Excellent project! You work in a very organized and professional way... Love the control panel and the trackplan... great work...
Been making a little bit of progress on completing the mainline on the station side of the layout. I have the mainline, with siding, installed all the way to walkway opening. I haven't run DCC bus wires or dropped feeders yet, but the track is all powered from the staging lead as I haven't cut rail gaps yet. I've get to the wires one of these days At the BNSF Interchange, I have all the track (except the crossover to the backdrop section) installed, but not glued down yet. I'll have that done in the next day or so.
While I'm waiting for the bridge abutment's caulking to dry, I started roughing out some scenery items in Elmwood. And I finally got the island cleared off. Just don't look under the benchwork now!
Took a break from track work and started working on the hills for the island, mainly just installing some profile pieces of foam to get the general profile in place. Cardboard strips will be used between the foam to form the actual terrain face. Then I went back to track work and started working on cutting and fitting track on the last portion of the layout. Just need to buy a couple more pieces of roadbed for the mainline, install the mainline and the upper deck bridge and the track will be done (minus bus and feeder wires). And lastly this morning I finished up the Shed building in Walthers' Yard Office & Shed kit. Turned out real nice.
This weekend I got under the layout to run a couple DCC block bus wires and feeders. I filled up the last of the open spots on my BDL168 board so any further DCC bus work will have to wait until next month when I have a new BDL168 purchase budgeted. In the mean time, I also began working on wiring up the turnout and signal DCC boards to a new piece of plywood that will get mounted under the layout. Here's a look at the 2 CML Electronics DAC10 turnout controller boards. 3 CML SIGM20 Signal Controller boards (2 of which still need to be ordered) will also be mounted to the other side of the board. I needed to order a couple more of the dual RJ11 surface mount boxes. Once I get what I have wired up, I'll install the board to start installing turnout motors and signals where I can until the additional BDL168 and Signal boards are purchased.
Finished up the Yard Office building in the Walther's Yard Office & Shed Kit this morning. My order of roadbed came in so this weekend I'll be starting work on laying down the final bit of mainline track. I'll also be finishing up the wiring on the new Turnout/Signal panel and installing turnout motors. Then maybe we can run some trains the full length of the layout!
I like the way you're building the mountain... I'm guessing it'll be pretty light compared to it's size... Great work so far...
Phase 1 of the new Turnout/Signal wiring panel is done. Phase 2 will be adding the last 2 SIGM20 boards in the future. The wire terminals on the DAC10 boards are small, so switching between regular DCC and programming track wires was a pain in the past. So this time I added some toggle switches in case I need to adjust any settings. The two boards on the left are the DAC10 boards and control 16 tortoise turnouts by DCC. The (soon to be) 3 boards on the right are the SIGM20 Signal controller boards. Each SIGM20 can control 8 signals with 3 aspects each. And work on the last bit of track is underway.
Today I got the last bit of mainline installed on the layout. All that's left is the bridge. You can see the small extension I added to accommodate the last curve.
There's been a lot of action on the Elmwood Sub this past week, so let's get going! Bus Wiring All DCC block bus wires and feeders have been run, soldered, and connected. The last bus to run is the general "Rail A" bus for my industry spurs. Here's a look at my track diagram from Train Controller and my Block numbering. I'll eventually incorporate the info the diagram. Fascia With the bus wiring pretty much done I began installing some of the fascia to the layout. Need to purchase one more 2x4 sheet of hardboard to finish the end of the island. Everything still needs profiles cut, gaps filled, and some sanding. I've also got the board cut to the correct width for staging parts of the layout but I'm going to install some LED bar lights first to light it up when needed and also need to add openings for access into staging in the fascia. That should work should happen this coming week. Wiring A look at the 1/8" jack on the fascia panel used for powering one of the bridge spans. This is the upper deck span.
Scenery Using foam, I began constructing the hill that'll cover the long staging lead running on the back of the layout. It's basically just strips of foam built like stairs. They're not permanently installed, just sitting there. They'll be setup so they will be removable just in case access to that track is needed. Signals With block wiring done I dug out the box of signal this afternoon. I can only setup 8 signal heads so far with 1 SIGM20 board so the Dixie Curve passing siding will be the first to light up. I'll be using two signal bridges and 2 double-target searchlights here. And that's all for now!
The beginnings of a Master Layout Control Panel. It'll be about 43" wide and powered by a CML electronics DTM30 board.
excellent progress. it's tough to keep on the project - my layout is collecting dust right now, but seeing your progress is incentive to get back at it. thanks!
For the bus wiring I switched from the previously used Anderson Powerpoles to crimp bullet connectors and labeled wires for the connections between modules. Much cheaper and much faster/easier to assemble. After the layout was back together I decided it was time to fill in the "blue foam hill". I used cardboard strips to fill in the empty spaces, then covered the whole thing in masking tape and painted. I ran out of tape so I still have a little to do. And while I had the paint out I also gave the plywood top a coating. Looks much better than seeing all that bare plywood. Got about half the layout done so far.
Decided to swap out the searchlights for the signal bridge as originally planned. The bridge is a N.J. International kit built with searchlights by Richard at Custom Signal Systems.
Been doing a little work here and there on the layout during these summer months. Finally starting to cool down in the garage so I'll hopefully be getting in there more often as fall/winter approach. Mostly I've got the fascia installed, painted and cut. Also put some LED lighting at each yard throat. I'm also finally stopped for more insulation foam to complete terrain building. Got the corner sections in the work and in process of installing the last braces for the center island. I also played with using weed fabric as a cheap fabric skirt. It looks good when installed but it's kinda stiff so getting to things (like tools) under the benchwork was a pain. So I took it down for now. You can see a piece still installed in the 2nd photo.
