I've been remiss in posting my latest work, but here's a bit. First, Zimmerman Printing Company, a scratchbuilt project with basswood sheets and dimensional lumber from Northeastern Scale Lumber Co., Grandt Line windows, Walthers HO Roof Details (which look amazingly well sized for O scale!) and Woodland Scenics figures. The interior is detailed and lit, so that at night, the observer discovers new scenes behind the windows and doors.
And speaking of detailed and lit, I've embarked on a project to light up the entire layout with interior lights, lampposts, etc. I already had a handful of buildings with detailed and wired interiors, but hadn't installed a power bus to set up a light circuit. That has changed over the last four weeks and about half the layout is now lit, creating an enchanting 1:48 world after dark. It all started with my curiosity about the Woodland Scenics plug and play lighting system, which now lights one quarter of the layout, and evolved into my recycling power packs and lights left over from my previous HO layout. Since HO lights from 10 years ago were terribly oversized for 1:87 scale, it didn't take much to make them fit a 1:48 scale environment, although many of my leftovers have a European flair that doesn't always fit a narrow gauge environment set on the northeast coast of Vancouver Island in the late 1940s. But as I'm becoming more imaginative and skilled, I've converted a number of them to something that fits and lights the scenery perfectly.
Below is my first run at transformation: 3/16" wood dowels turned into telephone posts through distressing and staining, with the top part of a European-style lampposts attached. The image is pre-weathering so they look even better now, installed to light up the yards of Bar Mills Models structures.
As a bonus, I'm working my way through existing structures as I prepare them for interior and exterior lighting, some of which I built years ago and who've either suffered the ravages of time, or weren't that well executed compared to what I now build. I call it my rehabilitation project, and each one comes off the workbench looking much better than before, thanks to repairs, properly executed weathering and glimpses of another world behind windows and doors. Of course, getting my big hands inside small buildings to caulk corners so light doesn't leak out, to retrofit them with interior details and to install the lighting can force me into devising ingenious solutions. In future, I will prepare all new buildings for some level of interior detail and lighting, as I did with Zimmerman Printing Company above, a few weeks ago, starting with the Bar Mills Models "Railway Express Agency" kit in O Scale now on its way from Maine to the Great White North.
One of these days, I'll set my camera gear up to take High Dynamic Range Imaging pictures of the layout lit up for nighttime service. Since I haven't done any HDRI for years, it might take a while, especially if I've lost the software extension to my digital photography program that makes HDRI production possible when I switched desktops PCs in late 2019.
