Emsingen town foundation, and outlook on 2014

Over the last couple days I finished up the foundation for Emsingen. Getting a smooth road on this somewhat tricky arrangement using a spatula is ... challenging. When the flatter area at the bottom didn't really work out at all, I fell back on Joe Fugate's "building a smooth road with styrene is way too easy" recommendation. It worked out quite well. 

 

The road surface is too light at the moment, but I'm planning to fix this with some weathering using a light wash and weathering powder when I blend together roads, side-walks, and building base plates. 

 

Emsingen town foundation. Roads are done and painted.

 When I test-fit the freight shed on the patio yesterday it appeared that the corner of the shed extends onto the access road to the train station. Thus, I ended up taking the whole thing inside for a test setup. It turned out that everything still fits together. It's tight, but workable. I might shorten the loading ramp on the street side a little bit once I get to building the station area.

Removable section of Emsingen set in place and populated with buildings.

A couple things I noticed with Emsingen in place:

• Freight shed and Bahnhofstrasse are really tight.
• Need overgrown wall below the houses behind the freight shed. Rocks under Marktplatz need to match color behind Steinle.
• Somewhat step dip towards the grade crossing is needed. I should have rasped down the street an additional 2mm or so towards the edge.
• Arranging backyard / garden on the right hand-side in above photo so that the gap will mostly disappear will be difficult. That's actually true for all the gaps. I might experiment with thin styrene "flaps" to cover the gaps at least for the streets.
• Keeping the whole thing removable and not damaging the foundation or buildings in the process requires some kind of hidden lift-out / lift-in help once scenery is completely built. I'm not sure yet how to do that. Maybe string loops hidden behind houses on the left and right?
• The next removable section will not be this big.

Finally, an overview shot of the setup as seen from the Talheim operator position.

Emsingen Lokstation, station, and town. Obviously I need to finalize the backdrop.

I plan on completing installation and wiring of lights for the town of Emsingen before I go back to work in January, and maybe even finish basic detailing. Then I'll move back to the engine servicing area, fix the turntable, detail the roundhouse (including a mechanism to open and close doors). Once that's out of the way, I can blend together the two areas, and complete work on the main station area, both street-side and track-side. It'll probably be May or June by the time I'm done with that.

Today I'm taking a break from Emsingen, and work on the N-scale Timesaver instead.