Layout Progress: Puerto Station & Vignettes.

Just got done with my station last week. I wanted something that was iconic to southern California and eventually found an old Taurus Products Capistrano Depot kit on ebay. Then I rode the bike down to Capistrano and took a bunch of photos of the actual structure -which is now an Italian eatery- to try and capture the look and feel of the place. A little on-line research turned up several pictures of the depot as it had looked at various times, and I used those to figure out what the surrounding vegitation would have looked like in an ideal world.

After the usual kit-bashing, selective compression, and scratching (including the trees) this is how she came out.

Puerto Depot basks in the afternoon sunlight between trains.

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Puerto Depot, Close-up.

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Puerto Depot, Passengers.

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Puerto Depot Module.

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(BTW: The name "Puerto" is by way of being a minor homage to John Allen. His railroad warped my mind at an early age, and "Port" was one of the major switching portions of his layout.)

I've also been constructing vignettes to keep myself entertained between serious projects. It's fun to watch non model railroaders discover them, and some vignettes make the trip down to Sandy Eggo for temporary use on the big museum layout, where they cause a number of double-takes. (It's remarkable how many HO gauge sized things one can find in a toy store.)

Note: Those of you who may feel that model railroading should not include visual humor should probably skip these...)

Calamari on the hoof.

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Mars Attacks!

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"Quint's Sportfishing" also sports Quint himself.

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All for now. Enjoy!

~Pete

Reply to
Twibil
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On 14/12/2010 5:32 PM, Twibil wrote: [...]

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Nice work. I like your sense of humour.

OT follows (computer tech stuff:) BTW, interesting effect of allowing/disallowing scripts: when I Allow Flickr, the image is replaced with a red and blue circle have fun with each other, and NoScript offers a longer list of choices, one of which is some Yahoo thingy. But the picture shows uppe perfectly when all scripts are turned off. Do you access Flickr through a Yahoo something=or-other?

Wolf K.

Reply to
Wolf K

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Wow, very nice work. Including the background! Looks like the airport at Goleta/Santa Barbara.

Reply to
Lobby Dosser

Thank you. It was my first effort at painting a backdrop, and I'm reasonably happy with the way it came out: generic southern California.

You're right! I used to race sportscars on the airport track at Goleta, and lived in Santa Barbara as small child, but I missed the resemblance until you mentioned it!

DOH!

~Pete

Reply to
Twibil

Thank you. It was my first effort at painting a backdrop, and I'm reasonably happy with the way it came out: generic southern California.

You're right! I used to race sportscars on the airport track at Goleta, and lived in Santa Barbara as small child, but I missed the resemblance until you mentioned it!

DOH!

~Pete

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Right nearby is the McDonald's where the Egg McMuffin was invented!

And yes, you've nailed the SB area with that background! First thing I thought was "looks like SB."

Reply to
Lobby Dosser

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for posting. I did enjoy viewing it.(and I was lucky - my computer displayed it just fine!!)

Reply to
a425couple

Heck, I'm located just ten miles east of the location of the very first McDonald's ever: E street in San Bernardino, CA.

The backdrop mountains on my layout are actually a reasonably accurate representation of the 360 degree horizon as seen from atop a hilltop near my home just east of Redlands, CA: about 60 miles east of L.A. and 40 west of Palm Springs. Mt San Antonio (Old Baldy) to the northwest, Santiago Peak (Saddleback) to the southwest, and Mt San Jacinto (the one that looms above Palm Springs) are all easily identifiable -if a bit distorted for effect.

I took a 360 degree panorama with my digital SLR, printed out the blown-up pics and taped 'em together in a circle, then pencil-sketched the profiles of the major mountain ranges, the front ranges, and the foothills that surround my area onto the backdrop.

I then went down to Lowes and used their scanning paint computer/mixer to perfectly match the various colors of the mountains in the photos, painted in the basic shapes, and shaded them with hand-done brush stippling to suggest the contours of hills as seen on a typically hazy southern California afternoon.

When conditions are right, our hills out here appear to be painted on the horizon anyway, so duplicating that look was reasonably easy since my mountains actually *are* painted on the horizon.

~Pete

~Pete

Reply to
Twibil

Heck, I'm located just ten miles east of the location of the very first McDonald's ever: E street in San Bernardino, CA.

The backdrop mountains on my layout are actually a reasonably accurate representation of the 360 degree horizon as seen from atop a hilltop near my home just east of Redlands, CA: about 60 miles east of L.A. and 40 west of Palm Springs. Mt San Antonio (Old Baldy) to the northwest, Santiago Peak (Saddleback) to the southwest, and Mt San Jacinto (the one that looms above Palm Springs) are all easily identifiable -if a bit distorted for effect.

I took a 360 degree panorama with my digital SLR, printed out the blown-up pics and taped 'em together in a circle, then pencil-sketched the profiles of the major mountain ranges, the front ranges, and the foothills that surround my area onto the backdrop.

I then went down to Lowes and used their scanning paint computer/mixer to perfectly match the various colors of the mountains in the photos, painted in the basic shapes, and shaded them with hand-done brush stippling to suggest the contours of hills as seen on a typically hazy southern California afternoon.

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That's a great idea! Have to remember that.

Reply to
Lobby Dosser

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