Switching the USA Switching Layout!

Last week was a bit of a modelling desert in as much as I had other things I had to get on with. It happens that way and model making is a hobby so it does take a back seat on occasions. However over the weekend I did manage to get some of my USA H0 stock out and have a bit of a play with my new layout. To some enthusiasts 'play' should be 'operate' but I make no pretentions to knowing what I am doing with USA railroads. This layout is very much about switching as the Americans call it but better known as shunting in the UK. You have a few freight cars on the layout and switch them into the various sidings and you can also build up a train of freight cars to be theoretically taken away if there was a line out of the layout to a fiddleyard. Its all very therapeutic and takes your mind off other things! I will go into more detail another time. 

The pictures below showing the stock on the layout will probably leave some knowledgeable USA modelers in despair or fits of laughter given that I suspect that there is a real mishmash of eras and regions that could never have been seen together. However I am doing it for the fun of it and I am getting a great deal of fun out of it. 

Loco wise I have a few USA engines but this layout suits the Alco S-2 Diesel switcher by Bachmann. This one is DCC sound chipped and I use a Bachmann EZ Command controller which is ideal for this layout. Anyway, enough of the talk lets see some pictures.

USA Switching Layout

How I wish I could claim to have built this layout! I can't though! However I do now own it following a purchase from a wonderful gentleman who built the layout during lockdown and I collected it today. I bought the layout on the basis of seeing some photographs and whilst I would normally recommend seeing in person before buying, the photographs were more than enough to satisfy my senses that the layout was built by someone who really knew what they were doing. Meeting said gentleman and seeing the layout for the first time proved my senses were more than right! There is some fantastic detail on this layout and it just oozes atmosphere of those small mid west places in the USA where the railroad dealt with the freight of a predominantly agricultural economy. Love the little cameos and the way the whole layout flows. Every time I go back to look I see something new.

Why did I buy this layout? Good question for someone who already has a host of projects on the go. I have a small collection of USA locos and freight cars (note that they are freight cars not wagons in the USA) built up over the years mainly because I have holidayed in the USA in the west and mid west in some real off the trail places and their railroads ( note not railways!) hold a fascination for me. I have never really been able to run them and on my bucket list was a layout just like this. Given all my other projects it was a no brainer to me when this came on the market that I could get a fabulous layout and actually run my stock rather than await some distant future when my other projects are complete ( if that point ever arrives!). 

I will be having a running session in the near future but in the meantime I have been looking, admiring and in my mind I am back in the mid west USA where I had some fantastic holidays! Here are some photos.

Get your Woody serviced here!

 

A somewhat unusual title to commence a blog entry even by my corny standards. However there is a story about this that does lead onto modelling matters!. Friday morning saw me take a break from butchering wood having achieved something that even Mrs Woody thought was 'nice'! I have got to the point where the floor and bookcases in Man Cave AKA The Room of Gloom are nearly finished. Much to my amazement the bookcases actually are of the same height, stand straight and stunningly have not collapsed once loaded with modelling magazines! More on this in another post but here are a couple of pictures of things so far.

Getting back to Friday, I do cycle most days and cycling on my own has always been that opportunity to unwind and think things through. A lot of problems have seen a solution created after a bike ride. However I do on occasions have the fortune to take a ride out with some company. Friday saw Mr Beecham arrive as my company for my ride. Mr Beecham is the artist who drew the various locomotives and T34 tank that featured in a post earlier this year. He is a very talented modeler and its a pleasure to see some of his models that he brings along to show me. I do take inspiration from his creations and it is always good to see and learn from other modelers approaches to building a kit. Annoyingly he is not only a talented modeler but a fairly quick cyclists too. I have cycled seriously for many years time trialing and road racing in my younger years and have about 200,000 miles on my legs which, if I were a car, I would probably have been scrapped by now! However getting old has meant I have slowed down and hills, especially these days, always seem steeper than they did 10 years ago. My hill climbing ability is perhaps also not assisted by the fact that I am a bit heavier, OK a fair amount heavier, than I was in my prime racing days. This leads to Mr Beecham leaving me behind on the hills. However not all is lost as although both our bikes are of a very similar equipment spec I can leave him behind on the descent where I am free wheeling and he is having to pedal to keep up. Gravity can indeed be your friend on occasions!

Moving onto getting this story back towards modelling matters we stopped for a bite to eat at a local place we know and ordered sausage breakfast cobs - ideal for the weight conscious cyclist but they are tasty! Whilst waiting for our drinks I spied that they had for sale various reproduction metal signs including the one at the head of this post - Get your Woody serviced here. Well being known as Woody made the decision to buy easy but there is a modelling connection which the sign suddenly brought back fond memories of. 

On a trip to the USA some years ago I happened to be in a Walmart or Target store and I saw the Revell 1/25 scale 48 Ford Woody kit in amongst their range of kits they stocked. That had to come home with me even though I do not build car kits. Prior to the Revell kit I have only built the Airfix 1/32 scale VW Beatle and the Tamiya 1/24 VW Karman Giah. Anyway once home in sat in my pile of unmade kits for several years and then for no reason that I remember I built it. It was probably 10 or so years ago as I was still using enamel paints in stead of acrylics. I do recall it was a bit of a pig to mask up for spraying and that the green was a Humbrol green with a small amount of silver mixed in to give a slight metallic finish. However it is safe on a shelf and I dusted it off and became re-acquainted with an old build and the history behind it. Looking at it closely again there are some parts that could be improved but its a record of my model making skills at the time so its a bit of my history! I still like it and that is all that matters and what's more the memories it brought flooding back are priceless! Strange how a set of circumstances comes together and gives a nice result!

As I am still dealing with The Room of Gloom other modelling activities are on a bit of a back burner at the moment. However I have managed to be creative in the green house which is slowly becoming green! Usually my gardening and planting of seeds ends up as a scale model of a desert or lunar landscape but this year things seem to be going right!

Not sure whether I will get some more done on the Room of Gloom tomorrow (Sunday) and on Monday I have to go and collect something model related but more on that once collection has been made!

The never ending tale of wood butchery!

Not much to report on model making but here at WMD HQ the last few weeks have certainly seen some woodworking going on. As this is all connected with the Man Cave AKA the Room of Gloom (the garage is the Room of Doom) where my Last Great Project will reside I see it almost a model making activity. There are three major tasks to carry out in the Room of Gloom. In no order, the baseboard for the Last Great Project, a laminate floor  and a set of bookcases to house a 40 or so year collection of modelling magazines and books. 

If I were organised, if I had thought about it, if I had a plan, then the laminate floor would have gone in whilst the room was empty, then the bookcases would have been built and then the baseboard. Instead today I have a half finished baseboard in a room with a half laid laminate floor on which now stand some half finished bookcases! However it sometimes just happens like that and as the magazines and books are already in the room and will have to be moved to allow the second half of the floor to be laid it made sense (to me at least) that I make the bookcases so that I would only need to move the magazines and books once. I'm not yet at the stage of calling DIY SOS and hopefully some real progress will present itself by the end of the week. This is what things look like at the moment.

The bookcases are built from B&Q furniture board and eventually there will be five of these to fit along the back wall of the room where the laminate flooring buts up to in the above picture.

The photo above makes it look as though the whole bookcase leans but I can confirm it is true and straight - strange what my photography can do to even the simplest of objects!

One of things I am very lucky to have is a chop saw in the picture above. Bought it about three years ago and although a fair amount of cash it has been invaluable and paid for itself probably just in the savings in wasted material as a result of poorly cut joints. I can now get straight right angle or other angle cuts with no fuss and it makes cutting wood a pleasure! As with all tools you get some experience as you use them and one of the lessons I have learnt is to let the blade get up to full speed before starting to cut the wood and cut slowly across the timber. If you push the blade fast through the wood you might complete the cut in a second but you will probably end up with a splintered piece of wood instead of a nice sharp cut. Spend a few more seconds on the cut and you get a much better finish. As with all powered tools read the manual and take note and act on the safety advice!

Something a little cheaper but just as invaluable are the pair of right angle jointers I have had for over 30 years. They allow you to hold two pieces of wood together at a true right angle and once set you have your hands free to drill holes, put screws or nails in or whatever else you need to do. One of the jointers is in the picture below.

Much as I do enjoy the better weather we are now having it does bring about that time sapping commitment to gardening! Just before Easter I treat my lawn (probably better described as arid rough grass land) to a 'Feed and Weed' treatment. One of the results is that the grass is growing like crazy - along with the weeds! Well at least the feed part of the treatment worked! However I am going to have to get that cut this week at some time before Mrs Woody makes comment! 

Its all go here at WMD HQ!

More wood related matters but of a different kind

Having taken a bit of a break over the Easter period from model making normal service is now resumed! Still things to do on My Last Great Project just to get the baseboards finished but progress on the 009 narrow gauge layout has been made. As highlighted in an earlier post the Woodland Scenic trees were temporarily put in place and having left them a few days and looked on occasions to see if my mind had changed on their positioning I was still happy so the placement was settled. The trees come 'plugged' into a plastic base which compared to the rest of the tree are a poor representation of the base of a tree. However as the baseboard is thin hardboard, using the base was preferable to trying to drill a hole and get the tree to stand up properly. I decided that by thinning the edges of the base and then gluing them to the baseboard and using static grass they would become part of the overall landscaping. The pictures below probably make better sense than my words!

The original base.

The thinned base.

Bases being glued into place with UHU and then PVA on top with static grass applied from a Gaugemaster puffer bottle.

You can see the base on the right has been 'hidden' whilst the other two have had PVA applied awaiting the static grass treatment.

With that job done I turned to a few other details. A few vehicles were needed and these two Oxford Diecasts had been bought some time ago for this project. Time for their emergence from the 'stock' of items that I put away over time and then normally forget that I have them until after I actually wanted them by which time I have bought duplicates! In best Homer Simpson mode - Doah!

I am really impressed by the quality and finish on these models. Even get a registration number on them. They do need a coat of matt varnish to take away that 'Showroom' finish and make them actually look as though they are driven but that will come later.

Also in my 'stock' I found this Corgi RB19 Face Shovel that should be right at home in the quarry. It needs some weathering unless I pretend its just been delivered. In reality probably far too big a piece of plant for this quarry but it makes the area look interesting and I like it!

I am going to have to search through my figures collection in order to populate the layout but some sheep have appeared!

They were kindly given to me by a fellow modeler but I have no idea of either the maker of the sheep models or the breed they are. Given that I have no location or time period for the layout I feel safe in not annoying any experts in the field of animal husbandry! However I will as a precaution clear a file space for correspondence from annoyed sheep experts!

Overall the layout is coming to life. Still more to do but it is fun making my own World which is what all this is about especially as the real World cane sometimes be a strange place!

Easter break.

Well a somewhat different April the First and Easter again due to the current pandemic and a wild variation of weather with everything from frost and snow to T-shirt heat! 

April the First did actually see me finish the last of the end baseboards - no joke! As you can see from the picture my wood butchery required the use of several ever handy G-clamps which form an integral part of my tool kit along with mallet, hammer, lump hammer and sledge hammer.  

The arrival of Easter saw me take a bit of a break from model making although I did finish painting the end two boards and then put all four baseboards together in my Man Cave/Room of Gloom and......they actually fitted together without having to resort to any of the aforementioned hitting implements!

Sizes have slightly changed with the two end boards now being 2 foot 6 inches rather than 3 foot as originally planned. It was one of those moments at looking at things in the Man Cave with a tape measure and an inquisitive mind that led me to realise that by shortening the baseboard by a foot I could, because of the 'curved' ends, turn the whole layout round in the room and place it either along the backwall or the side wall. Made sense to me to have this versatility so that is what happened. It may have an adverse impact on my envisaged track plan but I think I will be able to get away with this change. As you can probably tell from my posts whereas any competent railway modeler would have used one of the many available track planning programmes to draw up their ideas into a fully detailed technical drawing my plans exist in my mind! Not always the best way of doing things but it usually works for me.

With some good weather other interests in my life have also been progressing. My cycling adventures saw me on the First of April complete 1005 miles this year so far. Gardening wise despite my total inabilities in this area the green house has suddenly come to life and that too needs a tidy up especially as the trays of seedlings and potted up plants are rapidly expanding. 

That together with the dreaded weeding seem to have taken a fair amount of time up this Easter but hopefully the next few days will see progress on other model based projects. As they say on TV - Normal Service will be resumed as soon as possible!