Bernhards Random Ramblings BACKUP

Today I participated in a panel discussion about technology and model railroading. As the panelists we geeked out quite a bit over new approaches to control systems like MQTT and comparing that to LCC and traditional systems like Loconet or CMRI. We also discussed subjects like radio control in garden railroading, DCC, JMRI and some its history, cameras for engineer's point of view and remote operations, or control panel designs and tradeoffs of different approaches. A wide range of topics in a fun discussion with friends. I sat in the operator pit of the Welztalbahn, but facing the camera instead of Emsingen. This limited space for my arms. You can see a few times in the video that I'm bumping my elbows into the fascia boards around me, while trying to show or explain something... Not ideal, but I like showing the layout at opportunities like this.

It's been a busy week with various model train related arrivals. Can't wait to put them to good use. 

I met with the usual hiking group this morning for our first hike together since Santa Clara went into Purple Tier last November. It was nice to catch up and chat about model railroading and other topics. Oh, ... and the first California Poppies are out! Santa Teresa County Park is very nice and very green at this time of year. Here's a view across the park towards the south end of Almaden Valley. Coyote Peak is to the left outside of the picture.

My orders from last year are starting to trickle in. This is a Maerklin Haendler Initiative (mhi) car set of a construction work train. This set will complement the Lima set I picked up a couple years ago. The light weathering on the cars looks very nice. The Ommi 51 is loaded with ballast, and the stake car is loaded with concrete ties. Here's the train set in place on the Welztalbahn with the Brawa Koef , probably maxing out the pulling capacity of that little engine.

[ Untergroeningen posts ]  [ part 13 ] In the last couple days I focused on the roof and adding some building details. I cut the Auhagen corrugated roof pieces to size, added gutters I made from U-profile ABS, and primed the lot with Tamiya primer. I used old PollyScale CSX Gray to paint the roof. The paint reacted with the primer and produced a nice irregular weathering pattern. I decided to leave that and followed up with a light application of gray and light brown weathering powders. A strip of 0.060 x 0.080 Evergreen styrene covered with a strip of 0.010 x 0.125 styrene works well as roof ridge. Next I turned my attention to the roof of the machine shop. After test fitting on the module, I decided that cutting the roof at an angle to line up with the backdrop as originally planned is not necessary and I could cut the roof edge at the long wall of the shed. Then it was time to face the fact that the wall I made for the machine shop is too short. Close review of the prototype p...

 [ Untergroeningen posts ] [ part 12 ] Yesterday, I glued together the shed walls, primed and painted the roof trusses and glued them to the walls. I started working on the roof sheets, but before I can fit them, I need to glue the water tower to the building body. And before I can do that, I had one more window I needed to add. Drilling a hole, and cutting out the window opening with the nibbler is easy, but requires care and attention. The window frame and support pieces were already painted yesterday, so I just needed to do a few touchups around the frame and the wall opening to make it look nice. Finally, the big moment gluing the parts together. Contrary to pictures I showed in the last few days the building is now glued into one piece.  [ part 14 ]

 [ Untergroeningen posts ] [ part 11 ] With the window openings cut on the interior walls yesterday, I started today with spray painting the walls a nice faded, yellowish offwhite color. I mixed this from 12 parts white, 3 parts grey, and 1 part yellow. The airbrush helped with creating the uneven, slighly messy look I was after. I glued the windows into the walls using Testor's Clear Parts Cement, carefully aligned the interior walls, and glued those as well. A few bottles of paint help keeping everything aligned. While the glue set on the walls, I painted the inset walls of the water tower in PollyScale Mud. I also painted the wood beams of the shop walls in dark brown, stained the wooden top of the water tower, and painted and installed the side doors. Next up was building the roof trusses to support the roof. Since I need at least 4 trusses, I made a simple jig from styrene. The trusses are built from Evergreen 0.060 x 0.080 styrene strip. I temporarily set up the walls and p...