Facia installed and a new passenger train
It's been awhile since my last entry. I have been spending most of my time outside working on the house and the yard. But, recently the heat and the rain have driven me back inside. This has given me some time to continue working on the layout.
I just finished the facia on the layout, and that has allowed me to start working on the scenery along the edge next to the facia.
Also, I just finished changing the lighting to LED in a Western Maryland Passenger set that I found a couple of weeks ago at my favorite Train store, Catoctin Mountain Trains.
It is an MTH Premier 5 car set of heavyweights that was cataloged in 2004. The cars are so heavy that I had to go pick up another GP-9 to pull the train up my 3% grades. That led to finding a matching express reefer to go with the set.
Daylight visits the Sleepy Hollow
My friend Bryan brought over his newly aquired SP Daylight train to run on the Sleepy Hollow.
Operating Session
Today most of the members of the Bull Run Hi-Railers met at the Sleepy Hollow Railway to assemble in one vehicle and head up to our favorite train store
Where we all had MTH orders that we wanted to pickup.
On the way back, we stopped in Leesburg and had lunch at the Red Hot and Blue.
Then it was back to the Sleepy Hollow to try out some of our new toys and generally have a fun afternoon operating trains.
Sleepy Hollow Passenger Service
I have been trying to find a project for an old 5 volt F-3 in my spare parts box, and after stumbling across an old Santa Fe passenger car set that the name and number boards had fallen off of due to what I can only assume was defective glue, an idea formed to make a passenger set out of them for my Sleepy Hollow Railway.
The passenger cars only required repainting and decaling the name and number boards, and then reattaching them with CA adhesive. The F-3 had been a retro New Haven paint scheme that required extensive sanding and repainting.
To finish up the project I added custom LED lighting boards to the passenger cars, and of course I could not resist the temptation to make one of the cars haunted, by adding skeleton figures painted with glow in the dark paint, and UV leds in the lighting board.
The CSX Invades the Sleepy Hollow
I found the CSX ES44AC that I had been looking for at the Spring TCA York meet.
That along with the SD70ACE set that I had purchased in a fit of Post York Frenzy Disorder, I decided to document they're arrival on the Sleepy Hollow.
The Coal Mine
I finally found the time to start work on the coal mine and finish the coal yard and surrounding buildings.
Like the backdrop buildings, the coal mine is kitbashed from about 6 Lionel Coal Tipple kits and lit with the same amber Led lighting that I have been using in all of my new structures.
The company houses are heavily modified Lionel freight shed kits, and the passenger station is a kit bashed Lionel Rico Station.
The frieght shed is a kit bashed Walthers Feed and grain kit.
Again, everything has the same style Led lighting.
I am still using small incandescent lamps for exterior lighting, as I have not had any success in wiring the led's into the lamp shades. The leads on the Leds just get in the way and make it impractical.
Power Plant
I can't believe it's 2012 already!
I have finished the power plant, which is the first building in a series of backdrop buildings that will go behind the Sleepy Hollow Yard, which is located directly behind the town.
The building is a Korber Power plant kit, with Lionel Smoke stacks mounted behind it. The power substations are custom structures that I purchased at the 2011 fall TCA York meet.
I painted the windows with Testors Dullcoat, and added Amber led lighting using leftover custom passenger car lighting boards that I developed.
I then added the Miller Engineering Reddy Killowatt sign to add additional interest. The sign is a nice addition, as it is generic, while still clearly stating the buildings purpose to the viewer.
Once I got started on the backdrop buildings, I couldn't stop. I had amassed a collection of old Lionel building kits that I purchased on Ebay when I first got into O Scale.
At the time I wasn't sure what I was going to do with all of them, but they have sure come in useful as kitbashing material for the backdrop buildings, which except for the Kober power building, are all made from the Lionel kits.
The lighting is the same amber Led lighting using my custom boards, and the windows have all been fogged with Testors Dullcoat to enhance the glow, and obscure the fact that the buildings are just narrow backdrops.
Hidden Staging
Inspired by my trips on the Potomac Eagle, I decided to add a hidden staging yard that will be modeled after the Wappocomo station and the adjacent service yard.
I cut through the wall that is next to my office and workshop, and added the staging area by installing a simple 2x12 shelf supported by brackets along my office wall.
In the process, I added another wye and redesigned the coal mine area to add more spurs, since I now had the wye to facilitate switching the mine.
This eliminated the runaround track at the mine, which was too short, and limited the size and number of the spurs the mine area could support.
Photo Shoot
My club mate and friend Bryan finally found the Southern Mikado 4501 that he had wanted for so long.
He brought it over to the layout to run, and we decided to do a photo shoot to post some photo's of it on the OGR forum in the Weekend Photo Fun Thread.
In the process, it makes a nice update for the scenery progress in and around the town of Sleepy Hollow.
Grave's Mortuary Supply
Inspired by the new Lionel scale double sheathed box car for Grave's Morturary, I created an industry in the back corner of my layout so that the car would have a home on the Sleepy Hollow.
It turned out to be a fun project. I took a haunted house that I had previously kitbashed from several MTH farmhouses, and added a bunch of details and some creepy figures. The last step before installing the structure was to paint the industry name on the water tower and the rooftop sign with luminescent paint.
Inside it has an old Dept 56 Haunted House sound effects module, and while it's a neat effect, it gets old real fast. I am in the process of developing something to replace it, that will be a lot less intrusive.
