Ideas Please

[NH 2525]

I like the approach you are taking to doing your layout. I may "borrow" a couple of the ideas mentioned by others in your thread to include in a few places on my layout.

Eric

 

[Pitchwife]

Not a bad Idea! I was thinking about hiding a couple of smoke generators in the "Haunted Woods" that I'm planning on my layout, but this might do the trick. One of my ideas was to have a small cemetery, with an old ruined church in a little clearing, and have a procession of ghostly monks wandering in and around the area, complete with a light fog, and it looks like this will do nicely.

Thanks Cid!

Kevin.

Kevin, if you're going to do smoke, I would use something like dry ice instead. Everyone I've talked to about using smoke, as in a steam engine, says that it leaves an oily film over everything. The dry ice should give you the same effect without the residue.

 

[Pitchwife]

If you are using black light during operating sessions, you may want to try lightning effects with sound. A simple color organ hooked up to some track lighting or strobe lights will give you very realistic lightning storm effects. Here's one I use for the haunted hayride and haunted barn my Lion's Club puts on. It will handle up to 500 watts of lighting. Enough to do your whole layout. The lightning flashes in a pattern that is in sync. with the sound of thunder from whatever soundtrack you play. There are thunder tracks on the CD, but you can also find some great ones online. Look for one that has the same sounds on both stereo channels, but offset by about a second or two. connect the unit to the speaker output that plays the sound first, and hook your speaker up to the other output. That will give you a very realistic flash of lightning that corresponds to the following rumble of thunder. I am happy with this unit, especially at this price.

One thing to remember about thunder and lightning is that they don't have to be in sync. Thunder from distant lightning takes a while to get to you.
I've collected quite a few WAVs of thunder. If you would like, I could email them to you.

 

[Jules Winnfield]

How about a drive in theater with a marquis with standard horror flicks and maybe a backlit transparency or a slide of a movie still for the screen?

 

[Knighthawk]

Thanks for the tips Clark. I've got some thunder wavs already. The info on the smoke residue was new to me though, you sure saved me alot of trouble and mess there! The drive in theatre is a pretty cool idea too Jules! It would be a nice way to pay homage to an almost extinct piece of some of my fondest childhood memories!

 

[viperman]

Thanks for the tips Clark. I've got some thunder wavs already. The info on the smoke residue was new to me though, you sure saved me alot of trouble and mess there! The drive in theatre is a pretty cool idea too Jules! It would be a nice way to pay homage to an almost extinct piece of some of my fondest childhood memories!

May I suggest a frame from The Shining?

 

[Knighthawk]

Thanks viperman! Heeeeeeeeers Johnny!

 

[Knighthawk]

I watched "The Shining" last night, and it gave me another idea. I could put in a hedge maze like the one in the movie, complete with little lights. I could even have people being chased through it by ghosts!(Lets not get started on the obvious Pac Man refrences here LOL)