Cynthia`s clinic

I sat through it in Orlando two years ago. I thought it was excellent, but I haven't had anything worth writing about since then. Maybe someday...

A no wiring solution using fiber optic lighting

This one was a bit embarrassing. Not because there was anything wrong with the presentation, but because I was completely oblivious to the presence of a new manufacturer of a unique solution to adding lights to a layout - especially since Mark Juett apparently wrote an article on it in the May 2019 NMRA Magazine. I can only imagine that I was simply too enraptured by the coverage by the coverage of Rob Spangler's Western Pacific 8th Sub too have noticed it. Speaking of Rob, did anyone notice his railroad managed to get on several covers in the past few months? It's amazing the writers, photographers and videographers weren't all tripping over each other in his layout room.... 

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present Dwarvin Enterprises - 

 
Caption: display stand

Dwarvin produces a box called the Lamplighter 1 (the Lamplighter 2 was announced during the clinic) which allows the modeler to stuff a number of fiber optic fibers (generally up to 1.5mm in diameter) into it. It also contains an automotive headlight style LED with a lens that directs the light down the fibers to wherever the other end of the fiber is. 

 
Caption: Michael Groves

When I asked how far the Lamplighter would push light down a fiber, he said to come by the booth at the National Train Show, where they had a 30ft fiber hooked up to a Lamplighter and it was still too bright to look at from the other end. 

The whole idea for this product came from Michael not wanting to install grain of wheat bulbs, with all their associated magnet wires, knowing that they were eventually going to die, to be replaced with difficulty. LED's largely solved the dying problem, but you have to get the polarity correct and make sure that you don't exceed their current rating. And there is still a "mess of wires" to deal with. Michael noted that Woodland Scenics has solved most of the problems with using LEDs with their Just Plug(tm) system, but he also considered it to both be somewhat expensive and to have a great many different parts. 

He called up Woodland Scenics to find out how much he would have to purchase, and how much it would cost, for him to wire up his 6ft layout section -

 
Caption: Woodland Scenics Just Plug(tm) system pieces and price. 

By comparison, the Lamplighter 1 system to cove has three light sources, fibers, and lamps -

 
Caption: Prices and materials for the same 6ft layout section.
 

Dwarvin Enterprises had several new products to announce for this National Train Show -

 
Caption: HO scale Globe Lamps, with attached fibers. 

 
Caption: HO scale Carriage Lamps, with attached fibers.

 
Caption: HO scale Highway Lamps

 
Caption: HO scale Industrial Building Lamps.

 
Caption: O scale swan neck lamps.

 
Caption: New Lamplighter 2 LED light source. 

The Lamplighter 2 is not only more powerful than the Lamplighter 1, it has the ability to hold many more fibers than the Lamplighter 1 as well. 

With the Lamplighter 2, the cost to light the 6ft layout section decreases drastically -

 
Caption: price comparison of Lamplighter 2 with Woodland Scenics.

The basic Lamplighter 2 kit - 

 
Caption: price of Lamplighter 2 basic kit. 

After the announcements, Michael got into some of the techniques of working with the fiber itself -

 
Caption: proper method of cutting fiber - both pictured use the correct shearing action

Fiber can also be cut with an Xacto knife. 
 

 
Caption: minimum recommended bend radius for fibers. 
 

Also discussed was how to splice fibers together (usually involves an aluminum tube as a sleeve and some sort of glue - but not CA. You can "flare" a lens on the end of a fiber to either increase it's light gathering ability (on the source end) or it's light dispersion ability (on the building end).  Increasing or decreasing how much light comes through the fiber is adjustable by simply pulling it out or pushing it in further to the Lamplighter. 

 
Caption: Small demo diorama 

 
Caption: Large demo diorama

Ask at their NTS booth how you can get the current discount they are offering for the length of the NTS. 

Prototype Photos

 
Caption: Cover Slide

I'm always up for a clinic that might help me become a better photographer, so I attended Kenneth Foster's Prototype Photography clinic. 

Ken has been a photographer for a long time (since his teens in the 60s) and has a huge supply of photos, on slides, paper, and digital. 

 
Caption: Ken Foster

 
Caption: Step by Step to better photos

The first thing a photographer needs to determine is why they are taking these photos? Are they for reference, are they artistic, or is there some other reason?

Not much time was spent on "Select your camera" with the note that Ken's wife takes incredible photos with just her cell phone - she has a gift for composition. It's not the equipment, it's the person using it. 

Location - I got the distinct impression that Ken doesn't exactly chase trains. For trains like the UP 844 or UP 4014, he uses the information they have published to determine where they will be, and when, and then he goes out and determines where he needs to be to get the shots that he wants. And then he marks the spot. 

Time of day focused on three particular times during the day that may be considered better for photography than others - The "golden hours" of after sunrise and before sunset, when the low angle of the sun changes the character of the light being cast on everything, and noon, when there will be fewer shadows due to the sun being as directly overhead as it will get. 

Composition goes with location a lot - finding places where you can get the photos with the angles on your subject you want and the background you want as well. 

"Get the Shot" - just what it says. Get those photographs. Electrons these days are cheap - and don't throw any photos into the trash. 

Download - take the photo off the camera and put it on a computer (if digital, if film, other methods apply), which is followed by Editing. Ken uses Photoshop, so do I - he seemed to agree when I described how using Camera Raw on photos that had been saved in the RAW format allowed me to save photos that would otherwise be lost due to poor lighting or other problems. 

File - save your photos in some way that you can find them again later!

Sell your photos - Ken is on the FineArtAmerica.com website, where he has photos that you can have put on various objects. He had a canvas tote bag with a photo of an 844 excursion on the front that he used as an example. 

All in all, an interesting (and certainly filled with fine photos) clinic.

Thank you Jeff

These are all great clinics. Good to know what Cinthia and the NMRA magazine wants for type of photo. Now to get writing. 

Making Twist-Trees

 
Caption: Alex VanZanten

When I walked into this clinic, I thought it was going to be on using stranded wire to make tree armatures. I was wrong - it's about using small gauge wire and sisal (hemp) rope to make evergreens by spinning short lengths of the rope strands in the wires.

A video is worth a few thousand words. At this point, Alex VanZanten has described all his tools and materials (see above), and starts twisting a tree by putting a bent piece of 20 gauge wire into a vise -

 
Caption: Alex holding up what were later determined to be 9" Safety Wire Twisting pliers from Harbor Freight, identified as "spin tool" on the tool and materials list above. 

Finishing early, Alex then proceeded to show us how he makes deciduous trees using Woodland Scenic's plastic tree armatures, polyfiber, paint, Super 77, and Noch "Leaf Flake" material. 

BTW - the Safety Wire Twisting Pliers (and Alex recommended the 9" version) are $12.57 at Harbor Freight's online store.... 

Painting Backdrops

Dr. Gil Bennett ran two clinics on Painting Backdrops back to back on Wednesday. I showed up for the second one and this is what I saw first - 

 
Caption: People attending the first Backdrop Painting clinic

Looking into the clinic room itself showed this -

 
Caption: a full house

Gil Bennett is ether just real popular, or many people want to learn how to paint their own backdrops. Or both. It could be both. 

 
Caption: Gil Bennett

Gil Bennett has a Doctorate in Art, and it shows. He also has a quick sense of humor....

Gil asked the audience for suggestions of what they'd like to see painted. The first clinic he'd received his first ever request for a runway (my father-in-law Larry, a former private pilot was responsible for that, I learned). Little did he know, that one of the audience for the second section was also a pilot.... and he also requested a runway. 

Me? I wanted foothills with the Cascades behind them. That morphed into the Blue Ridge mountains for awhile. Other requests were for a city, both evergreen and deciduous trees, a waterfall, a road, and yes... a runway. 

Here are a few of the progress photos I took - 

 
Caption: in the beginning is the blank canvas. Or primed masonite in this case.

 
Caption: Hills begin to take shape. He's keeping up a continuous stream of banter as he works too. 

 
Caption: The City (it was supposed to be LA-like)

 
Caption: Making some changes to the hills

 
Caption: A chunk of masonite cut off the end of the sheet he's painting on provided a palette. Remarkably few colors went into this. 

  
Caption: a runway... and a wheat field. The painting is in transition.

 
Painting a Cascade Range mountain. He was trying for Shasta, people thought it looked like Rainier. 

 
Caption: Wording on the waterfall and it's outflow.
 
Caption: The finished painting. 
 

Write badly....

"Anything worth doing, is worth doing poorly" - A fantastic quote given to me many years ago by a wise person. Simply put, it's better to do it at all than to not do it well. - (I wrote that badly on purpose)

That does not apply to handlaid turnouts

I find it ironic Tim would post that.....

Scott Chatfield

Yes it does!

My first handlaid turnout wasn't very good, but each successive one was better than the last. It is so important to give yourself a break and just get going!

I just came out of the LDSIG "What Would You Do Differently" panel discussion at the convention and was astonished to see that nearly half of the audience raised their hand when asked who was working on or about to start their first layout. I suspect that a lot of folks have been armchair model railroaders for a long time because of a fear of making mistakes. 

Make mistakes! It's OK! 

Jeff Allen

Build a turnout poorly

Speaking from personal experience... a good way to really understand how all the relationships in a turnout are supposed to work is to build one poorly and then study everything that's wrong with it.

"Make mistakes! It's OK!"

You have NO idea how hard that phrase is to accept, given the life experience so far.  First born son, must be perfect, eldest of four, have to lead the rest, can't make mistakes.  So, what did I do when I graduated high school, and dreaded the thought of four more years of the same scholastic drudgery?  Enlisted in the USAF, and ended up in Strategic Air Command, where perfection wasn't the goal, it was barely acceptable.  Given the stakes (nuclear catastrophe), we "Sons of LeMay" had to do our level best 24/7/365.  24 years of that leaves a mark...

So, here I am, staring at a module surface, armed with a sifter, white glue, some brown paint and a couple bags of Woodland Scenic green foam, paralysed at the thought of screwing it up.  Seriously!  I managed to build the module itself, get track mounted and wired, but the thought of not getting the blend right, or whatever artistic faux pas can be done with $6 of ground foam, makes me walk away without dropping a single crumb.

Giving myself a break may be the hardest thing I ever accomplish in this hobby.  I'm not joking.

Tim B.

My favorite eraser tool

I use a scraper, same thing that is used to spread sheet rock compound. Come in all sorts of widths. I use a 2 inch or a 1 1/2 inch. Works really well at peeling ground foam off scenery base. Spray it down with water 1st. The thing to remember about really great looking model rrs is that they had a lot of erasing done on them before they reached perfection. And perfection is a really slippery standard in this hobby.

Jack