And finally, work begins on the Riverside Station scene in earnest. The initial focus will be on getting the Rapid/Shinkansen tracks operational. This is the outer loop, that crosses this scene in the front, from the blue bridge just visible in the top, left, of the photo, running above the subway station at the right end of the scene. To do that, foam for the left portion needs to be shaped and painted, which is relatively simple (and was mostly done this weekend, although there’s still a bit of green to be added after some of the primer dries).

The real work will be getting the roof over the subway station built (and putting in the Subway station itself). This hasn’t been done yet, although the plan is final: a strip of foam will form the riverbank, and hold up one edge of a sheet of 0.080” (2mm) styrene that forms the roof of the station as well as the roadbed of the Rapid/Shinkansen tracks. The front edge will be held up by a half-inch strip of 1/8” aluminum supported on wooden posts, just over the cut-out “windows” that provide a view of the subway. Depending on how much the styrene flexes, I’ll also build supports along the subway station platform of 1/4” brass rod, to help support the roof (I’m going to build them eventually anyway, but I may need them sooner if they’re going to be structural). While I’m at it, I’m also going to try lighting the station with LEDs as my first attempt at lighting, since the station needs to be illuminated once it has a roof over it, or nothing will be visible. The details of that are still TBD, although I’ve bought some high-intensity white LEDs to play with.

The following photo (a larger version is available in the Scenery Photo album) shows the subway station (right) with the outer strip of foam, and the aluminum strip at the very right (this is one of the placement tests, before I finalized the plan).



As I work on this, I’m going to paint the foam, and put in the embankment along the river (more window screen set in WS Flex Paste, I think), so I don’t have to come back and paint it after it’s all glued down. But I’ll probably also put in the foam supporting the commuter line station in the rear of the scene, even if I don’t fully finish that. There’s some work that needs to be done where the commuter tracks run above the subway at the left end (I need to plan how I’m going to make the grade crossing there, and where I’m going to place signals and run wiring, before I can glue anything in place on the rear side of the scene).

Other website changes:
- I updated the power wiring standards page with a diagram of the presently-planned electrical blocks for the two upper loops (this is still in the planning stages). The diagram is also available on the Diagrams photo album.
- I’ve cleaned up my “basic electronics” page quite a bit, adding diagrams. This is at least in part to remind myself of the basics, as it’s been a number of years since I wired up anything more sophisticated than a lamp, and my skills in that area are somewhat rusty.
- I’ve created a “Movies” home page, as a place to put links to “all” my videos. So far there’s just the one from a couple of weeks ago documenting the first run of the subway. There aren’t likely to be more until the Rapid/Shinkansen loop is operational.
- I’ve added a “phase 2h” Construction page (and fixed the links to the previous pages) to document the work on the Riverside Station Subway. There are a couple more photos there of this weekend’s work.

Tags: Construction, Subway, Riverside, Foam, Design