The Choo Choo Barn Blog

A New Man Mowing, Sort Of…

    I started work on a new man mowing the lawn in January 2007 and figured it was time to finish it. So off the shelf it came and I dug in.

   

    Check out January 2007 for other pictures in progress.  The first pic is the drive mechanism.  I used ¼” pitch roller chain as my drive.  The sprockets are free running on 1/4" bolts that are epoxied into the wood. 

 

    The photo on the left shows the chain tensioner I made using a steel bar.  I drilled 1/4" holes at the correct place for the sprockets to allow the roller chain to drive the tractor.  I then silver soldered 1/4" bolts to hold the sprockets on the bar.  The bar pivots on the left and I fabricated an arm that puts spring tension on the right side.  (See photo below)  Tension on the chain is spread out over the four sprockets so that there is very little “play” on each when the chain decides to stretch.

 

 

    This animation is dedicated to my father.  He used to drive his John Deere tractor from his house through the borough of Strasburg to the Choo Choo Barn, a trip of about 1 1/2 miles, to mow the picnic area which was where the large part of our parking lot is now.  One morning on his trip through town, a Pennsylvania State Policeman stopped my dad because he was driving an unlicensed vehicle on the road.  My dad was absolutely fuming when he got to the Choo Choo Barn, ON HIS TRACTOR!  It seems the policeman, a guy that probably could have been young enough to be my dad's grandson, just gave my dad a verbal warning and said he didn't want to see him driving his tractor through town again.  You have to understand, my dad was born and raised in Strasburg, just like his father before him.  This was HIS town!  He served on Strasburg's borough council for 25 years, his last position being chairman of the safety committee, which made my dad the town policeman's boss.  How ironic!  Now if you think my dad stopped driving up town on his John Deere to mow the Choo Choo Barn picnic area, you obviously didn't know him.  He said a few choice words and continued his weekly chore, waving to all on his trek up town and back home again.

2009: A New Year, My First Project

        Well, 2009 started off with a bang. I had cervical neck surgery on December 10, 2008, due to a fall while raking black walnuts at home at the end of October. I was pretty much out of commission through the Christmas season around here. It did allow me to catch up on all the episodes of Lost, which I never took the time to watch. I tried doing some work but the “tingling” in my hands prevented me from working on the things I thought I could. I had started to cut the hoods and trunks out of a bunch of plastic AMT/ERTL 1/43rd scale kits in November and wanted to get back to them. My surgery also set me a little behind to start the yearly maintenance/building program on the CCB layout. I usually have things started well before the beginning of the year so my time was cut short. That, and the fact that we decided to open on March 7th and I lost some more of my help that I rely on during the winter really cut into my projects. I decided not to tear anything out this year; instead, I made a bunch of new animations and started a multi-year, super-detailing project.

Here are some before and after pictures of what I’m talking about. I LOVE detail! It just takes so long to do any.

BEFORE PHOTOS

   

Here are two pictures of the Wally's gas station scene that is at the Memorial Day parade.  It needed a little sprucing up.

AFTER PHOTOS (These photos were taken before I put the scene back into the layout.)

     

   

   

 

    You’ll have to stop in to see it on the layout!  The sad part is that most of the detail is lost because it is too far away to really see it but it was fun to make.  Two of the vehicles are pieces of die-cast that got broken in our store and since I keep everything, I just pulled them out of my junk box and started weathering.  The Camaro is an AMT/ERTL 1/43rd scale kit from about 20 years ago.  Various fenders, doors, etc. are from the same die-cast junkers from the store.  I just cut a couple of cars apart on my band saw, filed the edges and rusted them up with Testors Rust paint.  If you don't want to do this to your die-cast cars, just keep an eye open for 1/43rd scale cars at yard sales.  Kids are always selling their well played-with cars for a quarter or fifty cents.  I bought a couple hundred 1/43rd scale tires from narrow152 (his Ebay name) last year knowing that I would use them someday.  You can see what I did with some of them.  Tires are a great detail item.  They are always along the road as are bumpers and other car parts.  I got the idea for this whole scene from YouTube.com.  There’s a guy on there that details 1/24^th scale cars and has a whole junkyard full.  It’s really hard to tell they are models.  His work is magnificent!  Here’s his link: http://www.youtube.com/user/cancars.

 

The pallets are Preiser #65801.  They come 20 for $10.99 and are in kit form.  We sell them in our store.  They are very easy to put together, I made 40 in a couple hours, complete with painting and weathering. I used some of them in other parts of the layout, as junk in a trash pile at a farm, as cast offs along the RR track, etc.  The rest of the bric-a-brac is just part of my collection of junk I’ve accumulated.  In the picture with the rocks, you can see some tree stumps.  They are real!  I got some small branches and cut them on my band saw in 1/2" lengths.  I also split a bunch of them into fire wood and have some stacked up.  The rocks are actually part of the ballast in the railroad tracks behind the Choo Choo Barn that are owned by the Strasburg Rail Road.