I’ve been working on the railroad…..

Being tied up with a full time job hasn’t given me much time to post lately, but I have been able to complete little projects on the layout modules. I’ve worked on several things recently to hopefully enhance the prototype look of the layout.

These small projects include the addition of “industrial dirt” by Arizona Rock & Mineral to both the scrapyard and area outside of it, plus the parking lot area of Allied Chemical. Also applied this dirt to the loading area at Armitage Furniture. As a commenter mentioned on my Facebook group concerning the look of the finished areas that these areas in real life are not uniform in color, they’re various colors of stains, gravel, and dirt. I agree and I hope I’ve achieved this look in the photos below:

Another small project was the purchase of more realistic utility poles from a company I found on eBay, to replace the plastic poles on the layout. Photo below of the poles:

This set has very realistic pre weathered wood poles with the transformers and crossarms made of metal. I discovered the hard way that the metal parts should be primed before painting. I painted the primed areas with Vallejo light grey, then hand painted the actual wood parts of the crossarms with Vallejo tie brown paint, then weathered these with grey pastels when dry and sealed. I still have another set to finish and install, but here are photos of the first set of finished poles:

And, I’m still going on small, quick projects! Here’s another one to enhance the scrapyard a bit, the detailing and weathering of the Walther’s dumpster inside the scrapyard. This was done with powders and dry brushing. I think the result turned out great! Photo below:

Finally, I needed a few more operating derails, as some of my previous ones on the original layout wouldn’t work or were broken trying to salvage them. The previous derails were made by the same person who produces the ProtoThrottle, but stopped making them. A new company took over production and sales of these as shown below. I purchased these at our recent train show here in Denver, which is the largest show of the year. I also purchased red flags that go into the coupler at the end of a cut of cars. Both shown below: