Railroad Redux » San Leandro Historic Railway Society

Scenery for Antelope at the SLHRS

Dom — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 16:22:27 +0000

Lately I have been busy adding scenery to the area of the San Leandro Historic Railway Society’s layout representing Antelope. This area has been really plain for quite some time, and after seeing prototype pictures I decided to take care of it.

I am a firm believer of using layers of scenic items to get the most natural effect. Here I started with clumps of poly fiber and worked them into small balls. After using white glue to hold them in place I covered them liberally with scenic glue (thinned white glue with a couple drops of detergent) and followed with sprinkled ground foam. The smaller clumps are made using Woodland Scenic’s underbrush (a clump foam product). I also hit them with a layer of scenic glue and ground foam. After letting them dry overnight I went back with the vacuum to remove any excess foam.

For the trees I decided to leave the bases on, in hopes of them being more sturdy when bumped. I glued them in place using white glue, after they dry I intend to come back with ground cover and hide the bases.

Annual Summer Open House at the San Leandro Historical Railway Society Recap

Dom — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 07:39:39 +0000

Last weekend was the annual Summer Open House at the San Leandro Historical Railway Society.

Here are a couple of pictures that I took with my phone during the event.

This first picture is of one of our members at our completely full setup yard.

This next picture shows a banner that a couple of visitors brought in. I am not exactly sure where it is from, but it was rather impressive.

San Leandro Historical Railway Society

Annual Summer Open House at the San Leandro Historical Railway Society

Dom — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 08:59:36 +0000

Saturday June 5th and Sunday June 6th I will be running trains at the annual summer open house at the San Leandro Historical Railway Society.

We will be running trains in a variety of scales, HO on the main layout, G and O scales on the G&O garden railroad.

Also we will be selling cookies and have a yard sale. All proceeds raised go to the upkeep of the historic depot and the model railroads.

Its located at:

1302 Orchard Avenue
San Leandro, CA 94577
Phone: 510.569.2490

We will be open from 10am to 5pm on Saturday and noon to 5pm on Sunday.

San Leandro Historical Railway Society

Pics from the G&O Backyard Railroad

Dom — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 01:28:46 +0000

Here are some pictures that were recently emailed to me showing the impromptu golden spike ceremony for the children’s area of the G&O. This area was completed less than a week from our upcoming show at the San Leandro Historical Railway Society.

Oleum, Ca. on the San Leandro Historical Railway Society HO Scale Layout: Piping

Dom — Wed, 05 May 2010 07:50:48 +0000

Today I went down to the SLHRS layout and worked on adding piping from the refinery to the storage tanks located next to it.

I used the Walther’s kit to create this. Today my goal was just to build the shapes, I will paint and weather them once I get all of them assembled. I ran the piping from the refinery down so that it will go underground to get to the storage tanks. I intend to come back up on the other side and connect the loading platform for the tanker cars and also the storage tank on the hill overlooking Oleum (further to the right).

Here is the left side of the refinery. I have this piece fully constructed, however I am considering making this piece bend towards the ground right at the refinery so that it doesn’t stick up as it hits the backdrop. I also intend to add to the scenery in this area so that it doesn’t look so much like a soccer field (or UFO landing site as various club members have suggested).

Oleum, Ca. on the San Leandro Historical Railway Society HO Scale Layout

Dom — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 06:43:26 +0000

I have been pretty busy lately down at the SLHRS depot. Recently I have been working on moving some telephone poles that had been installed too close to the track. These are pictures that I took from my mobile phone after putting the finishing touches in place.

This picture is taken looking east.

Now a view looking to the west.

And finally, a view of the south end of Oleum, where I have placed one of the models I featured previously.

ConCor Bakery, Part 4: Final Touches

Dom — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 15:46:31 +0000

Before completing the chalk weathering on the model I painted the metal parts with silver paint. Over this I dry-brushed a rust color, adding heavy color where it would be likely for rust to form. Once this had dried I used the chalk to blend in the areas and add even more rust color to the metal.

One of the other final steps was to fill in the small gap on the upper window by using white glue. This had the effect of filling in the gap, but was able to be hidden by the weathering so that it was not noticeable. Once all of this had dried I coated the entire model with Dullcote to protect all of the weathering. On most models I would have done this before installing the windows as it take away the clarity, however in this case I wanted the windows to be slightly opaque so that you were not able to see inside the building.

Once this building was complete I donated it to the San Leandro Historic Railway society to be used as a generic industrial building on our layout. This building served as my “try piece” and landed me the job of working with another member to create the buildings for the Selby area of the layout (Selby, CA during the 1950′s contained a lead smelter and not far from there is the C&H sugar plant). I will provide pictures of this current building and any future buildings in that area as they are built.

Review of Kato NW2 switcher

Dom — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 14:30:22 +0000

At the San Leandro Historic Railway Society’s winter show I won a Kato NW2 switcher from the raffle. I am happy to say that this model turned out pretty well, and runs nicely on DC. Unfortunately is was very difficult to install the decoder for DCC in this model, as no room is available inside of the model. I was forced to mill out a portion of the weight under the hood to allow enough room for a N scale decoder from NCE. On the plus side the Kadee couplers I used to replace the horn-hook style couplers included with the model slid right into the existing pockets once I assembled them.

Two different options for the exhaust stacks were included, indicating the phase one and phase two (as built). The detail parts were crisply molded and easily installed, with only minor enlarging of a couple of holes. The directions were very clear and used diagrams of both the model and the parts sprues indicating the location for each part. For the smaller parts duplicates were included in case of damage. The directions stated that these parts could be just snapped into place, however I used Zap-A-Gap to make sure they would not fall out. The lights use yellow LED’s, which I admit look a little strange – and I will be changing them out eventually.

Other than the difficulty in installing a DCC decoder into this model I would have given it top marks.

Overall: 7
Provided parts: 10
Instructions: 10
Value for price: 7
Overall quality: 8

Pictures from San Leandro Historic Railway Society

Dom — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 23:50:48 +0000

As I was on vacation over the Christmas holiday I did not have any time to work on any of my projects so I decided to post some pictures I took at the San Leandro Historic Railway Society while running some of my trains.

This picture shows my F7 A&B units from Proto 2000. They were the first two models that I installed NCE decoders into, a really easy process as it was just a matter of removing the existing DC chip and plugging in the new decoder.

This picture shows a view of the same train heading across the top of the small helix heading towards Antelope. Notice the weathered look of the boxcars and gondola in the picture. This was done by drybrushing two different colors of paint, and then using pastel chalks to complete the affect.

Happy Holidays from RailroadRedux.

SLHRS Winter Open House 2009

Dom — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 05:18:36 +0000

This last weekend was the annual winter Open House at the San Leandro Historic Railway Society. Overall it was a really good show, with no major problems or mishaps.

Here is a picture of three of the members running trains in the Roseville Yard.

And here is JJ dispatching.

And here is the temporary display set up on the future home of the G&O railroad.