So Last night was the night of the Trains Layout tour and after a huge final push that took all of my free time and a day off work I was happy with what I had ready to present and still got the room cleaned up for the viewers.
Over 80 modelers took part in the tour which went to five layouts in our area the J&J was the only N scale layout on the tour and there were a number of N scalers who were on the tour. One of my fellow club mates and friend Daryl was on hand to run the trains and I talked and answered questions. In total the tour ran from 7:00pm till 10:20 and they shuttled the people about in groups of 8-10, we split them up in to subgroups of 4 so there was lots of room in the layout area for people to have a good look. My daughter and another of my club friend kept the other people happy while they waited with some coffee and train layout videos.
so I thought since you all could not come and enjoy the tour I'd post some shots here of the layout as it looked last night. Hope you enjoy them. I don't know if I'll continue to blog or not I would like some feed back on that if anyone cares to post their thoughts. If I do continue I will change focus to cover some other aspects of the modeling like small projects or reviews of things I'm doing and maybe post a bit less frequently.
But on with the photos. Click them for a larger version
The town of Needles
Towns west end
Main drag, is that cop eating a doughnut?
Crowd at the station the local's due soon.
Dairy Farm at east end of town
No mountain but that mine sure is producing.
Lots of trees grew last week
the Wharf scene with peeps and water
Thanks all for following along on my two month count down to the tour, I have enjoyed sharing the adventure with the community at N scale.net
John
Congratulations on hitting
Congratulations on hitting your milestone! I'm certainly not the first to say that the results look great and it must have been a relief to finally be 'finished'.
More people should commit to participating in open-house layout tours as it seems to produce herculean modeling efforts and outstanding results. Image how much better all of our layouts would look if we burned-the-midnight oil more often...
Very Nice, Indeed.
I was struck by the line of flatcars with the John Deere tractors loaded on. That is a great eye catcher. I will put that in my list of 'good-ideas-I-didn't-have'.
Keep blogging. Post pics as you make incremental progress. It's not bragging - it's sharing. (Except when I do it.
)
Moose
I like the ballast (at
I like the ballast (at least from the distance of the shots...). I have been concerned about ballast lately and that much of what I have seen does not look much like what I see in real life. I think part of it is getting most of the sides of the ties covered by getting deep enough ballast in place, which you seem to have done well.
I like the turnout controls too. it seems like a nice arrangement for manual controls that can keep your fingers out of the scenery when operating the controls.
It could be interesting once you get signs and lettering on the city buildings. In the old photos I have been studying, there seem to be a lot of power and telegraph-telephone poles running crammed along the city buildings. This may be in part because I am studying the arrangement of streetcar things at the same time. Both seem to exist at the same time so I suppose even without a streetcar, a bunch of lines would still be strung up.
Nice work!
Charles
Hey John,That layout looks
Hey John,
That layout looks great! I really like how there is a lot of running room for the trains. The town looks really realistic, And the town folk seem happy. I hope you have many years of enjoyment. My hat is off to you my friend.
Rob