom and Derrick. Nice work on your layouts John, Tom, Jim, Bill and Steve. Progress on my layout has been slowed over the past 15 months from cataracts due to my diabetes. I have had three eye surgeries and am much better now. I am able to see long distance without glasses for the first time in my life. My near vision and night vision is not what it used to be, but neither is anything else! For the first time in months I finally did some scenery work on Harrisonville and South KC. I need to install feeders to track at the big coal mine at Harvey. The coal tipple is nearly done and the vehicle storage and maintenance sheds are done. My old layout needs to be dismantled and removed from the train room to make way for more benchwork. Steve (and anyone else) you are welcome to stop by. The train room is a wreck. It is more storage room for business than train room. But I can clear a path for a tour. The trees are a mixed bag. Some of the smaller trees are scratchbuilt from dried sedum and ground foam applied with 3M Super 77 spray adhesive. Small and medium trees are also purchased from a Chinese eBay dealer called wehonest_us. The tree are constructed of wire armatures with ground foam. The dark green and medium green trees look pretty good. They come from China with light brown trunks so I paint the main trunks different shades of dark grey and dark brown. Stay away from the bright green trees. They are bright! Delivery is pretty fast and the pricing is excellent. Especially in larger quantities. The largest trees are those expensive pre-built Woodland Scenics trees. I have only used a few and only up front in very prominent locations. The cost for each tree is almost as much as a new boxcar, but they look excellent and do more to upgrade the layout than a new boxcar would do. I recently purchased a bunch of sage brush to use as trunks and armatures. They make beautiful dead trees (can a dead tree be beautiful?) right out of the box. I haven't tried any with foliage, but will try them soon due to the excessive cost of the large Woodland Scenics trees. Dale Rush Carthage, MO
Jim, the marker lights on the caboose look especially nice. And, while I'm 3 weeks behind, it's nice to have a Rick McClellan sighting around these parts. You KC guys, please send along my best to him - I don't think I have his contact info any more. Best Regards,
I had a ball operating Steve's layout- I lived in Ft. Smith for a while from 1979 til 1982, and well remember many of the places he has on his layout. Got a lot of ideas to implement on my end of the Central Division. And the wonderful thing about it- not a single Canary Yellow or green thing in sight! Ft. Smith alone could be the reference site for several different layouts on either the north or south end in HO scale, since there was so much for all three roads (KCS, Frisco and MP) to do.
When I was still in high school in the mid-1970s, our family managed the Rogers Motel in Afton, which was a crew change point for KC-Tulsa freights. We would see crews from Ft. Scott and Tulsa, and several of them kept "away cars" (really, old heaps) that they would use to hightail it to the local hotspots, or elsewhere nearby. I've heard & seen more times than I care to mention stories of crews shoving a very drunk engineer up the steps of the locomotive to the cab, and letting him sleep it off in the left side seat while the head end brakeman would run the train. God must indeed look after fools and drunken trainmen......
Railroads don't have a monopoly on this ... A couple of times the flight engineer and myself had to do the same thing with the captain. It was interesting getting to the runway and lined up for take- off. He had to steer the nose wheel. I am sure it happened to others as well.
Here is my new road, thanks for all the good advice Couldn't get it here, I added photo to my other post. post 28 finally made it
Thats a great road Bill. What was your technique? That is a fine looking road, the wood crossing fits right in too.
Tom the base of the road is Spackling topped off with joint compound (its a little thinner). I would be open to ideas, this is a little time consuming. Letting it dry over night, sanding, filling cracks in layers. The crossing is a lazer cut, by Minuteman. It worked ok, some sanding, fitting and then staining. I used RR Tie Brown for the color, real thin though topped with thin L&N gray. The color on the road is Woodlands mix of Slate Grey and White. The Crossing Flasher's took a little time, course I am not a wiring wizard. I still need to darken the road strip's with a lead pencil. All in all it went pretty good. Looking forward to the collector's edition 2014 Walthers. William Jackson
Bill, it looks real good. I like the way the road ducks behind the hill. Add a few small trees (pine?) on that hill and the observer will not be able to tell the road ends there.
It may be a little while for the trees, but thats right. I will post one, when I get it further along. William Jackson
Here are a couple before and after photos for the trees on the first few shots. on the last couple shots, I tried to get a just plowed look for the fields.
Tom, that is straight up quality work. You've done left me in dust! I really like the fascia and as always, I enjoy your pics and posts. Oh, the crossing is especially nice: )
Tom, real nice work, I like the fence. Great trees! Your like me though, my trees seem to disappear. Seems like I have made hundreds, but they just melt into the scene. Bill
Thank You Guys, Jim, Brathaaa We are just gonna have to agree to dis-agree on this one... Your modeling, scratch-building, photographic and weathering skills are awe-inspiring at least. I am just happy to be OK. Don, Thanks for the inspiration and kind words. Your work is Legendary. I am very thankful you took the time to take a look, Thank You. And William, Your experiences and knowledge as a Frisco M of W man, is en-valuable, and your knowledge of things Frisco, is a great resource. Turns out your a pretty darned good modeler too. I have said before that Model Railroaders are a very talented bunch I think. As you all are inspired Carpenters, Civil Engineers (for the most part), Electricians and problem solvers. It is great to be among some world class people.
Tom, That is "knock your socks off" model railroading. I don't recall ever seeing that much attention given to the details in scenery. You have definitely mastered the techniques for realism. Do you have a layout diagram you could post? Jim
Terrific composition in your scenes. I remember seeing the Frisco ROW from an automobile window from a parallel highway. Looking through tree and fence rows and between buildings makes the model more real to me. I am still getting used to concrete ties. Please keep us posted on your progress. John Sanders
Thank you Jim, for the kind words. I still have a ways to go on this but I will get there a little at a time. As far as a diagram, I would love to have one but I am afraid it would take much more PC skills than I have. So far after 15 years, I can draw a straight line on the computer but that's about it. But I would really like to have a diagram. This is as close as I can get for now. The links below give you the basic layout of the outfit, although the scenery has come quite a ways since these videos were taken. Thanks again Tom http://youtu.be/JWamcty-tVY http://youtu.be/uXYrNfLodRs
Thanks John, I appreciate you input and comments. If I had it to do over again I would probably go with the wood ties. At the time I was thinking I would build a modern up to date operation, but ended up going back in time, instead of forward. I ended up buying 14 boxes, they each had 100, 3 ft sections of track in them, there are about 10 3ft sections left. 11 of the boxes were the concrete ties. If I ever get a chance to build a big MRR again, I wont build as big or complicated, would likely be a single main track with sidings. Thanks again Tom