Structure And Scenery Work

Looking at the photos of Cantil I published in last Sunday's post, I realized I hadn't worked on this area in quite some time, so I started to spruce it up. In particular, I realized it's a good spot to place the other Bachmann boxcar body that I got in a double kit last year:

I also "dirted in" the loading ramp a little better, but there's more to do in this area.

I got quite a bit done on the T-Trak layout. I had an early Heljan-Con Cor grain elevator kit from the 1970s that I never assembled back in the day when I had an N layout in a walk-in closet. The main sticking point was that it was colored in brick-red plastic, but the "bricks" seemed much too large, and I wasn't sure what to do with it. One day I started looking at images of old grain elevators and feed mills on Google and discovered that there was such a thing as a cinder block grain elevator of this style. Then it dawned on me that the "bricks" in the old Con Cor castings could be done as cinder blocks, not bricks, as long as I painted this right.

So I airbrushed the walls Floquil Aged Concrete (Scalecoat does the same color) and used Roberts mortar to put the mortar lines in:

I decided to pair it with an American Model Builders Hitzeman Feed Mill. On one of my DVDs, there's a contemporary shot of Grabill, IN with a large wooden grain elevator or feed mill painted in this color, so that's what color I used for it:

With the Just Plug system now compatible with DCC via the NCE Illuminator, I'm installing lighting in as many buildings as I can on the T-Trak modules. I installed lighting for the office in the grain elevator, as you can see here:

I haven't changed the CVs on the Illuminator for this module yet to dim the lights to their final value. The AMB feed mill will also get lights in its office. I still have to add a few parts to the feed mill, and I will also add a Rix grain leg to modernize it.