A quick video

I shot this short video on Saturday, mainly as a motivation to myself to start working on my home layout in the coming period.
Hope it works the way I intend :-)

Overdue update

Wow I can't believe it is nearly October and I haven't posted in a while. The summer is now over, and the weather has been great for most of it, and even though it's officially Autumn, it still is very mild in general here in the UK. That has largely meant that my layout in the loft room was uncomfortably warm to work on, and the weather enticed us to be outside more and do other things with the family, and going on vacation. I guess it's a pattern that most model railroaders recognise.
I haven't been entirely idle though, the last couple of weeks I managed to make progress on my module boards, to the extend that base scenery is done, and it has been used in a first modular railroad gathering of my local group.
I've located a few problems on it, that I need to improve, mostly allignment issues ( I need to drill out the legs a bit deeper so that the adjustable bolts have a greater range) , and there was a strange electrical problem with it too, about half way into the operating session, so I need to figure out what happened there.

Anyway, here's a picture of it in action:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12783415@N06/9859845944/

and here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12783415@N06/9859864736/

Koos

Card stock modeling

Recently I've taken an interest in card stock modeling.
I've seen many pictures on the interweb, that shows some nice looking structures made of card stock or some kind of hybrid.
So I decided to give it a go.
I've purchased/downloaded a couple of structures from the 'Clever Models' website, (they have a couple of freebies too) as well as a small building from the 'model train software' website. see: http://www.modeltrainsoftware.com .
The last example is actually software that along with some examples, basically supplies you with a design package and lots of texture templates, to design and create you're own buildings. The Clever models site has a series of pre-designed structures ready for down load, as well as several textures (brick walls, windows etc) to make your own. See http://www.clevermodels.net/ .

I've also bought a couple of grades of paper to print these on, to experiment with what works best. So far I've got some sheets of 120gr/m2 , 160gr/m2 and 300 gr/m2 from an arts and craft supplier, to try things out with, and I decided to build a first structure using the 160 gr/m2 grade paper.

Here's my 'freebie' structure from the model-train-software site under construction. So far so good. I know some of my regular visitors build in card stock too, so I'd be curious if you have any good sites for me to find good structure models , obviously north american prototypes, and if they are Californian prototypes, even better. :-)

Bachrus rolling saddles

 .Today I took delivery of my Bachrus Rolling Saddles.

These locomotive rolling stands, enable you to work on your locomotive , while not requiring a whole layout. You can run in a locomotive when new, use it to set up DCC decoders etc.
I bought mine from www.sprog-dcc.co.uk.  A basic set of 4 stands , enough for a loco with 4 driven axles will set you back just under 50 GBP. While not cheap, they are very well made and can be used for other gauges too (the type I have can be used for HO to S scale).
For 6 axle locos you can order an additional set of 2 stands (which I've done ), and there are also stands for steam engine tenders with non driven axles etc.
It will get a bit pricey when you need to run in articulated locomotives such as a Big boy, but this tool is very useful, and I'd recommend it to anyone with a larger locomotive fleet, or does regular maintenance or modification work to their locomotives.
Here it is in action using my Atlas GP38-2. It enabled me to properly tune in the ESU decoder inside this locomotive. One thing I've found already is that particularly at higher speeds, the volume of the current speaker isn't high enough , the mechanism is louder. Something I would not have found until it was run on a bigger layout....

grass lands

Here another progress shot of the grass area I'm working on.
This is purely to demonstrate how a few different shades and textures mixed create a more realistic appearance.
More has since been added, but as it is still wet of glue, I'll wait with taking a picture of it.

Sound at Wolter Springs

Here's a quick video, of the first run of my Atlas GP38-2 on my Wolter Springs module, after it was equipped with an ESU Loksound Select decoder. It was originally intended for an SW1500, but I couldn't quite get it to fit properly so I used it for this loco instead. Therefore the engine you hear is an 8 cylinder 645E non turbo charged, not quite enough cylinders for a GP38-2, but I will load up a different sound set in the future. For now this will do.
Also visible is some of the new grass scenery I'm currently applying.

Pastures green

The next step in scenery construction on my module, is to add some grass areas. I've started by adding various sizes of grass tufts, by Heki, the colour is Savannah (no 1574) wild grass.
These are small mats that you can tear or cut in various shapes and sizes.
I will be mixing these with other colours, sizes and textures to create a realistic wild (non manicured) grass area along the right of way.  They've only just been put down, and the white glue I am using is still visible in places.