Progress 7 (Go to: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9)

(56-58) Somewhere in the back my gullet, I was not pleased with the "ribbon of blue" false color of the river and decided to give a "natural look" more of a go. Unfortunately, while the prototype river is many shades of mud or pea soup or gray or black (all depending on the season and angle of view) it is hard to get something that is real yet aesthetically pleasing under room lighting. Regardless, I painted some false depth and algae murkiness as is seen in the real life river and covered it with a goodly helping of gloss acrylic medium (that cheap and very effective cousin to "water' modeling products. Needless to say the ends of the layout needed to be dammed, even though it self levels and most went to the middle. Three days later and all the "milky-ness" dried to crystal clear. I'm still kind of "eh" on the results... I may try again.

(59) Say 'Goodbye' to the well-meaning shelf idea and it's ill-conceived design and execution. The shelf was originally meant to retract in an "out of view" cool-like fashion. It did. But the power pack and clunky (what-was-I-thinking) knife switch for the mine spur, did not. So it stuck out like a bad under-bite jaw on my, otherwise, clean layout. It had to go. And it did.

(60) "MASSIVE CONTROLLED POWER" Isn't that fun to say? Try it. Anyway, that funny bit of copy writing is written on the box of my new 600 gigawatt power plant that I mounted out of site, just under the layout. The only reason I bought something with enough G-Scale running chernobyl power for my tiny N-scale is it is the only plain DC/AC transformer with a hand-held remote. "MASSIVE CONTROLLED POWER" ...heh.

(61) I fabricated two metal straps and plastic coated them to mount the new transformer under the table. I also cleaned up quite a bit of wiring and relocated the mine spur power switch to a smart little red rocker switch, discreetly hidden under the lip of the table. Very James Bond like, I must say. I also get to say the word"fabricated" which is right up there with "MASSIVE CONTROLLED POWER"

(62) Only the hand held controller shows on the layout. It's velcro(ed) to one of the legs and makes a cool ripping sound when pulled off in a flourish to impress eager onlookers.

(63) The remote has some really nifty features for a plain old DC in this world of DCC doohickeys... Such as "Momentum Control" and "Realistic Breaking" But, my favorite is the clean and level DC power it provides the track. No spotty hurks and jerks or painful hill climbing. The unit rocks.

(64) There's the old saddle back steam switcher on the Dumluk Mine spur with a short coal drag. The 32 roars by with passengers on some cars on loan from the New York Central. Its a small layout, but busy none the less.

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