Weekly updates on my hand laid code 40 turnouts are probably as compelling as that of a farmer’s update on the growth of his corn field! The three turnouts I was working on off layout were finished and placed on the layout replacing the temporary Peco track that was serving as a placeholder. Now that…

This week I detailed the shoreline. First up was adding the high tide “stain” which was done by carefully masking things off with damp paper towels and lightly airbrushing on Model Master “sand”. Next up I used the same dampened paper towel technique to add static grass at the top of the embankment and between…

Using this interesting prototype structure on 54th Street in Brooklyn for inspiration, a lot of photoshop work, and a logo I found on the web I was able to cobble together a freelance “Rukert Terminals” structure for the layout.

The National Cold Storage structure is now complete and on the layout. That wraps up the big projects that I’ll focus on this year as I move towards detailing and tuning what I’ve done thus far.

Next up are the distinctive cigar band banners. The artwork was created in MS Word using a dark gray background (as opposed to black). I set my HP printer on “Other Glossy Inkjet Papers” and ran MicroMark white decal paper through. I did this mid-week and allowed it to dry until the weekend. A few…