2014-2015 Seventh Annual International Winter Layout Party

Your foam base looks beautiful, Doug. Will your view block down the center be a vertical sky backdrop (yielding a 15 to 16 inch deep shelf on each side of the layout), or will it be formed by hills, trees, and structures--but not sky--that prevent seeing the far side of the layout?

For what they're worth...some comments about view blocks on my layout:
In one portion of my own layout, I have a view block formed by 2 to 3 inch tall trees on a 2 inch thick foam hill down the center of a peninsula that is about 5 feet wide. The upper deck is at 65 inches from the floor, but a raised floor on one side of the peninsula puts the functional height of the upper deck at about 53 inches. I am 5'8" tall and, when working the yard on one side of the peninsula, I can only see trains moving on the other side of the peninsula when I deliberately lean forward and/or stand on tiptoes. This picture from several years ago shows me standing by the peninsula on benches that were replaced 2 years ago by the raised floor.


In another area of my layout, I originally had a helix separated from the sceniced portion of the upper deck by a 7 inch high vertical sky view block. Operators in front of the sceniced area could only see into the helix if they deliberately turned toward the helix and leaned forward to look over the view block. I had always been dissatisfied with the unrealistic appearance of this view block because the sky abruptly stopped at the entrance to the helix, and the sky of the helix view block was obviously shorter than the sky of the 16" backdrop that extended along the back of the entire upper deck.

When a water leak this fall necessitated repairing scenery in this area, I made the trees go all the way to the top of the helix view block, so there were no longer any unrealistic edges to the sky on the shorter view block, only on the top of the backdrop...and that edge could be eliminated from sight by carefully framing or cropping any photographs.


Personally, I prefer view blocks made of trees, hills, or structures to vertical sky view blocks, because any vertical edges of sky view blocks seem very unrealistic even when disguised by smokestacks, and (for me, at least) 16" from aisle to a horizon of trees or buildings seems much larger than 16" from aisle to a vertical sky backdrop. Using view blocks instead of vertical backdrops also offers the possibility of viewing (and photographing) at an angle instead of straight to the back of a shelf...which means you can see a panoramic view of scenery that could be as wide as the diagonal length of a layout.

 

Argh. Well, hopefully the layout can be a stress reliever.

 

Welcome to the Party, theskunk! It's never too late for anyone to join...and as we get past the holidays, I expect others will be dropping in, too.

Are the small layout and the larger modules set up to go together in one configuration only? Or, are the tracks that lead on and off of each module precisely located so that multiple configurations can be arranged? For example, could either of the single tracks that leave the small layout at 0 inches elevation (not the bridge overpass) connect directly to any of the 4 tracks that leave the larger keyhole-shaped module or the 4 tracks that leave the long narrow module propped under the window?

 

Due to my wife's surgery, I spent the first week of the Layout Party working in our dining room on the bridge kitbash/conversion as an alternative Party goal instead of downstairs in the trainroom working on my originally proposed goals. Now that she has recovered sufficiently for me to spend more time down in the trainroom, I've temporarily placed the shortened bridge and partially completed counterweight tower back on the layout until I can complete the original Layout Party goals.


My first Layout Party goal was to install kill switches for 5 stub tracks in the East Peoria Yard Engine Facility. Early last week, I electrically isolated the 5 tracks immediately after their turnouts with yellow plastic insulating rail joiners and used a black marker pen to "hide" the joiners. Over the weekend, I ran feeders from the bus wires to the toggle switches, rerouted the track feeders to the toggles instead of to the bus wires, soldered everything, and installed the toggles in the fascia board. When I checked the turnouts leading to the 5 tracks for electrical conductivity, I discovered the feeders to the tracks had also provided power to the diverging route rails for 4 of the 5 turnouts, so I added some new feeders for 4 turnouts.
The "after" picture of engine facility tracks taken yesterday from the front side of the engine facility looks almost exactly the same as the "before" picture in Post #6 taken several years ago from the back side of the facility, except for the toggle switches that can be seen in the fascia board.


This week, I'll be working on electrically protecting some turnouts on the mainline so trains can't enter incorrectly thrown turnouts.

 

This week I have electrically protected 2 mainline turnouts to prevent trains from going through misaligned turnouts and installed bi-color (red/green) LEDs from Radio Shack near the TOs, so operators have a visual indication of whether the points (which are not easily seen from the aisle) are properly aligned.

The first TO leads to a spur serving the Central Illinois Grain elevator and McGrath Ag Services. The TO has had a Tortoise motor for 11 years but only the motor is wired...no wires go to either of the single pole switches built into the Tortoise. The TO is located on the underside of an upper deck, 24 inches into a 30 inch deep shelf, and is secured in place with adhesive caulking instead of screws. To further complicate matters, the Tortoise is behind the fluorescent lights for the lower deck...meaning I have about 9 inches between the surface of the lower deck and the underside of the light fixture and the L-girder supports for the upper deck. Since properly positioning the actuator wire in the original installation was extremely difficult, I opted to wire the Tortoise in place instead of removing it from the layout.

In order to route track power to one of the mainline rails only when properly aligned, I had to solder one wire from the bus wire to one of the single pole switches on the Tortoise and another from the Tortoise to one of the mainline rails, which I had isolated from other track power using yellow insulated rail joiners painted with a black marker. By twisting myself like a circus contortionist, I was able to put wires through the tiny holes in the Tortoise single pole switch contact pads and then solder them in place (not a pretty soldering job, but ultimately it was functional). I also soldered the feeders to the rail and to the bus wire.
For the LED, I drilled a 1/4 inch hole between the straight and diverging tracks of the TO and fed the wires from the LED down through the hole and spliced them into the wires powering the motor (adding a 10K resistor to one of the wires). In the pic, notice that the LED seems more pink than red...so I'll probably replace the 10K resistor with a smaller one in the next days.


The other protected TO is at PPU Jct, which is the second of 8 turnouts in the Peoria Helix. The process of wiring the PPU Jct TO was identical to the CI Grain elevator, but was MUCH easier because I had easy access to the Tortoise contact pads while standing inside the Peoria Helix. The pic shows the LED positioned where trains on the main leave East Peoria Yard on the upper deck to enter the Peoria Helix. The TO onto the helix is just out of the picture to the left. The loco is on the main to the Peoria Helix and the other track (East Peoria Yard lead) dead ends at the edge of the picture. As in the other picture, the LED is too dim to show due to its 10K resistor, so I’ll replace this resistor, too.


As I've done on other R/G LEDs protecting turnouts on the layout, I'll cover half of the LED in black paint or make a cowling, so it looks more like a dwarf signal.

Next week, I'll be working on the background trees between the engine facility and the Interstate bridge.