For your enjoyment here are a few photos of our layout, depicting the St Paul Pass line of the Milwaukee Road. It's designed for operation and for long trains and running time (at least for European layouts!). My youngest son did the photos during our last worksession in 2010. StPaul Pass in Vienna - a set on Flickr Enjoy! Michael
Michael, you have a beautifully crafted and ambitious project under way. I'm sure it is pleasing to have the help of an interested (and skillful) son. Can you tell me how you did the excellent mountain backgrounds - are they commercial prints or your own artistic creation? Thanks for letting us visit. Bob C.
Michael, you've done a wonderful job on that layout. I would love to see a trackplan, to see how you put 4 levels of track in so stealthily!
You are kidding me, right? Actually, I would replace them if I didn't have many other things still to do. I think that they are not really good, or to be specific: they are really bad. I painted them myself on sheet styrene, using a technique that was first described in ModelRailroader: First apply white to the bottom and blue to the top and mix in between so that there is a transistion from blue to white to simulate the more white-ish horizon. The treelines are simply different shades of green, applied with a wide brush. Actually, the mountains in the back of the background should be more blue-ish, a sight you have on a sunny summer day. As you can guess from the photos, I don't do my living by painting as I would have starved by now. When I redo them, I will use photo backgrounds of the real Bitterroots, as modern digicams have the ability to do make excellent panoramic photos.. Michael
A track plan (albeit schematic) is on the blog's page. (Scroll down) I did the track planning with CadRail, but lost the files somewhere between computers. Michael
Thanks for the compliments! I'm using Skype for talking and LogMeIn for the Dispatcher to operate the CTC panel remotely. The connection is done with an UMTS/USB-stick. The communication during the last 3 sessions worked flawlessly, although the sound is not great but that might be a problem of the connection between the PC and the radio. When I have time, I'll look into that. Michael
Very nice..... now I'll have to go back and study the trackplan. What era are you modeling? Are you planning on overhead electrification or are you post-electrification?
Very nice layout! And I gotta say, you and Jeff are geeks . Actually I'm just jealous because my layout is so old-school and 20th century.... Happy New Year.
The video capability was the reason to choose it. It's not free, however. The full version lets you invite somebody via eMail which is very convenient. A camera car would be the next best thing, as there are several very small ones on the market. However, due to the fact that there are derailments from time to time I don't think it would be practicable, as the reaction time of the remote engineer would be too long. But the video connection itself is on my to-do list, if we have enough bandwith. Michael
I'm modelling the 1980-1983 era. In my world the line was not abandoned in 1980. I never planned for electrification...until I got one of the OMI Little Joes. It runs so fine on the head of the Olympian that the idea of an overhead wire is wandering through my brain....we'll see. And happy New Year to all! Michael
Michael,now all we need is an MP15AC in n scale and some SD40-2's and we will be all set.great looking layout.
