Urban Development

Continuing to develop the main village today I began to lay the foundations for the hillside.  Below are a few images showing the process.

Above is my village area with the buildings removed.  Each has an outline traced on the table with a sharpie marker, and for those that will sit atop the hill I've already positioned wires to power the interior lights.

It's not much to look at yet, my base is a combination of 1/4" plywood, 1" extruded foam and strategically balled wads of old newspaper (not pictured)   It's all help in place with white glue, and masking tape in the case of the newspaper.   You can see I've use some handy bottles and cans to weigh down my foam board as the glue dries.

Here we are a few hours later.  Newspapers drop sheets now protect not just the track but the ballasted area in the foreground.  I've cut up one full roll of plaster cloth into 4" strips and applied it to my hillside.  Once this dries a second later will go on.

The flat spots will be the foundations of structures.  After the second coat goes on and dries I'll begin considering where the rock face will poke through the grass.

That's it for today. More to come soon!

Town Planning

Now that I'm back at it I've decided to tackle some of the tricky things I've been putting off first, and top of that list is figuring out how I plan to build out the main station area.  Since the inception of the track plan I had planned to build a town here, but I've been troubled by some logical issues with access and roadways.  Call me a curmudgeon, but it always irks me to see layouts with buildings with no plausible road access.  The modern world is all about the automobile and a house, industry or workshop without road access is just  wrong.  My station is ringed in by track, it's an island... so what to do?

Before I go any further I should mention that all the images below are greyblock quality only.  Buildings are placed in approximate locations, roads are drawn in with a sharpie, hills and elevations represented by foam blocks and plywood- I'm just trying to lay out the key objects in the space, to find the right balance of density and appealing sight lines.   Also, as always, just click on an image to see it in high res.

Step one was building a level crossing.  I found some miscellaneous bits and bobs and took a stab at it.  Still needs paint obviously:

Next I took a stab at my main street.  I'm planning an elevation (represented by the plywood) with a road extending from the level crossing, leading up and along the back wall.  There will be a T intersection, and from that my town's main street, heading into the depth of the image below:

The foreground is slightly older structures.  As you go up the hill, much as in the real world, the real estate improves.  Out past the station is a freight warehouse, and a freight unloading platform, as well as the signal tower I previously located on the other end of the room.   It has bothered me for months that the tower is a closer match to this station than the one it was previously paired with, so tonight I finally made the move:

Here you can see the new freight platform and the warehouse behind it.  I'll probably look for one more industrial type building to block off the street and bridge the space to the line running in the background.  You can also see my planned spot for the semaphore signal.  I'm happy to report that wiring this is very easy, it will attach directly to my switch machine and operate automagically!

The station area is still in flux.  My largest concern in that I am now using three different styles of platform!   I'm really not sure how I feel about this, it was not entirely by design, but of course in the real world we see things like this daily.  Perhaps it speaks to a narrative of expansions... First there was the passenger platform extending from the station, then a freight platform was added, and then as traffic increased a second platform was needed... I'm just not sure. Please, let me know what you think:

Front right: passenger, center left: passenger, back right: freight.

The old church site is now a farm:

And the former site of the signal tower now has a small platform.  A new signal tower is on order from Euro Rail Hobbies, it will go on the opposite side of the tracks, and so make much better use of space that the previous arraignment afforded.  While I'm still not entirely happy, this area now feels significantly less cramped.  I've photoshopped in a picture of the new signal tower in it's planned space:

A new platform now sits where the old signal tower once resided.

Finally, you may have noticed above a bunch of new structures.  Sharp eye Sir!  I've been busy building a number of new structures, many of which were Christmas gifts.  Those of you responsible, you know who you are, and I thank you.  I only wish I could have got to them sooner!

Faller 232234

Faller 232245 (Apothecary)

Faller 232245 (Bakery)

Faller 232235

E94 Update

A while back I posted about some issues I had been having with my Fleischmann E94.  As you may recall my decoder on hand didn't fit.  What I didn't mention is that the E94 is just slightly taller than anything else I own, and it was getting stuck in one of my tunnels.  The rise from under the table had the top of the E94's pantograph hitting the plywood underneath my roundhouse building.  Because that structure is integrated with tracks, it's no simple job to list it out and cut a new bigger hole in the wood.

I had tried a fix earlier, using a course wood file and a Dremel tool to take a little wood away but to no avail.  Working from under the table was extremely awkward with the file, I just could not apply any force to it, and my sad little wireless Dremel was not up to the task.  I had a Dremel Stylus and found that it just didn't have the power to do more then scratch the wood.  Now, this being the only Dremel tool I owned, I assumed that this was what they were, and what they were was not very good.  I probably offered some detailed opinions on the subject because for Christmas my wife gave me a new Dremel, and this new one is good.

What a difference having the right tool makes!  This new Dremel made the job easy, I spent maybe 30 minutes on it, tops.  The only thing I had to be careful of was not setting the table on fire, because the sanding head never bogged down once.  The funny thing is I had considered replacing my old Dremel before but didn't think I needed a new one, because it was a pretty useless tool.  I thought a fractionally better one would be similarly useless, only slightly less so.  Well, I was wrong. This new one is many orders of magnitude better and I just wanted to share the experience with you all in case your find yourselves mired with bad tools.

My E94 now can traverse the whole of my layout.  I feel like I just got a new engine!

Quick Kit Review: Kibri 37032 Church of the Gotthardbahn

Design:  The kit is well designed.  It appears to be a modern mould, the visible seams are minimized when assembled, the flash is minimal and the sprunes had adequate trimming space.  Rating: A

Quality:  The walls are unusually thick, much more so then is the norm in N scale structures and the thin parts are about as good as one gets in a modern 1:700 scale ship (ie. impressively thin).   I was pleasantly surprised. The factory colours are not to my taste, but I never build an unpainted kit so a non issue for me. The Photo on the box suggests a common blue hue for the dome and stonework which is misleading, as they are cast from separate plastics, one green, the other grey.  Rating: A

Documentation:  Typical of Kibri the documentation is a little lacking.  The parts are numbered from 7000 to 8000 over several sprunes, rather then the standard A1, A2, A3...B1, B2, B3... and the instructions are a series of images that cram too much detail into too few panels.   It's not unbuildable, clearly, but it's not on par with a modern Faller kit either.  Rating: C

Decals and Details:  The decal sheet does not match the decals illustrated in the instructions.  The instructions on the window decals are not very clear, but the effect once used correctly is impressive.  The windows are a translucent yellow with a crosshatch which looks great.   The snowbreaks on the roof are finely moulded.  Rating: B

Build:  I'm very pleased with how this came out.  The church makes an impressive structure, looks great, and fits my chosen subject area perfectly.  Rating: A

Overall Rating: A (Not an average)

Click to enlarge

The original:

This last image is a print, you can buy it here:

New Structures: Rebuilding a used castle!

A few weeks ago I bought a used N scale castle from my local hobby shop.  I think it was part of a lot from an estate sale.   It was in pretty rough condition but I thought I might be able to rehabilitate it.

It was a Kibri kit, below is the manufacturers rendition:

And here's what I picked up for cheap:

You will have to click on the above to really see how ugly it is   The seams on the walls, the paint, the orange ground, the glossy roof...  It begs many questions.   Worst of all, whoever built this kit made no effort to produce something good.   The casting marks are all over the parts, the points of attachment to the sprunes have not been clipped nor sanded, parts were just glued together haphazardly.  Doors and windows were askew.  Worst of all, those walls!

I suppose I should have bene tipped off by the manufacturers photo- each wall segment joint is covered by some flocking material, so even in the best possible rendition this kit is a little rough.  Once I disassembled it and started sanding and fitting parts I found that even in the best case the results will be sub par, as the moulds this was cast from are clearly dated.   In fact, there's a copy write on a baseplate fr West Germany!  A modern kit this was not.

Anyhow, I tool it all apart, sanded the fitting edges, trimmed the injection marks, scrapped off the excessive old glue and then repainted it.  Once dry it came back together without too much fuss, but in retrospect I should have taken more photos of the before state, it would have made it easier.

Here's my end result:

   I chose to discard the extra base section it came with (seen in the top photo) because as my wife pointed out, it looked like it was perched atop a volcano!

Which kit is it?

This Christmas my friend Mark gave me some kits for my layout, one of them is the Faller 'Wood Plant', here's how it turned out:

So I'm pretty happy with it, and then I noticed something funny on eBay:

Brewery from Model Power

Factory from Atlas

So that got me thinking what other structures do I have that are sold or have been sold under many names from many manufacturers...   So far I've found this:

So this is my Faller 'rock crushing plant':

and it looks a lot like Model Power's Blue Coal Depot:

I don't like this much.  I like Faller, I want to believe in them, as a brand, but if they are just repackaging someone else's old goods, well, what does that say of them?   I guess the counter arguement is that they are keeping product on the market that otherwise would be unavailable.   In the case of the 'lumber plant' above, Faller does incude a crane (pictured) and some wood loads, and a few other bits and bobs that the other versions do not contain, so I guess there's some added value.  Still, before I pay full retail for a kit again I will browse eBay first for an older package.

Goschenen Station Model

In the 'north' part of my layout I plan to have an alpine passenger station, and I have just constructed it.  It is the Faller kit Schwarzach Station with some new signage by me. The kit was a Christmas gift from my friend Mark.  Thanks!   Goschenen is a town at one end of the original 1881 Gotthard tunnel.

As usual, there's no final detailing as I do not yet have a proper place for it, so it sits on painted plywood for now.

New toys and materials

A package of goodies arrived today with my latest order from eurorailhobbies.com. I got a small engine shed kit which I promptly built, 2 Faller viaduct kits which I plan to kitbash into a double wide viaduct to cross my little river, some wall texture material and a cd from Noch with paper card kit low relief models for alpine landscapes. I'll post images of each of these as I use them.

The Shed:
I ordered this little shed thinking I'd put it at the end of a spur line and it could house my V60 switcher.

Well, it is a very simple kit, I spent maybe 90 minutes on it and just did some basic painting/weathering so it wouldn't look fresh out of the box.  I don't have a ready spot on my layout for it, no scenery is even started yet, so there's not much point in detailing it yet.

Anyhow, I put it down on some green plywood and snapped a few images on my phone to share with the world.  And guess what?  The V60 does not fit!  My smallest engine is too long.   It almost gets in there, but the doors certainly can't close.   So, on a scale of 1 to 10 I'd have to say I'm mildly disappointed.

See for yourself:

It won't fit!