James River Branch: News Archive

Website News Archive: September 2008

29 September 2008

Yet another new name for the theater! After further work on the facade, it became apparent that "County" wasn't going to fit and remain readable. (When I think back that it used to be called "Creekside," I must have been delusional.) So, to give the sign nice, big, bold and easy-to-read letters, I finally settled on just "East." This will definitely be the last name change, since the artwork for the sign has been rendered, printed and applied.

28 September 2008

June 1974. That is now the exact temporal setting of the layout. It was chosen via a rather strange and convoluted process. While working on the theater, I felt as if the structure was increasingly taking on the qualities of a Frankenstein's Monster, comprising bits and pieces from five kits. Then it dawned on me that I ought to somehow "immortalize" that quality via the film being featured, and Young Frankenstein immediately came to mind.

This inspiration was followed by a flurry of fact-checking to be sure it would work. The film was released in December 1974, so I'm consciously bending history by a few months so it fit the layout's timeframe better. The Reading Railroad ceased operations around 1976, so that also worked pretty well; in fact, I could make the official layout time June 1975. However, my freight cars still have roofwalks, which were all supposed to have been gone by 1974, so once again I'm defying history; thing is, I don't care for the appearance of boxcars sans roofwalks, so nitpickers will just have to deal.

Work on the theater actually got me a little nervous at one point. After the walls were all assembled, the building started looking kind of big. So I quick popped in place along with the rest of the buildings on the street to see if it was getting too big for the space, and was relieved to find that it fit in quite well. The theater may inspire some changes to other buildings, but the theater itself probably won't be changing. The evaluation of the town buildings were captured in a new layout overview image.

27 September 2008

Want a really good close look at things? I've started adding extra-large versions of the Gallery images—look for a text link below the caption. They're 800 x 1200 pixels, so a high-resolution screen and broadband are recommended.

26 September 2008

As you can perhaps tell, work on the layout has subsided substantially since having to resume commuting. By the time I get home in the evening, I have just enough time to prepare dinner, answer emails, check the message boards I moderate, and edit a few paragraphs for Tom Mann's Weathering book, at which point I'll have neither the time nor the energy to accomplish much of anything else, and so I'll often round out my evening just tinkering with a few web pages. I'm not sure what inspired it, but I thought it would be fun to see my progress on layout projects in a visual form, so I created "progress bars" for the Construction page. I also rolled the Details index into the same page; I saw no reason to keep it separate.

20 September 2008

For those of you who have not yet come to the conclusion that I ought to be committed, this should convince you. Today's progress report is about... a storm drain. Yes, a storm drain, the kind of thing you see alongside the road to drain away rainwater. I even created an entire web page about it: storm drain. OK, so am I ready for the funny farm yet?

Also new with this installment are some name changes. Dot's Diner, having been moved right next to the railroad tracks, became Dot's Trackside Diner (although the full name is not reflected in the signage for practical reasons). And the Creekside Theater was renamed as a result of Dot's new name—too many "something-sides"—and became the County Theater, as a matter of practicality. Since the old names appear all over the website, it will be a while before they're all corrected.

19 September 2008

The time I'd otherwise spend commuting to and from work this week has been put to good use. Dot's Diner has been the principal beneficiary, both inside and out. For some photographic studies of the diner, see the new blog entry. The theater has seen some progress as well, having finally reached the end of a protracted design phase and starting on actual construction.

15 September 2008

To help introduce the layout to new visitors, I've added The Plan, an overview of the James River Branch.

14 September 2008

Some regulars may wonder at the flurry of recent modeling progress and website updates. I wish it was owing to a trend that would last; but instead, I've been suffering from a bad back (again), which precludes home renovation and other strenuous physical activities. The silver lining, of course, is that I can still model; even "better," owing to the drugs I'm taking, I must telecommute all week next week, saving me 410 miles of driving and providing nearly a dozen extra hours of modeling time. Unfortunately, it still doesn't excuse me from jury duty, once a week through December...

Anyway, the bolus of bonus time has so far resulted in, among other things, three new detail projects, which in turn gave rise a new section on the Construction page: Details, where all of these little clinics will be collected. The image above is one of those classic "dime in the picture" shots, just to keep things in perspective—the ground throw I just built is smaller than Roosevelt's jaw.

13 September 2008

I've shot myself in the foot. As I forged ahead with the crossing shanty and the adjacent roadwork, I neglected to leave space for one critical ingredient: the crossing signal. Now I no longer have room for flashers on this side of the crossing. It's not the end of the world—I can always squeeze in some simple crossbucks—but I'd intended to put flashers here. I am such a dope.

11 September 2008

A new sky backdrop is featured in the updated The Layout Today page. Also new is progress on a grade crossing. This bad boy is tricky given that it runs right through a turnout: out of the sixteen tiny bits of stripwood seen here, all but two had to be custom-shaped to fit against the rails. Thankfully, the only other grade crossing I need to make is on plain straight track. And in other news, more changes have been made to poor old Naughtright.

1 September 2008

With the planting of the layout's first trees, two new photos have been added to the Gallery.