Farm Pond -- Design and Zapper

Made a trip to Boone, NC, with two granddaughters and parents.  While older granddaughter, dad, great uncle, and granddad took a short hike on the Appalachian Trail in VA, younger granddaughter joined mother and great aunt to local Ashe County attractions -- cheese factory, 50-cent Cheerwine machines, museum, etc.  Check out previous post about Ashe County Museum -- VERY nice HO train layout.  The AT group returned worn out, chilly, and pleased; the Ashe County group came home wanting a "water feature" on the Blacktop Crossing!

Plans so far are to create a farmpond between the cotton field and the cotton gin.  Not a lot of room, but enough, we hope.  Proposed scene would be something like this:

Oops, photo should be rotated 90 degrees clockwise!

Got into a sequential vortex of sorts:  farmpond to be surrounded by horse pasture, horse pasture to contain shed (already constructed), horse shed needs a few bales of hay, DIY hay bale calls for short static grass glued to piece of balsa wood, there will be plenty of static grass left over, maybe can use it somewhere else on layout, but need static grass applicator, so here comes DIY applicator.

Lots of folks on Internet seem to like using bug zapper for DIY applicator, and brag about less than $10 expense.  Ordered zapper and picked up strainer at Ollie's -- cost must be less than $5!!  Pieces:


 Alligator patch cord, solder, hot glue already available.  Haven't tried out applicator to date!!

Outlined pond on plywood by poking scratch awl through paper drawing.  Not sure yet how to make clean cut to allow lowering pond AND sealing sufficiently to use epoxy "water".

Most supplies are on hand:  ground goop ingredients, toothpicks for fence post, 1 mil copper wire to try to use for fence line, a few Woodlands Scenic trees (obtained at discount at Hobby Lobby), a couple of young boys fishing, epoxy water, etc.  Just waiting on next visit from granddaughters, although hope to have pond "lowered" by then.

Ashe County Museum

Visited the Museum of Ashe County (NC) last week to see their HO layout -- turns out the railroad is only a loop with one passing siding and one dead-end siding.  The scenery is OUTstanding!

http://ashehistory.org/index.php/gallery-item/virginia-creeper-train/

The layout is about 30 feet long with about four different eras and four local communities modeled.  The work was done by several local townspeople and the number of scenes is amazing.  Besides that, each modeler has positioned him- or herself in a scene somewhere!  A builder can be seen with a clipboard near a house under construction.  A law enforcement officer's patrol car (1949 Ford) has pulled a yellow convertible with a blonde driving (the other modelers asked if he gets her phone number and he says, "No, and I only gave her a warning").  An artist that has done a mural downtown of the Virginia Creeper can be seen with his easel set up to paint that very same mural picture.

The officer has pulled her over!

Downtown in the 1950's.

The Virginia Creeper arrives but rumor is they coasted through town to keep from getting soot on the fresh laundry -- note that "Mom" is waving as the train approaches around the bend.

I suppose this might be the junkyard that the "Greaser" on the Blacktop Crossing uses for his parts cars!

Obviously, the time of the year is Fall in the NC mountains.  No puffball trees here; every one of them has a trunk!

This layout is worth viewing.  The rest of the museum is unique, as well.  The emphasis is what happened in Ashe county that is of note -- not just a collection of old "artifacts".

More Clean-up

With high hopes that the plastic cover will help keep the dust down on the layout, an attempt was made to clean up the dust layer that has accumulated.  Basically, that meant removing anything that wasn't glued down and vacuuming as much as possible:

Look closely between the spur just to the right of the cotton field and the inner oval track -- the dusted/vacuumed portion is pretty evident (it's darker brown)!

So, vacuumed as much of the remaining plywood and tracks as felt safe to do.  Then replaced the removed pieces after dusting them with a 1/2" soft bristle artist's brush.

Replaced the plastic cover with continued hope. . . .

Loose Ends

Company is coming over for dinner before long and The Wife has offered a tour of the barn as part of the entertainment!!  That presents a couple of issues since the barn houses the train layout.  For one, it probably should be running so track and locomotive wheels need cleaning.  For another, something a bit more prototypical than sliding the throws on the turnouts would be good -- I just happen to have six ground throws!  And, for another thing, the layout probably ought to be vacuumed a bit and dusted.

Fortunately, the granddaughters had given me a track cleaning pad and holder as a gift.  I pulled out some 70% isopropyl alcohol, wet the pad, and wiped it around the tracks.  Yep, there was a good bit of crud on the tracks:

That got the switcher running around most of the layout without a hitch.  Then I wet an edge of a paper towel and ran the front wheels and then the rear wheels of both the switcher and the F-cab locomotive over the towel a few times.  A little use of the "eraser" and some fine sandpaper and the switcher was running around all of the track at a setting of 1 or 2.  The F-unit needed about a 4 setting to not hesitate, but we can work with that.

The ground throws were not as easy to install as anticipated.  Seems the model, 202S by Caboose Industries, doesn't attach directly to Atlas turnouts, but I either didn't get or have lost any adaptors.  Rather than spend the time to go across town to the hobby shop, I just took out the Dremel tool with a cut-off wheel and removed some of the throw bar (or whatever it is called).  To connect to the ground throw, I drilled a small hole (my drill bit set number about #60 which didn't match up with Caboose Industries' 0.055 inches recommendation, but it worked).  Two small brads (used elsewhere to attach track to the layout) and we were in business:

Well, not quite in business, yet.  The downward-facing pin on the ground throw protruded into the cork bed material.  But, a small grinding burr on the Dremel and enough cork was removed to allow the throw to moved full length.  Well, yes, I did cut small pieces of cork bed to place under the throws -- turned upside down so the angle on the edge would fit the similar angle on the track bed.

I can count six turnouts with throws.  Wouldn't you know it, there's ONE more turnout left.

Oh well, looks like another trip to the hobby shop after all.

Now, with all that work completed and visions of dusting and vacuuming the layout before the dinner get-together, some way of protecting the layout from future "contamination" seemed like a good idea.  So, four piece of corner molding about 2 feet long were screwed in around layout and a roughly 5" X 5" block of wood with a 3/4" hole in the middle for a 2-foot dowel provided a center support.  A large sheet of plastic, and the protection is in place.  Looks like a clean piece of plastic would be a good idea!

Maybe I can use the two uprights on the rear of the layout for a 1/8" hardboard backdrop holder.

For the sake of catching up on other work on the layout, I did install wood "timber" grade crossings a week or so ago.  I just happen to have some "black" stain I used on a pair of Adirondack chairs left over, so the timbers got a grayish stain.  To get the timbers to fit, the outside pieces had to be ground at a bit of an angle (to allow for the molded in spikes on the ties).  Then I glued them with some Woodland Scenics Scenic Accent Glue.  It seems to be working OK, but I may need to go back and use glue that is a bit more permanent -- let's wait until we add ballast. . . .

Projects Installed, Temporarily

Managed to break away from Nurse duties long enough to take the three projects up to the layout to see how they might work.

My goodness it's hard to see the desk and chair in the woodyard shed.  I'm still trying to figure out whose idea this was.  You can see the desk just inside the window, and barely make out the "shadow" of the chair through the window "glass".

 If you look through the window on the fuel oil side, the bottom of the chair and part of the chair's legs can be seen.

A little imagination helps.  I guess I'll have to be pointing out these details since it will be doubtful that anyone would notice, otherwise!

The Nash Ambassador looks right at home lined up with other vehicles beside the Cotton Factory.  I doubt that you'd find a pink Cadillac among the cars parked at the mill, but I ran out of vehicles.  Guess that means a new shopping list for the next visit to New Brookland model railroad shop in Cayce.  That's all assuming that a parking lot will be installed for the workers at the mill.

And, the well-weathered Southern Railway boxcar looks pretty good behind the Switcher, which might need a little weathering, itself.  Parking lot and Switcher are for another day. . . or two.

Whose Idea Was This?!

Somebody thought it would be nice to add some detail to the interior of the Woodyard Shed by constructing  a desk and chair from a laser cut kit.  That seemed desirable having installed "glazing" on the shed for the woodyard so the interior was visible:

But "somebody" didn't realize how small some of the parts of the desk were going to be.  The initial steps were not too difficult give or take keeping up with the minute drawer handles after they were cut out of the board:

Used Super Glue for most of the construction and that seemed to work pretty well.  Notice the drawer faces were separate parts:

Did anyone mention that the drawer pulls were minute -- as in, extremely small?  Ended up with Elmer's white glue for drawer faces and pulls to give a little "wiggle room" in set time.

Anyway, finished product should look pretty good IF it will fit through the door of the woodyard shed.

Here a little burnt sierra oil paint has been used to give some "grain" to the wooden desk.

The Black Nash

As a kid, I remember riding in our 1950 Nash Ambassador from northwest LA (near Shreveport) to the coast of SC (near Georgetown).  It was a BIG black car with front seats that would fold down.  My mother would ride for miles on end in the middle of the front seat supported by a small part of the left half of the front seat while the three kids played on what ended up being literally a level mattress in the rest of the car.  Behind the driver's seat was a cooler with a little padding to match the back seat cushion.  Often the travel was at night to avoid traffic and the summer heat -- no AC for sure.

So, it was only appropriate for a 1956 scene to include a BIG black Nash Ambassador:

This kit has been in my possession for a while, like the Southern Railway boxcar, so while nursing for the wife continues, I pulled it out and put it together.

Tough to get a good paint job with a brush, but from a distance the finish looks OK.  Two comments worth mentioning:

First, just because the box plainly says, "Peel & Stick White Walls" doesn't mean that the modeler will use them.  Just after a somewhat sloppy job of flat white painting on the tires, the little sheet of peel and stick white walls in the kit was examined to see what it was.  Doh!

Second, the kit came with a small piece of Lexan  to be cut to fit and glued into the car interior for window glass.  That's easier said than done. . . .  So, just the windshield and rear window are Lexan.  The contours of the openings do not lend to flat sheets of plastic.  But, the instructions also mentioned using Micro Scale Krystal Klear.  None of that handy, but a bottle of Micro Master Clear Parts Cement & Window Maker was.  Instructions suggested collecting cement on the end of a paint brush and rolling around window opening, withdrawing slowly.  A paint brush handle was not going to fit in the vent window, so a round toothpick, pointed at only one end, was substituted -- used the blunt end.  It worked amazingly well!  The "windows" are not perfectly flat, but at least give the impression of glass.  Not very well evident in photos, but the windows without Lexan all have cement windows except for the front door windows which are "rolled down".

Now to decide where this Ambassador goes on the layout.