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Website News Archive: May 2009

31 May 2009

Click to enlargeThe stellar weekend weather was surely nice, but it also curtailed my modeling. So etching has been postponed again until I have the better part of a whole day for it, since many of the steps cannot be conveniently split up. But I've had a few snippets of modeling time here and there, so I turned to my vast supply of round tuits, and chose the Front Street Bank. This poor thing has been nearly as "jinxed" as the Franklin Five and Dime building in terms of how many revisions it's been through, but now it may be the next building to be completed, especially considering that it's not getting any special treatment such as illuminated signs or interior detailing. I'm not even sure if I'll install lighting; we'll see.

29 May 2009

Click to enlargeBeen a bit under the weather the past few days, so I've been filling my modeling minutes with some low-key work on a number of projects that have been gathering altogether too much dust. In particular, Dot's Diner is now inching toward the finish line. The interior (right) is finally wrapped up—I was particularly excited to add over a dozen people. Another random accomplishment was the installation of one of two abutments (with pedestals) for the plate girder through bridge. Gee, it only took about a year and a half to get that done—a really old and moldy round tuit. Wonder how long it will take for me to get to the other abutment...

25 May 2009

Well, with an impromptu family cookout carving up the bulk of my day, plans for launching into the etching project had to be postponed. Besides, my workshop was an utter disaster area after the flurry of recent projects, so I used what time I had to clean up. As I worked, I thought about some of the email exchanges I've had with folks about the MP-15DC chassis modification, and I decided to elaborate on a couple of points.

First, you don't need a gear puller or any specialized tools to take the flywheels off of the ceramic motor shaft (in fact, I'm fairly certain a wheel puller won't even fit between the flywheel and the motor). All you need are a bench vice or other means of very firmly gripping the flywheel, a broken drill bit in the range of #70-75 (broken is better because the bit might break doing this anyway), and a small hammer. With the flywheel gripped firmly, place the blunt end of the broken drill bit against the motor shaft, and lightly tap the bit with a hammer. In just a few taps, the shaft will start to move out of the flywheel. Be sure to have something on hand to catch the motor as it breaks free! Working carefully, there should never be cause for a damaged motor.

Click to enlargeThe other FAQ revolves around the worms. Although my initial plan was to use tubing to attach them to the motor, it turned out that a direct approach was more practical, and not as difficult to do as I'd thought. I chucked a worm in an ordinary power drill, set it on slow, and drilled endwise into the shaft with a #69 bit in a pin vice—which I held stationary, and simply pressed into the end of the shaft, doing my best to start it off centered. This process ensures that the hole is exactly parallel to the shaft (which is more important than it being exactly centered). This process might also produce an unusable worm or two, but once you get the hang of it, the reject rate should drop considerably; I only wasted one. Any remaining doubters should know that another modeler has tried my technique and confirmed that it works well.

Click to enlargeThere was also some discussion about tools. The observation was made (based solely on the images) that I had access to a vertical mill. I wish! The fanciest tool in my workshop is a Dremel. Except for drilling out the worms, all of the work was done using only hand tools. And I don't have any special skills or tricks; I simply apply patience, and work slowly and carefully. After making a cut, I'll file the parts a little bit at a time, checking their fit frequently. File and fit, file and fit, file and fit. That's all I do. It's actually a very satisfying process, and oddly relaxing, too. There are clues in the images of the modified mechanism that reveal the handwork. As an example, notice the corner of the joint in the enlargement above: the corner isn't perfectly square. It would be if I'd used a mill; but the files I have don't produce sharp inner corners. So, I had to round the outer edge of the part on the right to fit into the rounded corner of the part on the left. Anyway, if I'd had a mill, I'd be tempted to make these mechanisms for sale!

24 May 2009

Click to enlargeI've noticed how one small spot of the layout has gone through quite a few changes, particularly in the last few weeks, and the image at right shows how it appears today (regulars will recognize this as the site of the gravel piles that once sat behind the lumber yard). This evolutionary process has inspired a photo-essay. Please enjoy Four Square Inches: Evolution of a Scene.

22 May 2009

I was looking for a tiny project to fill about twenty minutes of spare time left this evening, and so I dug through my mental pile of "round tuits" and settled on an experiment I've been meaning to conduct for some time now. Although I really like the quality of SAM Trees, and also prefer the brilliant greens of mid-to late spring, I've been disappointed with how their spring green color photographs—it tends to run much too yellow, and the tint is such that it's not simple to correct digitally.

Click to enlargeSo I had this idea... I'd spray the trees lightly with transparent green dye. I happened to have an assortment of dyes made for coloring resin, and so I poured a bottle of green into a pump-style hairspray bottle, and thinned it 1:1 with alcohol. Then I picked a couple of random trees from my supply, marched them out to the garage, and gave them a misting. Lo and behold, it worked perfectly: the green deepened to a richer, more satisfying color that photographs as good as it looks in person—you can easily spot the two test subjects standing out from their untreated brethren in the image above. Now I have to figure out how I'm going to tint all of the trees installed on the layout—without tinting the layout...

9 May 2009

Click to enlargeWell, I wouldn't have believed it possible until I actually saw it running... a mechanism for an MP-15DC switcher. In a sudden flash of inspiration, I decided to try chopping down a GP9 chassis to match the dimensions of an MP-15, and it worked! Obviously the next step will be the shell, and this will likely be what finally gets me to learn metal etching. Meanwhile, here's a video of the mechanism being tested.

5 May 2009

Click to enlarge Click to enlarge Click to enlarge

Seems I've been switching gears faster than a driver at a NASCAR race. Just a few days ago I thought I'd be chopping up resin cast stone walls to make the tunnel portal and retaining walls along Front Street; instead, I detoured to do a little forestry on the opposite bank of the river. Now I've made the streets of Naughtright—all at once. Yes, all of the town's streets are made from a single piece of sheet styrene.

This seemingly unintuitive approach was quite deliberate (and took maybe an hour, if that). First, piecing streets together from multiple parts would have been much more work, resulting in alignment issues as well as any number of joints to disguise. And while it may sound backwards, the streets all had to be finished before anything else: in order to start installing structures, I needed to make foundations; in order to make foundations, I needed to make sidewalks; and in order to make sidewalks, I needed to make streets. Building things in the more "logical" order—foundations, then sidewalks, then streets—would have required an unreasonable level of precision to get streets to fit seamlessly against pre-existing curbs. Trust me, I speak from experience.

Naturally there was a price to pay: one final round of last-minute changes to the Plan. And as with so many previous revisions, it happened sort of by accident. While clearing the buildings out of the town so that I could trace the streets onto paper, I temporarily plopped Dot's Diner down upon the foundation for the Stephen A. Greene & Sons Building Supply lumber storage shed. And I promptly stopped and did a double-take: I really liked the diner there. A lot. I mean, it practically screamed, "This is where I belong!" As a bonus, this forced me to relocate the lumber shed, and within a matter of minutes, the boring gravel piles were history, and the shed moved in—with the open side squarely facing the front of the layout! Then I gazed up at the little hill where the diner used to be. What goes there now? And it came to me in a flash: the cemetery that used to be in the general vicinity in versions past.

And so, finally, after almost two years of playing checkers with buildings and twisting streets around like rubber bands, I'm ready to forge ahead with the town. I suspect that, with this log jam cleared, further progress should come at an accelerating rate. If nothing else, it was worth it all just to put a dent in that vast expanse of snow-white Gatorboard...

3 May 2009

Click to enlargeYikes, I've run out of trees! Thankfully I had just enough left to finish off the hillside I'd targeted for greenifying, and the trees definitely produced the desired visual effect. So, I fired off a couple of quick new Gallery images. I'd hoped to take the shots in natural sunlight, but it's been raining all weekend. I was also hoping to have more scenery done, but modeling has been trumped by home improvement duty.

1 May 2009

Click to enlargeAfter a particularly gruesome day, I was in desperate need of a modeling tranquilizer. For me, that's adding vegetation. The area that received my attention was the rock face to the right of the upper line. It's been barren for far too long; plus, I've been hoping to finally shoot some photographs that looked as if they were taken in the Northeast instead of the Rockies. Still needs trees; I'll get there...

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