Scenery Work

With lots more time on my hands, I've been working on scenery, for which I have enough material without the need to run out. I certainly hope our local train stores survive this crisis. Meantime, I'm working on time-consuming projects that I hadn't been doing when I had others that nevertheless required trips out.

The biggest one is installing trolley-interurban tracks in Lake Street in Zenith. When I built it, I used modular cast plaster city street products from Easy Streets. I don't know if they're still around, I started the whole city scene here 35 years ago. The point of Easy Streets was that the modules extended from the sidewalks (indluded) to the center of the street. The streets in turn were sized to allow you to lay track in a space between the facing modules.

I fully intended to do this when I first started Lake St, but soon enough I realized that HO trolley models won't take the curves you would normally have at city corners -- in HO, maybe 6 inch radius at the outside. So although I glued the City Streets modules down with a gap between them that would have allowed a single track down the middle, I shelved that idea and instead filled the gap with Sculptamold. Then a couple of years ago I rethought the idea and realized that although I couldn't put in right-angle turns at the corners, I could in fact using 15 inch radius sectional track run something down the middle of Lake Street and transition it off onto private right of way.

So I began chipping away at the plaster and Sculptamold. Here are progress shots.

When the track is laid, I'll surface it with spackle, clean the railheads, and carve in flangeways. This will wind up allowing me several feet at least to run a few trolleys.

I also put some finishing touches on the road crossing and surrounding scenery at Sunkist:

The house is a farm house kit that was briefly available from Walthers about 1990. I think it was made by the German firm Faller, and I don't think it was ever reissued, although similar houses are also now available from Walthers.