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.
Tom Flagg’s New York Harbor books are a virtual goldmine of ideas. It seems every time I go through them I notice something else. Helping the cause is the outstanding print quality Morning Sun Books brings to the effort. The images are so razor sharp they can be scanned and used for modeling.
A few weeks ago I was browsing through Volume 2 and noticed a great full page shot of Bay Ridge tower looking shotgun style down the yard towards the float bridges. I have a similar scene on the layout so a proto freelance version of the tower would be a nice feature. Here’s how I pulled it together.
Here’s the picture I started with from page 97 of the book. At a full page and with such high resolution there was a lot to work with. The first step was scanning the image.
After many hours of photo shop work I converted the book image to what you see above. The door is from my “wooden door library”. Note the Bush Terminal logo. above the door which was photo shopped in.
I printed out two copies of the images. One was left glossy, the other was dulled and the windows cut out. I then placed and adhered the dulled image on top of the glossy one so you could see the windows. The wallpaper was then glued to a styrene cube of the appropriate size.
The final step is adding 3D stand off details. At only an inch in length, the bay window was tricky and took a full afternoon to build. It’s one of those projects where you put on the coffee, turn off your phone, and concentrate. The windows are from Tichy, the rest is scribed styrene. Glazing was added and then the window blinds.
Final details included the door awning, electrical conduit, and window sills made from .020″ x .040″ styrene.
