Happy Labor Day folks, I hope you all enjoyed your weekend. I spent a bit of time up in the loft today getting the ground base adjusted. It's a bit time consuming. I am simply getting the shell down and to do so I have to make sure all my track is spot on in height for the highline and correct fit of the loop. So, there was a lot of fitting tracks together then taking it apart just to start all over again. I have the front side adjusted pretty good; it will just need some very minor tweaks when I place the rack down. Now I have to get to the back side and start this process once again. I know I keep saying this, but once these bluffs are right and locked down securly then the track template can be spayed in and the track can be laid for wiring on the main.
Welcome to Sunday all. I am trying to work up in the train room, but we have company over for an after-Labor Day family Bar-b-Q. We were in Milwaukee over the long Labor Day weekend, so here we are celebrating it with family today. I have managed to change the design of my front girder bridge section to allow for an even straight run down the board. The original CAD drawing had a bit of an 'S' curve at the bridge section. I changed it so the S is towards the switch about 6 feet down the track. I also managed to get the center bluff shelled and ready for permanent placing. The back riser is permanently in place and can be shelled in also. So, I have managed a bit, even with company wondering around the house. At this girder section I do believe I will have to raise the incline by about 1/8 an inch or so. The clearance looks like it may be pretty tight right now.
I needed some piers for the bridges. I think I settled on the bracing on right side. I will have to print about 10 of these.
I did a bit of work up in the loft this morning. This process is slow and steady, eventually it should start to look like something. I actually started the template for the roadbed today. I sprayed the front side, later today I plan on doing the backside.
I ran out of rail brown paint, so I ordered a new can much too quickly. Turned out I ordered a faded brick and not rail brown. So now 2 cans are headed my way. I truly didn't need the faded brick as I have enough brick colors to shoot with my airbrush. If I had a long enough hose, I could have just painted the template with my airbrush, but no such luck. So, rattle can it is.
Hi Andy, thanks for that heads-up, but I will pass on that type of gun. A rattle can works on this process perfectly, so I can wait for the paint to arrive. There's no rush, I have been at this new project for almost a year, and it still look like not much has progressed.
I was going to post this in the general forum section, but I guess I will start here and see how it goes. I have been having a very hard time designing a yard that makes sense to me and how I would like to see things flow. I do not have enough space to create a nice functional double ended yard, so I have to be creative in the 7' x 2' area that I have. My original plan was a double side stub yard that would function adequately but there would be a lot of zigzagging and sawing through the yard to get things done. I also did not like the room I had for the diesel house and a direct route in and out. The second design started to lose the space I was hoping for as far as classification track was concerned. I could only squeeze so much into the double-sided yard, also the diesel house (I like the location near the road), but it started to not make enough sense on the double ended stub section. I keep kicking ideas around, but I always seem to come back to the original plan. I am just not sure how to approach it at this point. The more I look at it and reconfigure the yard the more confused I get. ORIGINAL DESIGN LATEST UPDATE
Here the drill track becomes more functional for the double-sided yard and access is created for the double stub section. Just more ideas being kicked around.
To handle the reaching in for the uncoupling/coupling a yard requires would it maybe work to move it to the near side or is more of that going on at the industries? Sumner
Industrial yard on one side, staging on the other. I will have no problems operating because the table will be removed from the wall while running trains, at least while operating. There will be times when I just let some trains run and leave the table flush up against the wall. My main concern is making sense of how everything will flow in the limited space. Every time I have an idea to make a change, I seem to create another issue with the staging flow. The very last yard design is most likely the way I will go, or at least something similar. For quite some time I was going to go with the double stub yard, but all the zig zagging just seemed like a mess.
Sounds good on reaching in to work either yard. The tracks in the lower part of the yard would be hard to access once there were cars on any of the tracks. They would block moment the way it is now where you move up and down between the tracks by switchbacking between them. I took a few moments and came up with something that might or might not fit in with what you are trying to do. A rough plan just to indicate how I might go given the situation. Sumner
Thanks for the idea, Sumner, it's much appreciated. The stub section of the yard is intended for maintenance, or at least that is the original idea. My diesel house back side would be facing the black street on left, then the sanding and water will be in front of course and a small shop for cars was intended for the other side of the stub, a small road will be running parallel to the bottom track in the stub with some small industrial buildings nested along the road. So, my actual staging would only take place in the upper ladders. So, this was my dilemma, as I have shortened my staging to almost nothing while trying to maintain a workable maintenance area. I could probably get away with a small staging yard considering the size of my layout. I was just hoping to squeeze in more.
Sumner, I took your idea, but I added a run a round/drill/bypass on the left side. I do not have enough space to squeeze in the turnouts needed to do differently. The added run a round on the left does not address the issue of entering the stub area but it will give the switcher options to move on both sides of the ladder and alleviate some of the clutter issues. The maintenance area can be accessed with a little zig zagging from the left, but it does have full access from the right, once again some zig zagging but not to the extreme. My original yard would have had me zig zagging all weekend. The new run a round isnt quite as long as I would like it, but it's the best I am going to get with my space. It appears I will be able to move a consist approximately 8 back into the drill track on the left (the image show 9 but it seems a bit long), on the right drill I can move more.
The purpose of the drill tracks is so you don't foul the main while working the yard. I don't either of the ones that are there doing that since you can't pull cars from the yard tracks from them and push them into another track. Maybe I'm missing something? Sumner
