The summer is over, and that's fine for me. I much prefer Autumn. But one of the best parts of summer is... picnics! Who loves a picnic? I sure do. Eating outdoors is lovely, especially when you can observe trains at the same time. I don't know if the employees at Northeast Chemical want to watch trains while sitting next to a parking lot, but oh well. I thought a picnic table might be good for their lunch break, and a laser-cut wooden kit on Ebay from the seller The Thumult And the Shouting fit the bill perfectly.
They arrived without markings or instructions, though it wasn't very difficult to figure out how it all went together. The wood was prone to bending while I sanded some of the burrs off so I had to be careful. A little wood glue got them together, with extra added to the underside where it won't be seen for additional support.
Then, they were stained with various brown ink and alcohol solutions. When I was a kid, our family had a wooden picnic table that was painted fire engine red. I loved it, so I painted a third table like that.
What I am missing are figures. Wanna hear a sad story? Woodland Scenics has made two different figure sets with the same item number (A2759) and the same sculpts. But they were painted differently. Here is the old set, which I have been looking for unsuccessfully for a long time now. Sadly, most listings on Ebay use this stock picture even though the actual figures they are selling are the new ones.
Here is how the set is currently painted. They are nice, and I have them on my layout, but the paint on some of the clothes is a bit too colorful for what I want. I know I could buy them again and repaint them how I want, but I don't really want to.
I am looking for the guy in the middle with the black leather jacket and the guy with the yellow shirt and tie from the first set. Once I have them, they will sit at the picnic table eating lunch. Until then, I found a different set by Bachmann (#33163) that didn't look half bad online and the people look like they are wearing hazmat suits. Perfect for a chemical factory. But once they arrived I realized the painting wasn't very good. I picked one and did some moderate repainting, but in the process broke his arm off. Oh well, into the parts bin they go.
Thankfully a friend gave me another figure (I think Arttista) that looked a lot better, so he got a seat at the table. He can now eat his lunch in peace and occasionally see a train go back and forth.
I wasn't going to put a propane grill so close to a chemical plant. However, my wife was looking at the layout and she insisted that it needed a propane grill. "How can you have propane tanks nearby and not have a grill?" I couldn't argue with logic like that so I had to get one. Arittista made a nice painted casting (#1473) that fit the bill perfectly.
Nothing is glued down in case I want to rearrange things, but for now I am calling this scene done.