Editing the LSR

Next month, the local railroad club here in the Lubbock area is hosting a convention
for the LSR Region of the NMRA. Since, due to a combination of circumstances, we
(the TTrak-N modelers) are not able to have a display layout there. The room space
is available, the bodies to set up and run are not. Most are tied up with convention
tasks, while I will be out of town. Oh, well.

So, some of the group thought that we could substitute a slideshow video display of
our recent shows. It seems that a freeware program, IrfanView, has the capability to
use both .jpg and .avi files in a screensaver function. From a hint given to me, this is
proving to be a most useful program. The trick is to save it as an .exe file, not as a
.scr file.

So much for the boring bits. I'm collecting and editing the video files and jpg's. In
the end it will be a large file. So, unfortunately, I'm not sure that the result can be
shared. Oh, well, my masterpiece (ha!) may forever be mine.

shopping center module

well, the industrial module with the crossing sidings is taking far too long. the buildings are going together extremely slowly. so, i have set it aside in favor of completing other modules (started and planned) in time for the april show. before setting it aside for now, however, i did test run a loco on it. sweet.

the four new corners are in pretty good shape, mainly needing a bit warmer weather so I can work in the shop. their progress is well along, and should finish without too much hassle.

in the meantime, there are some straight modules on which I can do a lot of the preliminary work. here's some pictures of the first of these, the shopping center. at the least, it has revealed to me what it wants to become. most of the structures came assembled. a couple needed a few details added, and the two center next to the track are very simple tomytec kits.

tomytec kits are partially painted and partially assembled.out of the box. very quick to assemble, just a bit of glue and plop them down.

the next step is to lay out the streets as indicated in the last picture. I've been just painting over the primer with a light gray for concrete. after that, some blacktop for parking around the blue shopping center (four businesses in there.) a few details (mail boxes, sidewalks where needed, dumpsters, etc.) and some weedy spots and a couple trees or so, and it'll be show ready. piece of cake, this one.

the colors turned out a bit funny in these pics. the three buildings along the back are really about the same color as the square part of the office building with the round 'glass' tower. go figure why some color shifted, and some didn't.

so, that's progress for now.

More on the Industrial TTrak Module

While I've been waiting for the wall panel parts to arrive, I have been checking out the structures using the paper templates. That's when I discovered that I may have miscounted the DPM sections. Oh, well, I guess the three story building on the left may have to be five stories tall. I can live with that :-).

As for the Walthers panels, there will be a few extras there as well. So, in all likelyhood, one or both of the right pair of buildings will get a smaller extra area on the roof.

The decision to make them separate buildings is final. I like the open end of the siding, rather than a dead end 'box canyon' appearance. So, a connector walkway was added between them.

The two glue bottles on the left front are stand-ins for some fuel oil or chemical storage tanks. Otherwise, the pictorial tour around the module should pretty well speak for itself.

Module progress

The long-awaited Tomix 30º crossing came in today, so I "had" to play with it. The first picture shows the final arrangement of the tracks on a module for an industrial park. Overall, I did have to cut three pieces of track, the Kato 15º crossing, a piece of Kato straight track, and a short piece of Tomix. The cut Tomix piece is between the LH turnout and the 30º crossing.
Cutting both brands is very easy, takes about 5-10 minutes, start to finish.

The Kato adapter between the 15º crossing and the 30º crossing is stock length, but had to have a little of the roadbed 'wing' relieved to accommodate the Tomix crossing's other leg. I'm looking forward to seeing how this one finishes out. The sidings ought to be a bit of fun at shows, eh? One (maybe both?) sidings will enter warehouse type building(s).

















The other pictures show the current state of the middle-income apartment complex. Man, the apartment kits have been time consumers, for sure. Finally, today, I got the staircases assembled. Some black paper for a view block, the roofs, and figures will finish them out.

And, you should have a pretty good idea of where I'm going with the module. A two-lane street will be where the vehicles sit. There should be a bus lane about where the green semi sits. Some sidewalks, trees and grass will just about finish it off.

In the back is a Greenmax footbridge kit. It has two in there, but I will build them as a long single crossing the road and tracks to a linear park along the outside edge.












Yesterday I worked in 9th grade English. The kids were pretty good to me. Tomorrow, it's French class, and Friday it's World Geography. I guess I'm just a man of few talents, and master of none . . .

Later,

Joe

Progress on new modules

Here I continue to go, working on several modules in parallel. I guess I get
bored with sticking to one or two at a time. So, for an update, here goes.
Did I send you links to the videos I shot at the club play day Oct. 17?

The Arkham Hospital module is finished, and made a successful debut at
the play day. The helicopter took a bit of finger damage, but it is repairable.
I received some good comments from club member and visitor alike.

The rest of the modules I used are old ones, with a few details added, such
as figures, cars, etc.

The high rise corner is on its last phase. The final detail parts are in from
Hong Kong, and I should be able to wrap it up rather soon.

The second corner has a pair of the upscale Tomix condos, and a few other
structures. I wasn't liking something about the arrangement on it, so I grabbed
the Tomix 4015 pair of corner shops. It will look better with one of them in that
troublesome spot. Other than streets and a bit of bare ground behind the buildings,
next to the tracks, nothing much more than plop 'em down and go on.

The third corner is the middle income apartment complex. Those dang Greenmax
buildings are finally painted. I tried to over do the details, and had to strip and
repaint a number of parts. Assembly has started, so progress should move
right along there, too. There will be an overhead walkway from the apartments,
across the street and tracks, to a linear park and trail on the outside edge.
Remember, I beveled all outer corners, so there's not much width to work with
outside the ROW.

The fourth corner module is the tenement (low rent) corner. After moving the
buildings around quite a bit, I returned to an arrangement close to what I had
drawn in the planning phase. The sidewalks are laid and painted, along with
the street. I still need to join the tenement buildings back-to-back. It won't
be any problem. After that, it's grass, bare dirt, and details, details. It will
take a little while, but it should be show ready before long.

Arkham Hospital is one of four straights in this new set. Straight #2 in an
industrial area. I'll get back to it in a minute. Straight #3 will have the Tomix
4020 as a cornerstone of the module, the Tomytec Cylindrical Office building,
and one of the pair of Kato 23-408 convenience store buildings, and a grade
crossing. The 4020 will have a large parking lot. It will become a retail superstore
or a cinema. I haven't settled on that one just yet.

The fourth straight is another office collection. I'm thinking the Greenmax 46-6
and 46-7 with the elevator towers between pairs of buildings. That's four buildings
sandwiching two towers. So, there are two towers for elsewhere . . . And, a
couple of the Tomix 4051's for good measure. I have two of the sets, and that
gives me a couple buildings left over there, too. One will go to corner #2.

The modules are all boxed out and primed. Where pre-built structures are used,
I've test fitted them and am pretty well satisfied how they are working out, well
enough to have confidence in the sketches involving kits still in the box. And,
that pile is slowly shrinking, too.

Back to straight #2, the industrial area. I want to have sidings here to give a
chance of doing a little switching during a show. I figured out that the Kato 15º
long crossing would make it interesting, and worked out the arrangement of picture
#1. As soon as the tracks leave the turnout proper, they convert to Tomix for a
different appearance on the sidings. The Kato adapters will need to be shortened,
no big deal. The Tomix 30º crossing on order will fill the needs here, along with
a bit more straight track.

The structures to go here should come out of the Walthers 3-in-1 building kits.
I got both versions of them at a sale in Dallas a while back. It was a case of the
right place at the right time. I wasn't sure just where they'd be used, but structures
in hand are never wrong, eh? I figure the shorter siding may enter a building, the
longer, well, who knows? Stay tuned, details eventually, when I find out what they
are

The rest of the pictures show how I bashed the long crossing so that it would fit
the TTrak 33mm spacing. It didn't take long. The turnouts are #4's. The plan is
to always the through them as trailing point devices. That should minimize any
problems that could occur. And, I will to apply the John Sing tuneups to them
as well.

As a stand alone set, this will be a square about 1240mm on a side. That will
sit nicely on a pair of side-by-side 6' banquet tables. To use them with the other
modules (Allen, Darrell, Cal and mine) I'm also queuing up a pair of the transition
modules.

Transition #1 will have a Tomix 4023 substation inside one curve (my oldest
Tomix kit, by several years) fed by a high line using the Heljan/Kato 23-401
towers stretching across the module. Inside the other curve, A Kato 23-310
building overlooks a set of sewage treatment tanks. This would be used next
to the tenement corner . . .

The other transition may well get an idea I saw at a showing by the Clovis, NM
club. A corner in their HO layout had the track raised above the low landscape
on earth fills. The inside and outside were connected by a vehicle tunnel. The
whole lower area was a campground. That should make a very nice scene, you
think?

There is, also, an overhead station scene with the tram loop under it. That
has become a separate project of its own. The design has pretty well settled
down into a pair of 930mm sections. Together, that forms a 6x scene. However,
I want to clear out these other pieces before starting on them.. I do feel very
good about the design.

Altogether, I'll have about 30 TTrak modules. That's about twice as many as I
can transport at one time in my truck. You, know, I may be building all the proof
needed to have me committed . . . not to mention the several left over structures.

I guess I've rambled on too long. G'night, and remember to reset your clocks tonight.

Junction Module Rework

I decided, after seeing an N-scale junction module done this way at the Plano show, that I wanted a trestle on mine.

I attacked my TTrak-N junction module this morning. After pulling up the track, I took a jigsaw to it. Then I glued in some blue foam.

Uh-oh, I forgot that it needs to be ready to go on Friday - and I'm working Thursday and Friday!

Well, it won't be anywhere near finished by Friday, but I can slip the track back on it. It won't be pretty, but it will run.

Maybe it'll be a good show-n-tell for visitors, eh?

The pictures will give you an idea where I am going with it. Before Friday, I'll scoop it out with my big hot wire cutter. It'll take longer to set the cutter up than to do the job.

By the big show on May 1-2 it'll look decent, with some scenery, maybe a couple of low hills, too.

Sometimes things would go better if I tried to think just a little ahead, but where's the fun in that?

Joe

I ordered some Kato N-scale super elevated track recently. It is the V11 set, which forms a complete 'squeezed' loop when assembled as they show it. It would cover almost 4'x'8. Since it arrived, I have been thinking of ideas to use it in a TTrak-N module set.

Since the track has larger radii curves (99mm larger.) new, larger corner modules are required. I have seen what some others have done, and I reached the same conclusion. The large corners will need to be 18” square.

The last few days, I have pretty well settled on a cityscape theme. So, with some time on my hands in conference periods while I sub-teach, I began making some drawings. After that, I ordered a few (ha! – thanks, tax refund!) building kits to populate the modules. It was a guess as to just how many would be needed, but I think I may have guesses very close.

The large corners require two tables side-by-side for setup. Looking at that, I settled on an arrangement that uses two corners and a double length straight between them. These will fit across the two tables perfectly. The straight is a normal-sized TTrak-N item.

Fresh drawings were made on graph paper at a scale of 20mm per square. After that, I proceeded to construct a mockup of the planned model. The next two pictures show the overview of the idea. The tall buildings, outlined in orange, are 9-story Tomix 4018’s. Yes, I splurged a bit when I found a really good buy and ordered three of them.

The middle height buildings (in green) are 3-story. The two longer ones are apartment buildings (Greenmax 44, two in a kit) and the others are Greenmax 46-4, four per kit.)

There are six two-story buildings outlined in blue. All six are in one Greenmax 33 store set kit. Four are shown on the back of the center straight. And finally, there’s a pair of pedestrian bridges from one Greenmax 46-3 kit.

From what I've seen in pictures, all the structures are generic enough to pass as 'Western."

The left corner will have a plaza in between the buildings, and maybe parking behind them. The parking area should seem to “extend” beyond the module.

I've been told by other modelers that the buildings snap apart by floors, and can be recombined to create shorter and taller ones. This could be fun!

The heavy curve lines (all pictures) are the track centerlines. Light lines just outside of them mark the roadbed edges.

In the center, on the straight module, I’m looking into using a depressed area with shops under the tracks. The Tomix 4103 Dual Track Underpass Shops and Tomix 4106 Dual Track Underpass Car Park have been ordered for this space. I will have to play a little game with the tracks, as Tomix uses 37mm and Kato uses 33mm spacing between the centerlines, but I think it can be worked out okay. Interfacing the two brands is not a problem, as I already have the adaptors for it.

The right corner has apartments and numerous stores on it, with maybe a small playground just inside the tracks. Both corners will get grassy ‘parks’ on the outside of the tracks.

Probably, there will be no parking visible here.

A theme for the other two corners needed to complete the loop hasn’t even been considered just yet. Anyway, once the big show at the Lubbock Arts Festival on May 1&2 is over, it’ll be time to make sawdust and spread glue.

There’s still a lot of details to be worked out. All the buildings (except the 9-story ones) have been confirmed as having been shipped. So, soon it’ll be time to start building the modules and fitting everything together. To make the big corners a little lighter and simpler to fill with scenery, I think that I will cut off the outside corner when I build them.

A couple of final comments. These new corners will not replace my existing ones, just add to the collection. And, now that there is another TTrak-N modeler in the Lubbock area (Allen), we have begun connecting our modules together in a larger layout. This is done by using junction modules. The larger corners will require a larger junction to match. No problem, already designed. It was a piece of cake.