A new year is here and with it a new list of things to do to our model railroads, its time for Weekend Modeling Plans. No big plans for me other than the move into a new room for both the office and layout, which will be nice as the porch has little insulation and morning such as this are somewhat cold. If I do manage to sneek in a few hours on the layout, I plan to finish the last bit of track work in Potter Place and then start some terrain building. So how about you? Will you start off the New Year working on your home layout or a club layout? Modules getting spruced up for up comming shows? How about sceanery work or track work? Whatever your plans are, let us know. We'll all come back here on Monday the 7th and see how we all did. Until then, have a happy and safe weekend and... High Greens!
Well, tomorrow I have to get my HO modules down off the wall pegs, dust them off and load them into my truck. On Sunday my club will be displaying our modular HO layout, a small N gauge layout and a Lionel layout along with a Thomas layout in G gauge at an assisted living facility over in Goshen NY. for the residents and visiting family members. I may also get some time to do somemore work on my T-Trak yard modules.
Through this week in my extra time at work I assembled a list of about 47 locomotives that need details/paint/number boards, etc. I am going to line them up and start processing them like an assembly line and use some cash from the sale of some other locomotives to get parts and details. Need to make an order of custom decals for a run of G&OM shields so I can get 3 or 4 units finished up and weathered.
It's a ski weekend for us, so little will be accomplished. I'm on my last vacation day of 2012, in a world where the pay period counts more than the Julian calendar, so I may have a bit of time once the house is straightened up and we're packed for the trip north. But, I have great news from the week. I did some roof detail work on the old mill buildings and I'm much happier with them now. Few structure kits come with brickwork on the insides of the roof parapets, and DPM sections certainly don't, so I cut some thin strips of brick sheet to line the rooftops. Since my layout is low to take some advantage of the sloping roofline in the train room, I look down on rooftops all day with my God-like eyes, assuming God now needs bifocals. More important, though, is what I did while the buildings were downstairs in the shop. I've been struggling with getting trains to operate smoothly on that quarter-round stretch of girder rail street-running track leading down to the carfloat. I spent some time carefully watching the derailments, and found a few bits of cobblestone brick sheet lifted over the rail edges. There were also some lumps of solder inside the rail grooves, which I was able to remove rather easily with a Dremel cut-off disk. No Dremel, as that would have eaten through the rail in about a millisecond, but just the disk in my fingers did the job. After that, I cleaned the track with a Q-tip and lacquer thinner. Not only would my test cars run through, but the 0-6-0T didn't stall out thanks to the ultra-clean track. So, I'm not going to have to rip that track up, after all.
I'll start with cleaning out the train room - it served as holiday overflow storage and Santa's workshop. I have three new acquisitions to add to the roster, and I need to get my plan together for projects for this year. I also have an airbrush to clean.
Ok, I'm back in the game at last. Frustrated with several ineffective layouts, I put the hobby on hold for a while. After Thanksgiving, I went back to the drawing board and worked out a design that would resolve some of the most nagging problems, and then spend most of the week between the holidays redoing major portions of the layout. It was previously a combination of foam board or plywood subroadbed over L-girder benchwork. I pulled up most of the plywood and laid down foam everywhere except the reversing loop, and worked carefully to create a level surface to avoid track problems at transition sections. Because of the considerable inventory of DC equipment, I'm continuing on that path for the time being, and I totally rewired the layout for two-cab walk around throttles with isolated return loops using their own power supply, and four blocks (not including the return loops) so I can continuously operate several trains if I desire. Block detection and train control will be added in the future. I tested the mainline running every locomotive I own with only minor problems, most of those being the locos themselves. The majority ran flawlessly around the entire layout, only requiring minor adjustments to turnout points or tension. After that I ran some of the more difficult rolling stock, like 86' trailer flats, box cars and passenger equipment. Again most ran quite well, the majority of the adjustments needed were on the cars themselves, such as trip pins or wheel gauge. Excuse the pun, but I'm satisfied I'm on the right track. Next step is finishing wiring and control on the yards and service trackage. These tracks were also test run by temporarily wiring all the leads to the main line busses so I know that trains run through the turnouts ok with no derailment issues. But of course that is only part of the problem when wiring for DC, as isolation in the wrong places can make for interesting outcomes. I have to work part of the weekend, so the time I do get on the layout will be limited, which will consist of building the control panels that I've drawn in autocad. I'll mount the diagrams on masonite covered by Lexan, which I'll drill for the miniature double pole center off switches for cab control. In the yards an additional lead will be added for a local cab so I can switch the yards while maintaining continuous running on the mainlines. There should be an out of date layout diagram on my Railimages site. Sometime soon I'll finish the current diagram and post the revisions. And pictures too. Looking forward to the weeks ahead when I continue work on the layout with the privilege of being able to run trains with no drawbacks. A luxury previous efforts didn't offer. Great to be back in the game. Happy weekend all!
