Upper Facia
Upper Facia
This past Saturday Baron helped me get the upper level facia installed. It is 1/8″ masonite. This was a somewhat tedious task of ripping the masonite (in the garage- oh yeah, it was about 15 degrees out!); take the pieces downstairs; clamp them up; trace out the areas that have variation in them to match the terrain; take it back up to the garage and use the jig saw to cut out the profile; take it back down and put it up. I couldn’t haved done it without his help!
On Monday night I had some of the USRA work crew over to finish the job. When we originally put up the facia on Saturday we just tacked it up with enough screws with finish washers to hold it up. All I had was 1 1/4″ screws and those left some “meat hooks” poking through the back of the facia that I deemed too dangerous. So Monday night Jay replaced all the screws with 1″ screws and finished tacking it up while Ron gave it a coat of semi gloss black paint. Here are some shots of where things stand right now:
Looking towards Champaign:
Looking towards Paxton:
Looking at Paxton:
Looking at Decatur:
Track Painting
Another accomplishment is that the track on the upper level has been painted. I used Polly Scale Railroad Tie Brown with my airbrush. This was my first attempt at airbrushing and I figured I couldn’t mess up track too much. I’d still like to go back and do some detailing of the ties and tie plates using the Floquil paint pens. I have done some experimenting and so far it looks pretty good. No pics available yet.
Display Case
Another project I got done over the holiday was making a display case to show off the engines that don’t have decoders in them yet!
