Proviso Yard Tracks Painted

Before painting the tracks in the proviso yard, I first added any missing ties between the turnouts. While its been over a year since most of the yard turnouts have been installed, I have not taken the time to complete the installation by installing ties at the rail joiners at the ends of each turnout.  With ballasting next up on my to do list, I needed to get them installed and then all the track and ties painted before ballasting can begin.  I used Floquil rust for the rails spayed at an angle followed by Floquil railroad tie brown spayed directly from above.

Warehouse Parking Lot Weathering and Fence

I took a piece of 220 grit sand paper to the parking lot to give it a faded look and installed fencing between the parking lot and the yard tracks.  Sanding the parking lot brought out the seams between the styrene sheets, so I used a fine point permanent marker to simulate regular tar seams.  The fencing is from Gold Metal Products.  I reused fencing from the Rochelle Sub.

New Blog Name

As you can see, the blog has a new name as suggested by John Claudino of Aztec Engineering; UP Excellence in Miniature.  Congratulations John, the locomotive will be on its way soon.  Thank you to everyone who voted and to everyone that submitted names.  Thanks also for supporting our advertisers.

Painted Parking Lot and Weathered Warehouses

Painted the parking lot grey and also used a grey wash to weather the warehouses.  The white and brown OWD Logistics warehouse came out a bit darker than I like, but I will try to rub some off later this week once it dries.  I will also need to rough up the parking lot a bit with sand paper and add a chin link fence.  Its definitely getting there.  Once I get the scene complete, I will move on to ballasting Proviso yard; a huge task to which I'm not really looking forward.

Warehouse Parking Lot

   Styrene or Smooth-it? I went back and forth on what material to use for the warehouse parking lot in Proviso.  I really like the results of the lots and roads I have done so far with Smooth-it from Woodland Scenics.  But with the parking lot needing to go right up to the backdrop, I did not think it was really workable.  I also did not feel like dealing with the messiness of plaster more than a foot from the edge of the layout.  So, styrene it is!  I used 7"X12" .040 styrene sheets from Plastruct for the project.
   The first thing I did was layout the sheets so that I could mark them for cutting.

   Once cut, I glued the sheets down with liquid nails.  Once the sheets were glued down, I noticed that the OWD Logistics warehouse was very close to the yard tracks.  In fact, the warehouse was too close.

At first, I was going to let it go and maybe change it later.  But then I realized that it was going to bother me every time a locomotive used the track; which would be often as the track is used by consists moving to and from the locomotive facilities and the head end of eastbound trains.    To resolve the issue, I used a scissors to  cut the warehouse and make it 3/4" narrower at the parking lot end.  I also cut back the parking  lot to match.  The result is a big improvement.  

With the parking lot down, next up will be painting.

Paint and Roof Detail for Millwood, Inc Warehouse

The Millwood, Inc. warehouse has been painted and roof detailed added.  Over the weekend I'll be adding a thinned wash of paint for brick mortar detail, doing a bit of weathering and maybe even putting in a parking lot between the warehouses.