I have begun to glue down the second layer of 2 inch pink foam. I have also attached the Passenger Station Diorama. The Water Tower Diorama is not attached. There is a one inch foam layer under it that is. I am leaving it unattached for now to allow for any adjustments I may need to make with its location.
Balou, Can we calla vote to extend that deadline to the end of the month? I'm having too much fun here. I just wanted to add, that it's that first push to lay a switch or a couple of pieces of track, that seems the hardest, the rest comes fairly easy. Once again, thanks layout party for motivating me to build an actual layout.
John: My apologies for missing this question earlier. The "sidewalks" and the entire block of buildings is .060 inch styrene sheet. I purchased a 4 x 8 foot sheet a long time ago and I just cut out what I need in the form of the whole city block. By making the city block a single piece, I can lift the entire city block from the layout and work on it at my workbench. The sidewalks, including curbs and alley driveways, are scribed on the stryene with woodcutter tools.
Thanks! I have now figured out where I am going to put the Grain Elevator Diorama. I also laid in some more foam. These photos were taken before the foam was glued down. One more diorama to go.
No problem extending to the end of the month. As long as you'r making progess it's never over. But don't worry, it's popular enough we'll try to run another party in the summer!
Hey tom, Good move on going with a 4.5 foot width. It really makes a difference. the 16 foot run must give you lots of space for those future yard areas and other main line tracks. A suggestion, take it or leave it. MR had a plan years ago of a layout with a small branch that went into the middle area. I cannot recall the name, but it was in one of their project layout books as well. Maybe you could have a track go to the middle of your area and put your grain eleavator in there along with some other small town industries to be added later: fuel dealer, pass. station, freight house, etc.
My layout progress has been tied to progress on my house, I bought a "fixer upper" and have had to deal with livability issues and things "she" needed addresed. But to date I have repaired the roof leaks over the layout room, and everywhere else. Removed the old carpet, padding, staples and nails and scrubbed the old hardwood floor with murphy's oil soap. The floor is not in great shape and not worth a full restore but adequate for my layout room/office. I have converted the closet into a workspace and added lighting and electrical there as well as painted the walls and ceiling. The room is basicly ready except for a few minor isses but a thousand other issues demand my time and money. On the whole I am happy about the progress and definately have NOT been sitting in my armchair!
Av8trtx I sympathise with you. I got home otnight only to discover the ancient wiring on my porch light was out. Me "I'll fix that later" She "you can't leave the front of the house dark all night someone might mess with the car" Out come the tools, then off to the hardware store, back home for the repair. It feels a whole heck of a lot like being at work when I'm at home. lol
Geeky Thanks! I have MR's 48 Layout book and they have one layout that has a branch line done the middle like you mentioned. For the middle I a scenic break planned that will help to seperate the scenes and/or hide the back of them. I may run the trolley line down the middle from the Passenger Station Diorama to the town which will be at the other end of the layout. Right now I have no large yards planned. There is room for an extension that may contain a yard. I already have the drafting table base set up. It is being used as an extra workbench right now. I also have a Woodland Scenics Modular base that I can add on at a lter date.
I have the reached the point where I needed to run a test train to see if there are any glaring problems with the track. To do that I placed down some foam temporarily and completed the loop in those areas. Using one of my Atlas LNE U23B locos I then ran a test train. Other than some electrical pick-up problems on the Farm House Diorama there were no issues. The Farm House Diorama problems are from the fact that I still need to get some of the glue off the rails from the ballasting process. I then ran a train with two 50’ boxcars and a ACF covered hopper. I had one derailment issue but I expected that. Since there is no trackbed laid I have an area or two where there is some unevenness in the track and in one spot it was causing one of the boxcars to derail occasionally. In the one area I was truly interested in which is between the Passenger Station Diorama and the Water Tower Diorama there were no problems. This area will be the first area to receive trackbedding. No pictures or video yet. I am working on that.
Welcome, Av8rTX! A big Thank You to John for hosting this layout party. Nice work, everyone! Tom, I'm following yours closely as I'm fast approaching a new pink prairie. While I did not work on scenery, I did set goals and was inspired to clear some projects: 1) Renumbered and weathered five DI hoppers for my SP cement train. I now have 9 different numbers for this prototype, still need more! 2) Weathered six ATSF boxcars. Three Atlas cars earned new roof walks. Four weathered lightly, two heavily. 3) Rebuilt the crushed cab on a LL GP20. Managed to rebuild/repaint the cab, assemble, and weather. The weathering turned out poor, but that’s OK as this loco is now low on the priority list (due to DCC). Back into the jewel box it goes. 4) Removed a crappy building from the layout, returning the site to dirt and weeds. Looks much better! 5) Ordered, received, installed DCC system. Converted five locos so far (plug ‘n’ play Altas 6-axle). I am digging DCC!!! Still have tons and tons to learn. 6) The Junkyard. I have an auto wrecking yard in a prominent location. Convincing details in a junkyard are both laborious and expensive. I’ve set a limit on what I spend per “wrecked” automobile, and believe me, it adds up real fast! So far, I’ve only detailed the outer perimeter of wrecks, and still need to fill in the interior. This will take a long time. The business footprint is only 7”x 9”, less than a half square foot! I added a couple dozen details, seats, panels, other misc parts. I also rebuilt and weathered a couple of Herpa vehicles, which were pretty lame to start with. Like many wreckers, my yard has resorted to stacking cars to save on real estate. To model this, I’ve decided to glue detailed Mini Metals on the tops of older resin cars. The resin cars are not good enough by themselves, but work fine when buried under a Mini Metal. Here is a blurry picture of what I am talking about: Additionally, I started another half dozen “stackers”, but they are not yet ready. I’ll post them in an upcoming photo fun. Does anyone else here model a wrecking yard? I would love to see some other’s work. I don’t think I’ve really seen anybody tackle this. I enjoyed seeing everyone’s work and results. As always, there are plenty of pictures on my RailImages account.
Steve Great work! The junk yard scene is awesome! Last night I added a industrial spur to the layout off the curve between the Water Tower Diorama and the Passenger Station Diorama. My intent for this corner is to have a cement plant. I am looking at Walthers Valley Cement plant but I am unsure of the footprint of the buildings and their configuration. If that does not work then I may go with a cement distributor like Walthers Medusa Cement Company. I also continued test runs. Last night I ran both Atlas LNE U23B locos with 12 cars. I had some problems with derailments and cars splitting the new installed turnout. One of the problems was related to a low hanging trip pin on a coupler that was snagging the rails as it went through the switch. Another car apparently has an out of gauge wheel set. I came to realize that the biggest problem was due to unevenness in the track. I then temporarily placed some track-bed foam under the track to even it out and removed the two bad-ordered cars from the consist. End result; no more derailments. Next series of tests will involve the steam locomotives.
Well, 14 Feb has come and gone. Summer is starting to decline; although there's another barbie planned next weekend. Looking back to my first post, it only had a few snags. Since then, thanks solely to this topic, I have carved, gooped and painted 7 of the modules - those representing the yard and hillside. Rough colours resembling terrain purely as something other than blue to go under the eventual ground cover. That was as far as I expected to get by 14 Feb. On the past few weekends I've started laying track and wiring each module, starting with the logical place - the unsceniced reverse-loop module right over top of the computer monitor At the rate of one module per weekend, I should be able to run a continuous train by... oh, May? An old image from November showing the two modules in the foreground, now home to track. The modules in the background being non-blue now. Definately need to dig out the camera. The reverse loop was intentional, as my previous experiences with flex track had shown curves to be the home of most problems. Curves and turnouts. Using an SD70 as a test, I've located and nailed most of the places that derail the 6-axle engine, leaving just one turnout I'm going to have to rip out and relay to get right. So, in all, I'm ahead of where I planned to be, and much futher ahead of where I had been October to January. No matter how mad work gets (very), or how the weather deteriorates, I'm somewhere. [ February 19, 2006, 12:46 AM: Message edited by: Another ATSF Admirer ]
Found camera. An equivalent shot to November above, taken about 1/2 hour ago. Sorry about the lighting. Really have to do something about that. More detail / photos: http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~gsharp/album/progress_200602.html
ATSF Admirer: It looks like you're making good progress. Reverse loop wiring is always fun especially in DC layouts. Stay cool and run steam....
