Monday, February 27, 2012

PHOTOS FOR THOUGHT

Was looking through my photographs and came across a few from a road trip we took a few years ago, exploring the northern Jersey waterfront around the Newark/Elizabeth area.  First, a shot of the old Singer Sewing Machine Plant in Elizabeth(port).  Just behind this structure were the shops for the CNJ, but are long gone now.
How About this for a backdrop structure?
If you try to build this let me know as I will buy some stock in DPM first.  

My port area remains unfinished, although the structures in it are getting close to finished.  One problem I am wrestling with is that my bulkheads look too plain right now - just concrete.  Another problem is that I can't figure out how to exactly render the water.  I know how to make it, just the colors I'm finding hard to pinpoint.  Here's a photo of the Elizabeth River - some food for thought.

Old bulkhead, Elizabeth River
Enough of the serious, now some funny, unless of course you are the owner of this excavator.
Avalon, NJ 2006 - Townsends Inlet  
I think they found a sinkhole.

Lastly,  the coolest toy ever made - Mighty Casey.
I wish I weighed 50lbs still - I'd be the one playing with it.
Mighty Casey was sold in the 1970's.  It was a ride on electric train.  There were a few different cars - a B&M Boxcar, a red gondola, a caboose, and yellow passenger cars.  I had the basic set way back in my childhood and then my mom picked up some additional track sections at a church rummage sale.  There were straight and curved tracks, and also a 90 degree crossover, but no turnouts that I can remember.  We pulled it out in the 90s for my son to play with.  The plastic track works well on hard surfaces or indoors on carpet, but not so great on grass.  No problem, I quickly fabricated some track out of 1x2s with 1x4 ties, held together by drywall screws.  The battery was dead but an old alarm battery worked fine, actually over powered the motor a bit.  Tell me that doesn't look fun.


1 comment:

John Teichmoeller said...

Hi Jim,

For a variety of ideas about your water modeling colors, you might take a look at some of the references we compiled in the "Miscellaneous" Rail-Marine Bibliography:

http://www.trainweb.org/rmig/BIBmisd.pdf

John Teichmoeller