Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on getting the sidewalks done as well as adding street lamps and fire hydrants along 1st Avenue. I had to go back and repaint the hydrants from the original red I started with to a more prototypical dark green with white top.
The yard and apron area are loosely (very loosely!) based on Bay Ridge and Bush Terminal facilities. Since the last report: added utility poles, coal bin, yard office, tree line to the left, and a water column. Except for a shed and some loose details this is getting pretty close to being a finished scene.
Same scene taken from a little further back.
One of the more challenging aspects of this project is realistically modeling the street track. Brooklyn still has a lot of the signature Belgian block in place so I drove up there, took some photos from as high as I could get, and cobbled together some images in photoshop to use as photo laminates.
Doing the straight sections was fairly straightforward. The turnouts and curves? Not so much. At any rate I finished it all up this week which puts the last really challenging part of the layout in the rear view mirror.
My general plan is to have the model railroad “mostly done” by the end of the year.
With the design book finished and submitted to Kalmbach, it’s back to your regularly scheduled programming. Next on the docket is finishing the Belgian block wallpaper overlays on the street trackage. This gets particularly dicey at the double turnouts.
The first step is to photocopy one of the turnouts and cut the pieces out to use as templates. I’ll then place the templates on a sheet of the photo wallpaper to cut the pieces. Finally, I’ll adhere the pre-cut wallpaper pieces in place. It would be nice to have the block courses actually curve with the turnouts but that would be a monumental task so I’ll utilize the good enough philosophy to ensure progress moves along.
More re-assurance that I’m not floating in the Miami River as some have assumed given my lack of postings recently. For the past several months I’ve been working on wrapping up my new book for Kalmbach, How To Design A Model Railroad. I’ve finished and submitted it. After taking a bit of breather, your regularly scheduled programming will resume.