P5se Camelback Wrote:That looks nice ... almost too nice!

My former wife would have said that looks "suspiciously clean ... what are you hiding?!! Did you buy another one of those ridiculously expensive little gold trains?" 8-)

But actually Vicki ran trains with me last night for awhile! Here is a photo after we finished, with the trains parked in Middle Yard.

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That's one spiffy layout and train room....

I'll be watchin' to see how you do with the grass thingy...I might need a little bit o' that...

Gus, it was quite fun trying out the GrassBlaster tonight. The results were promising, and I'll try some different screen configurations to see if I can make it work better.

Rebuilt the screen - the hole in the plastic lid covers less than half the area, but added a full size screen on both sides of the lid. Now we're talking. When the Blaster gets close to the scenery, I can hear a bit of snapping and sizzling as the electrons sing their little song and stand that grass right on up!

Now I am led to an interesting thought. If we attach the probe to a piece of sheetmetal, then put a piece of wax paper over that, then put some small dots of white glue on the wax paper, and then sprinkle the static grass on with the Blaster, we will be making little tufts of grass which, when dry, can be peeled from the wax paper and placed on the layout, in lieu of the expensive grass tufts from Heki or Scenic Express. Experiment tomorrow, but all I have right now is the 1/8" tall grass. Longer is in the mail at the moment, supposed delivery date = wednesday.

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The ion generator, according to the "specs," produces 7500 volts on the output, hence the snapping and popping. So... even though the generator can't really produce enough current to kill a fellow, it would produce a pretty good jolt akin to an electric fence. Moral of the story - keep your fingers away from the screen!

Gary S Wrote:The ion generator, according to the "specs," produces 7500 volts on the output, hence the snapping and popping. So... even though the generator can't really produce enough current to kill a fellow, it would produce a pretty good jolt akin to an electric fence. Moral of the story - keep your fingers away from the screen!

That sounds like the voice of experience talking
Charlie

Hey Charlie, gotta say "no", I didn't get shocked by this thing yet!

Update - bricklayers are working as we speak. Glad to have this finally underway! Once they are done, only thing left on the building is some caulking and painting under the eaves. Here it is October, the building project was started last November, so have almost 1 year in this now. It has been fun!

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Nice. Just curious, do they know what is inside?

tetters Wrote:Nice. Just curious, do they know what is inside?

Not at the moment. They got here this morning and immediately went to work, spreading the bricks all around, doing layout, and then mixing mortar.

Gary,

Super progress on the building and layout. And I love those carts! I made one very similar to those using scavenged materials from the house and the move. When we moved in there was a cabinet/shelf just like what you built installed on sliding tracks in our laundry room. Since our washer/dryer was a different configuration, out it came and sat in the garage collecting clutter. The movers left one of their rolling carts (chipboard with casters) and never came back for it so I figured it was fair game too. Remove sliders, add casters and voila, instant rolling cart.

Immediately I began to use it to hold tools & goodies for building the layout sections in the garage. And almost as fast my wife spotted it and decided it would be wonderful in the house for her stuff! After some negotiations I agreed to let her have it (the cart, that is) in exchange for the really nice metal topped craft cart from our bedroom. She'd been using it for scrapbooking supplies and now it will be my scenery cart once the layout reaches that stage. Until then it's a stand for my portable workbench. Not sure where the other one is...but it's NOT taking up space in the garage!

Galen

Hey Galen, I like the idea of a portable workbench. I need to get some heavy duty casters and build something, a solid wood top, vice mounted on that, storage underneath. Now, about the carts I built, isn't it funny how no matter how big you make it, the tools and materials expand and completely take up every cubic inch?

As for progress, the bricklayers finished today, they just need to wash the walls down a bit on monday. It looks nice, much better than tarpaper!

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Gary,
even your 1:1 buildings look good....I would prefer more weathering!!!

So when are you putting in the path to the house....and where is the guest room???

Greg, the guest room would be the spare bedroom in the house. At some point, we will put in a concrete path, and also raise the yard up between the house and the train building. As for the weathering, I think I will try a new technique - I'm gonna leave it outside for a few days and let it weather naturally.