Unboxing and Review of Athearn 30K Tank Cars

Part III through VI of Operations Video Series Posted

Parts III through VI of the Union Pacific Railroad Geneva Subdivision Operations Video Series have been posted to YouTube over the past week. This will be it for a awhile for the series as part seven will not be posted until the first of the year. I will be posting a review of the new Athearn 30,000 gallon ethanol tanks I received a couple of days ago. That should be posted by this weekend. Here's a link to the Geneva Sub YouTube channel.

 UPRR Geneva Sub Channel


 

Operations on the Union Pacific Railroad Geneva Sub Part II

Operations Video on YouTube Channel

   I've started on a operations video series that will eventually chronicle the operations of all trains on the N Scale Union Pacific Railroad Geneva Subdivision.  Part one is already uploaded with part two coming by this weekend.  Subscribe to the Union Pacific Geneva Subdivision YouTube channel so that you don't miss an episode.

Farm Backdrop

After putting in the cornfield backdrops last week, I decided to complete the area with a farm backdrop to go behind a laser cut barn and resin grain silo.  I scoured the internet for a farm photo that would fir the area, printed it out, laminated it, cut it out and then taped it behind the barn and silo.  To finish the area I also put in some gravel/rock around the structures and added foliage.

 

Cornfield Video

Here's the promised video.

Cornfields on the UPRR Geneva Subdivision

   The only way I know to do plausible cornfields on a model railroad layout is..."Photo backdrop."
   Last summer I frequented a farm road overpass of the Union Pacific mainline just west of Global III.  Its a great place to watch trains as there is pretty much no traffic on the overpass and usually quite a bit of traffic on the UP mainline.  Its also surrounded by cornfields.  I used the over pass to take numerous photos of cornfields from varying angle for later use in photo backdrops.
   Today I finally got around to printing out the photos and mounting them on the backdrop between Franklin Grove and Global three.  I am pretty happy with the way they turned out.  Eventually I will use the same technique all along Global II and into Rochelle.

   In the first area I used Akeem Models brass corn rows that I salvaged from the old layout.  There are about five rows of the brass corn with the photo of actual corn behind it. 

 Here's the before pictures.

Just west of that is a farm.  I plan to use a photo of an actual farmstead behind the barn and silo. 

 

Here are the rest of the cornfield photo backdrops.

 Video coming soon!!