Aftermath

So, I've delayed writing about the Springfield show because I've been distracted. Yearbook final deadline is March 1, our club is having its first operating session in years and general business with life in general.

The show? Oh yeah -- the show. It was great. I had the good fortune of being able to introduce some of the QCMRA people to the NE Free-mo people and it went very well. As usual, the NEFM people put together an amazing experience. Setup went smoothly, operations kept the layout busy all weekend, and everybody had a great time.

My module has never looked better and thanks to a little (ok, a lot of) track cleaning by Mike McNamara, it even operated fairly well. Almost enough encouragement for me to build a second.

And on that note, the QCMRA people are very interested in building Free-mo modules. Hopefully, we'll have something to show this summer.

What follows are a few photos of my module as well as the video of the entire layout (produced by the afore-mentioned mensch, Mike McNamara.

Status - 3 days to go

This has been a busy couple of weeks; not all of it railroad related.

Finishing up college applications with my daughter, dealing with the aftermath of my dad's passing, semester grades, yearbook. Lots to do; lot's been done.

So far on the module, I've:

1. Redone the roads and sidewalks using Walther's asphalt road system. It looks a lot better than the foamcore did. I slightly adapted them to fit the space that was there. Not perfect, but a lot better. Still have to add grade crossings.
2. Chose not to do foundations for the buildings; removed all the old foamcore. 
3. Made sure every square inch of wood (other than what the buildings will cover) has some sort of ground cover. I used dirt on much of the north side for parking lots. I'll detail it later this week.
4. Bought and prepared trees. I got a bag of inexpensive bottle brush trees from Amazon. Sprayed them individually with matte clearcoat and covered with ground foam, They look better and I'll install them later this week.
5. Painted and ballasted the track -- painting went ok, ballasting not so much. See note below :(
6. Thanks to Dennis at QCMRA, got the Cinch Jones plugs replaced with Powerpoles. Still have to install them but that can happen at the show if I don't get to it before then.
7. Have done some scenery refreshing; still more to do.
8. Fixed a couple of structures. 

Still to do:

1. Weather and detail the roads and sidewalks.
2. Add grade crossings.
3. Detail the scenery with bushes, trees and a couple more grass patches.
4. Paint the areas under the foundations black.
5. Clean up the track. Ballasting went poorly and I need to use a wirebrush to remove excess ballast to make sure that the track is usable. This could take a full night :( Lessons learned about being more carful when ballasting. I may need to repaint the inside of the rails and the ties. I'll buy Woodland Scenics markers at the show and take care of it there.
6. If time, repaint the sides of the module. The dessert sand color has gotten dirty over the years. I'm thinking of getting some dark green and redoing it -- at the least, redoing the visible sides.
7. Pack all the structures, rolling stock and whatever tools I'm bringing.

I'm sure I'm missing a couple of things, but this is fairly comprehensive. I'll post photos later tonight. I'm excited; first show with this module in at least three years.

Start Me Up

Three Years. It's been three years since I looked at my Free-mo module or have done anything to it.
Why? Daughter in high school. Two dogs. Pneumonia a year ago. My model railroad club. Working on the yearbook for school. Other distractions.
However, I'm taking the module to the Amherst show this year but it will need some fixes before we go.

1. Redo the roads, parking lots, sidewalks and foundations -- I did them with foamcore the first time and they didn't hold up well. I'm using styrene this time.
2. Finish weathering the rails (dry brush gray paint) and ballast the tracks.
3. Replace the Cinch Jones connectors with Anderson Powerpoles and add a booster common wire.
4. Touch up the scenery.
5. Add UP5 to 'front' side.
6. Review all the structures, other details and rolling stock.

The show is January 25 and 26. That’ll  gives me 17 days as of today to get that all done. I bought a 2' X 4' sheet of 1/16" styrene from Dick Blick yesterday for $16 so that will take care of all the roads and sidewalks and building foundations. I'll cut the roads using a pair of Cutco scissors that I've used for styrene before. I'll paint the roads with flat black spray paint, the sidewalks with off-white craft paint and the foundations with gray craft paint. I'll mark the road stripes with Woodland Scenics road striping pens. This whole project should only take a few evenings.

The track: gray drybrushing should take one night and ballasting one more.

Another night for the Powerpoles and booster common wire. May be able to add the UP5 the same night.

Another night to touch up the scenery.

One night to review all of the other stuff I'll be taking.

Ten nights out of 17 days. I can do this.