Justice City Dioramish

[MartyO]

Progress is getting slower as the care for detail and precision is needed. The front baseboard is re-used as the price of poplar wood is just too crazy. Anll the holes will be filled in and or covered with the final fascia.

The back scene was fastened with cabinet screws and the screw heads covered with this evil tape to reduce marking the wall. The backboard was also doubled up in places to provide some strength.


It is beginning to come together.

[MartyO]

Getting the diorama on shelf brackets is one of those multi dimensional problems they talk about in advanced math classes. The bracketes need to be plumb, square, level in two directions no matter the wall they are fastened to. Now do the same for three other brackets and have them all level together in two directions. Through in a wavey 1950's construction.

Yup it was easy (not). But it was done.


next on the agenda is to screw the bracketsto the underside of the diorama. That is tomorrow's worry. Here is a couplepics.

[MartyO]

Opps, here they are.

[MartyO]

Today almost everything went off track. I removed a hardware store of bolts, washer and nuts.

[jerryrbeach]

Marty,

Looks like most of the "not so fun" prep work is well underway on your journey to a new layout adventure.  I'm looking forward to your updates.

[MartyO]

Thanks Jerry,

This has been a cathartic experience tearing everything down to the barebones. Stuff I learned years ago seemed to work and the "newer" stuff I used to build the diorama has been a failure.

For example, I hand laid track into pink foam insulation in this diorama. It was ok for the areas that were perfectly flat and never touched or pressed on. But as soon as you press a spike into a tie too hard, you might as well tear up the track and start over. This gets worse when installing hand laid turnouts with tortoise motors. It is a challenge to get nice clean holes for the switching wire and they are way too big and ugly. Add ballast can get messy with glue and rocks falling through and gummy up the turnout motors.

I had 10 turnouts all controlled by computer and/or manual switches and now I have NONE. This is going to make the diorama easier and simpler.

So the next phase is to re-shape the foam, replace the torn out track and start think how I can recycle and/or build new structures for the diorama.

[MartyO]

Whew! I have been busy doing things that make me happy and sad at the same time.

I removed the roadbed from the upper left track and replaced it with foam core board to level and make that track flat. It had a 1/2" dip in the middle of a 36" span. I glued down some wooden ties for laying some track later.

Then there is the back section of the diorama where the track dived down toward the shipyard. It was dippy where the turnouts had sunk. I undercut the roadbed and removed a fine wedge from the foam to flatten out the track. Not the grade is much better and will not get snagged by the turnouts.

The track in front of the shipyard has not become a dirt road. I thought it was weird to have two tracks into the shipyard.

The far end of the diorama is looking like the red and white striped lighthouse would look great there. A re-use of hours of crafting not wasted.

I moved the road to the waterfront from the left of the diorama to the right and tied the Shipyard road into it. It will go past the waterfront and up an incline to the Distillery . (this may change, I am not to sure about this.)

There were other foam carving done to add shoulders to the now elevated track and to prep for structures.

Speaking of structures, I have a ton of space to put in a waterfront and The next few years will be figuring out how to build them. So I think this will be the last post on this thread until there is some major revelations.

Thanks for viewing. and Happy Christmas!

(P.S. Pictures will follow...)

[MartyO]

More pics.

[MartyO]

and the last bunch.

[jerryrbeach]

Marty,

I'm excited for you.  IMO you have the best of both worlds.  You have solved track issues that haunted your progress in the past.  At the same time you have saved the best of your prior modeling as you move forward with a "clean slate".  You get to start a new adventure while already having a head start from saving the best of your past adventure. 

I'm not sure why some of the photos say they were viewed "0" times, as I opened all of them for a better look. 

Looking forward to your continued progress.

[MartyO]

Hi Jerry,

Thank you for dropping by.

There are so many possibilities for this diorama it in itself is overwhelming. I will take it one spike at a time and what I can afford.

[MartyO]

Yes, it has been a while since the last update and lots have changed since then. I have decided to;

- To NOT use many of the existing structures and they just seem to be wrong for the diorama
- Eliminate all switches, block detectors and related AIU electronics and a bucket full of wiring
- Re-shape/locate the road into the diorama
- Mount it to the wall with four shelf brackets and level it the best I could
- Completely remove all hand laid track, replacing with one run of flex track
- Lower the new track so it was at the same level as the Shipyard track, no slope
- Eliminate Track power buss and replace it with a central custom terminal block
- Create a separate series of lighting terminal blocks to which structure lighting 
- Solve the ugly 120 VAC power strip location

The following posts will provide a bit more details, I hope.

[MartyO]

I totally removed all the hand laid track as it just did not look right and the spikes I have were too big and the wheel flanges were hitting them. Removing the track and ballast destroyed the pick foam road bed, so I cut all that roadbed out to start with a better surface. Also, this eliminated the steep approach into the Shipyard and gave me space to make smoother curves along the back of the diorama.

It sucks big time to lay flex track on old pink foam that has been used before. I applied a layer of DAP 300 in a thin layer to smooth out the holes and bumps. This foam glue is very sticky and bonds well to the pink foam and when sanded a nice hard surface for the track. I used to use Hydrocal, but it will separate from the foam.

It takes a few days for the glue to cure enough to sand flat.

[MartyO]

Next came the flex track ... I pre-weathered the track and sleepers at the comfort of the model bench. It really did matter what colour of rail I made them and they will get "adjusted" after the ballast. I just did not want to twist my body out of shape to paint the backs of the rail when installed on the diorama. So I chose "Grimy Black" oil paint as the base coat and then a number of PolyScale colours from "Reefer Grey", "Boxcar Red" and "Roof Brown" to paint the sleeps and spikes, etc. I mixed the various PolyScale paints together to get various blends that I thought would add some interest.

Then the flex track was glued to the "fixed" base board with two smooth curves to the flow the train better.

I one area the pink foam was so bad I had to glue 1/8" hardboard to the foam to get a better surface for the flex track. If I use pink foam in the future I would definitely glue hardboard to the foam on all sections of track, especially to the areas with turnouts.

[MartyO]

My aim was to have the wiring as simply as possible and easily adaptable to my whimsy. Getting rid of a "BUSS" was key for such a short run of track. That is why I built these terminal blocks to attache the track power to. A second set of terminal blocks were spread along the diorama to have each of the structures tie into for track power. I then could add toggle switches to manage the lighting power and or the track power from one location.

If in the future I decided to put block detectors back into the diorama, it is as easy as cutting one rail and unscrewing on wire and inserting the block detector and re-powering that rail.

Since I am a fickle person, I really don't know what I want until some time in the future, tie wrapping cables is a waste of time and money. I find that screwing one side of cable straps to the base baed allows me to tuck away wires easily and make it look manageable.

I did find a nice place to tuck the power bar, with surge protector, even though there will only be one plug used.