Yawn. More buildings

Well this is getting tedious, isn't it?

Nonetheless,  a new pair of buildings have sprouted in the last few days to go to the right of the Alte Post.

The Volg and turret building have also been tarted up slightly with some roof weathering and fascias. The Volg also got a few windows on the side facing the Alte Post just in case someone looks from over there, but alas the grey building didn't receive the same luxurious treatment.

As can be seen below, a start has been made on the huge building to the right of the pic below - I think perhaps an old hotel now an old folks home? At this rate we will have this side of town grown out in no time. Go the Coronavirus!  *

* said in jest of course...

Mini-Gerig

My mini-Hotel Gerig progressed today. Its a little smaller and less windowy than the real one. I handpainted the hotel name.

 And of course I never remember to take these prototype pics that are on my laptop down to the trainroom, so build these largely from memory. This from Google Streetview:

Installed and barely visiblee. The three nearest buildings are just sitting there, but I have installed some (way-overscale) 'cobblestones' around, between and under them:

 Need some more of that road material. Its rather good.

One and a half more Wassen buildings

This is a house that is visible from afar that sits behind the corner turret-building (it probably has a nicer sounding name than that in real life) that was modeled last time. This is a foamboard core with thin card shutters glued on, windows drawn on, and a roof plonked on top. 

 And with a little paint:

It actually looks a bit like the real thing (although I declined to make the fancy roof dormer):

Later I added a base made of 'stone' for it to sit on.

Also, the little garage/stablehouse behind the Alte Post was added. And also visible here is the start of the Hotel Gerig that sits behind it:

Two more buildings - Volg and the Corner Turret.

I've slowly pottered on and built two more buildings over the past few days.

In the real town of Wassen, between the Hotel Alte Post and the Sustenpass road there are a string of buildings. My feeble memory thought there was only one (the handy Volg supermarket where one could grab a banana and a bar of chocolate for the days railfanning and a small bottle of wine or Champers for the evening's piccy-processing) but it turns out there are a string of five of them.... The Alte Post is just to the right of the Volg with a walkway between them.

Such a  pain there is very limited Google Streetview in Wassen. I'd only left space on the layout for the Volg, or at a pinch one and a half buildings, but as there is this rather tasty building on the Sustenpass corner (below),  that deserves to be included:

And that would leave me room for about 60% of the Volg.

And so with much mucking about, the following has emerged. I thought the corner turret might look a little silly in white so I made it yellow to stand out a little. It's all built on a slope because the road outside is on a grade. Artists licence applies in other areas as well...

The turret was made from a Tamiya wooden paintbrush - they are longer than they need to be :)   and have no taper to their wooden shaft. I whacked off the end, stuck it in a drill and applied sandpaper until it conformed to the right shape at both ends. A tiny thin strip of card went around the top to represent rain spouting or somesuch, and more paper was applied to fill in the bigger-than-needed hole in the roof shingles. Just looking at the prototype pic, I need to add a spike on top of it.

As usual things are a little wonky and skonky in places, and they certainly looks far better from across a large room than up close, but it's passable on the layout.

(p.s. none of the buildings in the foreground have been glued down so they all have random leans to them.  Not that I expect that to improve wildly when they are stuck down !

My old iPhone takes a pic at street level...

Model Modeling

While I had the big camera out,  a few pictures were staged on Wassen....

Re 4/4s with etched pantos, the lead one superdetailed, the others have been partially done.

Three Levels at Wassen

Peter Bertschi gets his shot at the Command Post (he was a rail photographer I met up here at this very spot in 2016)

Included for scale...

Scenicking through the Lockdown

With most of the world (including here) on Coronavirus lockdown, one might as well visit the train room to fill in an hour or two here and there.

Over the past few days I've made up some brass catenary masts for the middle level (finally!).

There are a few missing out of shot to the right but things are coming together and the layout is beginning to look more complete now. I placed my 1:300th PostBus on the road bridge for these pictures - it looked good in a forced-perspective-kinda-way until the upper level train was placed behind it!  

Interestingly, on the real Middle Meinreuss bridge, there have been two layouts of the masts in recent times. The bridge used to have two sets of masts spaced out on the main span, but since the bridge has had concrete walkways added, it has had one set in the centre. I didn't include the concrete walkways as they don't look quite as nice as the old style to my eye. 

Here is one of my prototype pics from August 2016 with the sticky-out concrete walkways (as not modeled!) and the posts in the centre of the span (as modeled!)

A tunnel portal has been installed at the left side of the middle level - my cliff face is necessarily steeper than the hill that the similarly shaped portal burrows into on the real planet Earth because it conceals the top level balloon loop.

And some trees have grown around and above it on the 'South Hill' tidying up this end of the layout a lot.

My tree supplies are running low though, so I need to pace myself...

The Re 460 pt 2

Finishing up the Re 460, I added some air hoses on my new lower chin, put a dab of red and white paint at the top of each hose to represent the operating cocks.

I also added a 'p' shaped fold of fine wire as a coupler and folded up some pantographs (remembering at the last second to put the 'up' one at the back). Yes, while the 460 originally had this style of panto, they have over the last decade or so been fitted with single arm top halves rather than the split arm  triangular style on most of the other stock that I had etched up.

Not too shabby. The white window blind is quite visible on the front-on pic. I suppose it should have been a slightly creamier colour.

While looking at these pictures taken with my 'proper' camera - as opposed to the pics from my 8 year old iPhone that usually populate these dispatches, some impressive details on Marklin's model revealed themselves. Not only is the correct name 'Säntis' clearly visible in the full sized pic under the driver's side window, but the Pininfarina logo is also in place on the other side.

Neither of these I've seen with my naked eye before, so I must say, well done Marklin, this is a far better model than I expected it to be.

At some stage I might fit some lead weight into the top of the body in the hope of going it a bit more grunt on the hills.