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.