This morning I had 30 minutes to spare, so I attacked 3914 with weathering powders. I'm quite pleased with the progress.

Two more locos weathered, these ones much less enthusiastically!

Firstly, SP #4418 - the real loco courtesy of John Huey:
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Now my attempt at something similar:





Second, SP #7122 - real loco photo courtesy of Mike Berka:
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My take on the loco - only one side has been completed so far as I only had about 40 minutes to do both locos, so only one photo shown:



Comments, critique and advice MUCH appreciated. I'm also going to try and get some daylight photos of all of the locos I've weathered this week so far, as the inside shots I've been forced to take by the poor weather are too dark for my liking. Hopefully this weekend - weather dependent as usual!

Small update for now, as the preparatory phase begins for...

CANE RIVER Mk.II

Cue the dramatic music!

I've taken the trackplan back to the drawing board after really not liking the idea of a relatively unstable peninsula across the middle of my room and the dreaded duck under that came with it. I don't need the hassle. Keep it simple, stupid!

As such, I've decided that a "round the walls" layout would be better. So after a lot of work, mainly to incorporate what I've already built, building kits I already have, etc, I have come up with this:



I've decided to finally include a depot building, as - thanks to a friend - I've found the perfect depot building design - the old KCS building at Many, Louisiana. It's even in the general area that my layout is set in.

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I've emailed the KCS historical society as one of their members produces scale drawings of depots and apparently Many is one of them.

Hopefully I'll get work back from him soon, then I can get cracking on building it.

Between bouts of switching cars on the layout, I managed this last night:





Blair Lines Farmers Fertilizer Supply kit. A long ways to go yet, but I have since primed the model and plan to have the rest of it assembled and painted before the weekend.

Photo time!

Yesterday I finished assembling the Farmers Fertilizer building, now I just need to get it painted, which I intend to do tonight and tomorrow.

Here are some photos of the almost complete building. The unloading gear for the hopper cars is designed to be cut to length to allow for the positioning of the building by the tracks, so that part wont be completed until I actually plant the building on the layout - which may take some time as I've got to build that half of the layout before I go any further with it.

But that's enough waffling from me, here are the pictures of it temporarily posed on the current layout:

Lunchtime progress report - I started work on the AMB Laser Kits Hinkle Mill, this will represent the Fishery/Crawfish plant on the layout, with a lot of extra details added to it, that is.

Not a bad effort for 40 minutes work, I think.

I had another look over the Hinkle Mill kit this evening and I cannot progress it until the components have been spray painted, which is my plan for tomorrow before work.

As such I've done a little bit of scratchbuilding and kit building this evening, spent an hour finishing off a couple of partially completed shop kits that I got second hand from a trade stall. They were missing parts but were cheap and easily fixed.

Also in that time I spotted a small storage shed on google Streetview when looking at the streetrunning in Gretna LA for inspiration, so knocked together a sub frame for that - it just needs texture papers/styrene over the top to finish it off. As does the house I built from one of Gary60's plans - tonight I fitted a roof to it ready for the top layer to go over it.

Here's a quick photo taken to show my progress. These buildings will go on the streetrunning section of the expanded layout. 4 down, about 20 to go!

Well, another lunch break over at work, and another productive hour.

Using these google streetview images as a guide:




I've put together the cores to another couple of houses that will be getting the basewood and styrene treatment once my order arrives from Hobbycraft.

This is my plan for the next few weeks - build cores of houses and shops during my lunch breaks at work - should get me a nice collection of buildings to use on the streetrunning section of the expanded layout.

It's been a while since I've updated this thread, but that's because I've been trying to stay away from the forums so I can focus on getting work done on my layout rather than procrastinating!

So, progress report - tonight I held off progressing my scratchbuild of Many, Louisiana Depot, and instead worked on a kitbash of the Walthers Cornerstone Hardwood Furniture kit into a replacement for my scratchbuilt Cobb Firearms building.

The new structure will now be a Louisiana Pacific factory, and the Doe Box factory and Cane River Lumber Co. will now become part of a larger Louisiana Pacific industry - with wood and other materials going into the spur, and box cars of finished construction products coming out.

I've gotten the basic frame of the building constructed, made by shortening the building from four storeys to two, and stretching it out into a part relief structure with a width of just over 12 inches. This way I feel the factory fits the scene better rather than dominating it, as I think a four story building would have.

I have also added in an interior floor and new roof made of card - a fully detailed interior will be going into the building due the large windows on the structure once I figure out how I want to do that. I'm hoping to add lighting to the building as well, once the interior goes in.

The building is by no means finished, as the roof needs detailing, the edges of the roof on the two side sections of the building need filing flat, and full cornices need adding. Once all this is done I will be giving the whole model a coat of primer and painting it before adding the glazing and bedding the whole thing down onto the layout.

Here are shots of the evening's progress. Firstly, before shots of the area the building will be occupying:






And now the new structure placed on the layout - work will be required to bed it into the layout but this shouldn't take too much work:






Let me know what you think of the new building and it's impact on the area of the layout - improvement or not?

Nice progress.

Cheers Mike, not as much substantial progress as I'd like, but having buildings ready to place on the layout as and when the extensions do get built is definitely going to come in handy down the line!

Small amount of progress last night, as I assembled the basic frame of the Model Power brewery kit which arrived yesterday, along with this:




Atlas 33,000 gallon 'Whale Belly' tank car. Lovely model, the detail is superb - I'll definitely be getting one or two more of these models sometime down the line.

No pictures of the brewery kit as yet, as I need to finish assembly and get it painted before I show it off - we all know what the unpainted kit looks like, after all!

Not one to waste time, I also progressed my scratchbuild of Many Depot. I had time to cut out and assemble two more walls, however the edges of the walls, windows and door frames have not been filed square yet, so you'll have to forgive the messy appearance.

The depot as it would appear from the track side of the building:


A close up of the track side of the freight house structure which is as far as I've gotten so far:


A shot of the excellent floor plan by Dr. Nick, including what the floors were surfaced with!


The end of the freight house - doesn't look like much, but it will.


Inside the freight house, with the support frame shown for the surface of the loading dock:


The road side of the freight house, showing the slightly different arrangement of the doors and windows:


Let me know what you think - though granted there's not much to see so far.

There's been a fair bit of progress toward the layout over the last week, and I'm happy with the work I've done. A bit of an eclectic mix of tasks complete, including:

1. Modifying the Model Power Brewery kit into a larger structure to represent a machine shop on the expanded layout.
2. Building the BLMA Highway Billboard kit
3. Progressing the Many Depot scratchbuild
4. Making more patches of Kudzu to be added to the layout at a later date
5. DCC fitting an Atlas RS3
6. Adding background flats to the backscene to give it a little more depth and interest - still more needing to be added, though it's getting there.
7. Modifying trackwork at the baseboard joint as it was causing derailments and uncoupling of freight cars.

Here are pictures and video of some of this progress...

Model Power Brewery:




Many Depot:




Backscene flats:




Atlas RS3:
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danielb Wrote:This morning I had 30 minutes to spare, so I attacked 3914 with weathering powders. I'm quite pleased with the progress.

Wow! That is the King of Cruddy"!

Cheers Mountainman!

Here's some better photos of the loco so you can REALLY see how cruddy it is.