I'm speechless.....and therefore cannot express my opinions.....

When do we see little people walking about...?? For REAL..!!!

I can't get enough pictures of your layout Kurt. Excellent work my friend, excellent work. Your eye for detail is spot-on. Simple things added in a way that makes sense. Not overdone, not "by the book", and it makes the whole scene look real instead of a collection of modeling supplies.

I like it that your layout would pass for a piece of real world instead of being artificially full of things happening. Very inspiring.

Wow, Kurt! Definitely museum quality work! I've been following this thread and it sets a high standard for those of us wanting to build an industrial switching layout!

Very nice Kurt !

Thank you all! It is always a pleasure to show you my pics.

Steamtrains Wrote:When do we see little people walking about...?? For REAL..!!!

Gus, still haven’t figured out how to do it, but I am working on it .

As I mentioned in my last post, I changed the tracks on the left side to have a runaround. Though I do not really need it to operate the layout, it will make operating a bit more interesting. But what is even more important to me, this end of the layout looks more like the real beginning of the spur now. On the prototype the tracks coming from the main all take a sharp 90 degree turn when running into the switching district.

cnw1961 Wrote:Thank you all! It is always a pleasure to show you my pics.

Steamtrains Wrote:When do we see little people walking about...?? For REAL..!!!

Gus, still haven’t figured out how to do it, but I am working on it .

As I mentioned in my last post, I changed the tracks on the left side to have a runaround. Though I do not really need it to operate the layout, it will make operating a bit more interesting. But what is even more important to me, this end of the layout looks more like the real beginning of the spur now. On the prototype the tracks coming from the main all take a sharp 90 degree turn when running into the switching district.

So are you

a) replacing both straight tracks on the liftout with the two curved tracks that form the liftout, or

b) keeping quite a bit of the topmost straight track as an industry track, while replacing the lowermost straight track with two curved tracks that form the runaround ?

No matter what you do, I am sure it will look wonderful!

Grin,
Stein, on vacation in MN

mmmhhh ... maybe I should have explained it a bit better . I removed the black tracks (old version) and replaced it with the red tracks (new version) ... and no, the new tracks I laid on the liftout are not really red ...

cnw1961 Wrote:mmmhhh ... maybe I should have explained it a bit better . I removed the black tracks (old version) and replaced it with the red tracks (new version) ... and no, the new tracks I laid on the liftout are not really red ...

Yeah - that's what I figured was the most probably what you were trying to show.

But why not put an industrial spur back roughly where the uppermost black track on the liftout (if it doesn't over-crowd the scene) ?

It would make a little more work for that runaround while switching - not just running your engine around your cars when you "arrive in" and "depart from" the area (since all your other spurs are branching off towards the right)

Grin,
Stein

Stein, I was thinking about an industrial spur near the runaround, but that would have left me nearly without any space for scenery. So I weighed scenery against operation and scenery won.

Wow...I got hot and sweaty just looking at the images.

I may have missed it, but where did your vehicles come from? They are extremely realistic looking.

MountainMan Wrote:Wow...I got hot and sweaty just looking at the images.

I may have missed it, but where did your vehicles come from? They are extremely realistic looking.

No, you haven’t missed it. The Dodge Caliber is from Ricko, the other cars are from Busch and the truck is from Trucks n Stuff.

The foliage along the chain-link fence is fantastic...the most realistic I've seen...I especially like the branches on the shrubs climbing the fence behind the tire....a how-to article would be great.
Looking forward to more pics and updates.
Cheers
Gene

wgrider Wrote:Your weathered cars look fantastic , can we get a 5 step how you did it?

Agreed! Fantastic weathering job, and I too would be interested in your secrets.

Also, what CAD program did you use for the track plan? It's nice and crisp.

Gene, the shrubs climbing the fence were done with Noch Classic Foliage light green (#7312). I think similar products are Woodland Scenics Foliage #F51 and Heki #1550 or #1600. These are simply fine poly fiber mats covered with fine foam on one side. You can easily stretch pieces until they have the right shape and density and then glue them on. I used super glue to glue them to my fence.



2-8-2, on page 9 of this thread I did a short how-to on how I weathered the AGR boxcar that I showed on page 8. Hope that helps. The track plan I did in an old version of CorelDraw. If you want a very nice drawing program for free that almost offers the same tools as Corel, get a free copy of InkScape: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.inkscape.org/">http://www.inkscape.org/</a><!-- m -->.