Cityscape - scene 1 the low rent apartment district

A couple of years ago I picked up two of the Plasticville apartment buildings. You likely know them - two story buildings that look like they have 2-4 apartments. It's an old staple of the Plasticville line and represents apartment buildings from the 1950's to the early '60's that captures some of the modernist and art deco elements that give Plasticville kits their character.  I want to drop them into the layout, but where?

After fitting in the track plan and the train station, I feel pretty confined with locating the apartments. There is an unused section that fits between the river, the railroad tracks and the convenience store. It's a little cramped, but 'compression' is how we usually rationalize this for model railroading.

Who would want to live in an apartment right next to the railroad? You can find plenty of towns where the rails run next to residential properties. In addition,  I can say is that I've lived in two apartments in my life that were in close proximity to the rails - one was right next to a major yard. After a while, you do get used to it. To some degree I want to model these buildings as a reminder to my earlier adventures and experiences. 


I assembled the buildings and placed them on the layout, adjusting them to get an idea of exactly where I best want to site them before I starting painting and flocking the landscape. We've got the river flowing close by on the north boundary. I'm thinking of squeezing in an access road to the rail yard next to the river bank. More a dirt/gravel track than a formal road.

Looking to the left

 On the south we bump up against the back of the convenience store. This area needs more landscaping.

Looking to the right

 Here's the view from the convenience store looking north toward the apartments.

Looking north

 And here's the view from across the river looking south. The river bank when finished should be covered in brush and trees providing some additional screening.

Looking south

 From a modeling aspect, separating the railroad right of way from the apartments seemed like a good safety aspect, so I dropped some brick wall sections from Armorcast around the east and south sides of the property to secure the boundaries. It also makes a nice divide with the backside of the convenience store 6' tall

Boundary between the store and the apartment. It's going to be a tight fit for the garbage truck.

The parking lot feels cramped, but again for modeling purposes, I'll be compressing the scene a bit to better fit the buildings into the available space.

The parking lot will be a crowded space when the cars and dumpster are added.

Landscaping with Field Grass

On a recent trip to the hobby shop, I picked up a package of MRC "field grass". I've tried Woodland Scenic's 'static grass' before and was disappointed with my results.  But reading the instructions on the package I thought I'd give this a shot.

Opening the package, my first thought is that unlike static grass, Field Grass has the consistency of "broom straw". Each stalk is rigid and will bend and  ultimately snap if pushed too far.

The instructions were so simple even I could follow them. Use a nail to push a hole in the base. Fill the hole with glue, then shove a clump of field grass in the hole and let it dry. I started with a few small clumps to see if I like the effect.

Some grass along the river bank

Same grass, different angle

Using these as a highlight in a subtle drainage swale. 

The darker flocking and tall field grass imply more water at this spot.

Lead in to the stream

This marks the soft groud that leads to the drainage stream. I'm liking the effect and will likely like the banks of the stream with more grass. This is sort of a 'dead' area on the layout. It's bounded by tracks and the river and bisected by the stream. It'll end up looking sort of wild with a lot of cast off railroad junk scattered about.

What's the verdict?

I like it! It's easy to use and adds a lot of detail to the layout. 

American Flyer's new cylindrical hoppers...a rant

I spent the weekend at the Carillon Railfest in Dayton, Ohio this weekend. Overall, the Railfest was a fun time, but for one really annoying thing. What, you may ask was that?

I'd acquired several of American Flyer's 'new' cylindrical hopper cars. The ones with "Canada" and "Alberta" emblazoned on the sides. Beautiful cars. Nice details, well painted with good high rail couplers...

...and scale wheelsets.

I attempted to run these cars on the clubs modular layout today. Now the track work on a modular layout can be challenging, but the code .148 track is supposedly capable off handling scale wheels. But no. I could not get those cars to make one circuit of the layout without derailing. It's very frustrating to spend nearly $70 on a car and not be able to operate it.

 Why in the world would you ship scale wheels with Flyer style couplers? I mean, hi-railers occasionally run high-rail wheels with kadee 802's that look more scale, but who exactly is the market segment that runs scale wheels and flyer couplers?

Lionel acknowledges they've gone down the wrong path. At the recent York show (Spring 2014) they indicated that future cylindrical hoppers would ship with high-rail wheels and that high-rail wheels would be available foir purchase...at $25.00 a set. So those $70 cars are going to be more like $95 by the time I get functional wheels on them. I am not a happy camper regarding Lionel/American Flyer right now.

It's a shame, as the cars look great. But a car you can't run is not much of a car from a customer standpoint.

Progress on the Spruce Hill environments

I managed to get a little time in on landscaping and got the ground cover on some more of the Spruce Hill area. Here's a few pictures to show the progress.

Add a coat of gloss to the river to 'water' it up  as well as flocked some more ground.

This should off the river with the large rock. The banks need to have trees and shrubs added.

Looking to the left, you can see how the ranch houses back right up to the tracks.

Another shot. The fencing is temporary. Trying to get a feel if I like it there.

Another day, another update!

Well another day and some progress to report!

I ran a new feeder wire to the section of track that was causing the 'start/stop' telescoping issue and it's helped a lot. I *think* there is still a slight drop, but testing my U33C got pretty good results. Here's a video showing the locomotive traversing the track. (Check your speaker volume - that U33C is loud!)

So with that problem mitigated,  I'm feeling better about the track work. In hindsight, it's really been bothering me and was starting to effect my enjoyment of the layout. So yay - 15 minutes of work drilling a couple of holes, running two wires and a little bit of cutting and splicing.

On an unrelated note, I was in Lake Louise, Canada a few years ago. It is gorgeous country with beautiful mountain vistas, great hiking...and the mainline of the Canadian Pacific running right through town. We visited in late August / early September and each day I could sit at the train station and watch big long unit trains (like 100+ cars) of grain hoppers being hauled to the west coast and the empties being returned to the Midwest to be refilled. At the time I was envious that you could get these great looking cars in HO, but not in S gauge. But no more! American Flyer released a new cylindrical hopper car that captures the memories of my vacation perfectly.

It's a great car with loads of detail. Heck - it even runs on scale wheelsets out of the box which might be a first for American Flyer.

It's a real beauty, eh?

I don't plan on running 100 car trains, but I can definitely see adding a Canadian Pacific grain hopper train to my collection as a memory of a lovely time in Banff National Park.

What's new?

Just a quick note on what I've been up to with the layout.

Landscaping continues at a slow pace. Part of the layout looks better, but it's got a long way to go before I'll be finished.

Trackwork - I've found an odd power loss on one section of track. What makes it odd is that voltage does not drop in that section, but the locomotives clearly slow down, and even stop at lower speeds. It needs to be fixed or everything that rolls through there will "telescope" as the locomotive stops, then restarts. I'm thinking I might add a feeder wire (but it's not a case of voltage loss, so I don't know if that will help).

Roundhouse - Got the 21165 Casey Jones engine running. I had to resolder the wires to the tender and did some basic cleaning and greasing/oiling. But that's all it took to get the motor turning. It pulls a train fine running counter clockwise. And promptly derails on the curves running clockwise. But at least I've got it running.

One of the American Models SD-60 is making 'growling' noises (again) which have me suspecting yet another cracked U joint or plastic drive gear (again). I love these locomotives, but man are they temperamental!


Keep 'em running!

Done with the ice breakers!

I've knocked out the first two of the ice breaker cars. These were 'quick and dirty' hi-rail cars designed as proof of concept test - both of the idea and my modelling abilities. I'm happy with the results. In the future, I'm going to try some more detailed versions and possibly a scale car for display.

The first two ice breaker cars on the layout of the Miami Valley S Gaugers

NYC icebreaker on the job being pushed by an American Flyer 0-8-0 #343

Another shot of the icebreaker on the MVSG layout