Progress At Malabar

Malabar is located on a foot-wide shelf in a storaage room next to the main layout room. I've slowly been bringing it up to speed over the last few years. The latest addition is a Thomas Yorke Industrial Engine House kit from Dr Ben. (The kit appears to br mainly Yorke's plaster castings for walls and details, with roof and doors re-engineered by Dr Ben.) It's been one of the most challenging kits I've done, but it's finally shaping up.

It was a tight squeeze. Before I ordeered the kit, I printed out the plans and glujed them to cardboard to mock up whether it would fit. It did, barely. Once it was in place, I had to trim about half an inch off the finished roof on the back to squeeze it in, but it all came out OK in the end.

I still have to add the doors.

The depot area is to the left of the engine house. Left to right are a partly visible scratchbhuilt California barn; an SS Ltd Rock Island boxcar depot; and a Bachmann boxcar section house. Behind them are a Yorke bar and a Kingmill building flat. I'll be adjusting their location as time goes on.

Next steps will involve more dirting-in of the engine house and various details in the area.

My Bet Is That Modeltrainstuff.com Is Heading The Way Of Caboose Hobbies

For a while in the early 2000s, I was a regular online customer of Caboose Hobbies in Denver. Memories are probably short, but for a time, it was one of the major online dealers, on a par with Trainworld and MB Klein/Modeltrainstuff now. But even before Caboose Hobbies lost its building and closed in 2016, it had been going downhill.

I quit dealing with them following a succession of screwups -- they'd habitually send only part of my order, claiming the other items weren't in stock. Then a day or so later, they'd discover they had the items after all and send them in a separate shipment, charging me the extra postage for a shipment that should have gone all in one box.

Each time it happened, I'd call, they'd say they were sorry and credit my card for the extra postage -- but it kept happening, and I got tired of calling. Finally they charged my card for someone else's $700 order, which was a big surprise when I got that month's statment. They said they were sorry and credited my card, but I realized I couldn't deal with them any longer. This was nine years before they lost their building and closed, but I suspect there was a lot more wrong behind the scenes at that point.

The new store apparently never took off.

I quit dealing with Caboose Hobbies about 2007, especially when I noticed that MB Klein was shifting its focus to on line discount. I noticed that Ted Klein, who'd run the business since the 1950s, passed away less than a year ago. Since then, it's had serious problems with longer and longer shipment delays. As of this past week, an order I placed on February 6 had gone unfilled by Thursday, Febrary 11, and the shipping status on their site said they were shipping only orders placed up to February 3 or so.

It looked like it would take them a week or more to fill my order. The problem is that, as their shipping delays grew, I was placing more orders with Trainworld, which has continued to ship pretty consistently the next day since last summer, when the first COVID lockdowns were lifted.

I opened a support request with Klein pointing out that they were taking longer and longer to fill orders, when Trainworld consistently ships the next day. Klein took two days to answer, and when they did, they said they tell customers it takes 5 o 7 days to ship on the site, it's because of COVID or maybe the holidays, and I should be patient, they're trying.

I told them Trainworld ships next day.

Hobby stores come and hobby stores go. I get the sense that when Ted Klein passed away, his store began circling the drain. For now, it's mostly Trainworld for me, and what I can't get there, I can probably get on eBay.

Improvements To My N Scale Architect HARRIS Tower

I've published a photo of my N Scale Architect PRR HARRIS Tower here before. This is how it looked after I'd assembled and painted it, with Roberts Products mortar applied, and instaalled a Just Plug LED:

I was never completely happy with it. The embossed brickwork didn't work all that well with the Roberts Products mortar, and I didn't like the uneven look of the lighting from the single LED. Eventually I installed Woodland Scenics Light Diffusing Film behind the windows, but I still didn't feel like I was finished.

Not long ago I saw a video with a shot of the prototype HARRIS tower in the 1970s. It was much darker than it is now since its resoration. Here's a photo I found on the web of it in that earlier condition:

The video also showed it had ivy growing on its west side, but that's also gone. I decided if I darkened the brick areas and added some ivy, I'd be happier with how the mortar came out. Between the carker brick, the Light Diffusing Film, and the ivy, here's how it wound up:

The ivy is barely visible on the rear corner in the photo above. I made it by smearing full-strength Elmer's glue with a fingertip over the area I wanted to apply the ivy. Then I sifted Woodland Scenics light green turf over the area and let it dry.

I darkened the brick first by brushing brick-colored chalk over the brick areas. I fixed the chalk in place by airbrushing a mixture of a little Tru Color grimy black paint, a little clear flat, and a lot of acetone over the whole tower, including the roof. I didn't bother masking the windows off. This toned down the brick color but left smaller mortar lines visible. I'm much happier with the result.

The Light Diffusing Film also makes the light from the single LED much more even. The NCE Illuminator that I'm using to run the LED also allows me to adjust brightness, and I'll probably dim it.