As the National Train Show kicks off this Friday, I felt compelled to get a few more details completed on the Canyon Module. Here are some images for some of those details.
Firstly, the backyard swing set was missing appropriate activity so I've added a youngster with parent to the scene. The child is sitting on the swing in a rather casual manner, seems to be chatting more with mom than seriously swinging :0)
The scene below captures a new pet standing near the winery building on the left side (German Shepard). Also seen is the fork lift and pallets, the pick-up truck with some large plastic barrels, the large garbage collection container at the right end of the drive, and some of those same large plastic barrels in use within the winery building. Hard not to notice that red car in the background, a nice Porsche sports car that the owner must have been saving up for years to afford! Almost forgot to point out is the ventilation unit added to the roof of the winery.
Next we have the new cell phone tower. Originally a very basic brass kit with a plain round plastic pole from BLMA, I've embellished the model with added antenna elements within enclosures and I reworked the pole to have decreasing concentric sections as you follow-up the pole from the base to the top. This presents a more realistic impression of a contemporary cell tower. Next, installed the tower within a fenced in enclosure along with a control box.
On the other side of the module, I've added a signal bridge to help control the traffic on the mainlines. Seen below, this is a standard kit from Animek Models that I found much easier to assemble than I originally expected when I acquired the kit. While I certainly didn't attempt to do it now, I could readily see the possibility of adding real lights using nano LEDs, maybe I'll consider that in the future as I look for new challenges. Meanwhile, my primary concern was with the vulnerability of this model when transporting my module so I added a "cement" base surface using magnetic tape and glued a small neodymium magnet to the module to hold the signal bridge in place. BTW, if you look to add this sort of feature to your layout, take note that you double check that all of your train cars will actually fit under the bridge ... the double stack Gunderson is tallest that I have and I had to build up a base to assure that it would fit comfortably under the lowest feature of the signal bridge.
