Model Railroad Blog

SALCO

Next up on the East Rail 2 construction docket is SALCO which specializes in food grade salt and salt for water treatment. It’s an understated structure with a funky inset notch for the track. Salt, not being the most delicate of commodities, is often transported in the rattiest, patched out boxcars.

SALCO is the structure on the left with the odd notch in it. Notice the abandoned track in front.

“Searching For My Lost Shaker of Salt”? Somebody has a sense of humor. Sign over one of the loading doors.

A good overall look from Google Streetview

My best chance of success as far as keeping all of the windows and doors in alignment is going to be to cut everything with the craft cutter. I’m working on the CAD drawing now.

East Rail 2 – 12/2/23

Yard job Y320 out of Hialeah goes knee deep in the weeds as it works the logistics warehouse on my new East Rail 2 layout. As a general rule I don’t use sky images with clouds but in this case it was the better fit.

Here’s a shot from the same angle taken on the old layout probably around 2007 or so. It’s been fun to go back and re-create the old scenes.

A View Down the Canal

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It’s been a long time coming, but here’s a view down the canal on my new East Rail replica layout. I’ve tried hard to keep the flavor of the old one while, at the same time, making some subtle improvements.

Here’s the same shot on the old layout taken in 2009. Steel structures are relatively rare in Miami due to their vulnerability to hurricanes. Replacing the warehouses with block and stucco versions was the biggest change. The vegetation coloring on the old layout was a little off so I corrected that per my new scenery book. Other than that, the two are very close right down to the crumpled corrugated box on the left under the bush.

East Rail 2. Weeks Gas Scene

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Weeks Gas stands at the entry point into the East Rail industrial park so it’s a key visual element. Shown above is the finished scene on the layout. You’re standing at the edge of 37th Avenue facing NW. The structure itself is pretty basic so I modeled it out of styrene using conventional means. The vent and sign are photos though.

To help you get oriented, the image above shows where the photo was taken.

My Scenery Book Is Out!

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Scenery For Modern Switching Layouts

Finally…..my scenery book is finished and live on Amazon! I would describe it as a niche book targeted to two readerships, myself and my blog readers. Many thanks to Tom Klimoski for his editing efforts.

No matter how much experience we have, we all have the capacity to improve, myself included. A big part of my motivation for writing this book was to document my own personal R&D effort to improve my scenery efforts. So, to an extent it’s a notebook to myself.

I’m not sure I like the phase “serious modeler”. Model railroading is recreation after all. Let’s go with the phrase, “modelers that like to dig deeper into their efforts”. This book isn’t directed so much towards the general public as it is to my friends and readers who I correspond with week in and week out. As I worked on it, I imagined sitting down over a coffee or beer and outlining ideas, thoughts, and concepts that might help them in their modeling journey.