Tools, tips and tricks
Scale Model Animation 2 – LEDs and Lighting
Model animation—bringing models to life—adds enormously to the interest and enjoyment of any layout or individual model! In this installment I want to touch on more “points” on lighting and LEDs—likely more than you’ll ever want to know!
Gatorfoam BASIC techniques for cutting by hand for bases and panels
This 6 plus minute video shows some basic techniques for working with Gatorfoam with only hand tools. Great for those of us with no shops or living in an apartment.
Storing equipment
Heck, I've been storing my equipment on bookshelves for years. The ones with an open back I glued onto the back of the shelf balsa wood square strips as wheel stops, The diesels are in a separate book case starting at the top shelf with the switchers down to the last shelf which is the six-axle monsters. I was totally dissatisfied with the commercial inventory software available. I ended up making my own on MS Excel© and am quite satisfied with the way it came out. # # #
Making YouTube Videos of your layout
Last year prior to a Mid-East Region convention, those of us who were having Op Sessions gave a clinic on operating on our layouts, primarily for the guys who would be coming and had never seen it before. I did a PowerPoint presentation, and the new crew thought it was very helpful in familiarizing themselves with the layout.
Iwata Medea top notch
This is a report on my experience with one of MRH's advertisers Iwata Medea. 1st based on their ads and MRH articles I bought 4 Iwata airbrushes...life is good ...best airbrushes on the planet.
Meanwhile...back at the ranch my compressor stop restarting under load . It's a Whisperjet plus I bought in 1993.
I still had the paperwork so I called ...turns out Iwata Medea is the old Medea...even at the same address & telephone. Kirk Leikendahl helped me out...1 week later my whisperjet was back in business.
One way to organize rolling stock
As I've been unpacking from my move to Florida it became important to have a way to organize and find my rolling stock for two reasons: 1.) So I can sell certain items; and 2.) So I can locate specific cars to run on our club layout. I started by using an Ipad(tm) app to organize the cars and put them on shelves; however, I realized that I needed to remove these shelves in order to build my layout. What to do? I decided to using six drawer plastic rolling carts.
Here's what the cart looks like:
Wireless camera
I just bought a new Sony DSC-WX80 with built in wireless modem. I was always forgetting to upload my pictures at the end of the day and because my railroad is in another building I would not have easy access later in the evening when I typically find the time to work on my website and such. Now all my pictures pop up on my SkyDrive and I can get to them from any machine on my network. It's a 16Mp camera with a Carl Zeiss lens and it takes beautiful pictures. Here's one from today:
Paint problem - help
So, my next project is to get some cabooses together for my short freight fleet of power, before the rolling stock arrives.
To that end, I have aquired 5 Athearn Cabooses (cabeese?) in IC orange, already decorated. 2 different road numbers out of 5 cabeese is a good start. So, next I aquired some IC Orange paint from:
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