Speeder Shed

I spent some time this afternoon working on a Clever Models speeder shed. It is nearly done, I just need to do some weathering to soften the exposed white paper surfaces. Now a speeder shed isn’t really appropriate for my era, rather my railroad would have hi-rail trucks instead. For a while now I’ve had an idea to put a model railroad museum on my CR23 free-mo module in part because I like railroad history and because it would give me a nice stealth programming track.

I had never really known what structures to use for it though, I’ve been considering the Motrak Models MOW shed (and still am) but it seems to be a speeder shed would be a great addition to any museum. The only thing I might change with the speeder shed is the base, I built the card stock version that comes with it but being a module that will, hopefully, move a lot I might try building one out of wood for durability. It will be hard to do though, this one looks really nice!

CR23 Updates

I’ve been terrible at blogging lately but have actually made some progress on the layout. I’ve got much of the wiring done, I have all the loconet wiring done except one UP5 (I’ve got one, the standard calls for one on each side). That leaves just the track power which is basically just finding the right cinch plugs.

I’ve also made some changes in the scenery, I wasn’t happy with the way the Walthers road stuff worked out. The section that cross the track was a bit wider than the rest of the road kits so it didn’t look right and it would have been very difficult to fix, I wasn’t too happy with my paint job, and I decided I didn’t want a perpindicular crossing so I opted for an angled crossing.

Printing Models!

Something I’ve wanted to try for a while (since I listed to Model Railcast #151) is building a card stock kit. In theory it always seemed like something I could probably handle. I finally decided to set some time aside tonight to try tonight and ended up going with a control shed by Clever Models.

I’d say the top three features of card stock models is (in no particular order) price, instant delivery, and the ability to print new parts if you make a mistake. First off I had to wait for my new kit to be delivered:

Even with the little fingers grabbing for it the USPS can’t beat that delivery time!

I would have preferred to work with a smaller knife but all I had handy was a utility knife and brand new blade. I’ll be picking up an X-Acto knife in the future to make it easier to work with the more fine details.

Since I didn’t have a fine blade to work with and this was my first model I decided to forego the super-fine details. As soon as I have an X-Acto I’ll definitely be using them as it should really make it pop!

It was surprisingly easy to go from a flat piece of paper to the main structure, all it takes is some careful scoring to make folding easier and a tiny dab of glue. I will need to come back later and put some color in the edges created. I have gotten a few suggestions that I’ll be mulling over and finishing another time.

As I’ve already mentioned I need to work on the bright edges but most importantly I’ve proved I can build a card stock model and I had a lot of fun doing it (this is a hobby after all, it should be fun!)