Replacing a nondescript building in my city

I am replacing a building in my city that was a quickly modified cheap foam structure.  When I put the city in I wanted to get it done quickly for an upcoming open house.  Now I am going back and doing some upgrades and replacements.  The new structure is going to be a scratch built burlesque house.  This is the seedy part of the city so that will fit right in.  Here is the existing building that will be replaced.  The burlesque house will not be as tall but will have a large sign on top.

I will sell this building, or if nobody is interested, it will be tossed.  It is only a building front as the new one will be.

As usual when I scratch build, one of the most time consuming parts is the research and planning.  While I do not draw any detailed plan, I do make a sketch and ensure it fits and has a reasonably realistic appearance.  For this structure I am doing an Internet search for appropriate signs and posters.  I contemplated some fancy lighting but will likely not do that - at least not for now.  Most of my buildings are not glued down but merely set in place, so making later modifications is not difficult.  Where I do glue the structures down they are merely edge glued with white glue so are easy to remove with a little water around the edges.

My layout is almost totally sceniced and I am running out of room to installed new structures.  I have been thinking about tearing the layout down next year and building something new.  I like to build structures and scenery so it would be interesting to do something new.  If I do decide to build a new layout I will spend a good amount of time on the new design.

More steel hot metal car models

I added to my (now two) hot metal car fleet by building the Walthers plastic kit that has been sitting on my shelf for some years.  The Walthers car was very easy to build.  I did spend some time painting and weathering it.

The Walthers car is the one in the front while the one in the rear is the brass model I previously painted and weathered - though I made some modifications to the brass car since my previous posting.  I sprayed the Walthers car a dark gray then added a thin wash of acrylic red oxide.  The skull was made using fine brownish black cinder augmented by real fine rust.  I finished up with some reddish brown chalk dust.

Since the steel mill on my layout is really small I don't need many hot metal cars but they are fun to paint and weather.

Critters:
- I previously mentioned the Stealth Cam that I have installed at the back of my yard.  I am getting a little smarter at using it and getting better photos.  Since my property backs up to park land we get lots of critters.  I have a dog bowl back there in front of the camera where we put bones and table scraps  (better than throwing them in the trash).  One frequent visitor is a fox shown here in a rare daytime appearance.

The night time photos are essentially black and white with lighting by an infrared LED array.  This is a just for fun camera.

Texas oil field 1918

I thought this was a neat photo - it has a wide variety of the elements associated with an early 1980's oil field.  In addition to dozens of oil derricks it shows the railroad connection with an interesting variety of rail cars.  There is a stock car, a ventilated boxcar, a standard boxcar, and a reefer car.  Also several buildings - perhaps the long one by the boxcar is a freight station.  There also seems to be a lot of buildings among the derricks.

There are also a number of vintage automobiles, but no trucks - just lots of wagons.  I do not see any indication of what they used to transport the oil.  Early tank cars were often just short vertical tanks on flat cars.

Scratchbuilt vintage truck

This truck model is mostly scratch built.  The only commercial parts are the wheels and part of the cab, the hood and the grill.  For the cab hood and grill I used left-over parts from a military truck model - I removed the roof and the back of the cab, then  I built a new roof and back from styrene.  I added cab steps from styrene and fenders from card stock.  The headlights were made from the rounded ends of plastic sprue and the front bumper from a thin strip of aluminum sheet.  The wheels are Sheepscot cast metal parts.

The truck body was made with a frame of wood (top, ends and base) and the sides are card stock with a cover of computer paper on which I printed the color and lettering using the Apple presentation software.  The sides were sprayed with a clear coat to protect the finish.  I added a scribed wood layer on the body front and a metal freight car door for the rear.

There is an underbody frame made from styrene strips and a a vestige of an engine under the cab.  A styrene rod connects the engine to the rear axle which has a sort of universal joint made from the split end of a plastic mechanical pencil part, along with some card stock finish.  I finished up with some chalk weathering.

This was an enjoyable project despite several in-process revisions I had to make.  A normal result of the fact I never draw plans.

HO standard gauge goose of a different color

Some years ago I purchased a Con-Cor "Galloping Goose" with HO standard trucks.  The model was undecorated and since I do not model western narrow gauge (I do have some eastern style narrow gauge) I decided to paint it in colors of my choosing - much to the consternation of my western narrow gauge buddies.

I decided that since the front of the goose looks like a school bus I would paint mine yellow.  The rail bus (I don't call mine a goose) is sitting on a siding behind my city station.  As with all of the locos I use it is DCC equipped with sound.  I chose to make it standard gauge because it did not seem right for my narrow gauge which is freight only (timber and coal).

As a totally unrelated subject, I recently bought a "Stealth Cam" - a camera for unattended photographing of wild animals (or anything else that moves across it's path).  I have it mounted on a tree in my back yard and it is really interesting to see the photos it takes.  It is full color during the day and effectively black & white at night.  The night photos are taken by an infrared LED array.  I have gotten photos of deer, foxes, raccoons, and a neighborhood cat.  Our yard backs up to parkland so anything is possible. We also get photos of ourselves when we walk by.  It is just for fun but fascinating.  The photos are recorded on an SD card which we insert in our computers and download.