Down to the buzzer...

Hey, it's about time! I've not run a locomotive other than the test track since 2015 so I feel your frustration.

Forget those buildings, get a train on the track quickly!

Help note #1 for 2018: Do not set trains or train accessories on running appliances.

I believe thats a Walthers model too 

I have a couple of smaller donuts I took out of a couple old Curtis-Mathes console TVs 
I forget what they is called but they look like the wires wrapped in ferrite on most TVs but these are plastic coated & I want to use them AS donuts XD

i hear you guys. ive been without a real layout for over a year myself. ive started building a new one, but every time i get going i change my mind and tear it down and start over. i figure its easier to get it right now than change it later with track and building on it.

Yep, it's always been a meager ol' 4x8. I always had a knack for cramming stuff full, though. When we moved we'd originally intended to have the "railroad room" in a different place with plenty of expansion room, but once we cleaned the place out I realized the apparent ideal spot was in fact the worst one possible. So... same as it ever was for now. Maybe some day I'll get to park a trailer on our side lot next door

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So now Bev has been re-diagnosed with the flu, and the wife is also down.   This sucks but on the other those are two few distractions to deal with.   So I have some wires re-run and hooked up... enough to remind me what I though I needed and wanted to do in the first place.   It's simply shocking how dirty the track is even though it looks clean enough at first glance!  The test runs were less than inspiring... so they don't count or do they?!   I guess the 0-8-0 Nelson and Randy helped me rescue managed a few laps

But I have an order to follow before I get ahead of myself.   While I wait for the sealant to cure around the window over the layout, I figure I'd run a tour of the buildings that made up the layout. These were all in the box that fell yesterday. The damage was surprisingly minimal! But as I went through them I realized they now present a decent display of my evolution in the the hobby and some personal history. I guess I'll probably break this up into smaller post batches. I'll try to minimize rambling....

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The classic Atlas switch tower, and Life-Like general store, are the only buildings that survive in context from my original high-school-era SCMD, 25+ years ago.   I bought both of them new.  Back in those days I was happy enough if I could hold a paintbrush straight and not smear glue on everything, so the detailing is rather crude.   I didn't do much to the switch tower but it's shed a few pieces over the years (moving many many times).   I loved the look of the general store from first sight, though I would never see a comparable "real life" counterpart until I moved to KY.   I originally built it naked (I was happy to have just a building! I wasn't going to wait to buy paints and stuff first!), then later tried to dress up the general store with paint, but I wasn't too confident since it was already assembled and I'd yet to develop any meaningful technique.  You might recognize the basic Testor's enamel assortment colors.   Still, it has character, and even though I could probably make it more "photo authentic realistic", I keep it the way it is...

...complete with broken windows (the switch tower has some too) courtesy my younger brother and/or sister.   They demolished everything I built when they were little, without repercussion.  My childhood home experience was effed up.  Still, my brother got clever enough to break all the windows on the backsides so I wouldn't notice right away.   So in a way I couldn't be as mad... and now I can even laugh about it.  Back then, not so much! 

Here's a Plasticville assortment.  I didn't realize it until just now, but I acquired and "painted" all of these at roughly the same time, during the early days of planning the current STC after I moved to KY and was living in my then-gf's tiny apartment.    Only one was deliberately purchased, however - and it was the only one that happened to be new.

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^ The shop trailer was a refugee in a junk box I got from a relative passing his son's childhood trains to me.   I really didn't have a use for it, but it was complete and I was intrigued by all the molded-on details.  But I still wasn't equipped to paint things very well.   Nor did I want to sink a bunch of effort into this crappy trailer.   But Sharpies were becoming available in all kinds of colors, and were easy to use, with no clean-up, so...  I liked the results well enough.    Probably needs a dullcote bath though. 







^ WPLA was a baffling case.  I think this is supposed to be the Plasticville TV Station, but even though I found the walls and doors in two different boxes, the antenna was not to be found.   So I imagined it as a radio studio with a remote satellite uplink.    The baffling part is, of course, the odd scale: the walls and windows are passable for HO, but the doors are HUGE!   Rather than fret about them, I simply turned the building so its back normally faces the viewer, and even when viewed from the "front" the WPLA marquee obstructs them.    For the colors I went with a typical 50's glaze color for the brick and then trimmed the windows to match.  With Sharpies, again.  I could never have guessed it at the time, but those are now my kids' school colors. 





^ This cottage was another freebie (train show junk box?), though it was assembled.  Impressed the awning never broke off: guess they don't make glues like they used to either. 

There's a scale problem with this one too, but unlike the massive doors on the TV/Radio station, this entire building seems a bit... too small!     But that makes it great for forced perspective, and so when I built the leveled hill in the back corner of the layout, I placed this there to help an illusion of distance.     I liked its as-built appearance, but decided to try and use the stucco texture to simulate vines... with Sharpie.  

Yes, I had a problem. 





This Plasticville Farmhouse is one of the first new buildings I purchased for the STC.   It was mostly painted by my wife.  The colors are very unconventional for a farm house and the blue is a bit dark, but our wedding colors were the same approximate hues of blue and green.  Also, replacement metal roofs were all the rage in her farming community at the time.   Still, the paint we used was NOT the right type, and yet its resistance to mixing and thinning, and resultant uneven coverage, actually made the home look aged and weathered, which helps.   I later airbrushed the dirt spatter on the foundation - this was one of the first things I airbrushed. 

And look close: NO SHARPIE!