Spent part of the weekend building a couple of switches, Tried a different way of cutting out the stock rails, clamped to the board and used a file, Did some snotting on the 1776, And ran trains, 4 at once! It was a good opportunity to tweak volume levels to be similar, still more to do there,
Gotta rethink the sticky tape idea....it out stuck the pliobond, Mixed up some grout with some fine ballast to try out in a section, will see how it dries tomorrow, Then did some cork shaving and put in a bit of track, And lastly a pic of that coal load glued to the foam cover. Just got to finish "setting" the decals. Sure wish I could get dry transfers for these, I do like them a lot better, but can't do them straight one letter at a time.
Had to make a little clearance for the programming/staging track, And a dozen new Intermountain tanks showed up. Pre-ordered them 3 years ago, I think, They look excuisite! Well worth the wait! That is a MT 10.000 gal on the right for comparison. Added some india ink wash to the rail area. I am not certain of how good this grout and ballast mix looks, but we will see. I added paint to the rails also, but no pics of that yet. Got distracted with work and some track laying and wire planning.
Ooohhhh... tank cars look nice. I didn't reserve them (~ 2 years ago)because I didn't know if they would actually get produced due to I-M's penchant for cancelling announced items. I had never realized how visually different the Micro-trains 10,000 gallon tanks are compared to the I-M 8,000 gallon tanks, and I have many of each; but,had never put them side-by-side (go figure!). Btw... great work on the layout... and great videos too!! Sent from my SM-G530T using Tapatalk
Thanks! The layout gave me headaches yesterday, with a short circuit showing up. Turns out, one of my locos has an issue, haven't looked into it yet. So, time to do a bit of zoning with toggles so I can isolate troubles more readily. These tanks came out great, hopefully will get the oil production and drilling facilities installed soon to give them a setting. In my correspondence with IM, they do count on pre-orders to decide on wether or not they produce an item. There other delays are due to the usual overseas production issues.
Worked on ballast and weathering the track and getting color on ties. Still experimenting, will put up details later. And finished up putting in the tracks for staging. Now to drop in feeders and wire things up. The shortest track is 6 ft. That would be the right one. The far left one is the programming track/stage. Had to huild 3 more switches to get this put in, fun! And tonight while testing it, the first ME switch in this pic is causing derailments! So, maybe it will get replaced with one of mine..after I try fussing with it some.
HAd a lot of work and company keep me busy over the last week, but did find time to drill holes for feeder wires in staging, lay some ballast and put some new tanks on the code 40 spur. Told the owner of my LHS that I would send him a pic of them on the layout. Thd scenery bottls are standing in for the future il uploading facility. The morning sun was warming up the rails here.
Well it has been over a month since I really got to spend time working on the layout! Having spent part of the week in Billings and two visits to my LHS then (YAY!!) I found motivation to do some of the wiring I have been putting off. I have electrically divided the layout into 4 sections to make troubleshooting issues easier. I am also making it so I can shut off each staging track, and will do the same in the main yard and roundhouse areas. There will also be a programming track, closest to the pictured edge in the staging area. Yes, old liscense plates are a great source of aluminum sheet! And my two trip haul from Jim's Junction.
After some rewire working around and cleaning track and test runs and then I got to actually run some trains! I still have some frogs to wire up to switches and more feeders to drop, but trains are going again. Aaah, the sweet sound of steam chuffing around again! Color coding the feeders is a huge priority! Then keeping track of the colors all around the layout is important, as long as you I keep ytrack of the left and right rails so as to NOT cross up the colors! Solder wires, meter test, solder wires, test.....
Made time to clean the track up the gulch and then allowed the brass to run an "inspection" special. It appears that the Pennsy ain't going to get their loco back anytime soon! In fact, while making the video, it may have been an extremely "happy" brass hat heard bragging on about getting her renumbered and a few other mods to make her harder for the Pennsy to find her! But that may have just been the "spirits" of the inspection train talking!
Spent some time this evening cleaning up the yard area in preperation for laying track there. And then the bridge bug bit and I finally installed that Kato bridge! Really! Here's a slide show and video for proof...
I like how you do not have the little bumpy bit in the track that I have at the joints with my (different) bridge! Looks good. Donald Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
Installed the lower bridge today and then ran some trains around and across it. Then built up some foam board for a scenery base, now on to finding a hot foam cutter. Hopefully at the shows coming up at the end of the month in Livingston-Helena.
Wow, that's gonna be one impressive layout! I just bought a hot knife from Harbor Freight for $15. It's cheap, but for the couple times I'll carve foam with it, it should work fine. Geez, that stuff STINKS though .. wait till summer and open all the doors and windows! I did a trial run .. eeesh! .
Definitely has to be well ventilated! There are a LOT of bad things generated by melting that stuff! I will do most of the carving by knife, steak knife and such. What little carving I need will be small stuff that goes vertical across layers, so a hot knife may do the trick.
Careful on cutting foam with a hot wire/knife. Some type of foam (I think the pink kind) gives off dangerous toxic fumes. Excellent work by the way.
Put in more power feeders, fussed with programming and then broke out the big momma! The EM-1 just was begging to come out and pull trains! So, dug out more freight cars and then put her to work. Added the Trainboard special run MI boxcars as a blast from the future in 1920! It has room for 22 cars which is about the limit of the staging yard tracks.
And upgraded the K4s consist so she wasn't just pulling a mixed train with oil cans, now she is back to varnish!
