Feb 29th Leapyear weekend photo fun


Great start everyone. Here is my small contribution for this weekend... a field of dried corn stalks. (at least part of a field) I made about 120 stalks so far, and need about 400 more to finish this small field. They are cheap and easy to make, just time consuming.
If there is anyone here from the Midwest Valley Modelers Rail Road Club of St Louis, you may recognize these corn stalks. Thanks to Ken Patterson and the Rail Model Journal for the great how to article on these.
 
Long-time lurker, infrequent poster here...

Here's my latest project. I grew up in NJ and often visited the Whippany Railway Museum. I've had in the back of my head for a long time to make an HO-scale model of the old water tank. The plans in the March issue of Model Railroader were just the catalyst I needed.

a White Rain hairspray bottle was the perfect diameter for the tank:

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The hoop rings are made from black thread. They ended up a bit more askew than I wanted, but the prototype is in pretty rought shape so perhaps that's ok. :) I decided to leave out the hoop-ring tensioners. The tank is very small, and I'm not sure the detail is worth the effort.

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The base is a simple box covered with brick paper:

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I included the bricked-over window. A bit of tedious work for a detail nobody will notice. :D

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The arched brick doorway is a bit more noticeable.

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The spout and assorted rigging was by far the most complicated thing to build.

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Finished product:

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I'm not completely happy with the spout details but I'll sit with it for a while and see if it annoys me enough to do it over. :)

Now if I only had a layout to put it on!
 
Neat photos, everyone. Crandall--how do you like your H-8? Isn't that a beauty of a loco? Have you found enough cars for it to pull, yet, LOL? The traction tires on my first-run H-8 came off about six months after I got it, I never replaced them and it STILL pulls like a team of oxen. Gorgeous loco!

Jeffrey--what a cool idea on the lights--gave me some ideas for the Yuba River Sub. Thanks.

MLW--hey, don't worry about the ground cover--that's a terrific job on the ballasting and weathering--my ballasting often looks like the crew went out after a few too many Gordon Biersch Pilsners, LOL. And your first attempt at rock-work looks great--that's REAL Canadian Shield stuff, IMO.

CPW: Like those corn-stalks--and they DO look time-consuming from the photo, but the results are really fine.

JWP: What a neat water-tank, and thanks for showing us how you built it. Really nice work, IMO!

Another file shot: My first attempt at weathering a loco with Bragdon chalks. Loco is a 'borrowed' Colorado and Southern 2-10-2 on Yuba Pass with a caboose hop.
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Tom
 
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I'm always tring to impove my camera skills.
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Yesterday I got bored and decided to add some grime to one of my engines.
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Fred, have you seen the Busch version? I have three packs of the sunflowers, and one of the trial packs of the wheat field.

Here's a Ford Model T pickup I did for a member of the forum, Paul (OldGettysk).
 
CP9302,

How do you make those corn stalks? Always wanted to add some, but no idea how.

Everyone else, Great photos. I'll try to get some up for next weekend.
 
Love the corn stalks..wow! I also like the water tower...nice job on that. :D

Art, the Rivarossi is a superbly detailed engine, and it runs well for the most part...some hesitation at turnouts, which surprises me to no end. Every other loco I have, big or tiny, does fine on them. Also, for all its heft, it can't pull as well as my BLI Pennsy J1 2-10-4. It has been slipping, despite the rubber tires. Growing pains, I hope. Basically, I am confident in it and l]pleased.

Here she is atop the Seneca Falls trestle.

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Model T

Well I wanted to show off my new Model T which Josh had put together for me . I cannot thank him enough for the outstanding job he did. I have three fellows that want to drive off in it right now :D :rolleyes:
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Paul - I hope you hid the keys, if any one of those guys gets behind the wheel that model T won't last very long, LOL
 
Great work everyone! This is one of the best weekends in quite a while. Paul what era are you modeling? Just curious.

I had a small operating session today. A friend that is both a fellow music teacher (a few years back) and a model railroader brought over a family that is into both model railroads and RC Planes. His boys have built almost 50 planes themselves. Turns out I remember the Father and his oldest son from a Boy Scout Camporee that was on aviation a few years back.. He is in a local RC Plane club. I recalled speaking with him at that time. Anyway he is into O Scale and his sons are building an HO layout so they wanted to see my setup. After a short tour, I got the throttles out and what I thought would be a few minutes ended up being a 2 hour session with two trains going. It gave me a chance to see where the bottlenecks will be when I really start operations on the layout. His youngest (10 or 11 years old?) got the coal drag pulled by the USRA Mallet 2-6-6-2 and the UT4 throttle. He had never used DCC before. I showed him how it worked, let him pull up the loco and he was off like a pro. All 3 of them seemed to like the DCC. Here is the youngest at the throttle of the Mallet:

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My buddy Andy was the switchman for the train (I set them up as a two man crew):

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Enough of the plywood central, here is Andy following the train on the sceniced section (actually he is completly ignoring his train and watching the other guys train....... Hey is the turnout thrown? Hey! Hey Andy?):

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Father and other son as the crew of the Reefer Train pulled by a little Russian Decapod:

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And one more of the youngest taking the Mallet and cars up the grade (20 cars I think up a 2+% grade. No problem.):

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Hope you had a fun weekend!
 
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Wow, very nice ops session!

Thought I'd unveil another custom BNSF unit. This one goes on eBay tomorrow night.
 
Here is a quick how to on the corn stalks.

They started life as fake Christmas garland. (Someone remind me to buy a replacement garland before the Wife notices next Christmas!) These are make of plastic 'needles' wound on a wire core. Trim off 1 1/2" long pieces. Each piece needs to be thinned or the stalks are too bushy. I hold the branch so the needles angle upwards and trim the needles at the bottom of the branch short but leave the ones at the top longer. (top row in picture)
Now comes the fun part. Hold the bottom of the branch in some pliers and use a heat gun to melt the needles so they fold over and wrap around the stalk. I recommend wearing a heat resistant glove as those heat guns kick out a lot of heat! (bottom row in picture)
After the stalks cool, paint them with your choice of yellowish/tan paint from an airbrush or spray can. After they dry, trim any leaves that droop bellow the bottom of the wire.
It is easiest to plant the stalks in foam insulation board covered in dirt or ground foam. I had to plant mine in plywood, so a drill was needed. The best part about these stalks (other than the price) is how strong they are. The wire core makes them very sturdy.
More in depth instructions can be found in the June 1995 issue of Rail Model Journal. Article by Ken Patterson.

Josh, the Busch corn stalk kit looks very nice. I haven't used it myself, but my LHS has some. They model summer corn waiting to be harvested. Our module is set in the fall, so dried up dieing corn was needed for us. I am going to have to try some of those wheat kits though!
 
Yeah, they gave me a free wheat kit, its 8 rows (about 1/4 of a full package), and they look ok. I'm going to use them as tall grass somewhere on my layout.
 
TWhite said:
Bob--

Terrific photo as usual--and your tips on photography on your website are absolutely invaluable. Time for me to get out my Canon and try some of them.

One question, though--do you ever use the Zoom on your camera, or do you crop your images--I ask this because I've never considered myself much of a photographer, and sometimes I think I 'Zoom' when I could use a crop instead.

Tom
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Sorry for the delay in replying, was at our club's annual train show all day Saturday, now trying to recover!

Most of my recent images have all been taken with zoom lenses. I do have two fixed focus Canon lenses from my film days, a 28mm and a 50mm, but only use them for special purposes. I've mostly been using the 18-55mm zoom that came with my Canon Rebel XTi up until recently. I got a great deal in the late fall from a fellow who what changing from Canon to Nikon, seemed to be hard up, to my benefit! I got two Tamron lenses from him - an 11-18mm and a 18-200mm zooms. These are their most recent high-end models and seem to work great. I always wanted an exteme wide angle zoom, but the cost always scared me off. The 11-18mm is around $585.00; I got both for about $480.00!

Anyway, the original photo I posted with the linemen working on the pole was taken with the 11-18mm at 11mm and f/22. This gives the maximum depth of field, the wider you zoom out, the less depth of field there will be.

Illustrating - here's the same pole scene shot with the 18-200mm zoom wide open on purpose to blur the background and isolate the pole guys:

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Here's another shot with the same lens, but stopped down more to give more depth of field but not enough to make the background sharp:

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And yet another one with more depth of field, with the background again not being distractingly sharp:

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What I also like about the longer zoom is it allows me to get in close to scenes that are too far away for the wide angle. I can be back from the subject and not get shadows of the camera in the scene this way too.

One great thing about digital is you can try all sorts of things and tricks and see the results right away!
 
Great work on that BNSF Josh , Bob that is fine work and great photography , out of my league . Ray looks like you got another family hooked on HO . BTW I model the fifties into the early sixties. I use to live about a 1/4 mile from the mainline into Niagara Falls . right behind Olin Matheson Chemicals . SO I saw lots of frieght trains and passenger trains go by daily . Have lots of fond memories from then . that Saloon is like one that was close by to my house back then !! a old neighbor had an old Model T so had to have one on the layout !!Fred nice idea for thge corn will have to try it and see how the wheat does . Jeffrey really like that KCS !
 
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TWhite

MLW--hey, don't worry about the ground cover--that's a terrific job on the ballasting and weathering--my ballasting often looks like the crew went out after a few too many Gordon Biersch Pilsners, LOL. And your first attempt at rock-work looks great--that's REAL Canadian Shield stuff, IMO.
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Thanks. I does look like Canadian Shield doesn't? Thanks again
Nice weathering job on the your loco.
 
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