Tonight we made great strides toward getting the RGW operational again. The vacuum was a constant enjoyable noise, bright boys were flying and Scott and Ed put the final touches on our bridges and rail changes so we are ready to fire it up. We met some early resistance with shorts, but the cleaning efforts eventually sorted all that out and we had an SD-7 running in Renton yard within the first hour. We never actually ran anything out on the main, preferring to continue our track cleaning, but seeing an engine run again was fun and listening to a sound-equipped loco purring in the room was heavenly. I figured nobody wanted to see pictures of old dudes perfecting the art of the bright boy, so instead I thought I'd show off our clean layout. We'll start in the lowest part (22 inches above the floor) of the layout, our operational staging yard. The foreground is Seattle (west), the backside Pasco (east). Exiting to the right leads you to a 6 level helix. When you exit the left, you run through four levels of track. As you can see in this pic along the north wall. At the bottom (level 1) you are heading to Renton and return back over the top via the high bridge. Long after you pass through Renton you'll head to Black Diamond on level 3 and to Franklin on level 4. The scene here includes the highest point on our railroad, 53 inches from the floor. The scene depicts a location known as Henrys, where the Columbia and Puget Sound crossed over the Northern Pacific. We have two islands, the first includes track through Stacy Yard (So. Seattle) then proceeds to Renton Yard. The upper line is the long run into Black Diamond. Arriving in Renton you have our main classification yard. One of our main industries is Boeing, so you'll often see 737 fuselages here. The upper line along the South wall is one way headed to Black Diamond and in the other, leaving Franklin, headed for Palmer Junction. On your way to Black Diamond, you'll pass through the small town of Maple Valley. Not much to see here, but the junction sent you to Black Diamond, or over the Milwaukee to Eastern Washington. Once in Black Diamond, our main industry, coal, comes into play. Old Mine #11 was literally in downtown. It still is, just dormant. Our next stop is Franklin. In its day a bustling metropolis by virtue of the coal industry. Although a ghost town now, we envision it still being a going concern with two mines, both owned by Rainier Anthracite. After leaving Franklin along the South wall (on the other side of the backdrop) you come to Palmer Junction. From here you can take the diverging rail into Palmer and do business with the Edwards and Bradford lumber mill, or continue on the mainline, through the cut, and info the helix and parts east. We have over 3200 lineal feet of track in here, a run from staging to staging will take over 48 minutes without stopping. Hope you enjoyed the tour. More to follow.
Absolutely fantastic! I would love to see it in person someday. Till then, a good YouTube video would be great!! The TEAM has done a great work of art!!!
Worked on a bunch of little (pun intended) stuff today, not the least of which is the table and chairs for the library. The set is from shapeways. I added the blue seat backs to match the photo backdrop in the library. I used model master "wood" as the chair color and model master panzer interior buff for the table tops. Here's how the set will look once inside the library. Two people enjoy their books and a husband and wife in conversation; albeit the hub looks as if he's dreaming of the golf course, or perhaps his next railfanning adventure. Thanks for checking in.
If there's a constant in model railroading it's that every once in a while a confounding event will occur. Well, tonight was that night. Our new transformer for the main turnout bus arrived yesterday. We installed it tonight and nothing happened. The old multi-meter showed that voltage dropped to 1 volt when hooked up to the main bus. Interesting. Ed, Scott and Bob set out to find out why. First step was hooking the transformer up to the secondary turnout bus. It pegged at 13.5V. Hmmm. Must be a problem in the main bus. So, over the next 3 hours the guys pulled apart the bus to isolate the problem. The problem, never found, but the transformer started pegging 13.5V again. The solution, who knows, while items were removed from the bus, they were put back on without change and the problem never returned. Ahem. In other news, Reynold returned from vacation, all tanned and relaxed. He spent the evening touching up the tracks in the lumber yard. If you look closely, you'll see the white lines created when we pulled up the tape. Rey is painting those and it looks great. Wain finished his road and crossing into the Renton Yard. Very cool! I made changes to Stacy Yard and spent much of the evening prone under the center island attaching the styrene to the homasote with double stick tape. Later we'll mark out the road stripes and paint the styrene with asphalt paint color. One other thing I did was to add Woodland Scenics field grass to the lower Cedar River. Neat stuff. One other thing, we reorganized the power station a bit, combining the Lenz controls and separating the two turnout bus transformers. Finally, added the two couples to the library. Getting closer to completion. We'll, that's it for tonight, thanks for checking in. M
Spent this evening building mock-ups for the service tracks along Renton Yard. In this first pic, RGW 444 just set out a boxcar at New Flyer Inc., a truck supply and repair shop. It is also setting out flatcars at Sun Chemical. Earlier in its round, the crew set out a boxcar and a flat at Wesco, an industrial supply chain. Both of these new buildings will get a lot of detail over the coming weeks. Wain purchased a CD with all sorts of building types, accessories and details. You can see what he came up with on the New Flyer building using the CD. I finished the mock-up of a third building, one that is not serviced by the railroad but has significance to it none-the-less. I'll save it for tomorrow.
Following up on last night's post, I am looking forward to building the remodeled Milwaukee Substation in Renton. The building is affectionately titled the Old Milwaukee Substation, it's home to an architect firm among other tenants and is a few blocks west of the old depot (now home of the chamber of commerce). Here is what it currently looks like: And my version in foamcore: Plastruct can expect a hefty order of brick sheets in the next day or so. You may ask why, in my version, the primary structure is so far removed from the glass panel area? Well, I need to cover an upright holding up the next level, so the building needs to accommodate that. M
Tonight we cleaned and cleaned and cleaned some more, so not many pics of that, but it sure is shiny in there. There were a few things done though. I worked on the South Seattle Yard, securing some loose edges and putting the first coat of spackle on the seams. As that dried, I put down frog tape on the homasote and track. I then put down the first coat of bright yellow. While the boys are affectionately calling the yard the "banana republic", it really is the base coat that I will cover in tape to eventually pull up and reveal all the markings in the yard. The next two coats are a gray primer and asphalt. Let's hope it works. Scott did a couple of small projects, he built our newly delivered PECO track bumpers, shown here awaiting paint and weathering: He also swapped out the plastic wheelsets and installed kadee whisker couplers to a 3 set of our log cars. Finally Bob completed the second chute to the woodchip loader and detailed the scene with more sawdust debris. A fun night, good stuff. M
This is my first look into this thread, and it seems to be pretty cool. The small details are always the best. Keep up the work on the paper plant or lumber yard, I'm not sure what to call it. Either way, it looks good. Can't go wrong with center beam flat cars.
Amid yesterday's honey-do's, I did get some time in the train room. Sanded the seams on South Seattle Yard, then painted them yellow. Pic taken while drying, so nice and shiny. Later in the day hit the area with matte finish spray for first coat of sealer. Probably give it one more coat of sealer before applying the striping tape and numbering.
Last night's work party included a bit of fun, most notably a package received from Athearn with a replacement front truck for the KCS SD70Ace #4046. Athearn was simply outstanding in dealing with a warped front truck that kept the loco derailing on anything but straight track. Reynold replaced the truck first thing and we gave it a few seconds of running to check its performance: We did not adjust any of the CV's but you still have to love that fan whine. WOW! As for other progress, Bob completed the final track detailing at the lumber mill, finishing the work Reynold started last week. He also added more woodchip debris along the feeder track. Wain was busy with the RGW engine shop, using the nibbler to get the retractable door in place. We also filled in some open areas with replacement ties and ballasted some of the track. Next week we run trains and the video camera will catch it all.
