The JSSX This Week 11/10, and it can pay to look up too

Well, on the JSSX this week, a little bit was accomplished.

I got some fencing made to surround the property where the oil storage tanks are located. 

Here's a picture of the fence jig that Brian Smith made for me. I gave Brian the dimensions I'd been using for the height of the fences (6 ft.) and the distance spacing between the vertical posts and he whipped this up.  There's two long horizontal grooves cut into the board and then holes and vertical grooves are evenly spaced 10 scale feet apart. The holes allow for soldering or gluing the posts and chords together.

There is a short section of partly completed fence in the top left of the board and on the right there are 3 gates that I just made by eye. One is for the rail entrance and the other two are for the truck entrance.

On the JSSX, here's a "drone view" of the entrances to the storage tank property, with the fence and gates installed.  Looks good so far.  Next up was to start work at the grade crossing to the truck entrance over that curved track switch. I'll trim and fit .010 thick styrene sheet between the rails for that.  The .010 thickness will sit low enough that it won't interfere with the wheel flanges to cause derailments.

To fill in the area between the two sets of tracks I decided, rightly or wrongly, to use wall spackling rather than try to cut and trim styrene there.  I masked the rails, especially that curved switch beforehand. I let the spackle dry overnight and then skimmed a 2nd coat over top the next day. Some very light sanding followed.

In much the same photo below, that's the .010 styrene in between the rails of the switch, sprayed with Rustoleum grey and Modelflex grey.  Added in a Caboose Industries ground throw - it's an N-scale one which I think looks better - that I painted with Vallejo Rust Texture paint to get rid of the shine of the Delrin plastic.

Just have to fill in the area of the switch points - I'll use more .010 styrene for that - and then some thicker styrene where those long ties are at the switch rod too.

In the 1:1 world, on Friday the season's first snowfall also brought this UP SD90 8510 and SD70 4223 that were turned at the wye. They're seen here rolling past the station on the way back to their departure track at the east end of Sarnia. Kind of rare to see these around here.

And to finish out the week with something a little different, when out railfanning I guess it can pay to look up every once in a while too...