MARX STREET DISPLAY - Project Fail

Have you ever started a project you at first felt good about only to be be disappointed with it? Well, I've had more than my share in my life. Sometimes I'll get stoked by an idea that seems good, buy a bunch of stuff for it and then for some reason never get around to it. Occasionally I'll actually start a project and just get fed up with it and scrap it. Such was the case with this Marx Street Display I started last year. It began with a scrap piece of particle board and some diecast autos I wanted to photograph. I though it would be great to have a small street diorama to pose the autos on for photography. After twiddling around for months with that first piece of scrap board, I discarded in favor of a larger piece!

The now defunct project

It started to go well, or so I thought, until after gluing down all the sidewalks I had bought. Made by Bar Mills, I never realized until they were glued down that there were actually two different styles of sidewalk! One is narrower than the other. AND THEN I noticed the street itself narrowed from one end to the other! Even after using a long straight edge to align the sidewalk pieces I STILL didn't line things up correctly - a testament to my lack of modeling skills LOL

Crap!

Then after looking at everything, it just didn't 'click' with me. It didn't work. I thought I would/could save the project but instead threw in the towel and tossed the project board into the dumpster! Does that mean the project is dead? Not entirely - it's just on hold for now. I still would like some display to photograph the diecast vehicles on but it may be best to scale down my desires into a smaller board like a bookshelf display. As an example these two past projects were designed to fit on my bookshelves out in The Cave so I'm thinking that may be the way to go. Stay tuned for further developments (ummm, yeah, but don't hold your breath)  :-)   Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina

New Project: Marx Street Shelf Display Pt 1

Okay, well, in between trying to sell things off and making room out in The Cave, and working on my aircraft runway shelf display, and taking photos of all kinds of different things, I started yet another project: Marx Street. I've been wanting some kind of small (and cheap) display just to photograph diecast or plastic cars and trucks on and have been batting ideas around in my head for some time. A few years back there was a major housecleaning out in The Cave and most of my plywood/particle board/Masonite/Styrofoam/1x2 & 2x4 wood stock were tossed. I kept a few things back - just in case. It was from this 'just in case' pile that I found this 33" (83.82cm) wide x 16" (40.64cm) deep piece of particle board. After pulling out a Marxville plastic Service Station, Diner, and Super Market it was clear something could be put together  without too much trouble.

To get the ball rolling I bought and cut up some 1"x 2" wood stock and framed up the piece of particle board. Then I bought two packages of Bar Mills No. 0684 O-Scale Sidewalk Kit. It's advertised as having 100' scale feet of sidewalk but as you can see by the photos, 100 scale feet doesn't really go that far and I had to buy another package. The streets were bought on eBay and sold by ScenerySheets.com. I purchased the intersection, streets with dashed white lines and a package of streets with green no-passing lines. Here you see the green striped streets and the trimmed down intersection piece. I ended up with a lot of extra street material and now am thinking about using that for the next iteration of my train layout.

Here's what I'm thinking of doing: there will be the three buildings seen here in full 3-D. They can be swapped out with other O-gauge toy buildings at will to change up the scene a little. The side of the street closest to the front edge will be populated with 'flats' - either plastic building fronts or cardboard, or pre-printed pictures (I haven't decided yet). After looking at some of Woodland Scenics 'Just Plug' line of light kits I may install some of those on the sidewalk. Then of course will be the myriad of tiny details which help bring any street scene to life. There will also be a backdrop behind the plastic buildings to help with the overall ambiance. All that being said, after starting this a few weeks ago I haven't gotten much farther than ordering a few more detail parts (this portion of the layout is now being used to clean, lube, and test my Marx engines for either eventual sale or to decide which ones are keepers). 

Thanx so much for your support my dear readers. Although the posts have slowed a tad there are still cool things in the works! As always - Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina