Welcome to the build thread for the Pittsville Branch. It is built with Kato Unitrack on a hollow core door. The photos show the layout's semi-permanent home in my sister's old room. I now have the layout, a workbench and a cat bed in the room (very important, as some of you know). The layout is being built using foam insulation board and sculptamold. Benchwork is simply folding table legs from an old table. Control is an NCE PowerCab system. The layout is a branchline in the Ohio Appalachians jointly operated by the Nickel Plate Road and the Pennsylvania Railroad in the late 50s. The purpose of the line is to haul coal and function as an interchange. Pittsville is the only yard on the branch an sees a lot of traffic in both directions. The industry on the layout is Dannager Coal Tipple no.54. It has three loading tracks and an additional siding. It requires three coal runs a day. The power for the Nickel plate is a single Berkshire (for the moment). The power for the Pennsylvania is an H10, NW2 and RS5 (also for now). Keep checking in for updates in he next two weeks as I try to get as much done before I have to leave for school. Then I will have to wait for semester break to do anything. Thanks for looking.
Look forward to updates. It looks like a good plan and fun train running. Tis summer craziness time for this contractor, not much train time available til winter gets here, so I understand the waiting. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks badlandnp. This plan took me a loooong time and I am very satisfied with it. Tonight the Pittsville branch got an infrastructure upgrade. The roundhouse kit was completed and wired along with the other tracks leading off the turntable. It took a lot of hours to solder all of the tracks because my dad and I were soldering newbies and the areas were tough to solder, but we figured it out- and mixed the polarity up causing a short. So I had to switch the polarity of the rest of the layout the other way by flipping the terminal joiners. Now everything runs smoothly. Tomorrow I hide all of the wires coming from the tracks and straighten up the wiring underneath. Progress can't be stopped.
Today I got to the hobby shop and picked up a flexible rock face, a big box of sculptamold and a bag of coal. The rock face was cut into pieces and distributed across the layout in order to try and avoid using anything else. I think it turned out pretty well. Tomorrow I will crack open the sculptamold on blend everything together. I also tried my hand at a coal load. It is a piece of scrap pink insulation foam cut and shaped, the painted with black paint and coal sprinkled on when it was wet. I like the look, and I will eventually come up with the magnet system to remove the loads easily.
Now that I am back for the summer, there will be lots of progress to report. I weathered some equipment yesterday and I like how it came out. I have the Berk and my K4 coming soon. The next step on the layout is to use sculptamold to finish the terrain before I get to ground foam. Sorry if the pictures are sideways, I have to remember to change the orientation on my phone when taking pictures.
