New Downtown Deco Structures OnThe HO Layout

I'm almost finished with a Downtown Deco Downtown Overlook Hotel and have begun to plant it in its final spot. I added Woodland Scenics light diffusing film to the interior of the kit with an aim to adding Just Plug lighting. The building at right is an Ed Fulasz hydrocal kit, while the station is a Life Like kit of a B&O prototype.

This is the West Zenith station area, which I've decided to expand with a few more structures, including the Bachmann Lackawanna concrete tower that I recently added. I really like the way that the background on the far wall matrches the foreground scene here. The tower has also had light diffusing film added, as will the station. All will get Just Plug lighting. I still need to dirt in the hotel and add sidewalks.

Here's a view looking in the other direction:

As you can see, the whole area is under construction, with new scenery revisions in progress.

By extending the sidewalk on Lake St in Zenith, I gained enough space to insert a Downtown Deco Cooter's Liquor store. This has yet to receive signs and doors. It fits an expended space to the left of of the bank building. Due to the work I've been doing there, the area is dusty, with details, figures, and vehicles removed. Because work is under way, everything is also out of plumb.

The shoe shop and radio shop are a Main Street Heritage Models resin kit. The bank is from DPM. Business signs are from Blair Line.

Finishing Up On Lake St

I'm in the last stages of retrofitting a stretch of trolley-interurban track on the west end of Lake St in Zenith. What I did over the space of several years was to chisel and dremel out a channel in the middle of the plaster street that woukld allow me to drop in sections of HO code 100 track.

This was a messy and tedious project that I worked on in spurts, taking long breaks. I was finally spurred on to finish when George Sellios reopened his layout after the lockdowns, and visitors began posting new photos on Facebook.

It took me a while to figure out the neatest and least troublesome way to resurface the street with the track in it and avoid having to clean out the flangeways.

What I settled on was to use spackle to fill in the space between the edge of the channel and the outsides of the rails. Then I sanded the spackle smooth to match the street surface. You can see the initial result below.

Then I realized I had some Walthers 933-3140 street track inserts left over from other projects. I used the center sections from these to cover the space between the rails. Then I painted the surface with Woodland Scenics Asphalt using the bottle shown in the photo below.

There are still some gaps and messy parts that showed themwelves after painting. I can fill these again with spackle and paint them, although no street surface is perfect in the real world.

I can finally get around to cleaning up the mess and putting vehicles, figures, and street details back in place.

T-Trak Updates

I've been doing more structure work on the modules, starting to fill in the city area. The latest is a Downtown Deco N scale Palace Hotel Card Room kit:

This is a deceptively complex project. Since the walls don't have windows cast all the way through, you have to paint the recessed window locations black before anything else, but then you have to paint and weather the walls, which have several different textures, plus add the mortar, and finally paint the Card Room sign using the stencil provided in the kit. Just finishing four simple walls and the roof took a week. Another issue was that the walls don't match dimensionally out of the box, so you have to trim and sand them so they'll fit.

The laser cut windows and doors don't fit the cast openings very well, either, but with everything together, the overall appearance isn't too bad. I still have to add a few more signs and details. I've done a number of Downtown Deco HO kits and have two more HO on order. The N aren't really up to the HO quality.

GATX 45605 is a tank car I kitbashed 40 years ago from three Atlas N beer can tank cars, which was about the only way you could get a longer modern tank car at the time. It still looks pretty good.

The building in the background is a Trackside Scenery BF-07 building flat to which I've added more depth via foamcore, plus roofing via downloadable texture off the web. I'm slowly adding other details like roof ducts to create a more 3D effect.

Progress On Lake St in Zenith

I was able to dremel and chisel out the hardshell in the knoll at the end of Lake St that would allow me to extend thr trolley-interurban street track a few extra inches into private right of way beyond the end of the street street. At the same time, I was able to dress out the end of the street with the Walthers subway entry and some additional sidewalk. The photo below was taken handheld with automatic settings, because I couldn't get a good angle with my tripod:

By adding about an inch of sidewalk to the length of the street in doing this, I was able to relocate the structures at the end of the street so I could add another, narrow structure. This will likely be a Downtown Deco tavern/liquor store. This photo was also handheld with automatic settings.

Finally, I retrofitted the IHC town house that had been on the corner with Woodland Scenics light diffusing film. This is a big improvement.

Cutting into the hillock has also added enough space to let me add another structure next to this one.