A hole in the wall X4 - a liftout bridge (page 12)

[Bob C]

TN, yer doin' a Dandy job !! I'm learning a lot about what can be done with foam from your progress reports - thanks for being so complete on the step-by-step. BTW, is that pics from the June RMC, the Port Royal article on the last layout picture ? I e-mailed the author to thank him for his work in the article and on his model - I've run by Port Royal on CR/NS many times in my career - and for the feeling for the real town he has reproduced in his model work. I'll be watching for your continued progress reports - thanks for your efforts putting your process here for us. Bob C.

[TrainNut]

Thank you Bob. I appreciate your thoughts and comments. This will be my second layout using foam and I have to say that I'm still way low on the learning curve. I was not, however, happy with my rock tunnel portal or the pile of rocks on top of the hill and I've since torn them out and replaced them with Hydrocal castings.
To be honest with you, I don't recall where I got those pictures but one of my subscriptions is to RMC so that's a good bet that that's where they came from. As I was looking at those pictures, I really liked the way the town looked and decided I wanted to mimic that with my own version.
Lately, I finally decided on the type of industry to put at the end of the yard. I went with the Walthers Cornerstone North Island refinery and that's what I've been building for several days now. I also bought another similar kit that has all the instructions in Japanese or Chinese charachters (I'm not sure which) hock: , which hopefully I can add to the refinery and they can complement each other.
Time for another photo update pretty soon I guess as I've made some progress to show. Soon.....

[TrainNut]

Hey guys! I've made a lot of progress but taken very few pictures. Soooo, for those of you that can stand it, some rambling idiot made a goofy little 5 minute video showing my progress. It's pretty low quality as I used my camera to make it.
YouTube - N scale layout

[Bob C]

TN - Thoroughly enjoyed your "Goofy...video" - can now see much better what you had in mind. Can hardly wait (you too, i'm sure) to see trains running through all that plastic geology and architecture ! Bob C.

[nachoman]

You have made some good progress. The city and canyon scenes are going to look great.

[tetters]

Ooo...this is looking awesome. Really enjoyed the video too.

[TrainNut]

Yep. Crooked track on purpose. I was watching a small freight tiptoe it's way down an old siding the other day and thought it was really neat how it jerked and swayed from side to side on old track. Sooo, I decided to try and replicate that. At first, you could not tell a noticeable difference so I exaggerated everything. I also put shims under the edges of the track in places to get the locomotive to lean from side to side. Whu'do'ya think? Keep it or tear it up? I like it.
First a video,
YouTube - 20091006084650

Then a picture,

[tetters]

Hmm...not sure if I like it. It looks a too exaggerated. In such a small scale I think that if we wanted to accurately model such bumps and dips the changes in track work would have to be minimal, small and subtle. The scale of the bumps and dips should match that of our scale.


The engineer in that loco might loose his lunch after traversing that bit of track. :peasoup:

[Bob C]

Neat idea!,TN...but the video hock: Scary...That train speed would have almost guaranteed a proto-wreck ! Track like that would be 10 mph at best, though the camera angle and tele- may make it look more radical than it is. If it does what you want without messing up your operation (it's your Railroad), Go for IT !!! I've been on rail that see-saws the far end up in the air when you start onto it, waves side to side, then settles back down as you move on it - got any ideas on how to miniaturize that ??? Bob C.

[TrainNut]

Hmmm, well yeh, perhaps I went overboard a bit. Like I said, at first, the lean and bumps were minimal and when I ran the train over it, you could hardly tell a difference.
Perhaps if I try to straighten out the biggest crooks and halve the height of the shims, it will still be noticeable and a bit more believable.

[MountainMan]

Only my opinion, but it looks to out of place next to a flawless mainline. I think it would look better as a spur line or backwoods logging line. Beautiful job, though!

[ocalicreek]

Seeing it next to the other mains is what has been bugging me too. On the other hand, on it's own, I think it's spot-on fantastic for rockin rollin track. Neat video.

That bi-level passenger car reminds me of sleeping in the upper berth of the upper level and thinking, as we rounded a curve, I'm just floating out in space here, well over the balast boundary! And that was on well maintained trackage.

Definately limit the speed, but you have managed to avoid what even in HO many folks have trouble with, vibrating rolling stock. Swaying and rocking is a smooth motion. Seeing a car shudder, for me, just destroys the illusion of mass and weight. You nailed the smooth rocking, somehow. Nicely done.

Galen

[TrainNut]

For those that actually read this stuff...
Before I can do anymore work on the town above, I've got to get some work done on the subway below and that means getting some light into a couple of underground structures. I've been looking around for quite some time now looking for the perfect structures to use in my subway scene and I finally settled on two of these Kato structures....


While not exactly what I was looking for, I'm fairly happy with them as they've got interior detail. You'll only be seeing that and the facade anyways. So I tucked them back into the wall to see how they looked.




Pretty cool but bland at the same time. They looked like vacant buildings to me. I decided they needed to come apart so I could paint the interiors, add people, window signs, weathering and lights. Since it's going to be in a subway already, there was no need to go to any great amount of detail as most of it won't be seen anyways.
Kato made it so that they came apart very nicely in three different pieces...
the roof (not shown), the structural shell, and the interior...

[TrainNut]

Now as far as lighting was concerned, I wanted to join the new age and use LED's but I just didn't have the patience or the time to figure out the whole voltage, amperage resistor thing. Funny, I used to be an electronics whiz in high school. I guess that info got purged a long time ago. Anyways, as you can see by looking at the base, it's divided into seperate stores. I did not want to use four different bulbs to light up one store and so I used two and modified the dividers just a bit so that each bulb illuminated two stores. I also placed the bulbs behind the screw pillars so that when looking through the windows of the front of the building, you would not be blinded by a bare bulb.




Pretty neat I think but still needs more detail. So, back apart it came again to have a little detail applied to the inside as well as window stickers and such. I also tried to define each store as being different from the outside by making them different colors.


I still need to populate the store a bit more with figures but I think I'm about there. Next up will be to detail the platforms.

[ngauger]

That looks great!!