Myles, I'm sorry about your band friends who are so ill. It would be good if you could practice the guitar some.
The paint on the bank looks good. My guess is that folks won't notice the variation in yellow. They will be impressed with the familiar street scene and be happy.
Thanks for the kind thoughts Mark. While the band was only working for 3.5 years, the bonds we developed have lasted a lifetime. I only saw Rog in person three times since graduation, but for the last 30 years all the band members (guys mostly) have been in constant contact through other means. We totally loved playing music together and if it weren't for Viet Nam pushing us in various places we didn't necessarily choose, who knows what could have been. I've often fantacized about it.
Finished the bank with the gluing together and roof making. I also prepared all the other buildings for the lighting activity that's going to commence today. I got a line on some micro-LEDs that will solve the "Christmas Light Challege." And I painted the stairs and will mount them once handling of the building is over. I had to reattach those crazy windows on the front of the Hardware Store.
To facilitate soldering surface mount LEDs on copper foil, I find that doing it on styrene doesn't work so well since the styrene melts below the melting point of my solder. Therefore, I've developed the practice to use very thin (1/64") ply as the soldering surface. I've also just purchase a ton of Pre-wired Micro-LEDs in Blue, Red and Green to do the Christmasy stuff both in the store windows and the trees that I'm going to add. The trees are just Woodland Scenics Armatures since this is Bucks County in the winter and trees ain't got no leaves. I'm going to add snow to the boughs and haven't yet figured out the best way to do this. Suggestions are in order.
I finished adding all the window shades and am not lighting the 3rd floors so I installed light blocks between the 2nd and 3rd.
And prepared the wood ceiling under the black out for the overall store lighting. I frosted the first floor windows with Dullcoat and did the same with the bank building to keep out the voyeurs.
Did the same treatment with the other three buildings.
The bank got its glazing and then I glued it together and made the roof which will also serve as the lighting base. I may overlay some fine, black abrasive paper to simuate a gravel roof. It would also hide the wood grain.
I had printed some extra chimneys and fitted one to the Newspaper buillding. I'll add that today and paint it. This roof too will be painted Nato Black.
I final fitted the Hardware House roof. It needed some relief cuts around the corner thingys, and the lower back edge of the sub-frame had a crown that needed to be sanded off. Did that on the belt sander… wasn't messing around. It's now ready to be permanently fastened.
I painted the stairs Haze Gray and will install when the time is right. With the new print setting, fine details like this are now quite doable. When producing parts like these, the hardest part was removing supports that were in very tough places. They were also too fat. Even my "Light" setting was too big. I am adjusting the support parameters to go as fine as possible without breakage since the new settings are allowing that.
I had one "Whoops". I forget to account for lighting the Hotel and buttoned it all up. I opened a hole in the base and will have to work something out. Putting LED colored lights will be a challenge.
Meanwhile, work continues on the turret project. Last night I finished designing the training gear hydraulic system. While I didn't have specific dimensions, I do have scaled drawings upon which I can overly the drawing. I then can make final adjustments on my drawings, but didn't have to.
Just a short Sunday note...
When I said that the exposure changes on my printer was a quantum change in capability, I was not be hyperbolic. I'm making some n-scale accesssories for the layout project. The hardware store in 1:1 has a part bench in front. I found a perfect one in the SketchUp 3D Warehouse that was print-ready. Not only did every tiny slat print perfectly, but the very tiny supports I created worked also. No supports broke… none!
And that's not a giant-sized nail clipper for scale. It's actually a pretty small normal nail clipper. I also printed n-scale versions of the Waste Management dumpster I did for my o'scale layout. I made it al one piece since it's so small, it didn't have to be hollow. And I produced a bunch of n-scale parking meters.
Frankly, the printer performance blows me away and I'm not easy to impress. And it drives me crazy that it's doing things I didn't think it could and actually shied away from.
And the printer just finished those complex hydraulic units for the turret project. And to think a couple of months ago I didn't have anything to print and was getting worried. I'll take pictures of all this tomorrow.
That is impressive! Wow!
From what I'm told, it can even do better than that...
I'm almost finished installing all the lighting in the buildings. While the CL2N3 LED drivers provide a trouble-free means to power LED of all stripes with any voltage from 5-90 VDC, there's a caveat. You can only put as many in series as the supply voltage allows, in this case a 12 VDC LED power supply, and the sum of the voltage drops of the LEDs in series. In my case 3.3 volts per LED restricts the series circuit to three of them. With four, you're dropping 13.2 volts and they barely light. It would be easy to fix, just tie the series LEDs into a parallel wired network. Ah… but there's a rub. The CL2s don't play well with parallel circuits. I don't know how this happens, since it a micro-circuit and basically magic. This necessitates creating parallel circuits, but with each branch having its own individual CL2 driver chip. With the parallel arrangement, all that limits the number of LEDs to the current output of the power supply and each LED only consumes 20 milliamps. The supply is rated at 2.5 amps. I calculate that it could power 125 LEDs.
I'm telling you all this (again… since I believe I've explained this before several years ago, but it's worth a refresher) because it explains why there are so many lead wires coming out of one of the buildings. Here's the circuit in the first building I did. The surface mount LEDs are quite bright so I covered it with a piece of Tamiya tape to dim it down a bit. The colored LEDs are a bargain, at $9.00/25 and current limiting resistors. I bought three packs red, green and blue. They already have leads attached so soldering is simplified.
Here's the building.
The most complicated building is one of the only legacy plastic buildings that the kids built 12 years ago. It's three stores and it represents three circuits. I was running short of time and after buttoning up the last circuit on the right, it didn't light when I tested it. I broke a cadinal rule. I didn't test before shrinking all the insulation in place, which just makes trouble shooting more cumbersome.
Here's the rest of those tiny accessories. That's the same dumpter I printed in O, but it even came out better. The square tubes' wall thickness is very, very thin and intact. I am still amazed. And get a load of those parking meters. The poles are so tiny I almost can handle them.
I'll have all the houses wired tomorrow and build the circuit board to power all of this, plus the lighting for the trees, streets, etc.
I got the power board built today. I did it this way for the first time when I had to wire the nine light circuits of the 16" turret. In this case I set it up for 13 seperate parallel circuits all driven by their own CL2N3 LED Driver Chip. I used a perf board to hand wire the circuit with the copper foil serving as bus bars for all the grounds and the input side of the LED drivers. The output from each driver goes to its own designated port on the output barrier strip. In this image the ground bus is on the left.
Then I had to wire each CL2 output to an individual terminal of the barrier strip. The solder on the CL2s and barrier terminals are just to hold them into the circuit board.
I mounted the circuit board on a chunk of 1X4 that will be screwed to the frame underneath the layout. I will put it in a central location so the drop leads from each building should reach it.
Notice that the barrier strip on the far side is nice and compact compared to that in the foreground. That's because, I found—after soldering all the power bus side—that each module has a little key-shaped connector that can lock them to each other to form longer strips. I did that for the far side. "Better late than never".
The lit building looks great. That’s a nice description of the multiple CL2N3 drivers and LED circuits and how you wired them on the board. That should be a nice installation that won’t give the store owner any trouble.
Thanks Mark!
The lighting won't give trouble, but I'm still dubious about the track work. I had a modeling buddy over today working on a 1:15 scale Space Shuttle restoration for a new aviation museum in Bowling Green, and was running the train around and around. All was well for about 15 minutes and then it hit that trouble spot (that I thought I had fixed) and flop! the engine fell over. Obviously still needs some work. Started working on the styrene pavement when Chris came over.
It's Monday, so I'm back to work. I use that term loosely.
Got the positioning of the pavement and roadway finalized and measured parallel to the layout's sides.
I measured the pavement from the layout edges so it was parallel to them. I marked the layout base to be able to put it back correctly. I located each building roughly on the pavement, and then, off the layout, laid in some perpendicular lines from the pavement edge. I held each building over its location and marked the x-y position of where the power leads will drop through. I drilled the holes in the styene on the drill press, and after positioning the pavement back on the layout, using those holes as a drill jig, drilled the holes through the layout. To drill through the plastic I use a drill sharpened to a 90° plastric-drilling and for the Masonite I used a spur bit.
In n-scale a 3-lane road (33 scale feet) is roughly 2.5". I using that number. I'm having two driving lanes and one for parking with each lane 11 scale feet. I'm making the roadway out of thick water-color painting paper. In this way I can use water-based paint without the fear of the paper curling up too badly. I laid out the paper old school using compass, straight edge, paper cutter, scissors and a pencil. Long cuts were made on the paper cutter. Curves and trims were done with #11 blade. After trimming I temporarily held the sections together with Scotch Magic Tape.
I needed to do some minor excavation around the back road perimeter to remove a little bit more of the Sculpt-a-mold so the road would sit flat on the layout surface.
After taping the long pieces together and fitting in the ends, I used a compass to swing the corner radii to make a 'steerable' turn for the tiny n-gauge cars.
I first freehand cut these with the #11, but realized it would be easier with a scissors. After cutting the corners and taping them to the rest of the road, I cut some small filler pieces to complete the road around the corners.
There was one area left that needed a lot of fiddling. The kids had some up with the idea to have a tunnel under the mainline, but it couldn't exit because there was a lower level track behind it. So we did a "Roadrunner" bit with a flat wall painted like a tunnel. I didn't change this for this new application. But the street needed to go into it and it was at right angles. I had to custom fit the paper road into this space.
Here's the road fit up for the next operation.
While I haven't finalized just what kind of adhesive I'm going to use to hold all of this in place—I'm leaning towards the 3M Transfer Adhesive Tape—I needed to seal the sub-surface so it was a good surface for the adhesive. I used this. It's a very good water-based sealer that dries quickly and cleans up with water.
And this is the surface prepared for attaching the pavement/base and roadway. It was still wet when I took this.
I'm going to airbrush the pavement a concrete color, gloss coat it, put on an aging wash to bring out the sidewalk expansion grooves, and then Dullcoat it.
For the road, I marked the road line locations, but not sure which approach to take: paint it all asphalt-color and then add thin white/yellow tape to simulate the lines, OR paint the line areas on the bare paper, lay the thin masks down and paint the asphalt color and then remove the tape to expose the road lines. I've done it both ways, but lean towards the latter. I means redoing all the layout I did since it will be painted black. Either way, I will be doing this tomorrow.
Oh... one more thing. I found that the point where the train derails randomly... the track gauge was just a skosh tight. A little filing on the inner surface of the rail with gap repair and the train slides through without a hitch. I think I've finally got it.
Thank you for the description of the road and sidewalk/building base construction. That looks like a good sealer product. I'm glad you found the track problem. Again, N-scale track can be so finicky!
Thank you Mark!
I got the base fixed in place with the 3M Transfer Adhesive Tape. I was thinking about adhesive options and settled on it. It's clean and holds like crazy especially in big flat surfaces.
Before adding the part, I lightly sanded the sealer, and added the strips to the bottom of the plastic. You press it on with the cover strip attached, pull the strips off and it leaves a contact adhesive behind. I carefully aligned it with the marking on the surface AND the wire lead holes and then pressed it home.
I mixed up some concrete color (Tamiya Sky Gray and Buff in about equal proportions) and airbrushed the base plate. I then went back and overcoated with some gloss in preparation for the slight weathering. In this case I errored. I used a water-based ALLClad Aqua Gloss, and used a water-based wash. The wash absorbed into the overcoat and was very hard to remove. It took a lot of scrubbing with a wet paper towel and then makeup sponge to get most off and I also rubbed off some paint exposing raw styrene. That had to be touched up. Needless to say, the results weren't what I wanted. I should have used Tamiya panel accent with is solvent based so it wouldn't have soaked in.
I also cut a piece of parquet flooring for the base of the Hardware Store since it's the only one you can really peer into. I used transfer tape for this too.
I trial fit the street again and found there was still some areas with the old ground cover that needed scraping down to expose native Masonite. In the streets case, I added the tape to the base board first since the street assembly was very floppy and would have been trouble trying to get the tape on without screwing up. I pulled the backing on one half and got the street aligned and then pulled the rest. It is well secured. I will the mask the base tomorrow and add the white paint for the traffic lines, then mask and brush paint an acrylic tube paint a weathered gray mix. When dry I'll pull the road masks off. I made the sidewalk in front of the stores wide enough to add some street trees.
Still haven't decided the best way to handle the tree lighting. One thought is embedding the micro-LEDs at the trees' bases and having the light projecting up. It will make it easier since I won't have to deal with all the visible wiring.
Progress! Filled the seams in the road, masked the center, painted the line base, masked the traffic lines and first-coated the road color.
Before I did any of the above, I determined where the trees would go, and "planted" four street tress in the front of the stores, plus a gaggle of them in other places in the "Valley". I'm using those bendy plastic tree armatures from Woodland Scenics which work for n-gauge. It's Christmas time, i.e., winter, so no foliage. I'm going to coat the upper surface of horizontally-oriented limbs with snow.
The mounting hole is a #53 drill, and some won't even need glue. I painted the pseudo-black iron tree bases using the scribed pavement squares as a guide and masked them. I painted them semi-gloss black.
I filled the road seams with Tamiya gray fine filler. While it was curing I did some making of the trees. I sanded the filler, touched up any thin areas and let it cure some more. After sanding, I vacuum the dust with a Dust Buster and then used a tack rag to finish it off.
After masking the center section, I laid out the car parking lines on the store-side of the street. With my street size, I have two-way driving lane and a full-sized parking lane. With the penciled-in lines, I was able to paint the white traffic lines with tube acrylic white. It took a couple of coats to hide the gray filler.
I could just see the pencil lines through the white so I could add very narrow Chartpak tape where the lines will actually go. I used a dividers to mark off 8 scale feet lines and gaps. Then, with a single-edged razor, cut the tape and removed every other piece of tape all around the road. Took a while. It's kind of hard to see the masks, but they're there.
After all the masking was done, I mixed up some very dark gray with the same acrylic paint and liberally applied it to the road. I was a little upset when I noticed the road buckling due to the water-based paint saturating it. I was hoping the water color paper wouldn't do that.
I suspected that as it cured, the buckles would recede, and I was correct. After dinner I checked up on it and they were diminished from what they were before and I suspect, by the time it's fully cured tomorrow, They will disappear. Any of those at the edges, I will inject some wall-paper seam paste and weigh them down.
I decided to go minimalist for the tree lighting. I'm going to use one colored LED at the base of each tree facing upward. This will simplify wiring greatly.
When the road was fully cured, most of the ripples disappeared. I added a coat of Tamiya NATO Black to kill the shin and removed some of the light spots left by the first coat. I didn't even try to pull the line masks without first incising their edges with a new #11 blade. The tube acrylic paint film is very thick and I was sure it would pull away with the masks. This was painstaking work and I was very glad that I had raised the layout off the floor high enough so the bending wasn't too bad.
This shot shows the beginning of the mask removal and also shows how flat the road is now.
Here's all the lines in place.
I masked all the track in prep for the next operation; refreshing the landscaping. I put toothpicks in all the drilled holes for the trees so I can find them after the new grass is "planted".
I got the trees covered with snow. Here's one planted for fun. I used W-S scenic cement judiciously applied to any horizontal surface and the crotches between vertical branches.
And here's the rest of them.
Have a dental appointment in the AM, and then need to go to the hobby shop, but I'll get some work done.
I figured out how to handle the festival lighting without creating a monster.
Instead of attempting to thread LED strings into tiny trees where the LED wiring is almost the same size as the braches, I'm going to light each street tree from below with the three colors of micro LEDs that I have. This will look better when the layout is viewed after dark. During the day, they won't be very noticeable.
This solves a challenge for me. Using the LED string lights would have been a wiring nightmare, and I'd have to use a Buck converter to change the 12VDC from my LED transformer to 4.7VDC that the string lights run on. And putting them into the trees just didn't seem very good.
I also have 13 CL2 driver positions on my power board and am only using 7 to light the buildings. I can easily tie in another batch of LED circuits to it. So I built 4, 3-LED arrays each of which will be powered by one of the CL2s on the power board.
Here's the first harness that I built. It took the longest (as usual) to get the procedure down pat.
And here's all four. I'm only doing this effect on the four street trees. All of them are tested and performed perfectly. The lights will be installed from below in three #43 drilled holes. I will hold them with ???… maybe clear silicone selant. It's nicely transparent. W-S Scenic Cement might work also. There won't be any stress on the LEDs since the wires will be adhered to the layout's underside. Like it or not, I will be doing some work underneath the layout. It's just about the same height as my big trains so working on my scooter should do the trick. White is + and black –.
I also found that dark yellow mix that I originally used on the bank building. It was mixed in the remains of a bottle of Tamiya Buff. I used it to fix that paint mismatch caused by thinking that I threw that bottle away. The mismatch bugged me.
It's Friday, so no work on the weekend. In the next session, I'll be doing the ground cover rework. All of that should take no more than one session. It's quite possible that the layout will be finished by the end of next week.
The streets and trees look great, as does the tree lighting. Good choice to have limited lighting in N-scale.
Thanks Mark!
Got a head start on the ground cover today, although I'm still not sure about what/how to do the snow and how much of it.
When the kids and I built the layout, we really didn't pay much attention to the interior of the two tunnels. I took care of this with some paper towels (Bounty) and Plaster of Paris. It was a sloppy job, and not meant for beauty, just to fill up some holes that showed the back side of the landscping.
It should be fully cured tomorrow so I can paint it. I'm not going to do anything fancy.
I made brackets to lock the transformer in place. I drilled holes into the transformer housing and… hopefully… didn't impact any electronics inside. I plug it in and turned on the power and didn't smell anything burning. I wanted to remove the cover to see what clearances I had inside, but found that the fasteners on the bottom were stacked in and not threaded fasteners. It's not going to go anywhere.
I then mixed up some earth color. My previous go-to earth latex paint was used up on the road project last year so I have to create a custom color. I went over all the bare horizontal areas and some of the those with sub-par ground cover with fresh paint and then generously sprinkled fine grass. When it's all set up tomorrow, I will vacuum all the loose stuff and start adding more interesting things and repair all the ballast damage.
Here's some views of the ground cover. It's a mess, but it's always this way before it isn't.
Landscaping should be done tomorrow or Wednesday at the latest. Thursday will be dedicated to adding building and lighting. Friday will be punch list items and and touchup painting the green banding.
Thanks for the "Likes". Work continued today in a short session. I got the gray rocks painted that the kids and I didn't do 12 years ago. I gave it all an alcohol wash, and started to add highlights, but it wasn't fully dry so that will wait until Thursday. Tomorrow we're doing a day trip to Danville, KY to a new glass museum that opened up. I don't know the specific day that Bill Newell is planning on arriving next week which is why I'm pressing to finish this week. I suspect I have some time next week too. Reviewed a bunch YouTube vids last night on applying snow to model scenes. Lots of variations to choose from, none of which conform specifically to my needs. It's still a bit of a quandry, but I am leaning towards Baking Soda, even though I bought the W-S Soft Snow. Partical size is huge when viewed in n-gauge.
Here are images from today's session. Many of these escarpments were earth colored when originally built. I went around and painted them an acrylic tube paint mix of white and black before doing an India Ink/IPA wash. I will be using chalks to add some more contrast when it's all fully cured.
When I pull the tape, there are lots of track areas that will need ballast touch up. I have the W-S fine gray mix ballast that will do the trick. If I have time, I may want to make a small part at this end (above image) and put some kind of monument in there. I'll see if I can find any in SketchUp's 3D Warehouse that I can print without too much fuss. Don't have a lot of time for fussing.
The tunnels turned out good, and the other improvements make a good scenery base for the snow. I have never tried to model snow in any scale. I have only used cotton batting for the temporary setups for holidays. You certainly don’t need much of whatever you use for N-scale.
Have a good trip to Danville. That name rang a bell, so I looked it up. Yes along Rt 68 on the other side of Lexington from Paris. I was through there long, long ago; before the major Interstate highways were completed.
Is baking soda "snow" stable over time? I have no direct experience, but I would think it would be attacked by humidity.
I don't know. I have both baking soda and W-S Soft Snow. I'm going to do a test piece before I screw up the layout. The deadline is next week and I can't afford any rework.
The little gazebo printed perfectly as I suspected. It's quite delicate. Those are toothpicks holding the tree positions as a scale comparison. I didn't want to fill the holes with ground cover… although I could just redrill the holes. Overthought it!
I will paint it white with a gray roof and greed trim. I can put some of those park benches in it.
I put in a path to the gazebo and put some low shrubs around them. It will add interest to a basically bare area. When the kids and I built this 12 years ago, there was a building in that space.
Last night I finished two weeks of drawing of the very complex sighting/control system for the 5" turret project. It was difficult in every degree of freedom, starting with having no dimensioned drawings of all of this equipment and ending with having to get all the connecting shafts for tie into their respective components. I also had to constantly think about how to print it and would it hold together. What helps was designing it attached to the frame and engine mounts so I knew it would fit into the model when done. Or that's how it's supposed to go.
This is the operator's view point. The Pointer's (elevation) station is on the left and Trainer's (traverse) station is on the right. The two telescopes project out of the shield and I had to ensure that they were aligning with those openings. I've made decals for the dials that show up in the regulator console.
All of this apparatus is smack up against the armored front shield and is out of sight and almost impossible to work on. Even if I have unfettered access to the turret, I could not get to these parts to measure them. My guess is to service it they must detach the entire amored shield.
This is the slicer setup for 3D printing. I'm doing the whole deal as a single part. The support scheme is complex, but I think it will work. I'm making two copies. With the printer adjustments working, this level of detail is entirely possible. Just look at how the railing slats showed up on the gazebo. This part is on the printer now and will be done later tonight. I'll let y'all know how it works out.
I was really anxious about modeling this ridiculously complex assembly. It was a critical path part and a deal breaker if I couldn't pull it off. Much of the rest of the job, including the relatively complicated powder and projectile hoists are not going to be as difficult. Ryan Syzmanski is getting a kick out of this because, even as curator of the ship, he will never see this part separated from the whole as it's shown here.
I just wrote a comment on Mark Boyce's thread, but the wheely thing just kept going around and around and I killed the upload. This site does that a lot.
As to my project, I've finished the landscaping and refurbishing. When all the scenic cement fully dries tomorrow, I'll start dealing with the snow. It looks a whole lot better than it did when I started. The inner part… the building base and sidewalk… is still masked, but that comes off tomorrow.
I painted the Gazebo and temporarily cleared a spot for it and took some images. I had to do some minor surgery in the tunnel at the transformer end. The plaster I added was in the way of the rolling stock. Clearances are tight!
I trimmed up and filled out all the ballasting, added more grass and did some shrubery work. Considering the height of an n-gauge person, the "shrubs" are more like large bushes like and Oak Leaf Hydrangea or bid Rhodadendron. I added another coat of paint to the wood framing.
N-gauge is so small that the "Fine" ballast I use for the walkway up to the gazebo looks like river rock and not fine gravel.
Here's a before image to refresh your memory.
The before and after is impressive. Nice work, Myles.
It certainly is an adjustment moving between modeling in scales as different as O and N. You have done a great job with it! I am assuming with as much detail as you are including, you are going to model a light dusting of snow, whichever method you use. The layout is a big improvement, but I’m sure the original served well for an activity for the boys.
I've made an executive decision today after doing a little experiment with the "snow". I'm not going to add it. Since the layout is fully covered with green materials, snow doesn't work as nicely as it would if I did it over a white surface to begin with. Furthermore, I didn't like the partical size and how it was going to react with wetting solution and scenic cement. Ergo, no snow. I will still use the trees without leaves. Also, we haven't had that much snow these days anyway. The layout looks really nice as it is and I started installing the tree lighting.
Instead of attempting to make the gazebo walk out of "fine" ballast, I made a cardstock pavement. I adhered both the gazebo to the pavement and the pavement to the layout using the transfer adhesive.
The kids and I installed some Atlas n-scale girder bridge sides to simulate the crossings. With the angular trajectory the rr follows precluded from putting in a normal bridge. Previously, the girders were held just with hot glue. I repainted them and weathered them a bit. Then I installed 0.032" phos-bronze pins to give some more substance to the mounting. Then I used the hot glue. This was the best choice since the mounting surface was very irregular.
I pulled the masking off the center section and did some cleanup painting of the edges after first masking the street. I drilled the #43 holes for the lighting at the tree bases, and then, using my scooter under the layout, inserted the LED harnesses into the holes and used some hot glue below to keep them from falling out. The red micro-LED is a smaller diameter than the other two. Don't know why. As a result, they went clean through the holes whereas the others need to be pressed into place. As a result, two of them were sticking out about a 1/2" above the pavement. I didn't know this until I had hot glued them under the layout. This made it very difficult to pull them back to the surface.
Lastly, I put the buildings in place to check on some final fit issues. One was the rear exterior staircase that goes behind the hardware store. I got worried that there wasn't enough room between the store and the street since I actually didn't size the base with the stairs in my thoughts. Luckily, it will just make it. Folks will have to walk out into the street to get around the staircase. I'm also still deciding on the adhesive to use to hold the buildings in place. I thought about the transfer adhesive, but now I'm leaning to using epoxy. It will give me some working time for final alignment. The transfer adhesive is a one-shot deal. Where you put something on it is where it's going to stay.
Without snow, this railroad could be done tomorrow (no later than Thursday).
Myles,
You could add a little bit of snow in the form of melted snow piles and in shadows.
Jan
Buildings are glued and graphics are in place. I'm already having trouble with one of the Atlas switch machines. Those darn things are so delicate. One of them already started overheating and the plastic case is deforming due to excess heating. I may have to replace it before I give it to the client. And I'm being very careful to not hold the button down too long. The switch wasn't cycling fully to the lock position in one direction. In attempting to keep cycling it, it started to overheat. My Z-stuff machines are over 25 years old and still work very well.
I added operating instructions for the switch operation to hopefully prevent any field failures. I color coded the looks and the loop switches to hopefully make it more understandable.
I used Gorilla construction adhesive to glue down the buildings. I was going to use epoxy, but decided against it… to sloppy. This stuff sets in 30 minutes and is fully cured in 24 hours. I used gravity clamps to keep them tight down for the 30 minutes.
I got the stairways installed. In this case I went with epoxy first, but it wasn't working. I added CA, still not working. Finally, when I glued the buildings down I used the Gorilla glue to reattach the stairs and it worked.
I put the clock in place. It's looks a bit cockeyed to me. May have to fix it. Due to the narrowness of the base, the bank is getting pretty close to that tree (soon to be planted).
I painted the benches and the dumpsters and placed them on the model. They are not permanently fastened. I decided against installing the parking meters. They are simply too frail to exist in this scale. They wouldn't last a week.
I briefly thought about making n-gauge "Waste Management" decals for the dumpsters, but they would be way to small to be practical. The colors give them away.
Tomorrow, when the glue is set, I'll wire it all up, install the power supply and add the power switch for the lighting and this will be done… unless I'm still entertaining the snow question. I sent the client a progress picture and explained about the lack of snow. We'll see what he says.
Everything looks great, Myles! All of your last few days decisions make sense. The 'gravity clamps' look huge on the N scale buildings! 
They're huge. You should see the crane that lifted them on top of those buildings.
I got the LED power supply fastened to the layout along with the wired switch. I mounted this on the outside of the layout to allow easy access to it and its cord. This is the side that facing into the store. Those looking at it from the window will not see it.
I'm still using the DPDT switches that I got in Germany when I did the original building of the big layout. Rather than purchase a single pole single throw switch I just keep pressing these into service. I have two left and one will be assigned to the lighting on the new turret model. Therefore, I wired both sides of the switch as "ON", and the center as "OFF". I just took the two hot output leads and joined them about 3" from the switch.
And with the label which actually took about 10 minutes to draw, print, add fixative, and mount with transfer tape. Pretty neat how those faux screw heads look totally 3D.
And I pulled a magnificent booboo. I decided to drill a new hole through the layout frame to pass the lighting wires. I used a healthy drill size and was very near the hole that passed the track power to the #3 position. When the drill broke through, it grabbed the + wire, twisted the heck out of it and then tore it in two. I had to do a field splice, which, needless to say, did not make me happy.
Looks great! Consider your boo-boo minor. We had a guy at the phone company who was mounting a control head for a mobile radio on the floor hump beside the driver’s seat. He drilled through the floor and right into the transmission. 🤦♂️ Brand new car. He was promoted to engineering and later to management. None of my installs were pretty, but I never damaged the vehicles. I guess that’s why I never amounted to much! 😆
Took one more image to send to the grandsons. I don't think the client is going to pick it up before early next week, so I'm enlisting my younger grandson, Jack, (Sophomore at Wash U at St. Louis mechanical engineering) to help me get it out of the basement. The basement steps take a sharp 90 degree turn that may preclude getting it upstairs with the legs attached. I removed them when bringing it from my daughter's house, but would like to not have to this again.
Lighting is done, but I may add one more to light the freight station. I have two more open ports on the driver board. Looks pretty good with the lights dimmed, but they're bright enough to show in full lighting.
I did all the wiring sitting on my scooter under the layout. It wasn't fun on my back or my neck, but I perservered. The hardest part (for me) when working under the layout(s) is my head's position puts my vision out of the top… non-bi-focal… part of my glasses, so I have to bend my head even further back to get things in focus. Using my Opti-visor helps, but has it's own problems constantly snagging wiring that directly above it, and it too is at the wrong angle for comfortable viewing. I don't know if any other senior guys out there run into this problem.
Here's the power board with all the wiring hooked up. I fastened it to the cross-brace in the horizontal position to facilitate making the connections. The hardboard out of which I created this layout is old, very high density stuff, that came from my dad's garage. It doesn't accept the wire-capture staples well. They penetrate a short distance and then fold up on themselves, but it was enough to keep the wiring from hanging down.
Here's the lights in ambient:
And with the lights dimmed:
Still to be done:
I replaced the distressed switch machine. These fragile devices worry me...
When I was halfway through the wiring, I plugged in the power supply to see if they worked. They DIDN'T! Oh my! What have I done wrong?? Checked the polarity of my hookups and they were correct. Then, my brain turned on. I have a SWITCH on the control panel, and that switch was in the center OFF postion. When I turne it on, I was rewarded with all the lights working perfectly.
The lights look great! I have the same problem with my bifocals. I have some reading glasses that I use for the computer screen and for tasks like your wiring under the table.
Trainman2001, your buildings and lighting look great! Yes, many of us older guys share your eyeglass woes. I don't need them to drive (yet) but need them for tasks, so I'm constant shuffling around. If I need to take out a splinter, I have to put 2 pair on!
Nice job, Myles. The layout looks great.
Thanks guys! I started wearing Varilux lenses in my 40s, so it's not for really old guys. And with my cataracts done, I'm actually seeing better than I did in my 20s. Age is just a state of mind.
I am declaring the layout finished. I put in the trees, people and cars, then ran the train to see if it still worked. It stopped running when entering zone 2. It was the connection at the control panel switch that wasn't secure. I reattached and it all worked well. I also found that some cars, due to the various couple types they're using, don't like to couple to certain other cars. Therefore; I'm giving the client a picture of the car order that works best. Also found that setting the power pack at much over 50 on the dial asks for trouble when negotiating that switch at the bottom of the hill. It gets a pretty good head of steam and can miss the switch. I'm going to make another label instructing that 55 is a speed limit.
The grandsons are impressed with how this thing cleaned up. Frankly, so am I.
There are at least 3 dfferent types of knuckle couples on this train: Kato, Kadee, and some I can't identify. While they all couple…eventually… when coming down grade and when slack develops, some let go and that can't happen if you want this to run unattended. I'm also suspect of that box car. It wobbles a bit through switches and I don't like that.
The pictures didn't post, Myles.
Let's try again.
This a good workable lash up. There are variations in the knuckle couplers that work better in some combinations than others.
Then yesterday, I was running the train for my daughter and it derailed again at that switch! I filled more track gaps with Bondic and filed then very smooth, and then did some run bys with the engine along and guess what? It wasn't the trackwork at all. It was the faux airline, uncoupling thingy that was impacting one of the guard rails on the Atlas switch. Most of the times it didn't do it, but when it did, it either jostled the heck out of it, or abruptly threw it off the track. This was causing a problem all along, but I couldn't see it. It was also afecting some of the cars with Kadee style couples. I clipped them all off since I'm not using any form of uncoupling appliance. If I had my druthers I'd glue all the couplers together. Now the train ran perfectly. No hitches. I probably spent a whole of lot time fixing things that didn't need fixing, but all's well that ends well.
All y'all have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Our kids and grandkids will all be together and it's the one time in the year that this happens.
I've made another movie of the big trains which I will post when I've edited it.
Sometimes it is hard to see what is wrong, especially when everything is so small. I’m glad you found the culprits!
Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Speaking of inspecting tiny things, I just got an iPhone 15 Pro, which has a camera with a 3x optical zoom. Combined with its excellent focus algorithms, it is a remarkably good tool for observing tiny things at a distance. It is kind of a microscope and a telescope at the same time. It is proving exceptionally useful for problems like the one that Miles described. The 15 Pro Max has a 5X optical zoom, which would presumably be even better.
Also, if you are an iPhone owner and haven't played with the Magnify app that comes with the phone, take a look. It is pretty amazing.
Part of the reason besides being so small was my problem solving bias. I was so sure that the track work was the problem since it had been up till that point, I had no reason to think beyond it. And I have used my phone as a microscope, especially when reading that insanely small lettering on the instructions that accompany some medicine bottles. I also used it to decipher the serial numbers on Apple products.
Good news! I got paid for the remainder for the n-gauge railroad. He'll be picking it up in a couple of weeks. Now I have to make sure nothing happens to it between now and then.
Then I wanted to ressurect some cars that I hadn't taken out of the box for over 14 years since we moved here. This was a nice full-length, aluminun extruded Weaver passenger set of the Pennsy "Fleet of Modernism" design that looks so spiffy behind GG1s, the one and only S1 and the T1. But these cars were terrible. They had the worse couple sets of any cars I'd ever owned and when I rebuilt the layout I didn't take them out of the box. In my old Pennsy iteration of the layout, my track spacing was too narrow (3.5" c-t-c) so when a train ran on the outisde with these long cars, some equipment clipped them on the inside of the curve. With my new layout, I purposely spaced everything wider than that so I could run any length equipment. Now the only restricted rolling stock is my very nice MTH railway crane and my Schnable car which can't make it through my tunnels.
I decided to find out what I could do to fix the awful couplers and approached it two ways. Here was the problem: Not only was there this height mismatch, but the lock pins wouldn't stay put and I was resorting to orthodontic rubber bands in some cases and twisted wires on others.
I shimmed one set so it would raise the coupler height. This worked.
While it did work, I realized there was a better way. I undid the chassis so I could slide it out of the extrusion enough to give more room around the coupler, and then simply bent the frame that held it all, upwards which raised the couple height. The shimming method created its own problem by forcing me to re-bend the uncoupling lever so it would engage the coupler sufficiently to work.
With the cars functioning, I lashed up a train and ran it around a bit. The uncoupling buttons on some cars are still too low and cause some sparking when the pass over some of the switches. It's not causing any electrical glitches so I'm not worrying about it. Here's the train.
The set also has a baggage car, but it doesn't have any trucks on them and I haven't found them yet. So it has a heavy weight baggage car, which, if I'm not mistaken, is not so far from reality. These cars were designed and built by weaver before the days of separate grab irons, sprung trucks and spiffy interiors, but the paint job is specatular. Most Pennsy fancy trains did NOT have round end observation cars. They had flat-ended ones. I don't know of anyone who's made them in O.
Nice train, Myles. I'm a big Pennsy fan and have a set of Fleet of Modernism cars as well as a T1. Glad you were able to fix that set. A train so beautiful should be run.
Myles,
3rdRail is doing the 1948 Broadway Limited with the flat0end observation car. I'm not certain if they did the Fleet om Modernization in a prior year.
Jan
That’s a shame the couplers were such a problem on otherwise nice cars! Congratulations on coming up with a fix for them.
I did get paid for the little railroad, but he's not picking it up yet. He's trying to navigate going to Charleston, and then to Louisville and then back to Bucks County, PA. He's going to make a very large triangle.
Meanwhile, I've been spending some serious hours designings more parts for the 5" gun mount project. This last bit is the complete projectile and powder hoist system that takes shells and powder cartridges from the ready service room up one level to the gun house. In an American battleship, like the Iowas, the gun house sits on a box-like structure that's also exposed. This structure, the ready-service room, has a small store of ammo for quick transport to the guns, and then receives replenishment from the magazine two decks below.
I'm modeling all of this, but the most complex was this hoist machinery. In fact, I'd say without exaggeration, that it's the most complex SketchUp drawing I've ever completed. It took over two weeks of work (I have no idea about how many hours).
Here's how they're situated in the gun mount.
All of the really complicated stuff is now drawn/andor/printed. I entertained the thought to print the entire hoist system as one piece, but reconsidered. I separated the projectile and powder portions and added some structure to help key them together during assembly. They're on the printer now and will be done around 10pm. Then I'll know if my setup worked.
Here's how it ended up for the printer.
Now I'll just have to figure out how to remove the supports without removing any of the delicate details. I added some additional supports on all the long accuating links so they'll print better. I took artistic license a lot in this design.
Wow!!
Everyone have a safe and wonderful New Years celebration!
Lots of work on the turret is going on, plus we've been dealing with a family health crisis.
My wife had a lumpectomy 16 years ago, and is genetically disposed to breast and ovarian cancer. As a result, she's been under a very tight regimen of mammograms, MRIs and bi-annual exams by her oncologist. The mammogram didn't pick up the new cancer, but the MRI did. It was in almost the same spot as the original and hidden by scar tissue. It's not identical in physiology. The old one was estrogen receptive, while this one is triple negative—not receptive to any hormone or Her2. That makes it a little harder to tamp down. Since she had radiation 16 years ago, she was not eligible for it this time. That made a second lumpectomy not a good choice. Instead she chose to do a double simple mastectomy. While emotionally radical, the surgery and recovery is relatively easy since all you're removing is skin and fat. The tumor was caught early, and even though moderately agressive, was only the size of an M&M peanut and was far away from the chest wall. No muscle had to be touched. Also, there was a clean pathology report after surgery. Prior to surgery she had body cat scan and bone scan and they too were negative. Since radiation and hormone treatments were off the table, Michele will undergo a short series of chemotherapy that will end in mid-March and she will be done.
I was able to do a lot of drawing while nursing he back to health.
Here's where the project stands now.
This was a test to see if all the floor panels fit. I was able to print respectable, scale diamond plate flooring. Can't see it in these pictures, but after paint and dry-brushing some wear on it, it should show up nicely.
Assembly of the gun house is underway, but I still have a few more details to design. I'm getting superb prints now that I finally lined out the exposure times. No matter how small the details, the printer will reproduce it. Whether or not it will stand up to handling in the real world is another question.
Myles, I was so sorry to read of Michelle's cancer return, but glad she was a good candidate for successful surgery. I will keep her, you, and your family in mind as the weeks' chemo treatments progress.
I'm glad you are getting consistent good prints now that you have the exposure time correct. The drawings and the test assembled assembly look great!!
Did the Newtown Hardware client pickup the layout and set it up in the store yet? I just wondered how it worked out for him?
Myles,
Please pass on my sincerest best wishes to your wife. I am hoping she has a complete recovery.
John
Thanks guys! Really! We truly appreciate the sentiment from our extended modeling family.
No Mark, it's still here, but he paid me. Once he missed the Thanksgiving window, he didn't feel any time pressure. He's going to combine the L'ville trip with a trip to South Carolina and it's on his time schedule. He's going to keep it at his house so it will be well taken care of. Meanwhile, I have to worry that I'm going to break something. It's like after you've sold your house, but haven't moved out yet. Bad things start happening...
Happy new year guys.
I agree, I would be afraid I would break something! Thank you!!
Happy New Year, Myles. Your wife will be in my thoughts and prayers.
Thanks Guys! Everyone have a wonderful year. And… if anyone tells you that Chemo is nothing to worry about, needs to have their head examined. Chemo can turn a healthy, vibrant women into an old lady in about 2 weeks. Hopefully, in mid-March, when this is over, she'll return to her old self. All of this to increase her 10 year life chances by an additional 3%! Is the cure worse than the illness??
Myles, I know chemo is rough, not from personal experience. My wife was an RN on a cancer floor when we first met. It is so sad the treatment is so rough on the patient. I’m sure you feel helpless! 😢 I recall her vibrant demeanor from our short visit at Sheetz. Please tell her I’m praying for her.
My Mother had to do Chemo for her breast cancer. This was in 1971. I'll never forget how sick she got from it. She passed anyway. May God be with Your wife you and your family.
Quick update. The oncologist reduced the dosage of her chemo infusion with very good results. Still not a normal situation, but greatly improved. Yesterday was her third infusion session. 3 down and 1 to go. That will take place on March 13. Four weeks after that her imune system will be back to normal. Even with that, her blood chemistry has been quite good.
Next: The little layout was picked up this week by Bill Newell. I made a protective cardboard cover for it from an old flat TV carton. Lots of cutting and hot glue. Made it so vertical ribs lie on the the lower straight tracks and it's high enough to clear all buildings and scenery. Flaps on the edges fold over the sides and I duct taped it to the layout side rails. It worked. We bumped the door knob taking it out of the basement and the protector kept anything from getting damage.
He brought his wife and they were heading from my Louisville home to Nashville. They made me run the big trains and, needless to say, we duly impressed. They got a real kick out of seeing the store in 1:48 on my big layout and the little tiny 1:160 version on the little layout. I am very happy to have it out of my basement. He paid me for it months ago. I didn't want anything untoward to happen to it.
Lastly: Finally, Allan Miller and I are on the same page. I am writing four articles for OGRR. It took a long time for this to happen, but I'm happy it did. I gave him a very long manuscript with lots and lots of images, but it was four times longer than OGRR prefers. Allan suggested making it into four shorter articles. I am in the process of doing that. The theme is "21st Century Modeling: Fusion of 3D Drawing, 3D Printing and Classic Modeling Skills to Create Unique Models"
Part 1: : The Journey from building kits to building your own
Part 2: Using 3D drawing programs to design your own structures
Part 3: Laser cutting your own designs to make unique structures
Part 4: 3D printing and model structure creation
This arrangement hasn't been approved by Allen yet, so it could change, but it's how I'm approaching it now.
That sounds like a very interesting sequence of articles. I'm excited to hear more about it.
Good to hear good news about your wife's medical treatment. You and your wife will continue to be in my thoughts.
I'm glad your wife is doing well with her treatments. I'll keep praying!
I'm glad Bill Newell is in possession of that great looking layout. I'll bet the difference between his building in N scale and O scale was remarkable to them!
That will be great having a series of articles on 3D drawing and printing!! You have certainly gained a lot of expertise on the subject.
Myles
Best wishes to your wife…..prayers are sent.
Looking forward to reading about your fantastic modeling…..
.Peter
Thank you for all the thoughts of encouragment! Michele completed her chemo treatment on Wednesday, March 13. We're not expecting any additional problems as she recovers from this round.
Just wanted to let y'all know that my first OGRR article is slated for run 340 (I bleieve that's Feb 2025). I have to be patient.
I was goingt include some more details about 3D vis a vis model building specifically, but quickly it was forcing the word count well over the 2,000 words per article desired by the magazine. I started writing articles on the subject, but they too quickly exceeded the word count. That lead to thinking about a book on the subject.
The book, 3D Printing for Model Makers, seemed like a good idea. With my latest Apple OS Sonoma and Apple Pages, includes abook templates. There is a one for instructional books. The template's pretty complete and automatically builds tables of contents based on chapter titles. But wait, there's more!
You can upload the book to Apple eBooks for no charge. Apple takes a cut of the sales. Marketing is no included. I'm looking for support from OGRR in that regard.
I've noticed a gap in the instructional material on 3D printing. There's lots of information on running the machine and dealing with setting up work for successful printing, but there's not much on the specific needs model makers have especially when they want to do custom work. If you look at 3D printing videos, they generally print either fantasy creatures and figurines or trinkets and other 1:1 scale items. They are not printing critical components for models that must conform to rigid technical requirements of scale and interconnectiblity. And they don't teach about using the design software to accomplish those ends. I intend to close that gap. SketchUp only recently has started noting on the models uploaded to their 3D Warehouse (inlcuding mine) about their readiness to be 3D printed. Designing for 3D printing is more difficult than designing images just for viewing. I want to explore that with readers.
While I've written articles on the topic, a book is a whole different animal. I will keep you all up to date on the progress, so stay tuned. And give me feedback about interest levels.
Myles, I'm glad Michelle finished the treatments with a positive outlook.
I'll look forward to the article. I'm sure it will be quite good. The book sounds like a great idea, but a lot of work involved. Please keep us posted.
Thought I'd give an update. Michele's chemo finished one month ago and she's steadily getting stronger. We're walking over a mile now. No sure hair has started growing again, but we're sure it will.
Work continues on the turret. I'm assembling the upper parts and still designing all the below decks stuff. I know this ain't trains, but it is modeling and it is O'scale (1:48).
Gun house shell is done waiting to be joined with the innerds. The ladder rungs are 3D printed, but kept breaking all the time. As they broke, I'm replaceing them with phos-bronze 0.015" wire. There are no drop rungs that I could find in 1:48… HO yes, O no!
The box that the turret sits on is the upper handling room. This assembly is also finished waiting for final assembly.
This space receives projectiles and powder cartrdiges from the magazine two decks below. There is also 50 rounds stored here, which is the other name for the space "Ready Service Room".
The powder brass cartridges are store in sealed aluminum cylinders. They are stripped of the storage container and then set up in another hoist to the gun house above. The cases are dropped down a hole in the floor to compartments below to get them out of there. I still have to made that hole.
The is the projectile hoist fully painted that moves them from the UHR to the gun house. One side is up and one down so there's always a shell waiting to be loaded. They load between 15 and 22 rounds a minute (every 3 to 4 seconds).
I finished adding the hoists to the gun house yesterday. It was very tricky and I had to keep trimming their floor panels so they would sit properly. I printed the 1:48 diamond plate. It was an experiment that worked.
The left side is the pointer's station (elevation) and the gray machinery is the motor/pump hydraulic set that drives a hydraulic motor that drives the elevation pinions for both guns.
The right side is the trainers (traverse) station with it's motor/pump unit. Everything in these turrets and the big guns are hydraulically powered.
Between the 2nd and 3rd decks is this… the splinter deck. It runs over 300 feet between the 2nd and 3rd 16" turrets. It's only 3 feet high. I modeled just a small sample that sits below the guns and above the magazine I'm building. The curator says it's a "lot of fun" crawling through that space. I can just imagine. It's purposed is to capture any spalled shrapenl that can be created if the heavily armored bomb deck above is hit. It prevents the debris from penetrating to the magazines and engine rooms.
I'm now laying out the decking and compartment partitions old school scribing and snapping styrene sheets of various gauges. This is the magazine floor.
This is the final design. I've sent the base measurements to my friend in Albuquerque. When I get this base I will order the cut plexiglass.
The porthole designs are wrong. On the ourside, they just a raised gray rim with an drip catching eyebrow over top.
Lighting will be really important to show the hidden spaces. It's also why I'm doing an AV program to show WIP pictures to identify things people can't see well.
I printed a really neat ladder for the upper deck decoration. This was another experiment since I perforated the steps and they printed. I thickened the railings so it would survive better. It was hard to find a good reference on this. Most of the museum ships' ladders are no longer WW2 vintage.
You're all up to date. Rest assured there's a model RR Project coming. I still wish I had my own laser cutter. The wattage needed for cutting appears to be 40W and above. Solid State cutters are still in the $1,000s and too rich for my blood.
Myles, First of all, thank you for the continued good news about Michele's recovery. One mile walking sounds great! I'll keep praying!
There are several ways to consider the turret project to be appropriate here. The first thing I noticed was in the first photograph the grab ladder rungs look like they could be on the side of a freight car. That ladder in the last photograph could be used on so many industrial structures. Another thing is you are showing us how complicated parts can be made with 3D printing that can open up all kinds of ideas for a model train and layout modeler. Lastly, I don't know that any of these assemblies would be transported by rail, but just think what interesting flatcar loads they would be. Wonderful modeling!!
Thanks all and Mark, thanks for the very long and dedicated support.
I am in process of writing a book on 21st Century Modeling: the Fusion of 3D CAD, 3D Printing and Traditional Modeling. I was originally going to put some of this in the four articles scheduled to start next February 2025, but it immediately drove the word count way up. So I decided to write an article about it and again, the word count soared. So I'm writing a book where word count no longer matters. I'm about 1/4 done so there's much more to go. It can be applied to every kind of modeling we do including everything about model railroading.
Apple Pages has formatting already set up for books and you can upload into their eBook library for free. If you sell any, they take a cut, but that's okay. I will let you all know when it's available. I asked Allan Miller if OGRR was interested in publication, but they no longer produce books. I'm thinking about asking them if they'd market it for me.
It is a beautiful Saturday and we went for a walk at the new Louisville, Waterfront Botanical Garders.
A couple more images… Gun house interior is effectively finished. Every part you see except the white styrene sheet for the gun house subfloor, is drawn and printed by me and most without any dimensions to work from. No commercial parts whatsoever. At the start of this project I honestly didn't know if I could pull it off. There's so much going on in there it's amazing you can fit any sailors inside, and yet, there were nine. I found a source of 1:48 sailors, but they're expensive.
In this image you can see just how complicated the real thing looked. I've captured that feel. This is just about how I'm going to get the gun house shield in place. My gun barrels are not glued. They will come off to get the house in place. You also get it on by raising the guns to their full elevator of 85°, but my barrels won't raise that high.
And one more image to blow you model railroading minds. This is the New Jersey today in dry dock at the Philly Navy yard in the same place where it was born in 1942. My wife and I will be hoping to visit sometime in May. It's an expensive ticket, but we're being comped due to my donation work for the ship. It simply staggers my mind to see just how big of a constrution the Iowa class ships were. All those tiny people were the same size as the folks that built it. The bow to the keel is 72 feet plus the blocking makes it close to 80 feet and to the top of the air defense tower was over 150 feet. You don't get a chance to see something like this very often. The stem line is almost a razor's edge plus 900 feet in length and 212,000 hp got the ship up to 33 knots. It actually did 35 knots in sea trials. Pushing 45,000 tons 40 mph through water is a big deal.
I'm now thinking about doing one of the engine rooms. I'm a gluten for punishment. I don't think that's ever been modeled either. And again, I have no idea about what reference material is out there. Almost the entire insides of the ship (250 feet of it) was taken up with four boiler and four engine rooms each driving one of the four prop shafts. Ryan said I could pick which one I wanted to model. They were all laid out differently. We'll see. I have to do "Early Sunday Morning" for the layout before I tackle that. I'm not getting any younger. I started the railroad in my 60s and 80 is just around the corner. There will come a time where I won't be able to do this stuff any longer, so there's no time to waste.
This topic is straying away from the main purpose of this forum. OGR is charged dearly for the bandwidth and thus the reason why we want folks to talk about trains. PLEASE try to understand. I don't want to have my moderators to start editing and deleting posts in this otherwise fantastic forum that I for one have been following for years!
Yes… it strayed. Of course you do realize that I've been producing this thread for 12 continuous years and, because I don't build RR constantly, but take a break to keep from getting in a rut, I post these odd-ball things to let folks know I'm still alive and thinking about them. I will refrain from doint this in the future.
@Trainman2001 posted:Yes… it strayed. Of course you do realize that I've been producing this thread for 12 continuous years and, because I don't build RR constantly, but take a break to keep from getting in a rut, I post these odd-ball things to let folks know I'm still alive and thinking about them. I will refrain from doint this in the future.
Nice that you let others know you are still "kicking" and am glad you understand why we need to keep the purpose of our forum "on track" with our model train hobby.
Despite not being train parts, the detail you are showing on the ship parts really show what is possible. So much more detail work that could be done. I bet a fully detailed roundhouse with tools and equipment would be awesome if done with the type of details you are showing
Miles,
I have not followed for a while. I am glad to read about your wifes' recovery. About your upcoming article for OGR and seeing the incredible things that you have been producing. I am very happy for you my friend.
Thanks guys! Al! Good to hear from you. BTW: The 3D CAD and printing I'm doing for the current project is essentially the same as I've perfected in doing model architecture for the RR. It's the capablility that's the theme, not the output.
Personally, I prefer both!! I too, haven't followed for awhile since I've maxed out my three layouts. Nothing like modeling trains and Iowa class battleships. Showing what's possible with your 3-D printing is both informative and inspiring. Your work is amazing.
Jerry
Loved the Iowas since my 9th birthday when it was my first model (of hundreds that followed). I was imprinted on its shape, elegance and power. Thanks for the kind words! You should keep following just for the fun of it. Never know what might inspire you.
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