Thanks Mark for hanging in there for the full 8 months. And thanks to everyone else too.
Today, I officially finished the model with the addition of the signage and vegetation around the bases of the fence posts.
The Illustrator signs I made were too big when I printed them out. I went back and reduced them to 60% of the initial size which worked much better. After spraying some final fixative to preserve the ink a bit, I brushed on a thin coat of MicroMark PSA (pressure sensitive adhesive) and then put the sheet on a piece of wax paper. I cut out the signs with a straight edge and sharp #11 blade, and took them to the refinery to hang them. The wax paper peeled cleanly off the back to expose the sticky stuff.
For the curved vessels, I may have to go back and use some CA since the PSA wants to release and the signs straighten out. I added "No Smoking" and "Confined Spaces" signs at locations all over the facility. I put two "Safety" signs on the ops building, and "Restricted Area" signs on the perimeter fence.
I then trimmed off the excess Gorilla Glue that foamed out of the holes, painted the damaged areas with earth Behr latex interior wall paint in a dark earth color, and sprinkled a mixture of fine and coarse turf on the wet paint. I a couple of area I used W-S Scenic Cement to glue on large patches of weeds around the bases of all fence posts. With these two steps, all of the refinery work is done other than adding some humans.
I took some final beauty shots which show the vegetation. The signage pics above were shot before I did the landscaping.
Notice also that I actually ran some trains today and took some movies. I just uploaded it on Vimeo and YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PX1_2u8U-A
So that wraps it up. Project started in April and ended on December 1. Took my youngest grandson down to the layout room tonight and he was duly impressed on how it came out. I am too... When I opened that box of tubes and pipes from Plastruct, I really didn't know if it was going to amount to anything or not.
Took another overall layout status shot from the spot that I use for these. I put the tripod on top of a 6 foot step ladder and have marks on the floor to position the ladder in the same spot. Little by little it's all filling in. My wife came down for the grand opening of the refinery and thought the whole deal is looking really good. Once the rest of the town buildings are finished I'll go back and put in the telephone poles and other street details. Right now I don't need anything else in the way when I'm adding more structures. There are at least three more major structures for the town: Bourbon Store House, Nighthawks Cafe and the Bronx Victorian Building.
Just for fun, here's what it looked like in October 2012. Building a large model railroad is a big job! I can see why some fellas get hung up on design and can't get started.
It will probably be a little while until the next project kicks off since I don't have it in hand right now. Meanwhile, I'll finish up that Fairlane GTA model. Hard to believe that a muscle car in 1966 with a 390 V8 in a mid-car size body did 0-60 in the 6s, and I have a 2008 Acura TL type-S with a V6 that does 0-60 in the 5s. Imagine that and gets 10 mpg better. In fact and 430 hp Corvette gets 25 mpg on the highway.
