Beginning my 2019/2020 Winter Modeling Season

Posted Jan 19, 2020

For a month or more, I’ve felt frustrated that other priorities (holidays, a house guest, master bath remodel and tattoo graphics for Chris), plus a lack of early-season snow in the mountains* have prevented me from getting back to work on my models this season. But, as I looked through posts on this blog from last year, plus progress photos on my phone, I realized that last year’s winter modeling season didn’t really get fully underway until the day of the Great Train Show in Puyallup in mid-January. So now I don’t feel so bad, and I supposed this just goes to show how excited I was to get back into the work.

I did manage to spend about 8 hours working on the chapel car, and a few more hours working on a 1950s wood kit (boxcar) given to me by a new friend, Karl, who I met last February at the UNW train show in Monroe. Karl drives trains for Amtrak and recognized me from my daily routine of walking from my office to the Spokane Street crossing on the BNSF main line to see the 2:20 Amtrak Cascades departure from King Street Station go past. In addition …

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TV Light Effect

Posted Nov 05, 2019

After seeing Bruce Kingsley’s Arduino-animated HO scale house in the April 2016 issue of Model Railroader, which includes a flickering TV screen in a dark room as one of its many effects, I decided to try writing my own TV-flickering code for the Arduino, and ended up with what I think is a slightly more realistic effect. Using a cool-white LED to simulate the glow of a black and white TV, the code creates the effect by changing the brightness to various levels at various time intervals, within preset ranges, in two different ways.

The majority of the flickers are sudden changes from one level of brightness to another, simulating the light effect of moving images and cutting from one camera to another. The length of time between changes varies each time from between 400-1,000 milliseconds (.4 seconds to 1 second). The levels of brightness are randomly chosen each time, from a range of 25-75, on a scale where 0 is off, and 255 is the brightest level possible.

The flicker effect alone, however, looks a little more like the light of an endlessly flickering flame than the light of a television broadcast. For more realism, I needed to include …

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Location & Time Period

Posted Oct 09, 2019

For the past couple of years, I’ve had it in my mind that I’d eventually choose a location, time period and prototype railroads to model after doing more research. About a year ago, I narrowed down my options to the Northeastern US or Pacific Northwest, during the steam or transition eras. I thought I’d take longer to decide, but when I look back at my intermittent research over the past two years, I realize I’ve only really been interested in the railroads of southwestern Pennsylvania in the 1930s through the 1950s, particularly the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Pennsylvania Railroad, so I think I’m going to consider it a settled matter now. Those roads have always been favorites of mine, and I grew up in that region, decades later.

The location will certainly be southwestern Pennsylvania, likely including Pittsburgh, and the main railroad modeled will be the B&O. If possible, I’d also like to incorporate a PRR line, and certainly the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad’s line through Pittsburgh, since the B&O’s named trains used the P&LE’s station in Pittsburgh.

Some existing models I’d like to use have narrowed down the previously-mentioned 30 year span to just ten. …

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Winter 18-19 Review

Posted Apr 30, 2019
Updated Mar 24, 2023

Since getting back into modeling a few years ago, I’ve done most of my hands-on work from approximately December through April each year, when I have a lot of free time to myself, as my husband spends most of those weekends snowboarding, and takes multiple week-long, or long weekend snowboarding trips outside of the area. Just as snowboarding season comes to an end, other priorities begin to take up our time. Gardening, projects around the house, hosting an annual Pride party, smaller rooftop gatherings, croquet at the park, and all the other fun things we do in the summer have to be crammed into the three months of gorgeous weather we get in Seattle before the clouds and drizzle return in October. As it’s now the end of April, I thought I’d put an official end to the Winter 2018-2019 modeling season by reviewing the accomplishments and noting what’s up next, when the 19-20 season begins later this year.

The season officially began in late August when I began purchasing my first model paint in decades (via eBay). I slowly built up some basic supplies, including paint, brushes, pipettes, thinner and decal solutions. At this point I realized I’d need …

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