MAP OF NEW QUINNTOPIA!

As the municipal electrical employees begin to add street lights to New Quinntopia (having completed adding all of the necessary street markings last week), the city planners have published their first map of the street layout of central New Quinntopia!

The central area of New Quinntopia is currently laid out in three sections.  Below is an overview of the central area with some of the key features:

Starting from the left, there is the undeveloped industrial district, which may or may not have factories:

Next to the industrial area, and bordered by the QMT (Quinntopia Metropolitan Transit) line, is the Commercial District. This is the area where the main QMT station is located (Latveria Station) along with many office towers and hotels.  Planning is underway for the intercontinental railway station Gare de Quinntopia. Which will be completed someday. Probably.

On the right side of the Commercial District, the elevation grows and clusters of houses and apartment buildings dot the hillside.  This area is also currently undeveloped.  There is some concern from city planners that the ground has a strange pink appearance and is very soft.  Outside consultant assure future residents that layers of a new environmental solution called plaster will cover up the toxic and unsightly mess. Everyone is happy.

The City Planners have also given each street a distinctive name.  The below images show the city streets without the QMT elevated transit overlay.  As you can see, Latveria Station faces the Avenue of the Liberation of Quinntopia (named after a famous battle that took place in Quinntopia).   On the opposite side of the station is one of the main thoroughfares of central Quinntopia; Minitrix Avenue. The station is bounded by Piko Street on the left, and Tomix Street on the right.  A very narrow street - Roco Street - bisects the block opposite the station.

Moving to the right of the station, we see that Minitrix Avenue continues, while the Avenue of the Liberation of Quinntopia turns into a one lane road before ending at Fleischman Way - where the future train station will be built.  Parallel to Minitrix Avenue is another major roadway: Kato Avenue.  Here in the heart of the commercial district both Minitrix and Kato avenues cross Fleischmann Way and Arnold Way before they continue on and merge in the residential areas along the hillside.

Unfortunately, New Quinntopia is not a great destination as no one road yet known to us actually leaves New Quinntopia; so if you get there, you may never be able to leave!

STREETS & SIDEWALKS

The very tedious process of creating sidewalks is finally nearing completion.  The process I've come up with takes several steps, so it's been...well, tedious!

The good news is that I am now moving on to much more interesting steps.  Namely, the placement of street markings!  This is another somewhat time consuming step, but when its all done it will be worth it!

Once I have all the street markings down (almost there!) I'm going to weather the streets with some weathering powder, and then apply a flat clear-coat over the whole mess. Once that's complete, I'll add street lighting and then the buildings are added!

The last time I create street marketings was six years ago, and I used a similar solution: dry transfer decals.  However, my experience last time led me to prefer the dry transfer decals from Japanese company "TGW".  The Busch are nice, the Faller are difficult (but that might be because they are old and the decals have dried out?) and Woodland Scenics leaves too much glue residue. I ordered the TGW street markings from Hobbysearch Japan.  While not perfect, they apply really well and don't have tendency to crack or break as much. I had to trim the crosswalks to avoid a specifically Japanese style, but this was just a minor step.

And like I said....soon the buildings are coming back! Here is my jam-packed workbench with most of the large structures out of their storage boxes! Soon!

The Rich and Powerful have their Stinking Mansion!

I'm celebrating the completion of the Faller 232298 Villa - now complete with lights! Wow, these kits seem deceptively simple, but so easy to make a mistake...

Anyway, got all the wiring done - which includes the obligatory interior details and painting/weathering.

This Villa has the appropriate look for the powerful overlords who rule over New Quinntopia from their hilltop perch over-looking the city!

For the masses and common people, I can now move back to the Elevated line. Which began with using my handy Dremel to cut away the interior plastic and connectors of Kato's elevated viaduct pieces.  So glad I have a Dremel! This would have taken forever with a knife or saw...

The elevated viaduct swerves over the mainline track, so I needed to custom-build supports/viaducts for this section given the height.  I considering different solutions, but a combination of Evergreen Plastics styrene and some girder strips from Plastruct will do the job.

I am building the elevated section by first establishing the right vertical hight...details and paint to come next!

That's it for today! Tomorrow is Memorial Day, so let's all remember those who gave all for their country, and hope that all future wars are rare and short.
Until next time...Quinntopia out!

Hills for the City and the Metro Station Gets Paint

Work has kept me very busy, but I've been able to slip in a few minutes of train time to make some minor progress since my last update....

First, I' ve now added the foundation layer for the buildings/city.

Which means I can now start to finish up the "Metro Line", add buildings, lighting and then track...and then trains! Easy, right?

The below photo is another good perspective on where the passenger terminal tracks will be located relative to the city and Metro Line.

I am intentionally hiding my curves as much as possible, so the tracks will pass under a hill on one side via a large tunnel complex. This section is removable so track maintenance will be simple. You'll notice of course the styrofoam which will give some elevation to the city so that it won't be just one flat space with streets and buildings.

On top of this hill will rest this Faller 232298 "Villa" building.  I was looking for a very austere and formidable looking structure to sort of place on top of the hill overlooking the city.  I'm actually following the instructions for this kit - typically I just kit-bash things, but Faller kits are such nice models that it's kind of fun to put together a kit like this for a change!  I will add in more 'elevation' once I determine the footprint for the Villa and its parking lot/roadway. I may even add some secret security bunkers as well.

As much as I didn't want to, I broke down and bought two more Walther's Norther Light Powerhouse structures to complete the other side of Latveria Metro Station.  These have been cut, glued and primed and the very first coat of paint for the architecture has been applied!  What I am still trying to determine is how I want to finish the windows and the station interior walls.  This will be another project unto itself! The windows that come with the kit have fairly thick 'panes' (or whatever they are called) so I am considering re-creating more fine-lined panes on the computer, printing on transparency sheets, and using those instead.

So a fair amount of work, while I also continue to work on a 'secret project' that I've been thinking about doing for years (in truth, its sort of a distraction as I have four separate projects going on at the same time - which is a terrible idea!).  Until next time...Quinntopia signing out!

The Slow Methodical Process of Kit-Bashing a Metro Station

As noted in my last post, track (and the related elevated track structure) is on hold until I figure out the precise electrical requirements to automate the metro trains.  On the other hand, I was able to make some progress, albeit somewhat slow, on the metro station itself.

I am using Walther's Northern Light's Power Station as the early 20th Century inspired basis for the elevated station. Its not as long as I needed, nor do the windows align properly, so some cutting and kit-bashing has been required.

First, I had to decide that in order to have the proper elevation for the track level, I would need to add at least 15mm of space between the windows on the ground level. Fortunately, this Walther's kit is made of fairly soft plastic to cutting and filing is not a big issue.

I initially planned on having five windows centered on a central lobby, but I couldn't figure out how to have the right pedestrian entrance on the ground floor; the Kato structure - that was the original inspiration (and will still likely donate some parts) - has a large entrance with stairways which I like a lot.

Ken (of the fabulous Sumida Crossing blog) left a comment (see? I read and listen to comments! At Quinntopia, we're all about listening! :-) )  that inspired me to open up the ground level some more, and be less focused on lining up windows with interiors (if you read his comment on this post, you'll see what he means).

I also decided to lengthen the structure so the entire Metro train will be in the station, so a second Northern Light building was ordered and sacrificed to kit-bashing to help complete the station.  I originally planned on have the second Norther Light station used for the 'back site of the station, but now I'm not so sure.  Basically, I'm tired of spending money on kits and don't want to order a third, but I expect I may have to!

The photo at the top of this post shows the general look that Latveria Station will ultimately have.  Lot's of 'open space' for parking/pedestrians, and nice open entrance to the station proper.  I've also ordered some girders and other etched brass detail pieces which I think this project will require to get the right look.  This is starting to get fun! Some projects (I have found) are good ideas that require more effort, but then it seems like a 'tipping point' is reached where you find a newfound enthusiasm and vision for the project and it really starts to get FUN!  That's where I'm at now. Thanks for reading!

The New Catalogs Are In!

One of the most exciting things about following European manufacturers is that they still produce a catalog that features new products to be released in the future (sadly, while the catalog may be for "2015", the actual item may not hit the shelves for several years!).  With that said, I thought I would share some of the new items from some of my favorite manufacturers (Images courtesy of EuroRailHobbies.com, where you an also pre-order! :-)) which I think are cool!

Minitrix:

The diesel locomotives (referred to as 'diving goggles'!) have such a unique design that I absolutely must have at least one of these models!  While there are several new liveries, this Czech created prototype (Series 752 is what I think they were called, but I'm probably way off) seems to be a brand new locomotive casting!  There are a lot more liveries of this model being released by Trix, so check them out if you like the bizarre!  I thought that this was one of the models that was done back in the old Cold War days by the East German firm of Piko, but a Google search seems to indicate that this is the fist time this model has EVER been done in N scale!).

Trix starting adding some buildings in a Hamburg series a couple of years back, and is continuing to add more to their card-based building kits line.  I am getting excited about these and need to start thinking about adding them to the new layout.  I'm glad I am working on a new layout, otherwise where will I find room for this:

Absolutely massive!  I was already considering adding the model of the Hamburg station from Trix (something I don't own yet), but now this amazong industrial complex creates even more interesting ideas for the new layout!

Fleischmann

Fleischmann always has a very large catalog of rolling stock, steam locomotives and diesels/electrics in multiple liveries (they seem to be focusing on Swiss and German models).   I did not see too many new items in N from Fleischmann that caught my eye, but as readers of this blog know, I'm a big fan of SNCF.  So to see this BB 20011 in this rare livery is pretty cool!

The above is a BR E69, which is cool looking (I'm a fan of center-cab electrics!) and apparantly was a DB locomotive.

Piko

This appears to be another brand new model in N Scale, an NS class 2200 locomotive!

Speaking of the NS (Nederlandse Spoorwegen! Not the Norfolk Southern! Geez! Get out once in awhile! :-) ), there appears to be a new model of the Hondekop with the "L headlight".  I have no idea what that means, but I still want one of these:

And what is this? It appears to be a controller that is also a holder for your iPhone (not sure, and not really finding any info on this yet), but its called the "Piko Controller".  I hope it allows you to use more than just the iPhone though.  Maybe its a proprietary screen? The good news is that it appears to address one of my big issues with using your phone as a controller (if you're like me, these touch interfaces just don't do it for running trains).  The big dial is cool!  (UPDATE! Pierre from LocGeek has a good overview of what this is from ESU - and its good! If you are looking for a controller that feels like a modern device [I'm looking at all my fellow Americans carrying around those awful looking Digitrax controllers! :-) then you may want to check it out!])

And some things I've missed in the past few months.... here's a nice model of the Berlin Wall for you from Faller!  I've always wanted to put up walls in Quinntopia, now I have an answer!

This is an older kit that Kibri is re-releasing.  It's a great example of mid-century modern railway archetecture.  Hmmm...can I fit another station on my layout?

And for you car enthusiasts...Busch is coming out with these really nice looking models of the 2CV! I hope they look this great when they are released!

Busch is also releasing a model that most of us should have on our layouts (although I doubt many kids will get what this is from!):

As I mentioned at the top, these are just a few of the new items proposed recently from many of the major European manufacturers.  I will look at updated this with news from some of the smaller firms (whatever happened to Mehano? Star Train, Arnold (Hornby), and Lilliput, among others, must have some new items of note that I have missed).

Hope you enjoyed this post!

Bookcase Diorama Project #6

The diorama project is slowly coming along (hah! I remember that this was going to be a little Christmas vacation project!).

So as you can tell by some of the photos, there's been some additional foliage applied as well as the installation of the electrical wiring for the signals!

So before I get any criticism from the prototypical-ly obsessed, these are not working signals (yes, mein freund, I am talking to you! I can read snarky remarks on any forum in any language with my trusty friend Google translate! So..be nice!) these signals are just here to represent what real signals MIGHT look like - and of course to add some color and interest to the diorama.

Still a lot more work to be done, but its finally starting to look like an urban landscape!