Switch installed on SR

Not so much progress since the last entry, with only the Tillig EW2 switch mounted towards the end of SR segment. A small thing i've noticed is the change in the Tillig 86112 slow motion motors: if the first motor bought and installed about a year ago makes quite some noise, the newer ones, namely some bought a couple of months ago and the most recent ones, just a little over a month, are a lot quiter, with the last ones being the best, as they sound more like the prototype. I have no idea what causes this, and certainly is not the color of the casing, that first was black, and now, with the last 3 motors bought, seems to have turned to brown, but I'm going to contact Tillig, maybe there's an answer there.

The Lenz spare parts, as in the problematic wheels, didn't arrive after all, because the packet was returned back to Germany, the reason - a bad address. But I'm already used to it, since it's not the first time that this happened (Lokshop's full box of products being returned because of a can banned to see the inside of a plane is still fresh in my mind). So hopefully, yet again, this week the wheels might arrive, and who knows, maybe they'll fix the problem.

The last order to Lokshop - mainly rock molds and dedicated materials and the Brawa V100 loco - has half of its products in back order for about 3 weeks now, so I'm thinking about what to get next, so with a bit of luck I'll have new toys for Christmas. This only enforces the last rule i've discovered about model trains - if you think you might need something, order it with one month ahead the time you think you are going to actually use it.

A bit of zip texturing was tested, as described in the Sep/Oct 2010 issue of the Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine; which by the way is a very nich thing, and the price is - as the cover states - forever free. You can download it right from there site, in a variety of formats. After a bad start, trying to use water based pigments on plaster (with disastreous results), I ordered some proper

dry pigments and started experimenting. And until so far I cannot duplicate the 1:8 or 1:10 pigment to plaster formulas discussed by Joe Fugate, the guy that wrote the article. Maybe my pigments aren't that strong, or maybe there's something about the plaster I'm using. The ratio succesfully tested so far is 1:3, but I'm not so happy with the color, which looks washed, but adding more pigment and keeping the plaster quantity constant makes things worse, since the whole stuff won't "glue" anymore to the foam test patches.
The last photo shows the installed switch and most of the wires connected. Up next is testing that the motor can be unscrewed from this position (I didn't drill another hole through the foam+wood board since there are already quite a few) and connecting this switch to the existing SR track that's already glued.