A microwave communications tower

The Southern Pacific Railroad was an early adopter of the use of Microwave communications in it's operations.  During my modeled eras this would have been in use with microwave relays on many mountain tops along the line and towers at important stations.  I wanted to include this on my layout and decided that the operations center at Carlin yard would be an ideal place to start.

To make the microwave antennas I punched a bunch of disks from .020 thick styrene scraps.  Then stacked them together until I got the thickness I wanted.

For the tower itself I had originally planned to use the kit from BLMA but those are no longer available. Then I remembered I had an old Miniatronics light tower from a past layout that had burned out lights and one of the shades missing so I used it.  This tower is about 40 scale feet tall.  The existing plug in structure on the bottom was used to secure the tower to a styrene tile base.

The tower actually looked better with the lights removed as the wires filled the inside and now the tower in more see through.  The middle two vertical supports at the top of the tower were cut off. The disk stacks got a .035 hole drilled into one side and a .035 styrene rod cemented into that hole.  That rod fit nicely into the existing holes on the remaining outer vertical supports and that is how the disks were mounted to the tower.  A small equipment cabin was scratch built out of styrene and glued to the base next to the tower.

Here is what the assembly looked like after a bit of painting and weathering.  I also added a radio antenna on the top of the tower.  This would be for the VHF radio communications between the operations center and road crews and MOW crews.  For antennas like this I use cat whiskers.  We have 4 cats and every once in a while, I find a fallen whisker on the floor while cleaning house.

And here is the Microwave relay tower installed on the layout next to the operations center building in Carlin.  I scraped away a bit of scenery and glued the tower base in place.  When the glue had dried, I touched up the scenery around the tower base. 

This was another one of those little scratch building projects where everything came from the scrap box that I enjoy doing.

Improving some Wiking VW models

A quick break from the structure building posts to work on some vehicles.

I have a bunch of old Wiking models of Volkswagen vehicles that were given to me by a friend years ago when he tore down his layout.  These models have great accurate bodies and solid clear plastic windows but lack any type of realistic paint detail, particularly on the tires.   Because of this I have never really used them on any of my layouts or modules.  The beetles and vans in particular were quite common in the 1960's and 70's so I decided to get some of them out and do something with them.

These models come apart easily.  There are just 3 parts: The chassis in a silver or gray color, the body in various colors, and a solid clear plastic part to represent the window glazing.  After getting these apart, I painted the tires black with Mission Models tire black acrylic paint.  When those had dried, I painted the bumpers with Model Master silver acrylic paint.

For things like hubcaps, headlights, tail lights, door handles, etc. I use Sharpie pens. These are available in an assortment of colors.  This can be done either before or after re-assembling the vehicle.  I store the pens in a zip lock bag in an effort to keep them from drying out.

These now look much more realistic and I am happy to have them on the layout.  I just did these two for now and still have quite a few more.  Next batch I want to try painting the bodies in some colors I remember seeing and with the van getting a two-tone paint job with the white on top which was common.

Finishing a 3D printed house

This 3D printed house is something I purchased a couple of years ago along with two others.  All three are based on the design of the Sears catalog houses of the early 1900's.  The one I am finishing here was the largest of the three and I intended to use it to house the speaker for the grade crossing in Carlin.  This particular house had a total of 5 pieces, there shown in the photo below after they had been sprayed with primer.  There was also a base and a small roof section not show here.

This is what it looked like after painting.  The small roof section is also present in this photo.  Painting these is similar to painting a Design Preservation Models (DPM) building.  I started by air brushing the base color then brush painting the trims and any details.  On this model I painted the chimney and the foundation walls a red brick color.  

There had already been a base prepared for this scene made from fiberglass reinforced plastic paneling.  Here is the completed house glued down to the base with a car port and other surrounding details being added.  The wire and plug sticking out on the right side of the base is for the grade crossing speaker. 

After installing the fences and more details at the work bench here is the completed scene installed on the layout into a recessed area that is surrounded by styrene strip with the scenery built up around the outer edges.  I still want to add a tree or two and that or other changes will be easy as this entire scene is removable.