Stillwater Milling

Thanks to Greg and some resin castings he made for me, I have been able to (almost) finish the external elevator for my feed mill at Davis. I still have to add ladders and platforms to the elevator, and then paint it. I also have to finish the roofs and painting for the rest of the building. But it's all coming together very nicely.

Street side view...

Track side view...

Thanks for the castings Greg. They were very easy to work with.

MelbNtrak visit 20th March 2012

Some of the MelbNtrak guys came over for a visit. We did a lot of talking, and ran a few trains. And I took a few photos.

Alan (with camera) and Rod.

(L-R) Greg, Rod, John C, Barry, Alan and John F.

John C and Alan.

Gordon White Lumber

Over the past few days I've been building the structures that will represent Gordon White Lumber at Pauls Valley, on the GC&SF. The main construction is complete, but I still have to paint the buildings, add signs, and perhaps some detail parts.

Here are the buildings sitting alongside the siding that will service them. The buildings need to be raised a few millimeters so that their doors match the height of the freight car doors.

Two buildings were made from plain styrene sheet, to which I attached corrugated metal siding. The other two were made from Evergreen "metal siding". The real metal siding has the same width "ribs" as the Evergreen siding, so I'm hoping that once the buildings have been painted and weathered, there'll be no obvious difference between the two materials.

Now for the bad news. During the week I received an email from the real Gordon White Lumber. They told me that Gordon White Lumber (which also has yards in several other cities around Pauls Valley) only acquired the Pauls Valley yard in 1981. The yard was Burke Lumber in the 1940s, and was owned by Roy Perkins in 1960 (the year that I model). I suppose that I should change the name of my industry to Perkins Lumber, but that won't happen soon as it will involve replacing a lot of waybills.

Ops session 20th January 2012

The GC&SF crew got together again on 20th January to run some more trains.

Once again, John C ran the show at Pauls Valley. Here's John switching some cars at the elevators:

Noel and Dennis ran the yard at Ardmore:

Dennis is switching cars while Charlie watches: 

John F at Pauls Valley, while Rob switches at Wynnewood: 

Greg, Rob and Dennis:

This was Dennis's first run on the GC&SF and he did a great job. Welcome to the crew Dennis.

Playing with focus stacking software

I've been playing with two 'focus stacking' software programs to try to get better depth of field in the photos that I post here.

Here's a composite image I've made of Pauls Valley from 14 jpeg photos, using a free product called CombineZP:

This image was made using the same 14 photos, and a commercial product called Zerene Stacker, which sells for USD $89.00 (personal license):

Note that the CombineZP image was cropped slightly, compared to the Zerene image.(I did that - not the products themselves.)

Having compared the original output files, I have no doubt that Zerene does a better job. But if you're going to compress the images and upload them to the internet, is it worth the $89.00? 

Ops session 9th December 2011

I called the crew together for an operating session on Friday, 9th December to launch the rebuilt town of Pauls Valley. Here are some photos that Greg took.

John C is the yard operator at Pauls Valley. In the background, Barry is waiting for his train to emerge from the hidden north-end staging yards.

John F is running the yard at Ardmore, and here he is switching some cars at the Bluebonnet feed mill:

Rod was switching some cars for the Kerr McGee refinery at Wynnewood, when some of them decided to lie down on their side.  Ooops!!

Noel is running the Ardmore local freight, and here he is switching some cars at Gene Autry:

Barry is monitoring the progress of his train as it enters the north-end staging yard:

Group shot - Noel, Rod, me, John F and Charlie:

John switching at Ardmore, while Rod is switching at Wynnewood:

Here's Charlie having a rest in the aisle between Davis and Dougherty:

Pauls Valley rebuild

As a temporary measure, Pauls Valley was originally laid out with old Peco code 80 track that I had salvaged from my previous GC&SF. Over the past few months I have completely rebuilt the town using Atlas code 55 track, and then installed push-rods to operate the turnouts.

Here's how the town looks:

At the same time, I also relocated the control panel and video monitor for the north-end staging yard's return loop, from the centre of the fascia, to the end.