Views from Above

I don't know of any model railroaders that don't like and admire Lance Mindheim's layouts. I like them in particular because he does so much city type scenery, with tons of industrial and commercial buildings and switching. I try to do something similar with the theme here, but he's a lot better at it than I am. I get lots of ideas from Lance, and actually follow through on some of them. 

Here's a short and fun Youtube video, less than 2 minutes in length, from Lance of his Los Angeles Junction, a small switching layout.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_xhGivWzUc

As I was watching this, I thought to myself I'm going to have to get a step ladder out after this.

So I did.

I didn't make a video, but I photographed a few views from above of different areas of the layout. I took about a dozen photos in this exercise, but these are the 3 that turned out the best. Nothing like photos from the layout to help us see what areas could use improvement.

Have a look at these overhead shots from high above the JSSX.

This view of South Industrial Blvd. includes vehicular traffic

GP38 813 (top) and 815 (in red), as well as Dash40-B 5068 (far left) outside of the JSSX maintenance building.  Might sound a bit funny, but this picture has reminded me that I still need to install the horn on 815 (forgot all about it).

And this is a look down from above at Ferrous Processing metal recycler. Two loaded gondolas, and an empty sit on the spur.  That's a UPS delivery vehicle at the bottom of the photo.

And back to the real world,  I had to hurry to get this photo of AEX 13838 as it had just passed me on train 382 Tuesday afternoon.

Interesting that the side looks mostly sort of pink, but the slope sheets on the end are white.