Arnie's track plan and pics

“Hi Al,

I was overwhelmed with the number and content of responses to my recent submission on my nighttime LED lighting project.

As I have no way of directly responding to specific inquiries from within your website, I was hoping you would allow me the liberty to address some things on your posting.

There you can see many of my layout videos and send comments, suggestions and questions directly to me. I would be more than happy to answer any communications I receive.

But for now, I want to thank all who responded for their great, supportive feedback. I am humbled by your comments and the sense of inspiration that many readers feel to go forward with developing their own layouts and projects.

And thanks for the suggestions made by Deano, Scott, Glenn and others.

To answer a few points: Bill I apologize for the incongruous McKinley Explorer cars; I was eager to video lighting effects and so I just used what I had at arms reach to run through the station. But you can see my Alaskan McKinley Explorer on my layout on Youtube.

As for the layout itself, the video only centered on the south side of the layout; the valley side.

However, the layout, despite its impression of greater size, dimension and depth, is only 8 feet by 5 feet. I’ve attached some layout overview photos and a track plan of the SV&GS layout that readers requested.

As for the vehicles, while I customized the buses with LEDs myself, the cars were purchased from a merchant in China.

The LEDs in the cars a very bright despite there miniscule size (1.8mm?). This causes light flaring and bleeding through the plastic bodies. So I had to separated the bodies from the undercarriage and paint the interiors with flat black paint. Then where light still shone through, I touched up the exterior paint. And lastly I painted the perimeter of the lights to make the lenses look smaller and more to scale.

And again my thanks to you Al for making possible this forum for all to participate and enjoy.

Arnie”

A big thanks to Arnie for talking us through his stunning layout.

Arnie is one of the regular contributors to the blog - but don't forget, you can only see all the posts (all 1403 of 'em) by jumping on the newsletter.

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Best

Al