Land, Ho!

I've been taking most of my railroading time to really dial in the land contours of the layout. As I've mentioned ad-nauseum, shaping the terrain has never been my strong suit, so I'm taking my time and evaluating/adjusting as I go. The pace has been very much snail-like, but I want to be happy with the final result.

Here is a general overview of things as they stand now, with some buildings mocked up in place.

The biggest rise in terrain is to the west end of the layout. Here I had originally planned for the cafe and hotel to be adjacent to each other on dual levels, but in execution there really wasn't enough room for the terrain to rise naturally and still have space for the buildings. You can spy the beginnings of the road cutting up the hill; it will eventually pass in front of the cafe and cross over the tracks across the cut in the north-west corner.

I really like using lightweight spackle to contour the levels together; sets up quick, and sands easily.

The East end of the layout will be primarily flat, with the exception of a small rise and cut toward the north-east corner to break up the visual of the tight curve. Here, a yet-to-be named industry will be served by the spur, and the hotel (and perhaps one or two more related outbuildings) will help visually distract from the track at the rear of the layout. Of course, it's also the spot for our depot.

Once I get the final contours in, I'm looking forward to "banishing the pink" forever with a coat of earth-toned paint. 

A Quick Update

I haven't been blogging much in the past week or so, but I have been attacking several projects on the layout in a haphazard, random fashion. Here's a bit of what has been going on.

4-4-0 Shapeways Conversion

After some time waiting for various parts to arrive in the mail, I started in on my HOn30 conversion of the Model Power N-Scale 4-4-0. This is to be my very first HOn30 kitbash "opus," especially since it will involve DCC and SOUND, and I'm spending a lot of time trying to get all the details of this loco perfect. Step one is to analyze and dry-fit the components, and make decisions on how I'd like the finished product to go together.

As you can see in the photos, I've been experimenting with different stacks and pilots. Both the brass diamond stack and the brass cowcatcher are a bit oversized, and this led me to try my very first stab at creating new parts of a more appropriate size in 3D. I'm currently awaiting test prints from Shapeways.

I also decided this loco would be sound equipped; perhaps it's because I'm a musician, but having sound-equipped locos has been high on my list for a long time. Sound is a huge part of the "visceral" experience of railroading. Having worked for most of my modeling life in N scale, and now in similarly-sized HOn30, the prospect of jamming in sound decoders in limited spaces has been daunting, but I've decided to tackle it head on with this loco. I test installed a Digitrax 16-bit sound decoder to test out functionality and the overall effect.

I have since revived a new, improved speaker that should beef up the sound quotient. More on that later.

Land, Ho!

I've also started building up the landforms on my little layout. I guess I've been putting this off because, as I've mentioned in the past, I tend to have a not-so-great eye for sculpting natural looking landforms. That said, I'm applying the techniques I used on my test module and things are going OK so far.

Using horizontally stacked cross-sections of hill contours seems to help a lot; it also reduces the amount of tedious, messy sanding and scraping I need to do to arrive at the final land contours I desire.

I'm trying to stay productive, while at the same time really optimize my time to work on the projects that strike me as most interesting at the moment. I think the next big layout milestone will be when I can finally not have a giant pink wasteland surrounding my right-of-way...