Some of you may remember the thread from early 2008 on the final operating session in Odenville, AL. I have relocated to Mobile, AL. I thought I would share the process of rebuilding the layout that made the move from Odenville, the return to operations with a new crew, and the expansion of the railroad that has been delayed for over 2 years. After a 17 month hiatus from being able to operate the WC&W due to a change in job and location, the new trainroom was finally finished on Thursday evening. The train room on Thursday night.
On Friday afternoon the reinforcements arrived and the layout was quickly relocated from the garage to the train room and process of getting the layout back on its legs began. I had a lot of very good help from the last operating crew in packing everything up. Not being a mind reader, I had a lot of fun/frustration trying to where things were packed. The best part is everything was well packed! By the end of Friday evening, the train room had a diifferent look.
Today (Sat.) was spent on model railroading, but not a lot of progress on the layout. In the morning, I attend the monthly SouthWest Alabama Railroad Modelers meeting. They visited the Foley Model Railroad musuem. It is a large nice sceniced O gauge layout. Then I headed to the Mississippi Gulf Coast Model Railroad club in Gautier, MS to help them wire there layout. I managed to install a DS64 and get 8 local routes working. This evening, I wanted to do some "showy" stuff so it would look like I worked on the railroad today. I got one more section up on it legs. Got the legs attached to 2 more sections and started a 3rd one. Then I decided to unpack buildings and get some of them back on the layout. Still have one more box of buildngs to unpack to try and find a few missing buildings
Wow!!!! The room looks great!!!! It's good to see the WC&W coming back to life and look forward to more progress shots. Might have to plan a 'family' trip to the beach durning an operating session some time.
One picture from today. Tomorrow, I need to start installing rail joiners and wiring. Nothing that will show up well in pictures, unless I can run a train. LOL
Thanks, Jerry. My new train friends down here were also impressed with the room. I'm shooting for a operating session on the 2nd Sat of Sept. I sure would like to be able to operate through Rabbittown since I have been waiting for over 2 years to do it. Once I get the rest of the house decluttered of train stuff, a visit would be great!
If there was ever a case for building your layout modularly....this is it. Looks great and seems to be going back together very fast.
Got several hours of train time today, but spent most of the time installing rail joiners between the sections that were set up on Friday. Did manage to get the U shaped section (West Perryville) pulled up and the tracks connected. Set one additional section up, but it had the legs that were switched and is too tall. Will have to adjusted the legs tomorrow night.
Have made slow progress this week. Most of the progress is not highly visible. I have installed rail joiners on the track between all of the benchwork sections. I have the Loconet cables reinstalled to all but 1 UP5 and that UP5 will be relocated in the expansion. I have gotten several more sections up. I have 5 more sections to stand up and reconnect. I finished unpacking 3 boxes of building. Still have to pull the power buss. I have to program 6 new PSX circuit breakers to supliment the 2 I had. I have reinforcements coming tomorrow afternoon, so should get most of the rest of the layout up. Have to install backdrops on the pininsula. My goal is to be able to run trains by Sunday evening.
The WC&W stands for Waltzing Creek & Western. The WC&W is a freelanced Appalachian coal hauler that also serves a steel mill.
Sat. and Sunday were mostly spent with my #2 son and his family. The grandkids wanted to see trains run. I finally got 30+' running just before they left at 4pm. I can now run all of the main line that is standing. Still have 2 more sections to stand up. I also need to wire the branch line. I'm getting real excited as the first ops session is scheduled for Sept 12. A lot left to do.
The Mirco Engineering bridge project should be restarted in the next week or two. I plan to be able to run thru one more town at the Sept. ops session. Track laying should start this week. I started pulling the power buss for the UP5's this morning. I should finish the power buss tonight.
I got the UP5 power buss pulled and wired up this week. I started laying cork roadbed for the next town. Unfortunately this weekend was more family projects. I had to go to north Alabama to move furniture for my MIL on Friday and then spent Sat. helping my father with photographing some of his Persian and Turkish rugs. Didn't have time to try to stop by Jerry DeBene's to check on his progress in person. Did get home in time today to finish laying cork and start laying track. Those #10 turnouts sure look good! Can't wait to put a passenger train thru them. A couple of pictures of the track laying and one shot of the outside of the train room and sunroom. Glenn
Glad to see you're finally getting the layout operational. Of course, while you're doing that the wife and I left Alabama with all our worldly possessions and moved to Colorado. Furnature etc will be delivered Sept 11. Have you decided on a new program for generating switchlists? Or did you modify the old program? I hope I get down there to operate on the new WC&W one of these days. The layout I operated on in Washington state before I moved to Alabama has also moved from SE Washington to S Carolina. Lots of layouts on the move.
