Dorfschmiede done

Alte Dorfschmiede in the perspective as it will be seen by most people visiting the layout.

Today I finished up the blacksmith house (Dorfschmiede), including some weathering and installation of lights. As usual I used Pollyscale paints and Bragdon powders to give the house a bit of personality and help with removing plastic sheen and weathering.

After some more consideration, I didn't install additional outside lights, since there will be street lights around the house. I also realized that the miniature lights I do have are either oversized, or their shape looks funny on a house like this.

The work shop with the big hammer is visible.

The lighting arrangement in this kit creates some really nice effect with the open shop doors.
 

At night

The "rear" of the house (well, really it's the front door...) is rather bland and will face towards the market square. I do need to spend a little bit more effort on hiding the gap above the front door, while keeping the upper part of the house removable for maintenance.

More experiments in Emsingen town

Last night I continued working on Faller's "Dorfschmiede" (1903961, black smith). The kit is a bit fidgety, and has more small parts than I expected. Some filing, filling, pushing and shoving is needed to make everything fit neatly, though the parts fit much better than Vollmer's "Alte Feuerwehrwache". Can't really blame them. There are 20 years or so between those two kits.

Either way, at the end of the evening I put the half-finished building into the town arrangement for Emsingen. Works quite nicely.

Here's an overview shot. The town of Emsingen develops to the left. The old city center is in the middle of the photo. I'm planning to add a market square with a small fountain in front of the city call. With some selective compression, to the right the town peters out towards the forest. I may, or may not, keep the bungalow on the far right. Some rich guy plastered his family home on the edge of town ... or, I'll put a small barn and/or an apple orchard there instead.

On to finishing up the black smith house ...

bye bye Maui

Die Alte Hammerschmiede

"Die Alte Hammerschmiede" is a fun little kit from one of Faller's low-end "let's move stuff on Christmas at Aldi" combination boxes. Nevertheless, there are some neat models in those boxes, and the others make a good base for kit-bashing.
At some point Faller sold this with a mini-motor to animate the hammer. I thought about doing that, too, but then skipped on it. I will add some extra lights though.

A recent two evening project

Putting together one of Vollmer's Bahnhofstrasse kits. It's a neat little kit, and fits quite nicely in Emsingen.

The original plastic kit is painted with Pollyscale colors, and got a dusting of patina with Bragdon powder paint. I typically paint everything on the sprues in one evening, and put it together the second evening. There's usually some touch-up work, that might spill over to the next day.

Hanging out trackside

I used the opportunity on the way to the airport to hang out a bit at Sand Creek where the BNSF and UP mainlines cross at grade. I was hoping for a nice shot of a train crossing the diamonds, but the crossing is located right under a freeway bridge and aside from being not photogenic, it's also very hard to see without getting on railroad property or climbing the freeway embankment.

Instead, I went for this shot looking south towards the huge (and quite smelly) refinery. The photo was taken while recording an HD video. Given that it's basically an HD still, it's not too shabby, but it would have looked really nice at full resolution.

Welcome to Denver ...

 

... this airport rest room is a tornado shelter.

Welztalbahn News

Two weekends ago I cleaned up the work mess on the layout and got it ready to run trains again. Thanks to Stefan for his help dealing with cleaning track and finicky locomotives. Here's the VT98 on the bridge just north of Emsingen. I need to come up with a name for it. "Steinlebruecke", maybe? The entry signal to Emsingen from the north is just barely visible in the background.

Both the previous view and this one are only possible with a camera. I put an old station building where the Emsingen station is going to be. The old building is nice, but with its brick architecture doesn't fit into a Black Forest setting at all. It would work great, if I were building a layout set in northern Germany.

Pascal and I started work in Talheim station adding a base for the road and raising the area around  the station building. 

When I built the tracks in Talheim station years ago, I installed cork roadbed. I later learned (and realized from photos) that station tracks typically have drainage pipes under the roadbed, so water is drained away from both the track and the station area. The shape of the ballast is different as well. It would have been better had I used cork sheets in the station area, so that tracks are basically level with the ground around them. 

I fixed this in Emsingen over the last year, and now we're doing the same in Talheim. We started by removing the angled edges from the existing cork roadbed. I don't want to pull up the track, so this ended up being a bit surgical in places. Talheim is much easier to access, so a 10 year old boy can help in meaningful ways. He seemed to enjoy it, too.

My Cappucino Today

The barista at the cafe surprised me this morning. What a nice start of the day.

Lava - The video

I took video of the Lava, too, ... on my smartphone, so the quality is so-so. I stabilized the material while editing, which created some artifacts. However, it makes the rest of the video somewhat watchable.
The video shows why taking good photos of the lava is challenging.

For the next posting we'll go back to Model Railroading, and take a look at progress on the Welztalbahn.

A River of Molten Rock

Last Lava Picture ... Promise!

Dripping Lava Blobs

Lava Goo makes interesting rocks. The lava drips out of the pipe quite slowly here and creates formations that look more like Stalagtites than the more fluid variety in yesterday's photo.

Fun at the beach

The original Mai Tai

At Don the Beachcomber Bar, Royal Kona Resort, Kailua-Kona, HI.

More Green

Safety railings for the bridge

Tonight I worked on the bridge just north of Emsingen.

Installing railings at the workbench.

Bridge installed.

Looking north towards Hausach.

Things are moving ...

... on freshly ballasted track, over bridges, on roads.

This is the section of road that started the recent explosion of scenery activity. The base material is 1600 grit wet sanding paper glued to a cardboard base followed by lots of swearing, and finally an application of Bragdon power paints. The biggest problem I had with this was that the sanding paper didn't want to stay glued to the substructure.
Note to self: white glue = bad idea. Tightbond II wood glue = good idea.
I will try another technique for building roadways the next time. Probably styrene.

The bridge just north of Emsingen is coming together now as well. There still many details missing, especially in terms of vegetation and routing a small waterfall to the gully that crosses under track to the right just outside this picture.

The yard in Emsingen got ballasted, and I de-maerklinized the bumpers at the end of the tracks. Compare the look to an earlier post.

Enjoying the sun

More from the Welzbridge

Part of the challenge here is to dress up the existing roadbed in a way that gives the illusion that the track is located on a bridge, not solidly anchored in ... errrmm ... "rock". 

Here's what the front of the bridge looks like now. The arcs are in, and the foundations are fit into the scenery. Later I will sculpt some rock work on the right of the bridge as well as fill the gap between the bridge and the tunnel portal.

Notice the jagged sub-roadbed behind the bridge facade. I already cleaned it up a bit in order to fit the wall and the arcs.

Here's an experiment of how this bridge illusion could work out. The veneer strips already frame the track and can be built up further with some scale strips from wood or styrene to complete the bridge deck. Once this is painted, ballasted, and topped with bridge railings, I think the effect should be quite nice.

A little bit of progress

Now that the glue for the bridge is completely dry, I moved on to install the Faller arch-stone strips like I did elsewhere on the layout. Since the plastic is quite springy the strips won't stay in place unless I force them until the glue has dried. Push-pins are very useful for this...

I also built up the scenery support base around the south portal of Tiersteintunnel. It's the usual web of cardboard strips covered with wide masking tape covered in cheap latex paint. While at it, I painted the bright white spackle paste around the Durchlass for the Welzbach. I'm still toying with the idea of connecting the two portals, so that it is possible to look "up-creek" through the tunnel ...