Monday, August 5, 2013

Point Operation

As you may remember from the track plan for Jerusalem, there is a single point on the scenic section which leads into the factory siding. I'd also decided that the point was going to be modelled as being manually operated and had even bought and painted a cosmetic point lever. Well I've now glued the point lever in place, although I still need to add some ground cover around it to make it look more natural.

Now the point lever is in place you can see how the manual operation of the point looks in this video. Personally I think the connecting rod sliding under the base of the point lever is a nice touch.

5 comments:

  1. Brilliant, the track is looking good.
    There used to be large shunting yards scattered all about the country; these had Engine sheds, loads of track and supported all manner of industry. they also had a mainline. I love this and suggest you think about auto de-coupling.... the next project?
    Have you got a good sky yet?

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    1. The track and undercoat look even better in real life (the light and video processing don't exactly do it any favours).

      I did think about auto uncoupling but decided that for this layout I could cope without. If/when I go back to OO gauge though I will definitely consider it. My long term plan for OO gauge is to build some form of industrial shunting puzzle to make use of all the wagons I printed. For that I will want to auto uncoupling as I won't want to rely on the "hand of God" for uncoupling.

      No sky as yet -- I'm still hopping you'll come across a great 180 degree vista on your travels :)

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    2. I'll keep looking for a sky. It's the processing that needs some thought. I'll try manual focus or build a gradient map and blur the horizon a bit in Photoshop.

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    3. Possibly de-saturating slightly to make it look like there is more of a distance to the sky as well. I've seen this used when the backscene contains landscape to give extra depth, not sure how well it would work with just sky though. I might stick one of the test prints in place for now though to give a little more colour than that wooden sheet, which definitely doesn’t look like sky no matter how hard I squint!

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  2. Apart from the interest of the points changing I got a better view of the track ballast: it looks really good.

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