Monthly archives: July, 2016

Track Thoughts

  After hand laying about three-quarters of the LAJ track, I have to say I don’t really see a noticeable improvement over well colored Micro Engineering flex.  Comparing the time and effort versus visual payoff, the Micro Engineering wins hands down.  While laying the last section of track I  stumbled on a technique that creates…


4835 E. 48th Street, July 16

Shown above is the finished structure. I’ve found that the appearance of photo wallpaper models is improved if I inset the roll up doors so that was done by cutting holes in the .060″ laminate before mounting it to the pvc core.  The challenge of this model was the photos.  I had no choice but…


4535 E. 48th St. July 15

Over the last few years, I’ve become more and more aware of the need for a very solid core to prevent structure warping.  For styrene based projects I’m particularly fond of PVC “lumber” easily found at big box lumber stores.  It’s light, cheap, easy to cut, and works with plastic solvents.   For the current…


New Layout Design Blog Entry

Posted a new blog entry on my business site comparing three common bench work footprints.   Here’s the link: http://shelflayouts.com/2016/07/model-railroad-bench-work-footprints/  


Printing Better Images

From the emails I receive, I can tell folks struggle with how to optimize the printed image output quality for their photo wallpaper. It can be confusing so let’s go through a short primer. There are essentially two steps. First, you need to save the photo in a way that maximizes how many ink dots…