Would have done this differently . . .

Assembling the steps and the knee walls proved to be tedious.   Since I was working off 3 bank buildings and I needed 4 entrances, I had to fabricate the 4th knee wall out of pieces from one of the bank fronts, and made the steps from 1/8" masonite:

The challenge was to assemble all the pieces straight and square and glue them together with CAA.  If I were to do this again, I would only use the knee walls and top step from the banks, and fabricate the rest of the steps from the 1/8" masonite.  

I cut the decorative triangles off the tops of the doors and glued on a strip of styrene to fill the gap on top.

Let the cutting begin

The first task was to swap the front and back walls of one of the bank buildings that will become the right wing.  First the cutting:

Then the gluing:

Glued from the inside:

Next I needed to cut the steps and knee wall from the fronts of all 3 banks using a Zona saw and bandsaw:

The door cutouts in the center section were done with a Zona saw:

Since I am making the center section taller than the wings, I needed to lengthen the column.   A search of nearly all the pens in my office located a pen barrel that was exactly the right diameter.  I cut off the base and inserted the barrel (white) using another smaller pen barrel (black) inside to strengthen the joint.  I ended up making the columns 1/8" too tall and later had to cut them back.  (better than too short!):

Grand Station

My latest project is a kitbash of 3 MTH Bank Buildings into a Grand Station.  This has been done before by many modelers.  Much of my inspiration came from Alex Malliae Link and John Sethian Link who IMHO have done the best iterations.  Here is Alex's work:

And here is John's:

Most kitbashes involve turning the banks so the sides become the front of the station and moving the front doors and columns to the center section.  You also need to swap the old front and back walls on one of the wings.  My variation differs in that I raised up the center section rather than lowering the wing sections.  This avoided having to shorten the doors, preserving their grand size, but did necessitate lengthening the columns.

The hardest part of the project was making the first cut.  This is my first kitbash, and I was a little insecure about taking a perfectly good building and cutting it up.  But pretty soon, I was chopping plastic with reckless abandon.  I'll post pictures of my progress. If all goes well, the station should be completed for display in White Hall at the TCA show in April.

Stillmeadow Crossing at Agricultural and Industrial Museum of York

The Train Guys and museum attendees all had a great time on Saturday with the display.  Now with 16 modules, we were able to run some nice long trains.

Newest Train Guy

James is enjoying trains with Grandpa "Choo-Choo"

Stillmeadow Crossing Video

From our display at West Manchester Mall:

Stillmeadow Crossing Display

Stillmeadow Crossing Modular group displayed at West Manchester Mall yesterday.  All had great fun.  We had bigger crowds than Santa!

Steamtown Railfest 2011

John and I drove up to Steamtown on Saturday for Railfest.  The event was celebrating the 25th anniversary of Steamtown and the 40th anniversary of Amtrak.  It was great!  In addition to Steamtown's permanent displays, Amtrak brought in a P40 Genesis pulling a cafe car, 2 baggage cars and a sleeper.  These housed a "museum" of the history of Amtrak.  They also brought an F40PH pulling a business/inspection car.

But, the best part was watching the excursion trains in action:  Canadian National #3254 Mikado, Nickel Plate #514 GP9, and a pair of Lackawanna F3s.  At one moment, we stood in awe as we watched all 4 engines criss-cross in front of us.  Here is the Mikado:

What's the fastest way to make trees?

Well, after our StillMeadow Crossing work session, we are still not sure . . .  but we finished some nice Woodland Scenics deciduous trees and we got a nice start on some conifers.  Steve, Jeff and I were assisted by Scott Mingus in tree-making.  Scott has a lot of landscape modeling experience from his many years of Civil War Wargaming.  Thanks again, Scott.

Making Conifers:

1.  Cut cedar shake into strips

2.  Carve into round trunk and add "bark" with a wood rasp

3.  Separate furnace filter material into thin layers and cut into circles, stars, and triangles

4.  White glue filter pieces to trunk

5.  Spray paint with Rustolem Flat Brown Camo

6.  Spray with thinned white glue and sprinkle ground foam

Woodland Scenics Large Tree Kit

Movin' Tracks

You will notice that I said Movin' Tracks, not Movin' Trains.  Last night I imposed upon friends to move my layout to the new train room.  Thanks Kevin, Jeff, Steve, and Scott!

Looks like a tight squeeze!

The StillMeadow Guys moving mountains

Green thumb

I think that I am finally developing a green thumb.  Not just because I got white glue and foam on it, either.  My trees are starting to look like, well, trees.
I trimmed up and re-shaped my first bottle brush tree.   Here is the final result:

OK for a start, but I wanted to try for a lighter, "wispier" look.  I found a nice tutorial HERE.

First start with a lot less sisal rope.

Spray with hairspray and sprinkle on 1/8 to 1/4" snips of sisal rope.
This builds up the branch structure.
(repeat 2 more times)

Spray with brown spray paint

Spray with hairspray and sprinkle on foam foliage and coarse foam
(repeat 2 more times)

The "wispier" look
(Uh, more like "we're having a major drought")