The following is an excerpt from my upcoming book, “Student to Master, The Lifelong Pursuit of Model Railroading Excellence”. Historically, model railroaders have had a love affair with deeply saturated, vivid, primary colors. However, that doesn’t square with the world we model, a world typified by earth tones, pastels, and desaturation. It’s also a world […]
Category: Construction
The Warehouse 5/24
Work continues on the warehouse for the LAJ extension. This weekend I added bottom sills for the windows (made from .040″ x .1 inch strip styrene). The windows and doors will be photos glued into place with 3M Super77 as the adhesive. My sense is I “might” get better adhesion if I’m applying the windows […]
Wrapping Up The Alco Line
A trio of Alco’s rounds the big bend and heads westward into the yard at Waseca on the Alco Line project I’m custom building in my shop. For the last eighteen months I’ve been building a custom layout based on CNW’s Alco Line in Southern Minnesota. Because of the project size, we’ve handled it in […]
Vacant Lot for the LAJ
Vacant lots are a signature element of many industrial scenes. Including them on your layout can heighten realism. They have a certain, “looks like they should be there” aspect to them. The aren’t as easy to model as you might think. About five years ago I started putting a lot more thought into how I […]
LAJ Update. March 24
Since the last update, I’ve been working on the final details on the far left side of the extension model. Above, we have a scratch-built tree placed to slightly screen the view where the primary roadway meets the “T” intersection. I also scratch-built a crossbuck using Tichy parts, stripwood for the post, and NBW castings. […]