Justice City Layout Build

Started by JusticeCity, October 16, 2018, 12:54:22 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

tooStupid

Lighthouse Landing

Slowly but surely I have been gathering my thoughts about this part of the diorama. The road comes into the scene from the upper left corner and sweeps around to the right raising 6 feet in elevation to the harbour beacon.



The lighthouse will be replaced with a harbour beacon standing on a concrete pad jutting out on a retaining wall.



The track side is ground is held back with a retaining wall to give clearance to the track and will be the base of structures that have loading docks.



The garage will sit in the corner, but notice it is not siding flat on the foam.



If you have ever worked with Pink insulation foam and used a tool to shape the foam, you will notice that there is always a dusty hairy surface on it. No matter what you do it is never smoot after the initial surface of the foam has been taken off. Well I have found a solution.



This is NOT paint as you would know it, it is the base in which the paint counter will had "stuff" to it to make it a useful colour. In essence it is the medium that is clear and provides all the protection of paint. I just coated the pink foam with this and a day later I could sand and smooth the rough areas of the foam. It might be hard to see in the picture below, but the surface of the foam is smooth and hard enough to sand flat.



To illustrate the difference, here is the garage on the rough un-sanded foam. Notice the gaps between the floor and the foam



After I coated and sanded the area smooth it looks much better.



There is still a year to go before this area done, so things are going to change!

Mark Dalrymple

Looking good, Marty.

Sounds good to have gaps between the structures to create glimpses to cameo scenes behind.  I would reiterate that the track snaking back into the scene is a wonderful leading line to lead your eye into the scene and I would try to keep that view unobstructed.  Probably as simple as making sure the last building in the row is not very deep.

I suffer from the same problems as you when buying from the US.  Things usually double or worse in price when importing to New Zealand.  Regards ideas for structures, maybe check out the Main Street Heritage range.  These might be what you are looking for.  Not sure if you can find them in Canada, but Jays Trains has some in stock to have a look at.  I've never built any so can't comment on the quality, but I think several of them look terrific!  I'm sure I'll end up with one or two in my closet soon.

http://www.jaystrains.com/HO-HOn3/hostr.htm

Cheers, Mark.

Lynnb

Ontario, Canada
The Great White North

My Layout Venture-> https://modelersforum.com/index.php?topic=6003.0

GPdemayo

I'm enjoying your journey Marty.....great work.  8)
Gregory P. DeMayo
General Construction Superintendent Emeritus
St. Louis & Denver Railroad
Longwood, FL

tooStupid

Hi,

The move of the diorama from the utility room to the main area of the basement has been a challenge in getting the track work running right. There are main areas that locos just did not run correctly. Re-leveling and changing the grades of tracks has been a significant pain!

When we did the move we had split the diorama into two sections. This has caused tracks to be mis-aligned and the dreaded derailments. It has been a job I have been avoiding for the past year. Soldiering on is more of a mind game.

I now remember why I stopped model railroading 40 years ago.

On the good side I have finally got all the electrics all worked out and re-configured to simplify adding new structures. The computer can reliability connect to the DCC buss and manage blocks and turnouts. However, the software to drive a diorama sucks!!!! What software that is available is ok to run a railroad, but not a diorama in an autonomous operation with the effects of lighting, etc. Again, I am trying to get into it with out spending $1000 for TrainController Gold.

That my update for now.

ACL1504

Marty,

I've very much enjoyed following along on your adventure. I like what you did with the rock and water. Great job on both. I also like the road in front of the small structures.

Tom  ;D
"If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed."
Thomas Jefferson

Tom Langford
telsr1@aol.com

tooStupid

The progress has been very slow with the Murdoch Precision structure. I did spend some time trying to add some height variations and decided to add a chimney stack. That took a bit of time to get that right.



When you look at the structure from the other side you can see how it fills a space and breaks up the skyline.



Now this is where the diorama begins a series of significant changes. But that is for another post.

tooStupid

Now to get to see the chimney and Murdoch building I had to delete a road in the middle of the diorama and squish the brewery and Murdoch it the left. This solved a few problems I had with line of sight in the middle of the diorama. More on how this will look in future posts.



As you can see the building are closer together, but it left an issue to deal with, how do cars climb the road to go over the rail?

So this leads to a series of flattening of the roads and getting them more into HO scale and more prototypical.

First, I had to raise/flatten the track going past the harbour. This improved loco movement.



Next, I lifted the road between the two rail and 5 HO scale feet. This improved access to the sheds.



Then the road behind the Weltyk Marine was flatten to improve crossing over to the lighthouse landing area.



This meant the crossing to the lighthouse area had to be adjusted to provide a smooth transistion.



When the time comings I will "pave" the roads in the diorama.

Next post I will get into the lighthouse landing to see what is happening there.

tooStupid

Getting the trains to run reliability has been the bane of this diorama, especially the result of the disassemble and move to a different location. Getting tracks to align, ensuring switches are not picking the wheels of rolling stock and getting the smuts of the track. This took a few weeks to get it running 90% perfect, this is the price of hand laid track.

I re-started working on the lighthouse area. (I think I am going to call it "Lighthouse Landing" until I get a better name.) Here is the straightening of the beautiful not functional S curve to the shipyard. It is not a S curve now, but a two larger radius curves with a longer section of straight track between them. The GP38 works great through here.



The retaining wall did get a first layer of colour and details. More will be done when the structures get built.



I did plant the garage in its final resting place.



It now ties the Weltyk Marine into the lighthouse landing.



Wiring, that was the next challenge.

Mark Dalrymple

Looking great, Marty!

Those close up photos show off all your detailing work nicely.

Cheers, Mark.

ACL1504

Nice done on the scenery Marty.

Tom  ;D
"If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed."
Thomas Jefferson

Tom Langford
telsr1@aol.com

GPdemayo

Great scene Marty and beautiful work on the grass and weeds..... 8)
Gregory P. DeMayo
General Construction Superintendent Emeritus
St. Louis & Denver Railroad
Longwood, FL

PRR Modeler

Curt Webb
The Late Great Pennsylvania Railroad
Freelanced PRR Bellevue Subdivision

tooStupid

Quote from: mark dalrymple on February 01, 2021, 01:49:19 PM
Looking great, Marty!

Those close up photos show off all your detailing work nicely.

Cheers, Mark.

Mark,

Most of the time I like to see the details, erg the macro closes ups, but that has the repercussion of me having to fix all those hairs and clumps of smutt off. It is a good way to motivate excellence in modelling.


tooStupid

Quote from: ACL1504 on February 01, 2021, 01:58:51 PM
Nice done on the scenery Marty.

Tom  ;D

Tom, I find scenery a very big challenge to get right and looking good. I am glad you noticed it.

Powered by EzPortal