Finished the stonework up on the west wall of the canyon, painted the added rocks, and then when dry went over all with a light spray of rattle can primer. Now that is out of the way I can finally get to routing the lower tracks and the approach to the section section and the port area. As I said earlier there are the plans and then there is the as built. Well in this case I have determined the the stone works was too big to put on the lower level, and then the same for the Virginia Brewery. Decided that my grain mill and the hops mill will go down on the lower level instead. Just too much trackwork down below to have them properly fit due to their size. 100_5181-1 by John Moore posted Feb 3, 2018 at 12:23 PM
Just got an E-mail that my Aztec cleaning cars have shipped, due here Monday, Wahoo. Laid out the Lonesome Cove elevated line and the Canyon Line and the connection to the staging area and the port approach track with a Sharpie. Then I laid out the siding for the mills. Put a stub end on each end as a spot where I can park some M of W or other cars. The Lonesome Cove line starts back at the port approach and is outside the Canyon Line. It then curves back before the creek and crosses the Canyon Line on a bridge. Should have enough elevation by then. Then another bridge across the creek and continuing up to a trestle, again crossing the Canyon Line where it gains access to the top of the canyon wall I just finished. 100_51820-2 by John Moore posted Feb 3, 2018 at 1:13 PM You can see the top side of the Virginia Brewery in this shot. It is built totally from styrene. Both grain storage silos are made of stonework sheets. The only thing not on the plans was the rail loading dock and doors I added. The other three buildings are all wood kits. An old shot of the brewery from my albums. Virgini City Brewery by John Moore posted Nov 6, 2006 at 5:18 PM And further happiness my order of bridges and the incline have shipped.
Well more rail joiners in the fingers, more bleeding, more turning the air blue as I wrestled with extending the canyon line. Got all the pieces in place and laid some cork roadbed tonight. I am about three feet away from completing the canyon line and the access to staging. Hope to be running some locos next week if all goes well. 100_5185-3 by John Moore posted Feb 3, 2018 at 10:23 PM
John, you are rolling hell-bent-for-election. Very impressive. Sorry about joiners in fingers. But that's one of the hazards of our business. Sorta like carpenters slamming their thumbs under claw hammers.
Great stuff John! I made a tool for sticking the rail joiners on. I took a short piece of rail, bent a 90 degree angle in it and wrapped it with electrical tape for a handle. I then angled the working end a tiny bit, and use it to install joiners. It's not perfect, but it took me less than 5 minutes, and saved the layout from countless hours of scorched air, bloody droplets, and general Mayhem!
Great idea, and since I still have a whole upper level to build and install track, and then a part two that is the port section of the layout. I was trying to utilize flex track as much as possible, eliminates joints, rail joiners, and bloody sore fingers. So far I am fairly close to my plan. Today I have about 6 feet of cork roadbed to install, and little more than three feet of track to finish what I call the Canyon line, two more power feeds to install and then the entire track gets a good going over with a Bright Boy. I am soaking all my cork roadbed in hot tap water, it makes the cork super flexible to work around curvature. Using Elmer's white glue and a track spike every so often to hold it in place. A lot of my cork is over ten years old and can tend to get brittle with age so the water soak takes care of that. I am using self adhesive rolls of cork to lay track other than mainline. Adds some holding power to the track spikes other than just going into the foam. I noticed that you are from Glendive. I used to live about 50 miles North of there and I can remember when the Yellowstones used to come into town. The whole town shook from those monsters. Used to fly into Glendive when I was coming home from leave in the military. Frontier Airlines then used the DC-3 and that approach over the Yellowstone River straight at those bluffs was nerve racking on those old crates. Road the North Coast Limited from there into Chicago.
The Canyon Line is done and the last spike was driven 30 minutes ago. First electrical feeder is run to the edge of the layout and getting ready to run the 2nd. 100_5186-1 by John Moore posted Feb 4, 2018 at 3:15 PM The turnout at the bottom will lead to the port area when that is started. The turnout on the bottom left is to the incline that will lead to the upper level. I will start that and construction of the upper level later this week. Area looks like the Deschutes Canyon when all out war broke out between Harriman and Hill.
Things have changed here, John. The airport is up on the flats west of town. The old airport got moved to make room for the Interstate. I am super-jealous of never seeing a Yellowstone in action. One day I hope to see the DMIR Yellowstone working out at Duluth.
Saw one of NP's last steam 2-8-2's working the sugar beet harvest for delivery to Holly Sugar and I remember the Goose, the gas electric that was passenger service on the connecting line between NP and GN. Sure glad they moved that airport. Flying almost directly into those bluffs you dealt with tricky currents and up and down drafts.
Got the ties replaced in the gaps were I had cut some rail then worked on the mine some. Anticipating the delivery of the track cleaning cars tomorrow I went digging for my homemade ones and got lucky. 100_5187-4 by John Moore posted Feb 4, 2018 at 8:41 PM They are all Bmann old timers 34 foot flats with the metal underframe. Converted them to MT wheel sets with couplers. The Masonite pads I made by laminating a piece of styrene to the top side and then counter set wire nails into them. They fit into holes in the car that allow them to float freely. The Masonite pads are beveled at each end to smoothly ride the track. I used them on the original Turtle Creek.
Turns out that it was more than flow it was staying on the rails. This morning I set out to clean the track with a Bright Boy then test some of my locos over the track after putting them through my wheel cleaner. Had a 70 tonner moving along and the first derailment occurred at the turnout throat. Repeated the procedure three times with the same result. After a little study I determined it was the flex alignment where it met the turnout. The I studied the situation a little more and came to the conclusion that I did not want to be reaching into the canyon to throw turnouts. Another issue came to light reguardng my power feed into the area and being able to stage trains. The Peco turnouts are power routing and that would defeat my purpose of having a train sitting without power there. So that is gone now to be relocated. So trackwork is under way again. 100_5188-1 by John Moore posted Feb 5, 2018 at 11:30 AM
After much agony of the thumbs, not to mention further damage, the track is re-aligned. During the process I discovered a bad electrical connection at the bridge and a few other things. But it definitely is a good thing to test with some locos before you commit to a final product. 100_5189-2 by John Moore posted Feb 5, 2018 at 3:50 PM The back two tracks are near 7.5 inch radius while the front track is 8 inch radius. Some folks may remember my testing done a few years ago on certain locomotives for the minimum radius they could handle. The 7 inch and 7.5 inch is at the limit for a two axle two truck small loco. Those are a lash-up of 44 tonners and a 70 tonner. The turnouts in the photo are Peco Setrack unit trackage system ST-5 for right, and ST-6 for left. They are tight and small turnouts and two of them just about fit in the same footprint of an Atlas standard turnout. However now I have all my turnouts up front where getting to them is easy. Now happily awaiting my Aztec cars in the mail arriving any moment. Just wish that big box store up around Baltimore would ship my order of stuff I need. The stuff was ordered the same day as the Aztec cars.
Testing the track and cleaning it with my homemade track cleaning cars. The consist has been running over an hour now flawlessly. And I am sitting here with a box of track cleaning cars from Aztec so be testing those shortly.
The new Aztec cars are now in service. When I spoke to the owner there was some doubt that they would run on my tight radius. The predator ran through it fine and after a little tweaking so did the old style wood boxcar version. 100_5193-3 by John Moore posted Feb 5, 2018 at 8:03 PM On the extreme right is one of my Masonite pads from my cleaning cars. It was the 4th one in line and this is what that pad picked up in an hour of running. The others have considerable more especially the first in line. Haven't used the wet roller on the Predator yet.
Started this morning adding ties in the gaps under the rails and discovered another alignment issue which after about two hours of work corrected it. Finished the tie adding project and then started adding some scenic material around the Macie Moly Mine. Built an elevator to reach the top levels and the mine shaft and just have finished notching out the scenery to accept it. I also added two of my big hardwood trees that were made from my Sedum. Also working on a waste pile and a conveyor from the mine to where the pile will be. The rock waste will be hauled out for rip rap and break waters so I need to dig in my box of stuff and find that front end loader. A lot more to do here before I move on to the next area. My order of supplies finally shipped and is expected tomorrow. I can start building that incline to the upper level hopefully Thursday. 100_5194-1 by John Moore posted Feb 6, 2018 at 3:29 PM Those trestle bents are not going to be used for the trestle so they are becoming supports for the rock waste chute. Ran my Aztec cars for two hours last night without a hitch. The key to getting through the tight radiuses is slow speed. I probably had the lashup of locos at about 20 Nsmph. I am really pleased with these and the service I got was excellent. I E-mailed Mr. Claudino last night and related my experiences to him. He called me about 2 hours ago and we had a nice chat.
John, your Macie Moly(Bend-Um) Mine area is looking more complete and very nice. The Sedums look quite tall, almost too tall. What is their scale height?
Dognabbit you done made me get up, look for them new spectacles. look for my scale rule, try to step over the Big Guy, whose sprawled on the floor on his back, and hopefully not get bit for disturbing his nap. They scale out at just a tad over 100 N scale feet.
That's a reasonable height for a hardwood, especially of the Oak family. I had a Water Oak taken down a few years back that was 115 feet. I think my, possibly others', problem is that we usually see model railroads where most trees scale out around 20-30 feet so they don't detract from viewing the trains, and for ease of maintaining the track. Rare when one sees properly scaled forests. Sorry for the inconvenience, but thanks.
I would rather my railroad be overwhelmed by the scenery it is running through and occasionally disappear behind some of it. I use the tall trees to good effect to hide things like where two backdrops join. Follow a train and it occasionally disappears behind trees and hills and that is what I am trying to model. My next order of pine trees I am going with HO scale trees because the largest of an N scale assortment is too small. Then I can mix the two and have a more realistic pine forest. I have a pair of pine trees near my south 40 that tower over everything and are probably around 150 to 175 feet tall.
