I bought the little containers like that at the $1.00 store but they are round? And doesn't have the large container either. I think I got 8-10 for a buck? A few years back! Of course you know the dollar store, here one day, gone another. Depending on items!
I still use small med bottles....even the 6" tall ones !! Labels removed...washed throughly. The yellow plastic does make it hard to see whats inside. New labels printed on my new digital label maker helps tons... .
Made some progress installing track feeder wires, doing multiple feeds in some blocks for extra reliability. The work is made a bit more complicated than usual because the layout is designed to be moved, so an allowance for disconnecting wiring must be made between the two HCD tables. As seen on the right, I'm using terminal blocks to do this, so all I'll need to disconnect the wires is a screwdriver. The structural member on the right with the holes in it is where the tables join. I bought spools of 22 AWG wire in colors to match Kato's blue and white. This keeps everything in order. Turnouts are last on the list and 24 AWG wire in black and red is on hand for that. Being that HCDs have no place to hang wires, I struggled a bit with a solution and settled on the wire clips you see here. They have adhesive on the back and seem to work well. I like too that the wires can easily be removed from them for maintenance.
Very nice and clean. You gonna use anything like the WS Just Plug lighting system in the future? Or some type of lighting? I need some clips like that to tidy up my first base and use for the second. You order them online or get then local?
Thank you. Yes, I hope to add lighting when the layout is further along. My control panel even has a "lights" toggle switch for it. The WS stuff looks super cool. I got the clips on line at Wal-Mart.com I think it was.
Excellent work sir. I like how neat, clean and organized it looks. I really like those clips too. They look like they would make it easy to remove and replace any of the wires if needed.
As another update, my plan to bash a Kato plate girder bridge or two to carry a No. 6 turnout was a failure. After destroying a bridge in the process, I ran out of patience and re-examined my track plan. I'll instead place the turnout on nearby "terra firma" and live with a tighter curve radius on the industrial spur, and a bit of a longer reach. The mainline will now happily cross over the yard tracks on two unmodified Kato plate girder bridges. As a result, I needed to produce a few more of my Kato "shorty" bridge piers with 3/8" chopped out of the center to allow milder grades. (Note: the piers are the same height. My cell phone tends to "fisheye" images. ) I'm sure glad I have my ancient bottle of Floquil "Concrete" color paint for this work. Floquil paints always airbrush so nicely.
By the way, I cut out and save the front and back paperboard pieces of cereal boxes as seen above. They're handy for so many things, painting, gluing, creating rough structures to gain a sense of dimension, creating patterns for track components and fitment of wiring components. At $0.00 Ea, the road's Purchasing Agent is a fan.
Also been doing that for years (don't have all of them ). As you mentioned great for making patterns, Sumner
I see a bunch of people on YT use them for their card stock projects, buildings, structures, mocking up... Apparently many uses for cereal boxes as well as clothes pin's? Neat to see how people hold items while painting, either by hand, but airbrush folk's really find strange ways to hold items to be painted. I am gonna buy one of those rechargeable $69 airbrush kit in the future. I never wanted one of those compressor ones! But the cheap one looks cool, just for simple jobs.
In connection with your post elsewhere on painter's tape and my response about how useful the stuff is, inside of each pier in the above photo is a small wad of painters tape that the clothes pin is clamped to.
I was wondering what the clothespins were holding onto inside the piers! Sometimes, flipping the clothespins around and letting their handles expand against the inside of workpieces works too.
I've also used painters tape to put tiny items on it while painting them so they don't move. By doubling it up and using the sticky side. You know those type of items that move when you breath or touch it with a paint brush or pen And it's so cheap and a roll last a long time.
Sometimes, when I'm impatient, I stick a finger or two up inside the object and paint my fingers right along with the object. Or, hold onto an object and paint. And then, get mad, knowing I have to clean the paint off my fingers. When I first got my Treble-O-Lectric train set (age 10), I made cutouts in cereal boxes for tunnels. Doug
I so like it when I'm able to turn my back on the Internet for supplies and buy from a local store. I'm working block wiring under the layout and am in need of heat shrink tubing in blue and white to match Kato's colors. Rather than jump on line to order, I instead visited a local electronics supply store that caters to industrial customers. I found exactly what I needed and at a price that was less than any Internet supplier. And, unlike an Internet store, delivery was instant, the tubing wasn't crushed up to fit in a box and I enjoyed some nice conversation with the staff there.
I knew you were organized, see wiring picture above, not to mention the detail on the bench work, but color matching your heat shrink tubing takes it up another notch Now I am expecting you to wear a Blue & White shirt while you run trains You do know I am just kidding right? But please do take photo's of the wiring work, as I ordered the wire clips and I am stealing ideas from you. Hope you don't mind?
It's admittedly kind of crazy of me to want to color match the tubing. On previous model railroads, I've used old telephone wire, speaker wire and whatever mismatched mess I could cobble together. This sort of thing creates a liability as years pass and maintenance needs to be done. On this version of the DS&N, I resolved to do things right, starting with color-coded wiring and figured I'd carry it to excess with the tubing.
