I would handle the joints just like drywall, with mud and tape, sand, & repeat mud as needed, feathering the edges smoothly. But paneling is more flexible than drywall, so drywall mud/tape may be prone to cracking if something hits the paneling between supporting studs.
Why not use foam board, etc... for the back drop painting? That room looks freshly painted. Just asking, and also easier to fix if want to change or mess it up? Must be a new house, or recently painted and new carpet? Or maybe you are the cleanest person on earth
Sunday, 07 January 2024- So it’s been awhile since my last post. I’ve been working pretty incessantly on the track plan. I think I’m satisfied enough to start in. This is probably an 90% solution-I’m sure compromises and adjustments will come during the build. It’s really become more of a Chicago theme. It’s a little bit of railfanning and a little bit of ops opportunity as well. I used SCARM, and used unitrack for the features…unitrack will be the double track main, and I’ll use Atlas flex for the yards and industrial branch lines. This will take up about the southern half of my basement (top of diagram is south). Bottom left is Metra’s Western Ave Coach yard: scenic stub-end staging and opportunity to do yard ops. This way I can rotate my Metra rolling stock and locos and the building can serves as hidden staging for my kids’ non-prototypical consists or local freight (until I build a permanent staging yard…more on that later). Metra coaches will then travel to the right (“heading north from Chicago”) through an urban canyon. Track height won’t change but the ground will drop away a bit for an underpass and elevated station (not depicted yet). Then it’s thr lift out?duck under? (TBD) and heading through some negative space towards Schiller Park and the Schiller Park intermodal yard, with another station. Then another bit of negative space before hitting an industrial park, like those in the Wheeling and Buffalo Grove suburbs. Then it can loop forever, or turn away at the wye towards staging tracks that will be added much later on-like when my kids are grown. There are some yard ops opportunities at at Schiller Park-bad order well cars or autoracks and getting wells to/from the A/D and load/unload tracks. My Schiller is compressed in length, but I think it’s got the feel of that very small yard. Mostly though, Schiller is a scene I can run through and stage some longer intermodal trains. The industrial park is going to be the opportunity for switching ops-I’ll have to stage that train somewhere else on the layout, pretending it just arrived on the scene, maybe stopped to hold for a Metra train-until I’ve got a staging yard done much later. Right now, there is no backdrop planned between the industrial park and the Western Ave Metra Yard. It’s not prototypical but I’d like to get the track down temporarily and mock up structures to see if I get the sense urban feel I’m going for here. Below the wye I can add for about another 12 feet once the space isn’t occupied, which could give me the opportunity for more rural/suburban run north of Chicago into Wisconsin and some hidden staging tracks. Maybe a helix to a staging deck. That’s a good ways off. Anyway-I’m happy with this as a concept and will adjust accordingly as I build it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Thursday, 26 December 2024- Wow, I can’t believe a year has passed since my last post on this thread. Work and family kept me busy, I got ended up taking a leadership role in a volunteer organization on top of all that too…but then we had some major storm damage that really put a halt to things. When I had time for modeling, I spent most of this year reworking the track plan-I wanted an elevated section of track as part of my “druthers” in addition to have the option for both continuous running and some switching. The time I spent thinking long and not doing gave me the idea to adjust the backstory of this proto-freelanced layout in honor of my late maternal grandfather who worked for NS for over 40 years. Rather than have WC get bought by CN or survive in the modern era, I think I’ll just have NS buy them. Gives me a nice backstory with consists I want to run. Photos of the updated plan aren’t great-I was in a hurry and will update them later. Metra’s western yard and the Schiller Park intermodal yard remain-each now will have a passenger station nearby similar to the prototype. I’ve got a longer lead to Schiller. I’ve got two rail overpasses over four lane roads, as well as a bridge over the Chicago River. Five (light blue structures)rail served industries-left to right. frozen food distributor, a transload/storage warehouse, a beverage distributor, and a distillery. The two dirt brown/green areas are a scrap yard along the aisle and a small team track between two of the warehouses. There is a lot of blank space in that large peninsula-this is an urban layout and so I will fill it out with enough structures and parking to seem plausible. It’s about 95% done-in the lower right corner, cut off a bit I will add a few staging tracks to support switching. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
In the upper right corner, I would clean up the serpentine yard lead, by flipping your yard tree to run NW to SE (using RH switches). Since the yard lead already runs to the top edge, it makes little sense to have it traverse back to the inner edge before turning back around to meet the lead switch. This would still leave room for the structures you show, inside the yard lead. If you need more length on the yard lead, just slide the mainline switch down the W side of the layout. (my directions assume N at top of the image)
Saturday, February 8th, 2025- Been kind of crazy since my last post. I took some suggestions here and reworked some of my track plan. I’m happy with it, but I had an idea a few weeks ago so I spent some time playing with a dog bone rather than a duck under format. The duck under style show above is still the front runner-but I did get some great scenery ideas from Prototype locations as I researched the dog bone idea. Unfortunately I’ve had to put further physical progress on hold for now due to some unforeseen health challenges. I’m on medical leave right now, so when I feel up to it I may post some pictures of the latest track plan. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
