If you model Miami or LA the odds are in your favor that there will be at least a few elegant Streamline Moderne industries along the right-of-way. The question becomes one of how to model the signature curved faces. I’ll start by saying the job would be easier if you have three hands. I spent an hour looking around for a plastic pipe or bottle of the required radius. No luck. On to plan B.
Begin by cutting two cookie cutter shapes of the correct radius out of .060″ styrene. These will be the formers that you wrap the wall around and then glue in place to hold the shape. Although I generally use .060″ styrene for walls, in this case I dropped down to .040″ for the curved wall because it’s easier to bend. Cut a section of .040″ styrene of the correct height and length for the curved wall.
Gently bend and roll it in your hands to start forming the curve. Although you won’t get it to stay exactly in shape, you’ll impart enough memory to get it close. Next, liberally apply MEK adhesive to the lip of one of the formers and bend the wall to its shape. Here’s where the third hand would be nice. Hold the assembly shape in one hand (maintaining everything in shape and tightly fitting) and then apply a few drops of thin CA at the connection point. Then immediately pop the joint with CA Instaset. Repeat with the second curved former.
As a final note you’ll notice a door on the left. I cut that in wall section before starting the bending process.
Work progresses on the “pink warehouse” at 1401 22nd. The walls are .060″ styrene. The roof is half inch gatorboard which I like because of its light weight and resistance to warping. Coloring will be via photo laminates.
The hardest part of the project was the curved and inset front entrance.
An impromptu session on the layout consisting of three car movements, and only using four turnouts, took about sixty minutes.3 + 4 + 60.
Gaining an understanding of how much model railroad we need in order to be “entertained” is one of the fundamental pillars of a”successful” design. Easier said than done if you’re just starting out.
A major challenge of being new to the hobby is that the modeler doesn’t have the experience to know how much layout is required to spin off the degree of play value they require to feel satisfied. They (including me at that stage) don’t know what they don’t know. In order to compensate, and build in a margin of error, they overload their “wish list” of desired features. It may only take “X” amount of layout to keep them entertained but they don’t know that yet. So, in an effort to avoid putting heart and soul into an effort that falls short in the fun department, they set a scope of “6X”.
Typically it’s not “just a bit” of overcompensation, it’s taken to an extreme. The end result is a myriad of design problems, chief among them being 6X won’t fit in their space. A close second being they have yet to gain the construction fundamentals to build 6X. What often happens is the layout never gets off the ground.
Everybody is different, each of us requiring different levels of element density to be satisfied. It may be a bitter pill to swallow but you can’t gain that self-awareness by surfing the net or conducting endless hypothetical thought experiments on your computer. Spending two years sketching and hand wringing will tell you absolutely squat. Investing three months building a small test layout will tell you tons. You’ll gain the self-awareness and the intuition needed to understand how long construction tasks take and how much operational fun you get from different arrangements.
I encourage people to think in terms of how many minutes of op. session enjoyment a plan will spin out. Keep in mind that you’ll usually be running by yourself and most people have “had enough” after an hour or so of running and playing around.
As a point of reference, let’s look at today’s blog title: 3 plus 4 equals 60. That’s three car movements, utilizing four turnouts, spins out a leisurely 60 minute session. Yesterday I put a cup of coffee on, and ran a session consisting of picking up one empty and dropping two loads at the end of the line. I didn’t use car cards. I wasn’t running with wrinkled brow or any degree of seriousness. I took frequent pauses to represent the conductor walking back and forth. I set the fusee’s for the road crossings. I ran at a slowish pace but it certainly wasn’t a 1 mph crawl either. I was surprised when I looked at the clock to see that an hour had passed. In other words it didn’t take that much to keep me entertained.
If you’re new to the hobby, and interested in branch or industrial switching operations, a good starting point is a plan with four to six turnouts. Get off the computer, slap a shelf on the wall and start experimenting.
As a sidebar, here are two examples that might prove helpful in establishing the pace of operations.
Example of plain vanilla prototype car pick up HERE.
Examples of good model railroad switching pace can always be found on Rick’s SoCal Models YouTube page. This is about the speed I run at.
With East Rail 2 now finished, it’s time to pivot back to work on the Downtown Spur. The DTS layout is approaching the finish line with only three or four fairly straightforward structures to build. Currently on the workbench is the pink Streamline Moderne structure at 1401 22nd Street. The inset, curved face makes things a little tricky.
If anybody is interested in operating the layout, drop me a line and I’ll see what we can do. I live in the northern Washington, DC suburbs. The best time on my end would be Friday or Sunday afternoon.
