Yeah! I'm a cartoon character after all!
Becky
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
A BRIEF MUSTER CALL
For a few hours today, most of the principal players for this layout gathered together in a formation closer to the final plan than ever before. While this is the room they'll be displayed in, they're not quite in the right places. But they are lined up in the right order, more or less. Conspicuously absent are the Matterhorn, most of Fantasyland and most of Tomorrowland which is still in it's design phase. However you can see all of Main Street, New Orleans Square/Liberty Square and Frontierland and most of Adventureland. (Minus accessories.)
The reason for this temporary set-up is that the storage room they've been hiding in needed to be cleaned out. That room will house this:
The Standard Gauge trains displaced from under the tree by the construction of Disneyland. Other than accessories and the Marx Civil War Mansion, all of these structures are cardboard. Which is why the measurements don't match what you may know about Lionel prewar buildings I used as a guide. They're decent representations of the 127, 115, 155 etc., but not exactly the same size as the originals.
PRIMED AND READY
Detail washes, spackle snow and hot glue icicles are next.
Becky, this project is turning out great. When you first started this thread, I was curious as to how you were planning to build something this complex. As the thread progressed, I began to realize that you were actually going to accomplish your objective. I am looking forward to seeing the finished layout.
Karl
Thanks!
I used the "fly by the seat of your pants" method of planning this one!
LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW, LET IT SNOW!
A pint of spackle and instant winter!
Becky you never stop impressing me with your talent each piece seems to out shine the one befor you have a real talent there and I enjoy seeing your creativity, its great.
Life's hard, even harder if your stupid John Wayne
http://rtssite.shutterfly.com/
A PAIR OF STATIONS
Not totally new, but I finally mounted the Casey Jr. station to a base. I also installed the gold fence, which is made of rubber and doesn't hold it's shape very well.
Also:
While this one hasn't really got anything to do with Disney, I decided to go ahead and use it as my Frontierland station. It's the Springfield Ill. depot from buildyourownmainstreet.org and I've always wanted to use it. So when I decided to use my MTH water tower on the Disneyland layout, I figured I should have a decent depot to go with it. So, there you go. Abe Lincoln comes to Frontierland!
hey its your disneyland so you can add what you want. It all loks great keep on charging your doing great.
WELCOME, FOOLISH MORTALS...
While we were away during site maintenence, I built the graveyard that accompanies the Haunted Mansion.
The tombstones are of course humerous!
That finishes up all the major modules for Frontierland.
Your lighting choices - the globes on the haunted house walls, the lanterns on the Robinson tree house, etc. - are outstanding. They really make the scene. I also love how beautifully you 'finished' the cardstock / paper models. It makes them 'fuller'
Doug Murphy 'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...' Henry V.
THE MIGHTY MATTERHORN
Last of the big modules! 3 feet tall and 2 foot square at the base. The tunnel is fitted with cutouts in the floor to accept O31 ties. If you look carefully, you can see one of them making almost a perfect line between 2 of the pine trees on the left. These slots will keep the track centered and hopefully stop any "drift" that might occur from the train's motion.
How I made my icicles:
Using a spare subscription card as a catchall, I simply dripped hot glue down from the top of the cavern opening. After the glue cooled, I trimmed off the excess with scissors and viola!
Instant icicles! And they're flexible too! This is one of the 2 "Ice Grottoes" for the Skyway. Similarly, the waterfall is made from hot glue too:
Cap'n Nemo cruises the lagoon!
So, from here on out the things I'll be building will be much, much smaller!
Becky.......... I can't stop visiting your thread. Your creativity and talent is amazing. All you need is one of those Newport RI mansions or a museum to showcase all of your masterpieces!!!!
Jack
IF IT WON'T COME LOOSE BY TAPPING ON IT, DON'T TRY TO FORCE IT. USE A BIGGER HAMMER.
I agree with Rock Island, this is worthy of a permanent home. I am very fond of Tom Synder's layout, but in comparison, using the criteria of doing more with less, and not having the bottomless pockets that lead to "professionally" done layouts ( which are non projects ) your work outshines them by a very long country mile. This is one of the top ten threads in my book..ever at CTT or elsewhere.
If this is not a future article in CTT, as well as one from Northwoods on prewar AF, as well as the recent restoring tinplate thread....well, in a sense they already are, albeit in a alternative media to hard print.
My congratulations again, and best wishes.
Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.
Thanks guys! I really appreciate all the kudos!
Who knows. One of these days, if it survives, maybe I'll let Disney display it at one of the parks. Just as long as they put me on the payroll and let me come visit it!
Excellent work Becky! We've not thought of hot glue until now, hmmmmm. We used Water Effects from Scenic Woodlands for water falls and had pretty good luck but kinda expensive, thanks for posting!
Jon
So many roads, so little time.
Thanks! It really doesn't look too bad in person! It's a bit "foggier" than I'd prefer, but in these settings it works. I also used it to make a smaller waterfall on Tom Sawyer Island. On that diorama, the water in the river is polyeurethane. Believe it or not, the water below the Matterhorn is just peel and stick laminate over painted cardboard!
Here's the current diagram:
Buildings in light grey, except those on Main Street and the Marquee at the base of the tree, are items I haven't completed yet. The more colorful shapes are completed structures.
STILL WORKING...
Probably the last big project before installation is finishing up the Skyway. Today I built four of these 16 inch high towers to support the system. Now I'll have to knuckle down and build about 2 dozen tiny gondolas. It's not a job that I've been looking foreward to because it's so painstaking and painfully redundant. But, here I go!
GETTING CLOSER TO THE FINAL DESIGN
Compare today's diagram with the previous ones. I've tightened things up quite a bit and created some fancy trackwork through Tomorrowland.
I see that you have a metric couch and TV, and that the soft metric conversions are from feet (8'x3') and inches (23"x29") to centimeters. I can see a rationale for such a soft conversion in the first place (the couch); but I'm having trouble reconciling the concept to the TV.
https://hpcrd.lbl.gov/staff/olken/metrication.htm
Bob Nelson
It's a Japanese TV!
Actually, it's a quirk of the RR-Track 2.0 (MTH Edition) software. It was just easier to draw the filled shapes using metric numbers than imperial. A half or a quarter inch is easy enough to work with, but when you get to 16ths and 32nds it can get messy. So using measurements on a tens scale got my shapes closer to the needed sizes and was just plain easier. For measurements where I didn't have a metric ruler, like the size of the room for which I used a 100' tape, I just did the simple conversion of 25.4mm = 1". Since most of the modules aren't exact squares or rectangles this helped me build in a fudge factor.
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