Friday Photo Fun

[cnw1995]

Begging your pardon, Here's some pictures of the layout projects I worked on over the holidays for you to enjoy. This is my attempt at hills - spray painted on scrap pieces of wood - after stapling 100 ft. of blue plastic banquet table cloth around the walls.

Here's the airport showing the new WW2 pylon

The canal is a blanket covering cardboard that I can crawl on to get to the back of the layout. I've added more water

I squeezed in an oval of my son's Bachmann HO track - that's the Hogwart's Express engine.

Another look at the hills. I did this rather sloppily smearing left-over blue 'pearl' paint and then spraying painting a series of green hills - the backdrop hangs a few inches in front of the wall so the wood pieces lean rather precariously. I stapled the backdrop to cardboard strips and then the strips to the ceiling joists.

Added a newstand and water tank to the station platform.

[cnw1995]

More photos. The nascent tank farm - held together with magnets.

Dinky and Britains farm animals from the 1930s behind that row of scraggly trees left over from my N scale layout. The bushes are scrap metal.


A 'side' view of the Girard station and semaphore...

Note the yarn 'loops' tied around the blocks in the cars behind the FA so they can be more easily picked up by the Marx crane.

[cnw1995]

A failed attempt at an atmospheric shot - showing my attempts at ballasting track

Trying again to show the ballast.

Note the concrete wall - painted yellow - of the crawlspace - the object on the wall is a small shortwave radio. Below the 'grass' surface is a 4x8 pink foam board, then a couple of layers of collapsed boxes from our moving into the house, then a vapor barrier and about 4 feet of rocks.

The blue cushion - from a bench seat of our kitchen table lets me scoot to the 'canal' running along the middle of the layout. I climb a step ladder and crawl down the cushion...it's a little easier on the knees.

[Jim Duda]

DougGer - is there anyway you can resize your images to a MAX of 640 X 480 at LOW resolution next time? It took about a minute to open the thread and I'm on a T1 connection which is about as fast as you can get. Those on slower dial-ups will have to wait awhile...

But the pics are gorgeous!!!

I'll bet there are some of us that are already getting ready for the Sunday "Pic Off"...wink)

[ChiefEagles]

Great job, Doug. Sure glad I did not have dial up. [;)]

[cnw1995]

Whoops, Let me try to fix this. ...I'm sorry they are so large.

Any suggestions on how to shrink these? My default image editor is Microsoft Paint which really doesn' t allow me to do anything with it. If I resize the picture as Jim suggests, all it does is cut out huge swaths of it.

[Jim Duda]

I think there are some FREE Image Editing Apps on the internet - maybe some forum members can help us out here. I use Photoshop so I'm clueless how the other stuff works...

[Anonymous]

Keep Us posted, I like to watch the progress before CTT shoots the finished layout !

[ChiefEagles]

Doug, I see nothing wrong with the size. Just a lot at one time. But that was OK. You using Shutterfly?

[spankybird]

Chief, click on the pics and see how big they get.

Doug - great pics but we have to have you re-size them a little. If you use Shutterfly, they have an automatic resizing in it. BTW - it free to use them.

tom

[spankybird]

Doug - did you get software with your camera?

here is some new diecast cars






tom

[wrmcclellan]

Hey Doug,

Classic toy training look there! Keep it up!

BTW - I wonder if you will do as one of my relatives in Akron years ago. He had a similar crawl space setup. After a couple of years he started digging it out and lowered the floor to the same as the basement floor. Added concrete lower walls to hold the sides (his wall did not go to the basement floor level in the crawl space area) and a concrete floor to match the existing basement. Took him about a year of spare time - but other than the actual concrete pour - he did all the work himself.

Regards,
Roy

[laz 57]

Looks good DOUG, enjoy those pics keep um comin.
Laz 57

[Anonymous]

i use shutterfly, great product, ur pics came up fast as all do.. i have cable and no prob.