Model Railroad Blog

New Book Coming Soon

There has never been a time in our hobby’s history when we’ve had so much information.  In addition, the information is delivered through much more useful vehicles.  We have blogs, forums, digital photography, and, of vital importance, video. There are literally tens of thousands of pages of information just a button click away.  Sounds great, right?  Actually, not entirely.  There’s a crucial piece missing, and that’s the subject of this book.

This is a book about identifying and prioritizing the core skills that produce maximum visual impact.  It’s about learning the key skills and subjects that matter the most and focusing your efforts there. It’s also a book about what “not” to do. I call them land mines.

For all of the “how to” information we have, the aspects that contribute the most, color strategy and composition, are rarely, if ever covered. The book addresses that major shortfall as well.

The first draft is done, and I’ve completed one editing pass. I hope to have it done within the next six weeks.

Photo of the Day

Facing down the LAJ extension with the new warehouse in position. I have a few more details to add to the module, but it’s nearing completion. As I pulled this composition together, the main thing I thought about was, what is the typical look of this area? It was a fun exercise and entailed looking at and studying a lot of prototype photos.

The shot was taken with an iPhone 6 which I’ve found in many cases gives the most realistic viewing perspective. Lighting was an overhead LED strip light and a single photo flood to get the shadows in there. Depth of field was via Helicon Focus.

New LAJ Warehouse

The large warehouse, which serves as the centerpiece for the new LAJ extension module, is now complete.

With the Alco Line project now installed, my focus is on my next book, “Student to Master, the Lifelong Journey to Model Railroading Excellence”. More details on that soon.

The warehouse illustrates some points of the book, the focus of which is decision-making and being really clear on what contributes to visual impact and focusing your efforts there.

The warehouse really isn’t that difficult to build, well within the reach of a modeler with a year or two of experience….and an open mind to try new things. A large part of success in our hobby comes down to decision-making. Sure, skill matters, but less so. Decisions come in the form of what warehouse to model, an eye-catcher or the norm? The decision to kitbash or scratch-build and move on from out-of-the-box kits. The decision to add the ubiquitous lot in front instead of doing the typical model railroad scene stuffing thing.

One of the topics I mention in a sidebar in the book is that of color depth and opacity. The natural inclination would be to paint the warehouse a pure, opaque, fairly brilliant, and saturated white. Realism is enhanced if you go another route. For this model, I laid down a base layer of gray first, and then lightly fogged on a layer of Tamiya Matt White.

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 to an unpainted surface so I masked these areas off.

I’ve also spent a fair amount of time carefully filling in gaps with Tamiya spot putty. This wouldn’t really show up in a photo but the cracks are very obvious in person.

It’s hard to tell if you’ve successfully filled in all the gaps when you’re looking at a white styrene surface. By painting everything with light gray primer it’s a lot easier to see if you missed a spot or two. After the primer application I can check everything and go back and fill in any areas I missed.

The Warehouse

On the workbench now is the primary structure for the LAJ extension. To be specific, the warehouse. My primary goal was to pick a subject that was representative of the Central Manufacturing District. I wanted it to be what you’d expect to see. I wanted typical and ordinary. After some online surfing and research, I settled on the subject above, located at the intersection of 50th Street and Gifford Avenue. Adding to the experience is that fact that I’ve been there. I’ve stood on the exact corner this Google image was taken.

If you want to move beyond being a casual recreationalist, you need to develop a comfort level with scratch-building. Doing so drops your hobby costs immensely and it’s the only way to create the prototype subjects you need. If you model the modern era, the structures are fairly simple.

I like the understated elegance of this building. Yes, it’s “just” a warehouse but back in the day they sprinkled on a bit of art deco ornamentation. It’s not just a box. Getting actual dimensions is easy. We know the personnel door is 82 inches tall. We know the freight door is 4 feet off the ground. We can prorate everything else from there and be good enough for government work.

Here’s a real time photo taken earlier today in the midst of contruction. A: The primary tools you’ll need are a heavy blade. I use box cutters. You’ll need an angle and Tamiya white putty to fill gaps. B: I use MEK for adhesive, pour it in an old lid and apply it with a ratty brush. C. The core of the structure is 1×3 PVC dimensional lumber picked up in the lumber aisle of The Home Depot. The structure facing is .060″ styrene glued to the PVC core with MEK. D: I buy the styrene facing in 24″ x 48″ sheets on Amazon. Most of the features were cut with the heavy blade from styrene sheet. The smaller pieces around the windows are Evergreen styrene strips.

Here it is sitting loosely in place on the layout. Note how the art deco elements on the far left add so much to the look.

Another view from the other end.