Thanks for your suggestions. In the photo below, I've added some oil and grease by way of weathering powder. I realize I'll have to repeat the process after the track is ballasted. - Jeff
Thanks. It's a fairly easy method: First a thin, gray wash on the ties, then paint the rails, then some black weathering powder down the center with a small brush. For basic track weathering, it's good enough for me. - Jeff
Late to the party... Well, I know I am four weeks late to the party. I have been battling broken appliances, plugged drains, heating problems, and other difficulties, but the whole idea of the thread, as our host Dave put it to me in a PM, is to get people working on their layouts and encouraging each other, not talking themselves out of it simply because of the "slings and arrows" of life. The layout is still in the early stages. For now, the main thing I am concentrating on is the Astoria District part of my layout. Based on an old tax map of Astoria, Oregon, from the time of the SP&S, in my layout's world the A-line (as it is called) is still a busy route and the tracks were never pared back but instead expanded a bit in Astoria. Here's the eastern half of the Astoria District: Notice that I have most of the main tracks down. This is a 2 1/2 ft by 4 ft N-Trak module, and the track is code 80 Atlas with Peco switches. I would like to: 1) lay the red-line (the "front" one) 2) solder power drops to the track 3) lay track bus beneath layout and connect the drops 4) attach the legs to the module and get it off this table 5) hook up DCC to bus wires and make this module operational Here is the western part of the Astoria District: This is a 2 ft by 4 ft NTrak module. You can see that I haven't gotten track laid yet. I hope to: 1) install the module legs 2) lay the major track, as budget allows 3) solder drops 4) install bus wires and connect track to bus power and make this operational The big obstacle here may prove to be the turnouts. I still need to buy several, but I can still run the bus wires. This is the layout room to be: It is a basement room. The upper portion of the walls is framed and insulated. The lower portion is concrete, as is the floor. This room, despite being in the basement, doesn't get terribly cold. I had thought that I would fur out all the walls and add insulation, but I don't think the budget will allow for that right now, so I am going to work on making modules, and if I decide to more thoroughly remodel the room later I can simply move the modules. Well, my list here includes: 1) move the junk out of here 2) Get those awful shelves out of the way, but keep the 1-by material as it may come in handy 3) Do something about the lighting situation. There is one semi-operational fluorescent shop light in here. I may just replace all the non-working ones with working ones and position them so that I don't hit my head (the room is about 7 feet from floor to bottom of floor joist and I am 6'-3". 4) Put the modules in here. Bring in the junker TV and the DVD player so that I can run my train videos while working I also have several kit/kit-bash/customization projects going on. Here is my Class A Climax from one of randgust's kits. It needs a paint job and some finishing BEFORE I take it to a model competition in March. I will likely lose, but I would at least like to have a finished model to show. This needs: 1) fine tuning to keep the top down 2) some "firewood" for the boiler 3) an "engineer" and some logger types hanging off it perhaps 4) a paint job I will also be sawing some plywood to make some T-Trak modules for the shelf-portion of my layout (which will also join some of our budding T-Trak plans at my club). I don't expect to get far on these, but I will post photos as I have them. Adam
Better late than never! That is an ambitious list of projects for the Layout Party. I wish you the best of luck on them. It looks like you have a nice space for your railroad, once you clear away the non-railroad stuff. Be sure to post updates! - Jeff
finished My little project Fiddletown, a H0n3 staging yard, is finished. I had to add a few details. One turnout has got a SP style single tie headblock, just for fun. And with no space you can place the switch stand outside. And a picture from the yard entrance: BTW, the stub end track next to the sign has code 40 rails. I wanted to test it. All tracks have switches to switch power off. Wolfgang
Outstanding Wolfgang! Well I was busy getting the railroad ready for the layout tour associated with the Plano show so I didn't plan on getting involved with the layout party. However, that doesn't mean that nothing has happened on the Van Buren sub. The week before the tour I installed the sub-roadbed for the branch line to Clarksville. I've enjoyed watching the progress on all the layouts here. Some mighty fine work.
I'm still WAYY low on free time.. so I'm tackling things I can do while watching the news.. figured out a simple way to add some drapes, using some tracing paper the girls brought home from school. cut.. crumple.. tape... enjoy! LOL
Hello my fellow train nuts. While I am officially joining the 09/10 winter layout thread rather late in the process, I have been unofficially working my fanny off in the old train room for the last month and a half. Allow me to catch everyone up as to where I am in all my doings. Eastport Terminal has been a much neglected corner of my layout for the last year. Well not anymore thanks to this years layout party. To start with, in September I poured a bunch of tinted and thinned down drywall mud all over the area including the tracks. It looked like heck and pretty much turned me off of train stuff for a while. So now being reenergized, I jumped in and sanded and scrapped like crazy. I am happy to say the effort seems to be worth it. I then constructed an arrival/ check in gate. This was made out of some extra parts from some old Pikestuff buildings. Next I poured the water. Not any problems there. After coloring the water area base I used Envirotex (instead of realistic water this time). Happy to say if I need water anywhere else I will be using this stuff again. That’s all well and fine, but what good is a container facility if you don’t have a ship to deliver the goods. Here’s where it gets rather interesting… More to come………. Brian
Ever wonder what one can do with an extra 2x6 that happens to be laying around? Heres what it looks like after a bit of cutting and sanding. This might add up to something after all.... Brian
This is one of the pictures and some of the text from my post at the start of last weekend...which was a 3-day weekend for me. But a bunch of non-modeling activities came up last weekend and all I got done was a partial smoothing out of the auto dealer lot. It looks like this 2-day weekend will be as busy with non-modeling activities as last week's 3-day weekend turned out to be, so the order of my plans remains the same, but I don't expect to get as many steps done.
Although I've been checking in on all your progress (and you guys are doing a super job!), I haven't been making any on my layout. Personal problems the last few weeks have made me not want to do anything. Today, I finally got up some interest to work on the layout. I installed the tunnel portal and ballasted around it, got one of the tunnel liners put in, put up a retaining wall, and added more cardboard strips and tape. So yeah, the retaining wall is weird, cause usually people put them on the back side of the tracks to get the full benefit of seeing the portal and the wall. The way my track curves and how I did the facia pretty much forced me to put the retaining wall on the front side of the tracks, which to me, still looks cool, and is a bit out of the ordinary. I didn't like it a first, but it's growing on me. Here is how it looks when standing in front of it. I still added ballast to inside the tunnel just in case I want to take pictures of it, even though you can't see in unless you are on a step stool or standing further down the layout and looking back at it. I still have a bunch to do to the other end of the tunnel before I can finish the cardboard strips and get to the plaster. Hope to get some of that knocked out today. Mike
Man, I keep forgetting about updating here (probably because I haven't had much time for progress lately). Nonetheless, I got some work done on the 4-4-0 and figured out a quick and simple procedure for lowering the ride height on the "Old Timers" passenger cars. I stripped much of the old paint in areas where multiple layers from the factory had gooped over some details. I built a new bell housing and mounted the old bell inside and finally for this update, I built a new smoke stack from brass. The new stack is not perfect, but I can live with it until it bothers me enough to improve it. Next I plan to add a few more details and I'm going to get a real headlight put in. Then it will be off to the paint shop. In this picture it's hard to tell, but you can kind of see the difference lowering the ride height makes. The rear truck on the first car is lowered and compared to the second car, its maybe a scale foot down. Pretty subtle, but definitely an improvement. I'll get a better picture of that difference up later.
The great thing about this hobby is that it's always there when you're ready. Much like an old friend. The retaining wall looks great - it's just what the civil engineers would have done to solve the hill issue in real life. Great Work Mike
Stayed up till 1AM working on my container ship. I was able to get the decking down as well as start the construction of the superstructure. All them portholes are a bugger!! As you can see I'm using styrene "for sale" signs for all the plastic. For 8 bucks you can't find a better bargain. I'm having a blast looking around the house for other materials to use as well. This project really got my creative juices flowing. Hope to get the helm started later this evening. Brian
