techhobbies

I've been doing a lot of scenery now that the tracks work correctly. I'm learning a lot fast as I do it too. Even with hundreds of hours of video about how watched, it's still a practice issue. The more you practice, the better you get.

I added a new locomotive depot/shed with a parking lot and lighting which I think turned out nicely. The shed was the first model I built for my first attempt at a layout 3 years ago, and it's finally in place, albeit, without one of the little fixtures on the roof. I'm sure I'll find it somewhere. The lighting is Just Plug, and soon it will be connected to my ESP32 lighting solution I have for the Just Plug lights. Because they are 3V LED's, you don't really need to very much special to make them work, just supply power at the right voltage. I use an ESP32 to turn individual LED's on and off as I see fit, and I can dim them as well. I even put together a little random blinker to make it seem like a bulb is flickering. Videos of that soon, I had to get a new power strip and need to plug it all together still. But it's in place now.

I also love working with Woodlands road kit. The material is not plaster, and it doesn't crack. it's also wonderfully easy to mix and spread. I'm a fan. As such, I started to get some roadway in, and am gearing up to add more over the weekend. I also got some cool modern street lamps from Amazon for pretty cheap. I think 10 for 10. They are reasonably bright, but do have some drawbacks. I'll get a few installed in the next week or two and talk about what I like/dislike. In testing though, they do tend to shine through the top of the led housing which looks very weird. I may need to find a solution for that. They also need some dabs of super glue as the parts tend to be loose. You get what you pay for, but the design is good and they look about right. Note, the little plastic square at the bottom I added, it didn't come with the model. I felt like they needed a base to connect to the scenery.



Today I'm doing static grass and some trees on the new dirt I put in. All the dirt is from my backyard too, which I like a lot. I need to clean it up a bit and go back and clean the tracks again so I can run with the new scenery in place.

Finally, there's a big open area to the east. My kids recently learned about Loch Ness and Nessie. So, we're going to do a small model of some of the lakeshore from Loch Ness and add a monster to the layout. They're pretty excited about the prospect, and over the weekend, I hope to make the bowl for the water feature. North is the bottom of these images where the downtown is, so the raised suburban housing area is to the south.