I model the Omaha( C&NW ) from Spooner, Wi to Rice Lake, Wi. in 1972. I've used some modeler's license so I can run BN stuff right after the merger. BN bought the ROW when C&NW was hurting for cash. This is the Omaha X, Spooner is at the X: The layout,HO scale, takes up the 30x42' basement. Around the walls with 3 penninsulas. Here's my area for the party. The plan is to extend the mainline to points south/east staging, build the staging under the layout and start scenery. Ambitious. Since I finished the HD list( tiled the bathroom and entryway,trimmed out the hardwood floor I put in last month,etc!)about an hour ago, I should be able to make some progress this week. Here's a shot of the penninsula next door: Terry
Yep, looks just fine. The dry grout makes it look good. In fact, a little more might make it look even better. Good work. You're inspiring me to try something new. Thanks.
WLP 2010, Week 1 (Part 1) In last year’s Winter Layout Party of 2009, I worked on background trees and a highway bridge over the P&PU Yard. This year I will add background trees behind the CNW Adams Street Yard, put in a highway bridge, and upgrade some industries and scenery between the tracks and the backdrop. This is a recent picture of the entire CNW Adams Street Yard. The 3 CNW yard tracks and Main are on the left, 2 BN tracks in the center, and 2 P&PU tracks on the right. In the foreground is the cardboard mock-up of the Adams Street Viaduct. I have used that strip of cardboard to represent the Adams Street Viaduct since Spring 2004…so it’s about time to find a better representation. Objective 1: Here is another view of the Adams Street Viaduct from the other side. One of my goals this Layout Party is to replace the cardboard mock-up with a scratch-built bridge that looks similar to the overpasses seen on Interstate highways. Objective 2: About 2 years ago, I temporarily parked some houses at the north and south ends of the Yard to fill in the space, but the houses at the south end will be replaced this Layout Party with some trees and non-rail commercial industries. Objective 3: Earlier this year, I cut some painted foamboard to use for making background tree flats. During this layout party, I hope to a) trim the foamboards so they are the proper height to represent the bluffs on the other side of Adams Street that are visible from the CNW Adams Street Yard, and b) to get some ground foam and lichen glued to the foamboard.
WLP 2010, Week 1 (Part 2) Continuing the description of where I’m starting from and what I hope to accomplish during the Winter Layout Party of 2010: Objective 4: At the north end of the CNW Yard, there are several industries that are crowded along a switchback track configuration. This Winter Layout Party, I’ll extend the track to gain more room to spot cars, build structures for 3 of the 4 industries to replace the cardboard strips currently occupying those building sites, and add trees and other scenic details to all 4 industries. 4a) Great Plains Propane—needs tanks, fences, and structures (track will be repositioned, and several tanks will be made. 4b) Heller Tin Compress—needs fences, scrap piles and small structure(s) 4c) Smith-Scharff Paper Products—needs details for the existing Morton building and the area around the industry. 4d) Lauterbach Lumber—needs structure and scenery. Note the Proto snapshots propped against the backdrop in this picture.
Fiddletown All turnouts are built and glued down. Now I have to Install the manual linkage for the turnouts. Wolfgang
Flip This Layout This is great timing! Last weekend, after a long session of staring at my layout (yes I do this a lot), out came the Big Putty Knife and I tore all the existing scenery off. No pictures, but it looks like a bomb hit the neighborhood. I now have a running loop with some sidings, a blank slate! :thumbs_up: Using the same layout bones will save me at least a year, not to mention $$$. Not completely sure of the goal yet, but a new setting and era are being planned.
I'm late, but can I play, too?? I would like to get a few things more donw before I have to pack the layout up again. Yep, I'm moving! This time, to SW Germany, in March. I dismantled the big Secret Places Sub layout, with plans to move it to ND and store at my sister-in-law's place. The original plan was to store it there, until I realized the beast of the layout would require a U-haul to move it. So, I stripped the turnouts and electronics from it, and heaved the whole thing. It was hard to do, but I hadn't had time to work on it in months and months. It wasn't as painful as I imagined. I rebuilt in a matter of days, this time a Hollow-core door layout, 36x80". Single passing siding, mountains, tunnels, the whole Moffat Route bit. It's based on 2 distinct scenes on the Moffat: Tunnel 18, Crescent Siding, and Tunnel 19; and upper South Boulder Canyon between Tunnels 25 and 26. I ran my first train 2 weeks ago. I used Atlas c55 this time, as a smaller layout is easier to detail. I really like the track's performance. I did most of my scenery civil engineering before the track was laid. The roadbed was laid, and painstakingly leveled with spackle and other materials to obtain the flattest roadbed possible. When my order of track arrived in the mail, I set straight to work. Atlas #7's are the only turnouts I used (all 2 of them). The mountains are removable for access. The foam mountains were then coated with paint-tinted Sculptamold. I had to cut the mountain back near Tunnel 25, as there was no room for rock castings. That's where I am; where do I wanna be in a few weeks? I wanna have basic rockwork done from Tunnel 25-26, and have the rock spire near Tunnel 26 carved. I want to have Tunnels 18 and 19 roughly-scenicked, and portals built. I would like to build tunnel liners, and install and paint them. That's not much, but my work schedule is long. I generally only get time on Mondays and saturdays.
Vacation days are good for layout progress Before hitting the sack on Saturday night, I filled the holes and gaps in the foam roadbed and terrain with inexpensive latex painters' caulk. It's handy for adhering foam layers together too. A little smoothing with a putty knife tidied it all up. To get smooth track joints at the new turnout, I soldered as much as possible on the workbench before the final track bending. Before installing the track, I spray painted it in the garage with Rustoleum brown primer then wiped the excess wet paint from the tops of the ties and rails. This leaves the sides of the rails colored and dulls the sheen on the plastic ties. By the time I'm done ballasting and weathering the track, the brown paint tends to darken. As usual, I painted the foam with brown latex paint and shook dry sand into the wet paint. After the excess sand gets removed and the paint dries adequately, the site is ready for track. White Loctite adhesive is visible here, securing the track to the painted foam roadbed. In some places, there are gaps between the track and the roadbed. This isn't a problem since those gaps will be filled with ballast (kinda like the real world). The right side of the earth cut will accommodate the realigned road leaving Burt. Right now, I'm leaning toward building a wood trestle for the mainline. If so, I'll use styrene shapes instead of actual wood. If that goes well, I may replace the concrete ballasted deck bridge visible at left above with a trestle as well. I'm not really crazy about the proportions of that bridge; it's overly massive to be really believable. Anyone have links to good wood trestle pictures I can use for inspiration?
I have to say that I don't object to the dirt crossing, either. I do like the wooden crossing better.
Packy D.: I must say that you really go for it! You just jump ion there and start cutting! I appreciate your drawings and think that these are very helpful for visualizing the changes. We have a few artist types in our club and they always draw a picture of proposed changes there. As for a bridge type, I do think the wooden trestle is a good choice. I was imagining a steel bridge, too where the supports are trestle-like. Maybe more like the "El" trains in large cities. I don't mean exactly like that, though; something like a wooden trestle where the extra strength of the steel is used to reduce the number of supports. (Not sure I can think of a picture.) I have seen old bridges with large I-beam supports added for strength. I'm just trying to think of something slightly different from the normal wooden trestle. Just found this from the Oklahome NEONS (I think). Here is the concept: If you look under the center, small steel deck girder, you can see where the old wooden trestle bents have been cut away. The steel structure replaced them.
Greetings everyone! I already see some great progress here! I think it's about time I jump in with some projects to share. My layout is back in CA, as I'm visiting home for the holidays, so I'll be working mostly on equipment. Later on after I'm back in CA, I'll add as much scenery as I can to the layout. A few big projects I've kept on hold just for this party have been to: Lower the ride height of 7 Bachmann "Old Timers" Passenger Cars. Re-build a scrap Bachmann 4-4-0, including the complete re-designing of tender trucks and drive shaft (their weakest links). The ultimate goal is to publish an article on this one. Re-build 2 more Life-Like Saddle Tanks into "Ultimate Saddle Tanks" and publish an article on this as well. Paint/Detail a MDC 2-8-0 Consolidation (Still in need of prototype ideas..anyone?) Other. Anything I might have forgotten about or that might come up. I'll try to get some pictures up by the end of the day.
Cool, this party is off to a great start! I've had a few moments here and there the past few days to get some things done. Got all the track painted in this section and I used one of these to paint the rails. Got it at wally world in the crafts section. Used some cardboard for the tunnel liners. Bending put the crease lines in them, which turned out pretty cool when looking into the tunnel at them. I also ballasted the track from the portal back, and gave it a wash of black paint to dirty it up. BTW, I hate ballasting. Here is the work area so far. I've taped and painted all the light leaks, so when the lower level lights are on, there is no stray light in the tunnel. Nice and black! =) Hopefully by the weekend I'll have the portal glued down and the hardshell put down in this area. Mike
Sorry folks, no pics at the moment, because I don't have a digital camera. I have 5 different projects that I'm going to tackle, in order of priority. #1 - Build from the ground up an 8' NTRAK module. The tough part is the engineering, because the module will have to break down into three pieces for transport, plus other complications. The easy part will be the scenery. There won't be any. Instead, I'm going to use the module as the InfoModule, complete with the comparison of scales, description of NTRAK and N Scale, How viewers can estimate speed, etc. #2 - Repair some damage to my 2' NTRAK modules, and complete the scenery on them, as well as paint their backdrops. Then BALLAST the critters. I don't like ballasting.... #3 - Same as #2, but for one of my existing 4' NTRAK modules. #4 - Install MT 2003 Couplers in all my Kato SD70/AC4400 series locos. The nice thing about this project is I can sneak it in between working on the others. #5 - Work on a 4' NTRAK module that's about 70% complete. The Mountain Line is done except for placing the bridge and putting track across the bridge. Then I need to finish the trackwork for the other lines, assemble the building I've already painted, etc. I doubt if I'll get to this, but I sure would like to... I hope to get some pictures of progress for the various critters, and will update weekly.
Update #1. Got the lumber ripped and bought the shelf brackets. Lotsa people coming so no work til Sunday.
Update #1 for me. Layout plan is progressing nicely, I have managed to incorporate my old layout into the new plan, which will give me a good kick start on scenery etc. In the process I've simplifed the track plan on the old layout, so have a lot of turnouts I can recycle now. Benchwork for the new layout is progressing at an excellent speed, about 75% done with just the centre island left to build. Will wait to build this until work on the lower wing is complete and I have some more room. Trackwork from the old layout has mostly been lifted and ballast cleaning is progressing slowly. Might have to get the water blaster on to it. Points are all cleaned up and ready to be recycled. Have begun widening and realigning the grade ready to be double tracked. No photos of progress here, my sister borrowed my camera for a few days. In parallel with all of this I've been busy repainting a Life Life GP9 for my granddad for xmas. Started off as a plain blue B&O loco... Disassembled, hand rails removed Old decals removed Cleaned and primed, then painted flat black Decals added, very fiddly getting the stripes to stick over the grab irons Snow plow added Fine details hand painted -- foot steps, air hoses, marker lights, light surrounds Reassembled and posed for photos Here is the result... Hope to get some more done on the layout in the next couple of days before I head off on holiday.
Nice bridge, Flash. Those folks have some serious talent. I picked up some Evergreen styrene H-pile and I-beam shapes today and got a load of inspiration. I'll go with a steel trestle instead of wood. I'm cruising the web for photos now. Here are few links that will probably guide the overall design. Steel pile bent Narrows Road trestle Kootenai River bridge Yolo Causeway It appears to me that the concrete pile cap design (as visible in the Yolo Causeway link) is perhaps a bit more recent than the early 1960's. However, the all-steel pile bent would fit reasonably in my modeling era. This is all starting to look easier than I originally planned.
