I finally did a video tour of my home layout, the Get Out n Push railroad.

Today I helped out in the San Leandro Historical Railway Society booth at the Girl Scout’s 100th anniversary celebration at the Alameda Country Fairgrounds. We also had a booth for Operation Lifesaver.
Girl Scouts you ask? We often forget that girls can also have an interest in trains (though not quite as much as boys for sure). There was a fairly steady stream of traffic through the booth and hopefully it will help drive more people in for our open house coming up June 2nd and 3rd.
Overall I thought the event was successful for SLHRS. The most rewarding part was running a small O scale layout and having people walk by and go “oooh trains!!!” There were even two little boys who spent quite a bit of time watching the trains with their dads while their sisters and moms went on to other booths.
Overall it was a lot of fun, and hopefully will pay off with the public exposure, and even more important that the information we gave out through Operation Lifesaver will have an effect and help prevent people from being injured or killed by trains.

Continuing from where I left off in the previous post:

Around this period I recieved my first Athearn locomotive…a major improvement to the Tyco and Lifelike.  It was an F7 unit painted for Amtrack.

Scenery on the home layout was not very good…dyed green sawdust representing grass (poorly I might ad) and some lichen directly out of the the box in all of its multi-colored glory.

This display was wired for DC, using a dual cab control.  This allowed for the operation of two trains at once, if you were able to switch everything correctly.  I can recall doing this with one of my brothers, trading between the inside and outside loops and hoping it did not cause a derailment (the usual result).

The layout stayed in this form until we moved, where it was put into storage for a time.

Around the age of 16 I moved into my great grandmother’s house to keep an eye on her, and the layout was set up in her garage.  While it was here myself and one of my brother’s removed the massive guacamole mountain and started using extruded foam to create new scenery.  Unfortunately for the layout, I only lived in this location for about a year and a half and the layout was moved back into storage – where it resided to this day.

While the layout was in storage my interest moved away from model trains into table top wargames.  For several years I was interested in Warhammer and Warhammer 40K.  This hobby brought me into the world of assembling and painting miniatures.  This was also my introduction into the art of drybrushing.  After 5-6 years I got tired of the wargames and began to focus more on school and other activities.

Fast forward about 5 years:  One day as I was on my way to get lunch I saw a sign advertising a model train show not far from my house (I never did make it to lunch that day).

This was my introduction to the San Leandro Historical Railway Society, which I have been a member of every since and am currently the chairperson of the scenery committee and the superintendent for the HO scale display.  Quite the improvement since I started in the club with no model railroad equipment whatsoever.  Once I started in SLHRS I began to slowly accumulate equipment, until I was given a substantial amount of HO scale equipment by my wife’s uncle (thanks again Gary) as he was unable to continue in the hobby.

To this day I am still interested mostly in logging railroads, an interest that started early on through the pictures of the famous Pacific Northwest railroad photographer Darius Kinsey.

Lately I have been listening to a couple of different podcasts about model railroading, these include: Model Rail Radio, the Model Railcast Show, the Model Railroad Hobbyist, the Model Railway Show, the Observation Car Podcast, and the Scotty Mason Show. I found all of these on iTunes, and can strongly recommend each of them.
These podcasts led to a train of though of how I got involved in the hobby of model railroading. As I can recall model railroading for me started with a Tyco train-set, the army one if I remember correctly. I might have set this up on the carpet once or twice (shudder) and then on the kitchen table.
Not long after my dad built a 5×9 table out of a sheet of 3/4 plywood, set on sawhorses. I can recall the first two loops that were nailed into place and running trains around like slot cars. This table was painted the most hideous color of light green (left over old house paint I think).
The loops lasted a short time and then work on the layout began. It was based upon an extended plan featured in the Model Railroad that Grows book from Lynn Westcot.
I remember reading the book, but never really tried anything from it.
Around this time my dad got another train set for Christmas…a lifelike UP model of some sort.

After the track had been laid it was time to start upon the scenery. We started this monster of a mountain using chicken wire covered in a layer of paper-mache made with plaster. This was then covered with more plaster. All in all I believe there was over 150lbs of plaster used on this mountain. We painted this mountain using spray-paint…the end result was a mountain that looked like guacamole.

TBC

I recently picked up another couple of cars from my local hobby shop (impulse purchase while waiting for my Tsunami decoders to arrive).

I was amazed at the amount of detail available on this 3 bay offset hopper from Athearn.

I also picked up an Athearn stock car.

After these pictures I took my usual steps and replaced the couplers with Kadees and painted the metal wheels.

I still need to weather them.

I recently have started listening to a couple of different model railroad podcasts. One of the most interesting subjects, described in interviews on both the Model Railway Show and also on Model Rail Radio (both on iTunes) was a micro layout called Brooklyn 3Am.
http://carendt.us/scrapbook/page87/index.html
I cant say enough about how awesome this little scene is, and how it uses a lot of small effects to complete the scene, even to the sound.

As described on the website for the display it is built on a foamcore table.

One of my recent acquisitions was Labosky’s Motorcycle Repair from JL Innovative Design.  I think that this is the third kit from them that I have built, and like the others it seems to be a decent model so far.  It does take a bit of work to prepare the walls and such, unlike a laser cut model, but the end results are pretty good.

This is a front view before the touch-up, and still a window to install.  Inside I have a printed interior that I used from the Window Designer software from Evan Designs.  I also installed light behind so that it will be back lit.

Another view…and oops wrong shade of black along the roof.

Here is a pic of the early construction, showing me gluing the two sections together.

Another method of clamping, yeah pimento jar aka. brush cleaner aka. weathering solution.

Currently I am working on the final details and designing custom signs for it.

Lately I have been working on a variety of kits.
I built two more of the Rio Grande Models kits, the Holt Steam Wagon, and the water tank for Donkey Engines. As usual these kits were fairly easy to build and have an incredible level of detail.

This first picture is of the donkey engine water tank. This was used to provide water for the donkey engines working out in the woods. It was on a sled so it could be towed to the donkey engines.
I weathered this model using a couple of different weathering powders.

The other kit, or rather two kits is the Holt steam crawler and the Holt wagon. I weathered these trying a new technique (for me) of spraying the model with Dullcote. After this dried I used a pipette to drip alcohol over the model. I let this dry and ended up with this white effect. For this particular model I think it works well. According to Monster Model Works this technique works well for creating mortar lines on brick, the results are impressive and I intend to try it soon.

A different view.

I can’t say enough about how much fun it is to give a new technique a try. It doesn’t always work, but for this particular technique all it takes to reverse the process is to hit it with another spray of Dullcote. In fact that is what I did on the donkey water tank shown above. It turned out very white (so much so that the picture didn’t even take), I sprayed it again with the Dullcote and then used the powders.

Very good video showing a brick painting technique using weathering powders and alcohol.

Also notice the incredible brick, a lasercut wood building, from Monster Modelworks

As usual I am working on my layout in fits and spurts.  After completing the plaster work I painted it with cheap indoor house paint in a brown color (got it on sale for about $15 for a gallon at my local hardware store).  These next couple of pictures show how I will be placing the building models to complete the scene.

This space will be for my log pond. It is a piece of Masonite that I screwed into the bench-work and filled the edges in with plaster cloth. I will paint it a kinda murky greenish brown and add logs before pouring the water material.

And this post would not be complete without another picture of my trestle, on which I have added another bent since the previous pics.