Car Floats part 2

Have a had a little more progress on the car float apron. Still, lots to do but it is a start. I cut out for the harbor and dropped it down 3/4 if an inch. I use foam board from the Dollar Tree to make the retaining walls. the top of the wall will be covered with styrene to help with the appearance. Going to use dowel rods for guidepost for the car float and tie offs. Also going to have to come up with something for an overhead crane for the apron. These cranes were used to raise and lower the apron to match the height of the car float. The apron was made out of an old Atlas bridge and styrene. the bench work was cover in a small layer of plaster and sanded smooth, and painted brown, green and blue. I found some clear plastic tablecloth in my wife's craft room,  that I borrowed a small piece of. I think it gives a pretty good ripple effect.

Car Floats part 1

I'm not much on watching reality shows on TV, but my wife got me to watch Railroad Alaska. I will have to say it was a pretty interesting show. Parts of the show takes place at a shipping port where railroad cars are delivered to the Alaska Railroad by a car float. This got me thinking, that this would be a good interchange for a model railroad and would be interesting to model. I know that Walther's came out with a sea port set with a car float and apron. ((The apron is an adjustable bridge that connects to the car floats so the railroad cars can be removed form the floats.)) I have found a few online but the prices of them is getting high and if the price of the kit isn't high the shipping for it is ridicules. March 2014 issue of Model Railroader has an article for scratch building a car float, so using some of the dimensions giving in MR I come up with a plan for a car float 3 feet long and 6 inches wide. I made a mock up using foam board that was purchased at the Dollar Mart of how I thought about putting the port on my layout.

     

Transfer Car Part 3

Got all transfer cars pretty well complete. These are fun and easy projects for anyone to build.

Locomotive Maintenance Part 5

The locomotive maintenance facility's got a big makeover. Most buildings were repainted. Still, have to weather them at a later date. All track is weather and most ground covering is down. I am pleased with how it looks so far.

Blog Pictures

As some of you may have noticed some of the pictures of my blog isn't showing up. Well I went through my Google account and deleted some of the pictures on it. I didn't know those pictures was linked to my blog account. So some of the pictures got deleted. I am in the process of reloading and updating the later blog posts to fix the missing pictures. I hope to have this done soon.