Plasticville Ambulance - Yellow HP

I picked up this Plasticville Ambulance on the cheap last year. I have no books on P-Ville so I don't have any item numbers associated with it, however it's a nice little piece to add to the Fire & Emergency fleet. It's rather a deep yellow, almost orange when seen up close and personal and is typical of the toy companies trend for making things in bright, garish colors. It measures: 4.125" (10.47cm) L x 1.25" (3.17cm) W x 1.375" (3.49cm) H. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

TRAIN TIME: Part 19 A New Passenger Shelter For The Edge of Town Layout

Did everyone have a Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad, Frohe Weinachten, Mele Kalikimaka, Kelemesz Unnepeket? - okay I'm running out of ways to say it here LOL Ours was good. The grandbaby made out like a bandit - Opa Fritz got chocolate hahahahahaha

As one would imagine, work on my Edge of Town (EoT) micro-layout had pretty much come to a halt. What with the Halloween layout, then the Gettysburg set-up, followed by the Christmas layout, the EoT has taken a back seat and I even stated in one of my Christmas layout Y'allTube uploads that nothing would happen until next year. I lied. :-) Anywho, this past week found me with a couple of days in a row with some actual, real life, honest-to-goodness 'me' time! Wow! how did that happen? 

I was sitting at the layout running a recent acquisition, a Williams NW-2 lettered for the Wisconsin Central.

Then I got to thinking about the latest project I had been working on (and slow leaking): a 'new' passenger platform for the layout. Until now I have been using a Plasticville Freight Depot (an odd choice of names by Plasticville because the thing looks more like a suburban passenger shelter).

But as small as this is I've been wanting something even smaller, something that hearkens back to my days when I was really into narrow gauge/shortline/branchline type of railroading. So I bought a junker freight depot off of fleaBay and modified it by cutting it down, cutting off legs and re-positioning them.  This was where I stopped about 6 weeks ago:

Fast forward to this week and my 'me' time, and I was thinking there was enough time to do some more work on this by adding a new deck (to hide the post holes in the original deck), framing it with 'boards', and distressing the plastic to look like really old beat-up wood. I then pulled out a Plasticville 2-stall outhouse and cut out the middle wall/partion and sanded the back wall. It was glued to the deck and everything given a coat of tan primer.

Funny thing, but when I had the idea for this I was trolling the Internet and found a picture of a real one that looked almost exactly like this (I forgot to save the pic tho) but here are some other inspirations culled from the Net. In rural communities these small platforms could either be flagstop stations, milk platforms, or a combination of the two. I'll be using it in a combination mode.

below photos credited to the Internet!

It's not finished yet but this shot shows the look I'm going after

The Marx news stand was also removed in favor of a much smaller Woodland Scenics news stand.

Previous fun runs on the EoT

Enjoy! Opa Fritz

TRAIN TIME: Running A Marxawatha and Some Work On The Edge of Town Layout - Pt 17 of the EoT Makeover

 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! :-)