The end of an era

 Officially on Oct 4 2014 The Right Track in my hometown of Bracebidge closed its doors forever, retiring after 13 years of service. I was hoping that the business would have found a new owner and kept on going but that was not to be.  Heres a few shots I took on friday while picking up a few closing sale deals, still a fare bit of merchandise left, according to the owner he will sell the rest at train shows. The store looks pretty much the same as it did when a few years ago that I purchased my first n scale equipment, tracks and scenery for the Blackcreek. The store will be missed on my treks north, another little piece of my past going the way of the dodo.

The stores layout, now sold, was a wonderful depiction of scenery construction in n and ho scale showing from rails and cork to plaster and foam cover. It was also a great test bed for new and used locos and rolling stock.

After the party

The ferry terminal on the layout and an addition of a launch and barge kit I got at the show.

 Took one of my cars and cut it half for something to pull out of the water. This will be a nice little scenery change up to the ferry

A new loco I picked up at the Barrie show last winter its a Kato make before they started using the atlas drive mechanisms, so it has no flywheels inside and the electrical pickups are junk so its motion is jerky and tends to stop over switches when the wheels or the track is dirty.

At the show I could finally get some different perspective shots of the ferry

Heres the start of the launch kit I picked up at the show, its an artitec kit which also makes the ferry. Its an easy kit to build, simple resin base with laser etched metal and resin parts added on top.

 Got to test drive a bachmann 4-6-0 for a bit, was a very nice looking loco, had electrical pick up leads on the tender so going over the switches was smooth, it is dcc ready which doesnt matter to me as I only run dc.  Just wasnt sure if I wanted to back date the layout to the 50s /60s  it would mean I would have to invest in a lot of earlier era vehicles as well a rolling stock.

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2014 Bracebridge train show

A few photos of the 2014 Bracebridge Muskoka model train show I exhibited at last weekend. Lots of venders this year and only a hand full of layouts. Ive been finding lately older folk are getting out of the hobby or down sizing and are selling off their ho stuff.  So its been great if your into ho nows the time to get your hand on some good equipment and track. 

Now if I do another sectional layout heres how Im going to setup the track, using circuit boards and soldering the track to it then mounting it to the layout with small screws, it looks very clean and robust, very good job.

This is very interesting its a mini miter chop saw built on top of an old hard disk drive, The gentleman who owns it told me he picked up from a guy who makes them and displays them at the Kitchener train show, but he couldnt remember the guys name.

Heres a heavy equipment diorama, some nice looking models, wish the actually worked.

Building the ferry terminal

I always wanted a ferry on the layout so after toying around with were to put it I finally committed to a location. The process of fitting it in wasn't to hard an exacto and a chisel did the job pulled up the cork under lay easily.  Trimmed the track and test fitted the gantry bridge, Im not going to power the ferry which wont be an issue as the loco will use some idler flat cars to load the ferry.

 I trimmed back the building in the rear to expand the wharf also had to remove some of the back drop building cut outs and after some paint I used balsa and bamboo squires to make the dock walls.

 I used several coats of polyurethane to get the water effect, since I didnt have any old syringes laying about I found using a dripping brush technique and blowing the bubbles out using a straw helped get a nice even look, having some objects floating or look half submerged helps add depth as well as using a dark paint color base.

 Touched up the paint on the building in the rear, also using some ground foam as ivy really helps cover up the old glue lines.

 So now that I have cut off the road that used to lead off the right side of the layout I needed to incorporate a new route and I didnt want to have to add a road going across the all the tracks to the front of the layout. So this was the next best option opening up between two of the buildings and adding a new background cutout. I use old walther catalogs or ads from past model railroader magazines, its simple as finding the picture with the right perspective and cutting it out and gluing it to the backdrop.

More of that ferry

For reference its a Artitec kit and sells for around 80 bucks, rails not included, and code 55 will work.

Started scratch building a gantry bridge, the end closest to the barge will sit on a pontoon.