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Thursday, December 28, 2006

Up To Standards!


Merry Christmas all! I hope Santa was good to you. I must have been a good boy because that jolly ol’ elf brought me some of these automobile models by Ricko Ricko. These 1/87th “accurate scale model for adult collector” are superb! I am just thrilled by these. They are finely crafted and detailed and are definitely up to my railroads standards. The one pictured above is the 1935 “Horsh 851 Pullman”. And the $15.98 price tag is worth it to me especially since they are ready to go right out of the box. No assembly required (It’s a Christmas miracle)! These autos sharing the road with the streetcars are going to make for some wonderful traffic. Yessir, wonderful traffic!

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Inspiration


Here is a scene I would like to try to duplicate on the layout. It’s a historic photo of San Diego Electric #1 in front of the Backesto Block building on the opening day of the SDERy. The Backesto building still exists today and has been beautifully restored! So I’ll be able to take some measurements for the construction of the model. San Diego Electric #1 on the other hand....

Historical reenactment of this scene on the layout seems perfectly feasible to me. It could be built on the corner of 1890s and 1900s street. Notice how the trolley is rounding the corner instead of passing straight through the intersection, so that’s another plus. The stumbling block is the trolley itself. I would have to build that myself. But if I ever succeed at recreating this scene, oh what a happy day that will be, yessir, oh what a happy day!

Saturday, December 09, 2006

Simulating Girder Rail.

The prototype street railways use what’s known as girder rail to create the flangeway through the pavement. Here are cross section illustrations of standard “T” rail on the left, and girder rail on the right.

My plan is to simulate girder rail simply by laying two rails side-by-side to create the flangeways.