Although I have been away from this blog for a long time, I have been busy working on rolling stock, a few new structures, vehicles, and other details. Although this is a small layout, basically complete for about twenty years, there is always things to do to make improvements. Among the changes was a switch to DCC that could not have been easier. The DC system with two cabs already had selector to switch any sector between the two cab controls. I simply replaced one cab with a Digitrax DCC station and the other cab remains DC. Any track or sector of the layout can be switched back a forth between DC or DCC, so I can run either DCC equipped locomotives or my older DC locomotives at the same time (on separate tracks).
I have also added a Woodland Scenics Just Plug lighting system for some of the structures. This lighting system is not inexpensive, however it is very well designed. Since the layout is basically a photo and video set, the lighting level adjustment on each part of the lighting system is very useful for adjusting light levels for photographs.
Most of the layout photography is now done with my iPhone. I use Helicon Focus to stack photos with different focal points into one photo with good depth of field. This can be done with an iPhone by touch focusing throughout the screen to select any number of focus areas. It works so well that I have several magazine articles published with photography solely with iPhone photos. An example is below.
