Good to see this thread back! I hope more people will share their "S"
efforts.
This week I finished permanently installing the B.T.S. "Greeley's Place"
kit (a.k.a. Smitty's Rod-n-Reel) on my layout. This involved connecting
the two surface-mount LEDs that are in the structure to the layout's
accessories bus. I then built up a bit of scenery around the whole
building. I hope to add a nice, large tree in the next few months to
provide Smitty with some shade during the hot Pennsylvania summer months...
http://pmrr.org/Layouts/PMRRBranch/ProgressReports_LVL2_52.htm
A couple of impromptu mini, one-man operating sessions this week were a
welcome break from the computer...
Last night I finished testing the free-rolling abilities of all my cars
by swapping out wheels and/or trucks... whatever it took to get some
nice rolling cars. I am happy now.
Over the past several months I have been scratchbuilding a large
industrial building (called the Canonsburg Milling company, which was a
real company, but I have no prototype photos of it). I am down to
building the last wall on the building. This one will be behind a
"concrete" dock, and will feature a second-floor access door, accessed
via one of the Kaw Valley Designs staircase kits. This week I decided to
cast the concrete dock out of Plaster of Paris, and using some Lego
blocks I had bought on eBay a while back as the mold master. It worked
well (took three days to dry). I hope to finish installing this last
wall section this weekend, and hopefully also install the roofs. Then it
will be off to the paint shop. Final painting and detailing will
probably take several more months.
I have also been digging more into the battery-powered S-CAB system that
I use. For example, I wanted to find out what it takes to program the
non-basic CVs of the decoder. I had planned on selling my now surplus
Digitrax DCC system, but it turns out that you need a DCC system to be
able to program the non-basic CVs (use your own or borrow a friend's). I
hope to experiment with this in the next month or so and report my
findings on my web site.
Our club, the Houston S Gaugers, were in a sad state about four months
ago when it looked like we might only be doing one show a year from now
on; and that is a one-day show to boot! My, how times change. We now
have three shows lined up: October, November, and January! The one in
January will be the World's Greatest Hobby show here in Houston, and we
plan on bringing out every single module the club and individuals own.
Several of our club members have been busy improving the looks of some
of the modules. I plan on adding some scenery elements to some of our
modules in the next few months as well.
If you are in the Houston area during those months, check out the
"Events" page of our web site:
http://www.houstonsgaugers.org/
There is always something fun to do in this hobby!
- Peter.
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Peter Vanvliet (pe...@fourthray.com)
Houston, Texas
My Model Railroad Site <http://pmrr.org/> (RSS feed
<http://pmrr.org/rss.xml>)
Fourth Ray Software <http://fourthray.com/>
Houston S Gaugers <http://houstonsgaugers.org/>
N.A.S.G. <http://nasg.org/>
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