Here is my first update after my initial post. Since posting that I ended up working a lot of volunteer hours at my club layout (we had some last minute cancellations so I put in over 17 hours the Saturday and Sunday before Christmas) and then we had the holidays and then I went to see the King Tut exhibit in Seattle and then I finally got to work on some stuff. Accomplishments: 1) I got my old PC box working correctly and it seems to be running JMRI now, so while that was not on my list in my first post it was on my list in my head. 2) I have made reservations to stay two nights in Monroe in February (the thing for which I am readying myself). 3) I have started working on my railtruck conversion kit for my On30 railtruck, and I appear to have the sound decoder stuff all sorted out and ready to go. Here are photos of the On30 railtruck kit at the "oh my goodness, I think the alcohol/india ink wash was supposed to look more washy and less inky" stage. I will be painting over this so hopefully it will all work out. This is what the package says it will look like. I haven't decided whether to make it U.S. Mail as shown or something else. I will be painting it a different color. Adam
No progress this week. Supposed to meet with my home builder friend tomorrow and schedule a time to rip the plywood for the benchwork.
More progress! With some Christmas downtime, I have been getting some modeling time in. Starting with ballast on the west half of Crescent: Click here to view the original image of 700x525px and 133KB. Gross Dam Rd closer to completion: Click here to view the original image of 700x525px and 122KB. I extended the MOW access road, and added some ground cover to West Crescent: Click here to view the original image of 700x525px and 126KB.
Looking thru the cut east of Tunnel 19 toward the tunnel: Click here to view the original image of 700x525px and 114KB. From Tunnel 19's hill, looking back at the ROW: Click here to view the original image of 700x525px and 161KB. I planted close to 100 bumpy chenille trees here on Tunnel 19, still needs about that many more. A patch of wildflowers is at the upper right: Click here to view the original image of 700x525px and 160KB. Still needs some weathering, but here's the scene flavor I'm after:
First update. Got the large siding in from the south side of the town of Potter Place NH to Concord NH installed. In reality, the larger of the two south sidings is only equal to about a 1/4 mile, but for operational reasons, I have the other end of the siding in Concord on the other side of the layout. The Route 11 overpass will act as a scenic divider. Seen here is a flat car getting spotted on the siding south of the Potter Place depot. The turnout is laid on a foam transition piece that brings this siding of the roadbed just like the prototype. I've checked all of my B&M locomotives and various freight cars and have had no issues with the transition. The lead on this turnout will go to another siding that serves the freight depot. In reality, this siding is about half the size of the large siding. I will use this more as a spur as I do not have a turnout that will fit the radius I have, nor do I want to build one. I will end up building one that is non functioning which considering the state of maintenance of the B&M at this time, is no real stretch.
Things on hold for a bit. The train room is getting torn apart. I've had it trying to just make things work. Going back to work today, which means I'm heading out of town until Friday morning. When I get back, heading to the store to grab some 1/2" drywall, wire, boxes, receptacles, studs, etc. Plan is: Remove existing drywall on the walls as intact as I can. Remove ceiling (it's popcorn), and when I retape the walls, it's going to be screwed up, unless someone knows an easy way to make it not look like garbage. Stud up the walls and rehang as much of the drywall as I can. I should have enough paint left over to repaint where I've taped & mudded the walls back up.
Well, things have progressed a bit here, too. First off, my On30 railtruck is coming together. When last we left, I wasn't sure which of the Tsunami decoders sitting on my workbench was the correct one. I figured out that I could easily test by carefully hooking test leads up to the red and black pins on the eight-pin plug adapters. I did one, and nothing happened. Uh oh. I did the other and it sounded like a steamer. I thought, oh, rats, after all this effort did I blow my railtruck sound decoder, and then I noticed I had a loose wire. I pressed that wire to the pin where it should have been connected and the sound came to life. I went ahead and re-soldered that pin and then did some testing to be sure things were going to work fine. When last we left off, I was also in the "oh my goodness, I think the alcohol/india ink wash was supposed to look more washy and less inky" stage on my On30 railtruck conversion kit. Well, after layers and layers and layers (and layers) of slightly diluted acryclic wash I have the following: I have started assembling the pieces, now that they are finally dry, and I have removed stock lettering from the railtruck itself and hit it with dull-cote. The roof is off because I am trying to figure out how to put a little guy in there. I have a driver figure, but I am probably going to have to cut him off at the knees as there is nowhere for his legs to go. I had also gotten JMRI almost working on a computer running a distro of Linux. Wellllll, that took a little more doing. I had the ports problem I always have when installing JMRI on a new computer as the program was designed around serial ports but most of us are now living in a USB world. Well, it took kind of a radical step of reinstalling the system since my mucking around based on the JMRI website help pages only got me to totally screw up the java and ports settings. I went to the JMRI Users list and got expert help and now I am up and running. More importantly, I got it running on my Linux laptop, so NOW I FINALLY have a portable JMRI set-up, after years of trying to put this together. I can take my Sprog II and basically set up a programming track or 1 amp DCC system anywhere I can take my laptop. As far as the modules themselves, I am continuing some wiring and some track tweaks. I have materials to start the retaining wall on the log dump module. Oh, if anyone has a one or two digit number to suggest I may be lettering this soon with some stock large HO letters I have around. It's not going to be #5 or #7 as those are taken. Until next time... Adam
No update this week, too busy with work and week three of some cold/flu/bubonic plauge. The layout is moving this week to a bedroom from the front porch however.
This past week saw the completion of the benchwork and running of the bus wires. I'm hoping to get some plywood top down this coming week.
Hi All, Here is an update as to my progress. As I posted before I am working in the area of Farmers Grain Coop which is customer #1 in my track plan The want to do list (in no order) Add more storage towers between the elevator and the back drop. I think I can get another 4 in there Ballast the tracks within the customer Ballast the mainlines (part of the second main can be seen in the first photo at the bottom and in the second photo on the left side) Install the switch stands within the customer Add some grain storage bins to the left of the three tracks Add some scenery Paint the rails Have some fun doing it. At this time I have most if not all of the above items completed. Need to to do some more overall scenery touch ups, but I'm happy with what I have got accomplished so far. While working the area I removed some of the ground cover at the team track area (seen in the middle photo) for a few reasons: I never liked the way that area had turned out; Saw something in a different thread that I liked and want to try; Will need to remove a track in the area. Due to other Life Events I had to push myself to get this done. I am leaving town in 10 days for a month, and I need to finish other projects around the house before then. So at this point I think I am finished and have to leave the party early. If I get some time, and I can do some more work I'll try to post it before leaving. Thanks for the invite, I have had a good time. Regards, Gary
No progress on my wiring. As I said, this time of year is tough, and I've spent most of the holidays either out of town, visiting family, or at the GF's house. Even *seeing* the layout is a challenge much less working on it. I intend to get back to it starting this weekend though. Not sure what I'll get done by February 10th but I guess every little bit helps. In the meantime, I have done some modeling. I have taken a subset of my modeling supplies/tools to the GF's and have been working on a few renumber/decal projects. Here is my latest...a "foobie" BNSF reefer.
I managed to take some photos while running trains this weekend after 2 oddball ice storms. It's been cold and snowy for 2 weeks now, and two back to back freezing rain showeres hit us over the long weekend, thwarting our 5-country Geocaching trip we planned. Oh well. I built about a dozen trees, and not much else... Pics later this week!
I haven't gotten much of my list done recently. This is not on my list, but probably should have been. My daughter Lucy has gotten more interested in trains so we've been going and running trains and working on things together. This is a picture of us mid-inspection on a string of Rio Grande coal cars that she really wanted from Santa.
Pulling out of the layout party. In addition to the shoddy craftsmanship used in building this room, I have to deal with shoddy plumbing and a frozen/burst pipe above the train room. I don't know what told me to move my desk and the majority of my locomotives and laptop/etc. this morning, but I'm glad I did. Thank the good Lord that I've been working local, and don't have to work tonight!
Major bummer, Todd, but good to hear damage is minimal for the fleet. We'll be here when you have time to begin rebuilding again.
Not a lot of progress :-( My current plans are as follows: . Continue to refine the overall design. - No Progress . Investigate materials for build - will need to be brick for the bulk of it and then something for trimming the windows and archs. - Ordered samples and bought some styrene to practise with. . Design the roof - thinking glass so that the people can be seen. - Glass is definitely what the roof will be . Figure out what tools I will need - Bought a bunch of tools that will be needed and I figure i will probably need more Realized that I do not have a workbench, so I have ordered a couple of file cabinets on casters and I will have some 3/4 plywood cut to 28x60 and then some counter trim and build myself a workbench that will fit under my benchwork and roll out to be used
I got a temp fix going. I've been up for over 24 hours, and I'm beat. Couldn't sweat the copper fittings because I couldn't get all of the water out of the lines, and the bread trick didn't work, so picked up two of those sharkbite connectors and some pex tubing. Hot water again! Going to make it prettier tomorrow, empty the room, and start demolition.
Like some others, I have not made much progress. It seemed like the only free time that I had was when I made the original post. Work, family issues, the furnace plus the weather making it too cold to work in the garage for long. At least, I had a successful test of the enginnering and design of the detachable staging yard since I needed to remove it for the repairmen. At this point I am hoping to get some things done before the end of the party. Peter
