ATSF Metro

This is a pictorial account of my model railroad, the ATSF Metro.

[valstewart]

Building the ATSF Metro - Scenic Progress

These last 3 photos show the progress in the areas that still need work.  Again, the area in front of the road needs to be sceniced and the area to the left of the orange grove needs to be finished.  The orange trees still need more flocking to rid them of the smoothness.  The large lot will be a model of the small ranch my wife grew up in and the peice of paper represents the floor plan.  At this stage I was fiddling around with placement and had the garage off the plan.  It will be included.  When the Grand Line windows arrive, work on the house will continue.  Much more work is still needed in the form of details, but it is nice to see the end of the tunnel in scenery work.

[valstewart]

Building the ATSF Metro - Progress

Here are another group of photos showing the downtown section and ending at the engine stalls.  While the town and yard are complete, the area just in front of the road is not yet sceniced.  All of the structures in the town are common kits that have been painted and weathered a bit to make them look more realistic.  There are even Tyco and AHM kits.  More to come.

[valstewart]

BuiIding the ATSF Metro - Scene Progress

I am posting a few photos showing the progress on the railroad.  These three are pretty much finished and show the far side of the layout from the grain elevator to the center of downtown.  A lot of details are still to be added such as people, and shop interiors, but they will be added over time.

[valstewart]

Building the ATSF Metro - Scenery

I am working on the second orchard and nearing completion of the basic scenery.  After laying down a layer of filtered dirt and gluing it in place, I began work on the orange trees.  As I stated before, these are made by using 2.5 inch Styrofoam balls with a small portion of the base cut off.  When covered with dark green turf and oranges, they look fairly good.  The completed trees are on one side, and the ones that need completion  are on the other.  I found by accident that most spray paints can seriously attack the foam, however, a bit if attacking is a good thing because it gives the turf a bit of tooth to stick to and also roughens up the roundness of the ball.  In this case, I used automotive grade OD green spray paint that was just allowed to mist the balls.  3M adheasive is then used to stick the light, and later course turf to the balls.  This is then hit with cheap hairspray to hold it all together and oranges are then added.  A final shot of Final Net hair spray holds it all together.  This scene will need a lot of details to bring it together.  The truck represents where workers will be picking oranges.  Waiting on boxes and ladders for that. Weeds and other items will be along the area between the oranges and the tracks. 

[valstewart]

Building the ATSF Metro - Roads and Scenery

I painted the striping along the road using Woodland Scenics white road striping and placed gravel, (very fine ballast) in the parking area and between the two grade crossings.  Once the ballast has hardened fully, I will use a light grey paint to mark the tire tracks vehicles would use to enter the Oil Storage Facility.  I found a lot of small bits of the fine ballast had gotten into the flangways and it took a bit of brushing to get it all out.  As this is a functioning railroad, I do not allow any of the rails to be blocked for very long.  A quick pass with the vacuum removes any loose particles that are not glued down and helps to keep the railroad neat.  Still to be added are telephone poles, a few larger bushes, and the oil streaks down the middle lanes of the road.  In the first photo a sheet of paper is visible.  This is a scale drawing of my wife’s home that she grew up in.  It was torn down recently to make room for development and will live on here on the layout.  The next area to be sceniced will be the zone between the road and the scrap yard.  This will be a sort of rough parking area I think.

[valstewart]

Building the ATSF Metro - Roads

The long and final road has been painted and weathered and final touchups along the edges and flangeways for the gradecrossings cleaned up.  Once a good coat of craft paint is a applied, it is sanded lightly and wiped with a damp sponge.  This gives the road a general dull grey look that is common on older roads that have seen lots of use.  It is very important that the flangeways be cleaned out to avoid derailments, so long trains are run through the grade crossings both in forward and reverse and observed for signs of problems.  Next the white lines will be painted on the roadway before the gravel part of the gradecrossing is worked on.

[valstewart]

Building the ATSF Metro - Roads

Finally finished the long road.  The grade crossing is finished as well and all that is needed is to paint and weather the roadway.  The plaster is smoothit from woodland scenics and the paint will be “dark grey” from Michael's.  The only bit of paving left to do is the small grade crossing that is just this side of the curve in the road for access to the oil storage.  After that, no more plaster paving.  Getting down to the home stretch!  The area in front and to the right of the road will be a small gravel parking area for the junk yard.   Because of the dual sided visibility, this grade crossing will need lights that shine both ways.

[valstewart]

Building the ATSF Metro - Roads

Work continues on the final sections of the road system.  This little bit will hopefully be the last of the roads.  A small grade crossing will still need to be placed just after the Oil Storage facility, but this will be a gravel road like the one for the railroad offices.  This grade crossing will be the smallest angle and will also be one of the hardest to get correct at the grades.  As you can see, paving tape and smoothit were used to create the forms.  Several layers will be required to get everything nice and smooth.  This grade crossing will be visible from both sides of the layout so the flasher circuits will need to have lights on both sides.  I am nearing the end of the layout and so the last 4 or so feet is becoming crouded with lots of scenicing stuff.  Perhaps a roll-around is needed from here on.

[valstewart]

Building the ATSF Metro - Structures

The Dairy Queen scene is now almost complete.  Sidewalk weathering is complete and the parking lot is finished.  The small hedge in the back of the parking lot is from Fallner and the benches are from a Tycho kit.  I am not sure where the figures came from, but were the best choices from my “box of people”.  Still to be added would be another person sitting on the other bench, a person at the window, and possibly a trashcan. 

[valstewart]

Building the ATSF Metro - Structures

Work continues on the parking lot and Dairy Queen.  Coats of dark grey craft paint have been applied to the lot and sanded smooth.  In addition, a cement shade of paint from Woodland Scenics has been applied.  More work will be needed and the driveways still need to be cut into place.

The second and third photos show mock-ups of the position  of the Dairy Queen and the position of the cars that will be parked outside.  I may put some benches out front as well.

Other details when it is finished will be trashcans, people and perhaps a phone booth.

[valstewart]

Building the ATSF Metro - Roads, Lots, and Sidewalks

This corner area was originally going to be a small park, but I liked the looks of the 1950′s Dairy Queen building and decided to make this an a drive-in instead.  The first thing that had to be taken care of was the grade crossing that lead to the gravel roadway for the maintenance shops. 

I use the small forms shown in the first photo to create the profile for the grade crossing.  These are easily made from styrene sheets and work great.  Once the forms were in place and the area masked off, Woodland Scenics Smoothit was used to make the blacktop.  It took 3 pours to get it up to the top and completely level.

The last part was in between the rails and paving tape was used as the form for the ends and tape was used to protect the area from plaster.  Once it started to harden, the area was scraped smooth with a pallet knife and grooves cut up against the rails to allow smooth running of the trains.  Although the NMRA wil cringe, I use the HO NMRA gauge to cut the old plaster away.  The plaster is soft and cuts easily and using the gauge ensures I am within specifications.

Painting will not happen until the lot is finished.

[valstewart]

Building the ATSF Metro - Structures

I wanted to place a small scrap yard at the end of the spur going through the oil disputer. It is a small corner and though I originally wanted to put in a small structure for an entrance, I would up having only the track entrance and saying the buildings were off the layout.  The fence is from Walthers, but the sign is of my own design using MS publish.  the crane is an old steam crane from titchy that was heavily weathered. The electro magnet is a button from my wife’s sewing chest and the scrap piles were from various manufactures, though were purchased from Walthers.  Everything was washed down with Rustall and stains to give it a filthy junk yard look.  I still need to add a lot of loose junk to make it look better, but for now, this will do .

[valstewart]

Building the ATSF Metro - Electronic Circuits

This is a video of my grade crossing flasher circuits in action.  The circuit works using photo transistors to sense the change in light as a train passes overhead.  I am very pleased with the results and will be adding other circuits in the future.

[valstewart]

Building the ATSF Metro -  Structures

I worked a bit more on the weathering.  Darkening the chalk effects seems to make the tanks look more believable.  Far better than the Walthers silver they came with.  I will do the other two horizontal tanks and then add a few more details before putting in the scenery.  The sign was once again made with a Canon printer and standard paper attached with sticky film.

[valstewart]

Building the ATSF Metro - Structures

Now that summer is over, (It lasted till the end of November here in California), It is time to get back to work on the ATSF Metro.  All of the scenery between the tracks and the backdrop is finished, and now the area in front of the yard tracks is to be finished.  This will include the Corona Oil and City Scrap yards.  This photo shows the Walthers oil distribution kit and my first attempts at weathering the tanks after painting.  I used red and brown chalk to highlight the seams and simulate rust over the pretty new white paint.  I also added some grey and tan to simulate dirt.  It looks a bit pink in the photo, but better in the layout.  I will weather the others to see how it all looks together.  In the background the unused coal bin and switch tower are visible.  These were recently completed and installed on the layout.

[valstewart]

Building the ATSF Metro - Structures

I finished the theater down Main Street.  Old timers will recognize that the structure is actually from an old Tyco kit that has been upgraded considerably to look better.  The posters were downloaded from the internet and printed out using the cannon printer.  The marquee was created using Microsoft Publisher as was the smaller FOX sign.  The larger FOX sign was from an internet photo of the Fox theater in Atlanta Georgia.  The original Lowes theater sign was a rather gawdy looking Arrow and was stripped of all the button bulbs and shaped into the shape seen here.  The large skylight on the roof was abandoned and a platform with an AC unit put in its place.  Additionally, the brick chimney was committed along with some of the more ugly detail items.  A few items from the Walthers roof details were added as well.  I was a bit skeptical of this when I tried it as there are much better and much more expensive theaters on the market, but this one came out very pleasing to the eye and matching the downtown decor.  With the theater so close to the tracks, I hope the soundproofing is up to the task.

[valstewart]

Building the ATSF Metro - Structures

Finished Dave’s Sporting Goods.  This fictional structure is named after my brother in law and represents typical structures of the 1950′s.  Both signs were made with the computer printer using Microsoft Publisher and attached to painted sign backs using tacky film.  The lower sign is the most difficult sign to date and took three seperate labels to create the completed sign.  The magnifying halo light helped considerably.  It is interesting to note that the top word, “DAVE’S” is only 1/8 inch in height.