Picked up the Woodland Scenics Substation, chain link fence and a set of 4 Telephone poles at the Amherst show a couple of weeks ago and finally had time to complete putting them on my layout.
The Substation is fairly narrow (about 5" wide), so it fit in nicely between two of my sidings. It comes already lightly weathered, so there wasn't a lot to do to it except place it where I wanted it to go. It also comes with a detached and weathered maintenance shed, which I chose to place inside the chain link fence.
The chain link fence comes in 8 sections and is designed to fit together tightly around the perimeter of the Substation when assembled, but can obviously be used for other applications. Some of the sections are "gate" sections. I put a dab of CA glue on the bottom of each rail post and inserted the sections into my foam layout topper and then glued the sides of all the sections together. I was able to download, resize and print out the warning and caution signs on decal paper and then spray with gloss clearcoat to seal the ink and then cut out with an Exacto knife. The signs are attached to the fence with double-sided scotch tape.
The telephone poles are scale sized and very realistic and come pre-wired with a spool at one end to hold and keep the wires tight and untangled while you simply stretch out the poles in sequence to whatever spacing you want. Each pole has a 1/2" long "prong" at the base to allow you to insert and glue them into your layout top. Once the poles are in place it's a simple matter to just pull all the wires taut and put a drop of CA glue where each wire touches a pole. A nice touch is that WS includes two metal "guide wires" to attach to two of the poles. The yellow protective covering at the bottom is a realistic touch. I cut off the wires at the Substation and glued them to the "power out" connectors on the Substation.
I made a non-prototypical "power in" electrical box at the other end of the Substation using the bottom of a small plastic box painted dark grey and mounted to the wall. The transformer can mounts are small rubber table/door bumpers painted flat black and glued to the electrical box. The transformers are actually large capacitors (160v, 68 uf) that I painted light grey and glued to the black mounts. They work nicely - they are a good size and have two wires coming out onto which I glued small craft beads that I had painted dark green to resemble insulators. I also lightly weathered the electrical box and transformer cans. I cut a small half-round hole in the bottom of the electrical box and inserted a plastic straw painted copper to resemble a conduit pipe and held it in place with "clamps" made from black cable wire clips. I then ran a wire from each can to the "power in" connectors on the Substation, using the extra thread left over from the telephone poles. (I don't like the way those "wires" hang, so I'll probably re-wire with some heavier line.)
I picked up some dumpsters, conduit pipe racks, wire reels and the telephone pole linesman from Model Tech Studios and weathered where needed and placed them around the Substation. The figures are from Bachman's O-scale line.
