2013 Bracebridge model train show

Officially this is my 11th year doing my home town show.  It was a little smaller this year, looked like some venders pulled out and the crowd attendance felt lighter than usual as well give the hot weather this year. After doing it for so long and going to other shows in the area you pretty much see all the same layouts over and over again and I swear most of the layouts look like they haven't changed in all that time either. Sadly some layouts have been around for years and have had very little in the way of improvement to the scenery done. Such as the track is still not ballasted, buildings not painted or weathered, trees that look like they came straight from a furnace filter and so on. Running long trains on a layout is nice for the kids but running trains on a layout that has been given a lot of attention to detail is what makes it magical. Another issue I have at shows are layout tables that are built to adult eye level. I know layouts are best viewed at eye level and its nice the kids cant reach anything but when they are the primary audience it make me want to give some heads a shake. Anyway enough ranting heres a few pics from the show, glad to see the fall fair mural I painted back in 2000 is still up in the background of the photo below.

                                                             nice to see the old ferry still going

                                             Glad to see more progress on this layout

I thought this little layout below was a good idea, the gentlemen who owns it gives kids the opportunity to learn to drive a model train

                    

 

Thought I'd add a dash morality to the layout.

Summer days

Its hard to be motivated to do any model train stuff when the weathers hot and the weekends get filled with other summer fun activities. A while back after adding some hydraulic hosing I painted up the excavator in a Linkbelt color scheme seeing as Im working with those machines day in day out now with the new career. I know Linkbelt never made a modern front end shovel excavator but if they did Im sure it would look something like this.

Moving along

Started with the terex rock truck

Some simple hydraulic cylinders

Some dabbling

There are times when you get bored of working in just one scale and now and then Ill go back to my roots and dabble in ho. I picked some ho scale heavy equipment for 5 bucks a piece at the Midland Train Show last weekend intending to work on them as a rain day project down the road but here I am already starting them. For the price they are not to bad looking I figure they are a good bases for some super detailing but there is going to be much work ahead to get them to look awesome.

 Here is the excavator pulled apart.

 I cut off the toy wheels on the bottom as well as the removed the gear boxes on the one end, typically excavators only have hydraulic motors on the one end of the chassis. I then used styrene and filled covered up the open areas on the bottom.

 I then cut off all the cylinders attached to the boom and stick arms as I will be making new ones that move in and out with the articulation.

 I felt the tracks weren't wide enough for the model so using a dremel tool with sanding drum I took off the old tracks and then applied some new ones using u shaped styrene. 

 The pieces that went into the center of the tracks didnt look prototypical of any excavator I have ever seen so some more scratch building was in order. I did save a small portion of the original section for the planetary drive hub which I used, the sides are looking much nicer now after adding some idlers wheels, still some more work to go on them though.

The 2013 Midland model train show

Spent a sunday afternoon at the Midland Model Train Show, heres some of what I saw.