Neuhemsbach comes to life

With several days off for Thanksgiving, and relatives visiting who can keep an eye on Benjamin, it was time to head to the basement and start some serious scenery work. As you can see in the attached photos, Neuhemsbach is the scene of my most recent work.

Using a foam cutting tool I picked up at the November show, I carved away to make some sloping fields south of Neuhemsbach and just north of it as well. Using scrap foam, cardboard strips and hot glue, I then built some hills to the north of Neuhemsbach and worked on

 the road overpass between Neuhemsbach and Enkenbach.

The strips were then covered with plaster wrap to give a nice rolling hill effect. After the plaster had dried, I painted everything with a latex brown paint for the "dirt". 

I've also started on some of the buildings. The partially complete structure is Walther's Cornerstone series "Farmer's Co-op Rural Grain Elevator". 

I've painted it gray and it looks like a good representation of the Raiffeisen Lagerhaus at Neuhemsbach. 

Been awhile

Sorry it's been awhile since I've posted. Things have been busy and as happens with most blogs, I've fallen behind. 

   In September, the local ETE group displayed our modules at the NMRA regional convention. Some interest from fellow modelers, but no new members.  

Also with the NMRA convention, I assisted the folks at CNYMRRC with one of their operating sessions. Had a lot of fun with that, especially as some of the folks who came to operate, really knew their stuff. After several other meetings with CNYMRRC, I've been voted in a full member. Although they are HO and definitely not European, I enjoy the company of the members and the monthly operating sessions are a lot of fun. I've been able to both run trains over the line and was tapped to be a yard master for 2 sessions.

As the months rolled by, October saw a meeting of the ETE folks here at my house. The layout was operating nicely. I was able to demonstrate the automation enabled by TrainController . We ran some of my trains as well as a few guest runs, including some Dutch coaches and an all sleeper train.

November of course means the Central New York Train Show at the state fairgrounds in Syracuse.  The ETE group was there in force with our expanded modular layout, including the debut of the Hauptbahnhof module.

Of course all this on top of work and keeping up with home projects left little time for working on the layout.  However, a long holiday weekend gives some opportunity for scenery work - the next post...........