Here are a few more photos of the section's having gotten plaster, in this case Hyrdocal with a bit of pigment.
Since the last time I've laid down a layer of sanded grout for desert scenery base and fix it down with dilute matt Mod Podgel After being nearly finished getting the sanded grout glued down and have been peeling up the blue tape I covered the track with. Since the river is drywall mud, I had to paint it to stabilize it. I'll have to go over it again now. One thing I forgot to do was to paint the track so I've been masking and painting with Camo Brown Here the rail and tie has gottnen a coat.
As time consuming at it is, I spent time this weekend gluing in ties between sections of flex track and anywhere along the mainline where there are gaps in the ties. I also did some masking and spray painting the track with Rustoleum camo brown so the rails and ties have a basic coating of paint. after that, main job will be ballasting. I also covered the side of the tracks along the canyon walls that hadn't gotten any sanded grout yet. Here is a stretch that got the camo brown The stretch off screen to the top that goes around and oxbow in the river also got camo brown. I'll have to get another can of camo brown as the current one is getting low. Looks like it will take at least two cans to cover the entire mainline.
Continuity testing using a DC power pack to make sure tracks are all energized before hooking into DCC. Working on wiring the Tam Valley Frog Juicers in. Did 6 for a hex juicer at the right end of staging and another 12 at the right end of the main yard. Have most of the Peco electrofrogs wired to where the Hex Frog Juicers will be located. I had forgotten that I had pre-wired some of them which are at hard to get to way in the back near the wall in staging. I think I have nearly all the drops tied into the bus. Maybe a couple left - I keep finding them! XO Getting up after sitting on the floor twisting wire and soldering - the bones really hurt for a bit! Masked and painted a bunch of track as well.
The track has been painted in the same area as above. I mocked up a 30 car coal train using ExactRail 3483 D&RGW quad hoppers which will just fit in the siding with 4 diesels and a caboose:
I decided to get 14 autoracks out of the boxes and onto the layout as I was testing track continuity and shaking down the layout. I have to replace plastic couplers, wheels and adjust height as necessary. Here is the test rain with 14 autoracks and filler freight on the rear. The first is one of two 32" minimum radius curves and the 2nd is on a 46" CURVE.
I have a number of open racks, either top open or fully open. So I've been working on accumulating 1970's vans, trucks and autos for the open racks. Atlas recently re-ran the Ford Fairmont wagon and sedans, in stores now. Also have enough Atlas F100 pickups to fully load to open bi-levels. The white vans are tridents.
I pulled out ten 86' auto parts boxcars to get them layout ready, at minimum tossed any plastic couplers and wheels, adjusted coupler height and do 3 point tuning on the trucks to prevent rocking. To get a typical mix, a couple Thralls and a couple Pullman Standard mixed in with the Greenville's from Tangent. Can you tell which are which? The siding can fit probably 4 more. The models on the head end are 50 and 60 foot auto parts cars.
I may not have the correct name but what I refer to is to tighten one of the trucks so it swivels but does not rock and let the other truck rock some. This tuning has been common for decades to help models not rock but track reliably. I first read about it in Model Railroader probably in the 1980's
I've heard that tune up tip before but it's been a while. Nice looking string of 86ft boxcars James and no, I personally can't tell which is from who . They all look great to me
It's probably hard to tell but there were 3 major builders of the 86' auto parts boxcars, Greenville, Thrall, and Pullman Standard - Tangent makes the Greenville, ClassOneModelWorks makes the Thrall (ScaleTrains will release their Thrall in a few months) and Pullman Standard are offered by Walthers. So having some of each you can get a mix typical of what was seen in auto parts trains. The 86 footers carried light components, and 50 and 60 foot boxcars carried heavier items, like engines and transmissions. The frames were stacked and carried on flat cars.
The larger boxcars also carried less dense components, and/or components that did not pack in a space-efficient manner, thus needing more boxcar volume for the same weight.
