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The Mainline => Kit Building => Topic started by: Andy Reynolds on November 29, 2014, 04:34:46 PM

Title: The Building of River Plate Station - Fine Scale Miniature's Brownsville Depot
Post by: Andy Reynolds on November 29, 2014, 04:34:46 PM
I'm new to this site, and I'd like to share my You Tube video on how I built George Sellios' Brownsview Depot-Jewel Series 15 . At the beginning and then the end you will see my completed craftsman kit along with 3 more completed FSM kits - Roadside Delight kit 270, Skinner's Row JS-6 , Jamestown Waterstop JS-16, which were taken at the NMRA convention in Cleveland,OH in July 2014.  My video is a collection of 120 narrated photos taken with my Nikon SLR camera. While the video is 41 minutes long, I have snap shot almost each and every task, with detailed comments on how I aged, weathered and built the River Plate Station.
Go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIFYuE5-brQ
Enjoy! I'll have more videos soon.
Title: Re: The Building of River Plate Station - Fine Scale Miniature's Brownsville Depot
Post by: Andy Reynolds on December 02, 2014, 12:09:51 PM
Thanks for all the reviews so far. Does anyone have any suggestions?
Title: Re: The Building of River Plate Station - Fine Scale Miniature's Brownsville Depot
Post by: jbelwood on December 02, 2014, 01:03:11 PM
Wow Andy, that module looks super. Having built 12 FSM kits (all on my layout) I can related to
all of the work you put into this. You will have it at the Amherst show in January, won't you.
Title: Re: The Building of River Plate Station - Fine Scale Miniature's Brownsville Depot
Post by: Andy Reynolds on December 02, 2014, 02:22:45 PM
Hi John, yes I will have it at the Amherst Show on January 24-25. I will also bring it this weekend (Dec 6-7) to New England Train Expo (http://www.hubdiv.org/fallshow/index.htm) at the Best Western Royal Plaza Trade Center,Marlboro,MA. I also was able to help George Sellios squeeze in a late entrance table for his new kit "The Hazen Boyd Company" As you know, they are limited edition kits.  So anyone who hasn't got one of the FSM kits, they will be able to see George's new kit, built by him,  at the Marlboro Show.
As you mentioned, and appreciated the time involved in his kits, it took me all total 400 hrs to build the 4 kits, make the module and work on my  road, lighting and scenery. What one cannot see at the end of the You Tube is the crowning of my roads that were built with "All Weather Asphalt Roof Cement" by Black Jack (sold at True Value) and fine black gravel. I even made all the curbing with sculpture clay from AC Moore.
I plan on making a video on this road technique in the future, around some of Ed Fulasz' hydrocal buildings on what will be called "The Fall River Industry" module.
Title: Re: The Building of River Plate Station - Fine Scale Miniature's Brownsville Depot
Post by: Andy Reynolds on December 02, 2014, 04:40:09 PM
John, Obviously I had help with the road work, from CCM (http://www.ccmodels.com/closed-caterpillar.shtml). I had fun not only with my technique, but playing with my construction equipment.
Title: Re: The Building of River Plate Station - Fine Scale Miniature's Brownsville Depot
Post by: Andy Reynolds on December 02, 2014, 04:45:25 PM
Can someone help me? My pictures from my Nikon are 4-5MBs. I got a too large to upload, so I added them as pdf files, and this seems to work. Not sure how you all have the pics show without clicking on the files, as I looked at my first rely and I had to click on the file to see.
Title: Re: The Building of River Plate Station - Fine Scale Miniature's Brownsville Depot
Post by: Andy Reynolds on December 02, 2014, 04:46:25 PM
and the last one...
Title: Re: The Building of River Plate Station - Fine Scale Miniature's Brownsville Depot
Post by: jbelwood on December 02, 2014, 05:02:41 PM



Hey Andy...Your CCM CAT dozer got me to thinking. My new strip mining operation could use one of these.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGbo1R8a27g
Title: Re: The Building of River Plate Station - Fine Scale Miniature's Brownsville Depot
Post by: Andy Reynolds on December 02, 2014, 05:22:47 PM
John, yes that little clip on the dozer in cool. They are pricey $1500 plus, I think. At least that is what i think I paid for a similar one 10 years ago.
Title: Re: The Building of River Plate Station - Fine Scale Miniature's Brownsville Depot
Post by: bparrish on December 02, 2014, 06:07:30 PM
Andy,...


Regarding your photo size..........

Do you have any sort of photo editor where you can shrink them down to five inches in the longest dimension and have the total file size under a meg? 

I use Photoshop but I know there are others out there too.  I can help with PS but not much help with any other editor.

This seems to be the easiest for me and no one has complained ............  The galleries on the site here never seem to fill up either and I have put a ton of photos up.

see ya
Bob
Title: Re: The Building of River Plate Station - Fine Scale Miniature's Brownsville Depot
Post by: Andy Reynolds on December 03, 2014, 09:38:39 AM
Bob, Thanks for the advise about Photo Shop and getting the pic size down. I do own Adobe's Photo Element. I might try that, so I can post actual shots on this Forum, so people don't have to click at each attachment. I am sure many people give cursory views and don't necessarily have the time to download attachments.
Title: Re: The Building of River Plate Station - Fine Scale Miniature's Brownsville Depot
Post by: bparrish on December 03, 2014, 12:12:44 PM
Andy...

I forgot to mention that jpeg is probably the most compact format.  Tiff is an old Apple proprietary format (I think) and it is rather sloppy about size.

I never have any problem getting a jpeg up onto the gallery.

see ya
Bob
Title: Re: The Building of River Plate Station - Fine Scale Miniature's Brownsville Depot
Post by: deemery on December 03, 2014, 12:27:34 PM
TIFF is not an Apple proprietary format.  It's an industry standard, just like JPEG.  The big difference between TIFF and JPEG is that TIFF guarantees no loss of information, while JPEGs are compressed and can lose detail.  So TIFFs will (almost) always be bigger than JPEGs, and JPEGs are what most forums, etc, want for posting images on-line.


Here's an example of a photo saved as JPEG at full resolution, versus the same photo saved at 90% compression.  (The latter is "ridiculous' but gives you a sense of what happens during the compression.)  The difference in image sizes is 257kb for the full-resolution photo vs 30kb for the highly compressed photo.


Note that the screen size of the image (length x width) is not the same as its compression.  You can have a large image that is highly compressed, versus a small image that is not compressed at all. 


You'll want to reduce the display size of an image, and then apply a bit of compression to that resulting image (e.g 3" x 5") so it stays within the maximum size for the forum. 


Hope this helps...


dave

Title: Re: The Building of River Plate Station - Fine Scale Miniature's Brownsville Depot
Post by: Andy Reynolds on December 03, 2014, 12:42:08 PM
OK - I dropped the picture size to 3x5, but this looks like I took up 1/4 of a piece of paper...hmmm (this was using Adobe Acrobat 9.
Title: Re: The Building of River Plate Station - Fine Scale Miniature's Brownsville Depot
Post by: deemery on December 03, 2014, 01:38:50 PM
Quote from: Andy Reynolds on December 03, 2014, 12:42:08 PM
OK - I dropped the picture size to 3x5, but this looks like I took up 1/4 of a piece of paper...hmmm (this was using Adobe Acrobat 9.
The problem is you saved this as a PDF (Portable Document Format) file, rather than a JPEG picture.  You don't want to use Acrobat for this (I'd say "you don't want to use Acrobat for -anything-, but that might be a religious debate :-)   Photoshop Elements or some other image editor is the right tool for this job.


dave
Title: Re: The Building of River Plate Station - Fine Scale Miniature's Brownsville Depot
Post by: jerryrbeach on December 03, 2014, 06:46:48 PM
Andy,
At one point, not long after this forum was born, Jaime posted a tutorial on using Picasa to size photos for posting.  Maybe he'll see this thread and chime in...
Title: Re: The Building of River Plate Station - Fine Scale Miniature's Brownsville Depot
Post by: NEMMRRC on December 03, 2014, 08:17:30 PM
Howdy.

Jaime uses Picasa (free software for both Macs and PCs) to resize his toy train pictures.

Jaime posted a tutorial on that topic at kitforums:
http://www.kitforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=7055

The resizing part is what you are after.

We love pictures.

Jaime
Title: Re: The Building of River Plate Station - Fine Scale Miniature's Brownsville Depot
Post by: gnatshop on December 03, 2014, 09:46:35 PM
Quote from: deemery on December 03, 2014, 01:38:50 PM
You don't want to use Acrobat for this (I'd say "you don't want to use Acrobat for -anything-, but that might be a religious debate :-)     dave   
OK, time for street protests and "Burn that stinkin' program up" comments!!!  ;D ;D ;D

But I'll have to agree - Photoshop or Corel Paint Shop are much better programs for re-sizing photos!
And we can't forget Jaime's tutorial (or, "teach them dummies somethin'") on Picasa!




Title: Re: The Building of River Plate Station - Fine Scale Miniature's Brownsville Depot
Post by: Andy Reynolds on December 04, 2014, 08:04:40 AM
Thanks for the posts on sizing the images to fit on the forum, unless they are attachments, as I will be do some last minute details to my River Plate Station module that I'm bringing to the Marlboro Show this weekend. (see link early on in this subject). I am helping out with the right hand side door admissions table on Sat and Sun mornings.  I'd love to see you all in person, I'll have the same shirt on as I had on in the final pictures on my You Tube video (see above)
Also, like I said George Sellios will be there with his newly built FSM kit that will be on sale there.
You can call me on my cell phone if you want when I am there, if you don't see me. It is (617) 680-2009, and my email address is AJReynolds@aol.com

Andy
Title: Re: The Building of River Plate Station - Fine Scale Miniature's Brownsville Depot
Post by: NEMMRRC on December 04, 2014, 09:20:33 AM
All that attend this show take lots of picture and please share them. 'Cause we love pictures.

Have fun at the show.

Jaime
Title: Re: The Building of River Plate Station - Fine Scale Miniature's Brownsville Depot
Post by: S&S RR on December 04, 2014, 02:55:30 PM
Quote from: NEMMRRC on December 04, 2014, 09:20:33 AM
All that attend this show take lots of picture and please share them. 'Cause we love pictures.

Have fun at the show.

Jaime

I'll seconded that.
Title: Re: The Building of River Plate Station - Fine Scale Miniature's Brownsville Depot
Post by: ranny9 on December 04, 2014, 03:01:28 PM
Quote from: gnatshop on December 03, 2014, 09:46:35 PM
Quote from: deemery on December 03, 2014, 01:38:50 PM
You don't want to use Acrobat for this (I'd say "you don't want to use Acrobat for -anything-, but that might be a religious debate :-)     dave   
OK, time for street protests and "Burn that stinkin' program up" comments!!!  ;D ;D ;D

But I'll have to agree - Photoshop or Corel Paint Shop are much better programs for re-sizing photos!
And we can't forget Jaime's tutorial (or, "teach them dummies somethin'") on Picasa!

Even though I use a Nikon camera, I find MS Picture Manager the easiest for my little brain.