Exercise day, got to work around 2 something. Finished the brass work on the fence and started painting the refinery area. I decided to create the entire fence as one assembly. After soldering the splices and adding the corner reinforcing bars, it holds together well enough to move it from place to place. It's really long and very easy to catch in things like the rest of the layout, the florescent lights, and anything else that might be in the way. However, I now know that I can paint the entire fence system off the layout and get it to the layout without wrecking it.
For the final corner, the one where the straight run turns left on the right end, I added the reinforcement with the fence on my sawing table in the layout end of the room. I moved my RSU to that spot so I could solder this last piece in place with enough elbow room to hold the entire fence. I ran out of 1/16" solid rod so I substituted 3/64" rod for the last two corners.
You can see the extent of the whole deal in this picture. Please ignore the mess...
It was time to start painting. I put the first coat of dark earth on all the fresh plaster areas and a first coat of Jungle green for the fascia boards. I didn't add any ground cover yet. When I put the next coat of latex down I'll start adding the final gray ballast as a gravel surface. I chose this route since the raw plaster absorbed the paint so quickly that it would be wet enough hold any ground cover. The paint needs to be really wet to get good adhesion.
It looks pretty good with the fascia matching the rest of the layout. The white areas on the left is the access road that's going to be treated with asphalt colors. I did finish all the sanding over there and am satisfied with the surface. It's really far away from the viewer so I'm just being finicky.
I pre-painted white craft paint in the road areas that are going to get any line work. I'm going to have the wide stop line in front of the tracks and I made a stencil for the RRXing lettering that goes on the road surface. I also pre-painted where the white parking lines will be in front of the ops building. I first did these by winging it with the ops building moved off its location.
But then I put the building back and found that my lines weren't going to work, so I added more down the line. Even so, this is one cramped parking lot. Maybe that's what's going in that space on the other end. Right now, Sinclair Oil must be asking the EEs to walk or bike to work. In fact, looking at this picture, The lines should probably face in the other direction and be on the other side of the lot next to the HP Spheres' stairs. That way, the cars will at least have a chance to get into the parking space. There's also very little space by the left end of the building. I tried an auto and it just squeezes by. I felt this space was tight from the get go, and I didn't want to make the building any smaller. O'scale is a pain in the butt! Stuff is big!
I woke up thinking about the best way to attach the fence to the platform. One way would be to make 1/8" holes or larger to give the slop needed to get all of those poles into those holes. I then thought about using the next larger telescoping tubing size to make sockets. Place them on the legs and glue them into the holes, trying to not get any on the sockets. This would hold the fence securely, but make it removable. I thought about what glue to use: epoxy putty, plaster, Gorilla Glue...? Epoxy putty would be a good way to go since it would be easy to control, wouldn't ooze into the sockets, and hold like crazy. It would also fill the excess space well and give some reasonable working time to get it all together. I will take suggestions from the audience on this one.
