May 19, 2018

More podcasting - this time on scenery & structures

 It's time for another podcast, this time a second visit to the Bench Time podcast, where I invited a friend along and we chat about scenery, details, and of course RGS history.

http://hoscalecustoms.com/bench-time-20-featuring-guests-steven-haworth-george-pierson/


May 15, 2018

New supplier for laser-cut windows, and other updates and trivia for your reading pleasure

So, I haven't really had much time for updates - work has been intense for some months now.

But, I did want to let everyone know of a new hobby manufacturer - Rail Scale Models.  These guys have purchased the laser-cut parts line from Rusty Stumps (who are slowing down a bit).  I've used these parts for windows, doors, and sometimes shingles on my projects, and I really like them.

And Banta Modelworks came out with two new offerings for the RGS - a new HOn3 water tank (will serve for Ridgway or Rico), and a set of yard buildings for Rico.  As usual, all wonderful stuff (and newly added to my wish list!). So I've been working through updating my RGS Models & Kits page as well, for those and other changes.

In other news... well, I've been slowly updating outdated links on my website, and most recently going through all the RGS and related layout listings I have, and updating it with links to YouTube and other locations.  Everyone's moved into the video age, it seems!  And that's a great thing.

I have found some time for layout work as well - finishing up the basic grass scenery over the entire layout, and now working through returning the track to operating condition.  Actually had to 'mow' some of the new static grass in places!  And - also with an eye toward operating sessions - I added new detection in my hidden sections (which involved lots of crawling thru hard-to-reach benchwork).  And then, decided to add frog juicers on my unpowered turnouts... which, yes, involved more crawling thru hard-to-reach benchwork areas.  All that work is nearly complete now.

For the website, it really needs a visual make-over, at the very least for the layout pages.  I have been looking at various options, and discovered Blocs, which I need to check out further, but it looks like a good posibility. I'm still pretty technical, but finding the time to handcode a new website just isn't in the cards.  And I'm just not up to speed on Angular 5 and other modern web tech.  Yet.  :-)

I should probably get some pictures up here, but in the meantime I've got newer photos over on my Steve's RGS Facebook page.