When my little Edge of Town micro-layout made the pages of the March 2021 issue Classic Toy Trains magazine I was - to say the least - thrilled as heck! But the idea for this newsstand came from Brian Eovitch over at the "The Train Cafe: BUY&SELL TRAINS/LAYOUT PICS&VIDS/Lionel Flyer Marx MTH etc" facebook group. He mentioned I should put copies on a newsstand on my layout! Holy cow - why didn't I think of that? LOL
I already had a newsstand from Woodland Scenics and was thinking of a way to shoehorn it into the layout somehow. It occured to me that the fruit stand is the perfect place to also sell magazines and such! So I made a copy of the cover of CTT, inserted it into a Word doc and minimized it into a teeny tiny picture. You can just barely discern that it's the cover from CTT but it's a nice detail touch. This was a quickie project and now I'm gonna make copies of other mags and paste them onto the stand as well. Enjoy! Opa Fritz
I think for the most part we all do it. Do what? Well, we build a train board, lay track, plop down buildings in the middle and call it a day. Somewhere along the way we may add a bit of scenery and a single grade crossing with a road going off the board to the fantasy world beyond. Seldom do I see a layout wherein there is more than one way onto or off the board. This bothered me a little bit as I would sit at the EoT and allow my mind to wander down those rural paths in mid-central Wisconsin. Somehow it didn't seem right that the whole look of my little enclave was a dead-end. I wanted a way for travelers to come into the area and head on out again without having to doo a U-turn. The solution turned out to be simple. Right next to the newly graveled-in parking lot the flagstop station rests on was a space perfectly suited for one of Lionel's single-lane plastic grade crossings. All I had to do was cut down the crossing so that it would fit the space, and slice out a section of the Marx roadbed track to accomodate the crossing. Now motorists can enter and leave the area relatively unimpeded (unless of course traffic at the farmer's market ties things up some). Enjoy! Opa Fritz
Progress on the the Edge of Town layout has been slow but steady. I have been transitioning it from a toy train layout to more of a hi-rail layout. Ohhh, it won't be totally hi-rail but it'll have enough detail and enough different things on it to make it unique.
The Plasticville Passenger Shelter now has a different name sign: "Deer Crest Lake" an homage to the little mosquito infested lake my sister used to have house on LOL
The Plasticville Roadside Stand has made some more progress.
At this stage the walls have been painted and a base added
The Menard's Cabin now has a Menard's Windmill
A tire swing has been added to one of the trees by the lake
A Marx uncoupling ramp was added by the Freight Depot. I haven't actually used it with Marx cars yet and am finding out some of my Lionel rolling stock is having problems going over the metal plate that sticks up. Should I keep it? We shall see, we shall see.
I bought and installed these Woodland Scenics Light Poles. They don't shine very bright during the day (unlike the porch light on the Menard's cabin) but they're fine when all the lights are turned off.
Work on the corner hill finally started. The corner was scraped flat and a paper template made from which a scrap piece of Styrofoam was carved and covered with patching plaster
The Plasticville Corner Men's Store sat for months on the layout but it just didn't fit in. I mean, a fancy men's clothing store in this very working class neighborhood. So what would be more appropriate?
A tavern or bar of course!
I started with this Miller Beer sign from - appropriately enough - Miller Engineering. The sign can remain lit or blink, depending on which way the on/off switch is thrown
I wanted to be able to move the building around but these lighting units have circuit boards and battery packs which make it awkward to move the building. The answer was to install a styrene floor so that all the electronics can rest on it
(L) the styrene floor made based on the cardboard template (R)
One of two custom Marxawatha's I have. What is a Marxawatha? It's a Marx train turned into a Milwaukee Road Hiawatha. I have two different engines and tenders with one set of cars, all utilizing 'wraps' which were commercially available many years back. I got my sets off of ebay a long time ago. The engines have the Prewar Marx single reduction motors which means they don't run well through the switch on this layout. They work just fine on the Tinplate Layout which has no switch
The second of the two Marxawatha's
Being frustrated with trying to run the Prewar engine on this layout with the switch, I filmed it running on the Tinplate Layout - much better!
The corner tavern is a work in progress. I found this lighted sign on fleaBay and ended up removing the Miller Beer sign and replacing it with a Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer sign (also from Miller Engineering). There will be some more changes as the project evolves, so stay tuned!
This year's Memorial Day Tribute featuring a New Marx Army train which I've had on a couple of other videos
The VFW put on a display for the locals
Scenes along the right-of-way
That brings us up to May of this year. There's been so much done it's impossible doing it all in one post, so stay tuned to this channel! :-)
