Street Congestification

 Oh! Traffic Around this Town is getting Nuts!

Left to right: Hauler: Velociped, Berkshire Valley: Buggy,  Artitech: Ford T Runabout,  LMB Old Time Trolley. with Preiser and A.C.Stadden figures.

I'm finally getting some nice photos on the layout.

Yes sir! Finally!

Dandy

Horsing Around

 Horse Trading and Harnessing

Comparing HO scale harnessed horses and adding duct tape reins. 

After finishing construction of the Berkshire Valley Models Buggy (right) I needed to add a horse. But the horse that Berkshire Valley offers (left) is rather heavily harnessed for such a light buggy. So I looked around at other HO scale harnessed horses.

It wasn't until after I ordered horses from Knuckelduster Miniatures that I noticed that their horses are identical to Berkshire Valley's horses! (They do come in two poses though). So choices are limited. Taking a look at the Jordan Highway Miniatures (out of biz sadly) horses (left) I noticed that they are more lightly harnessed. So I swapped out the horses with the Highway Miniatures Delivery Wagon since heavier harnessed horses would work better with that.

So I painted up the Jordan horse and attached it to the buggy. But after the previous blog post, the lack of reins bothered me. I considered different materials for the reins (thread?, tiny brass or styrene bar?) But as I was repairing a black leather seat with black duct tape it occurred to me this might make for great reins material.

I laid a piece if duct tape on a piece of glass and sliced off a very thin piece.

And stuck it on. The bottom and sides of the duct tape is white, so a little touch-up paint is required. But I really like the leathery look of the duct tape. Note to self: start with the driver and work towards the horse. Its easier to trim the reins at the nose of the horse rather than inside the buggy.

It was a little tricky installing the reins. But it took me longer to write this blog post than it took to install the reins, so... yeah. But I'm pleased with the results. We'll see how this holds up long term.

It occurred to me that duct tape might be a viable way to add harnesses to ho scale farm horses like these from Woodland Scenics. Then we can press these guys into service! (Except for the pony of course - I'm not heartless!)

Then there are also some well done draft horses available on Shapeways. I'll probably give these a try at some point.

So there are some good options out these these days for a variety of harnessed horses.

Yes sir! A good variety of horses these days!

Dandy

Recolorizing a Berkshire Valley Models Buggy Photo

Build a Berkshire Valley Buggy.  Take Photo of Buggy.  Decolorize Photo of Buggy.  Have AI Recolorize Photo of Buggy.

Artificial Intelligence is getting kind of smart.  I came across a site for colorizing old black and white photographs and I wondered how well it would colorize "old" photos of my layout:

Recolorized. I just finished building this Berkshire Valley Models Buggy in HO scale so I thought it would make a good subject for trying out AI colorizing.

Original Photo. This is the photo I took on the layout. It's interesting to compare it with the AI photo (top). Since I gave the ai a black & white photo (below) it had to guess the colors. It nailed the horse color. It assumed the street was concrete and colored it grey. I kind of like what it did with the brick color. It guessed the mans jacket was red rather than green. And really didn't do much with the yellows.

The black & white photo the ai had to work with. I took the original photo into Photoshop and took out the color and then uploaded the result to the MyHeritage site. And just like the old timey photo tinting studios from back in that day, it had to make educated guesses with the colors.

 

Interesting results. And I can assume this technology will only get better as time goes on.

Yes sir! The technology will only get better!

Dandy

Boards a-Buckin'

 Constructing a Berkshire Valley Buckboard Kit

The demise of Jordan Highway Miniatures caught me completely be surprise. I needed those horse drawn vehicles and early vehicles to populate the busy streets of my multi-era layout! But it seems Berkshire Valley Models has stepped up to fill some of that void left by Jordan. So I thought I would give them a go by starting with their buckboard kit.

The Berkshire Valley Buckboard dodging trollies.

Their kits are laser cut wood with tiny parts. Bust out the Opti visor, this is going to require a steady hand!

Before construction started, I painted all the parts with a thin wash and dry brushing of craft acrylics (Folk Art and Americana). After construction a lot of touch up painting was required as well.

I also ordered and painted up one of Berkshire Valley's Harnessed Horses. A Preiser figure was added as the final touch.

Not bad!

Yes sir! 

Not bad at all!

Dandy