Wolfgang, here> http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/gansg/8-yards/oildepot.jpg or http://www.venturea.com/tjooil.jpg :tb-confused:
Progress. Not much progress on the yard. My LHS doesn't stock too many Peco turnouts at one time, and I usually get there just too late. Not a really good picture, but space is at a premium. Hard to get good angles. Dave.
Wolfgang, You can clearly see "oil" on your layout spot, yet I posted a photo and link for propane tanks. I can see my brain does not function much better in 2009 Dave, You look like you are making good progress. At least the LHS is helping spread out your budget by not stocking too many turnouts at one time! And I know what you mean about space being a premium--now that I have the helix base installed, it is difficult to get an overall view of my layout that has been real easy to do so far. Jamie
No progress yet, I just recieved some new electrical goodies I need to get situated. NCE fast clock Circuit breaker, requies some work to re-wire some sections. USB for the Powercab/SB3. All I have done so far is install the new chip in the Powercab. Then I went over to a friends home to discuss next steps on his Horibly Oversize layout. I hope to have something by the end of this week as the kids and wife will be in school or working. You guys are puting me to shame. There is some good progress so far here.
This week I made 10 staging/storage "cassettes" for the new layout. These are 6' long, with three tracks routed into 1/2" MDF as tracks. So each cassette can hold a train of 18 feet. That's about fifty 40' boxcars. The aluminum racks for these were made a while ago by a friend. Now I need to get them mounted...
We have been having this same discussion at the club layout. There are three options as these guys see it. I will add that there are a lot of opinions, too, so I don't present this as totally accurate. 1. Holding tanks. These tanks hold the crude oil as it has been removed from the ground. It is a dirty, messy place. In the 1930s and 1940s, the tanks were made of wood and leaked a lot. There were earthen berms built just to hold the leaking and excess oil. The tank cars hauled the product out. 2. A refined distribution center. Much cleaner and containing various size tanks for diesel oil, gasoline, kerosene, etc. The tank cars hauled the product in; the highway trucks hauled it out. (I think this is what we will model at SAMRA.) 3. Dealer or retailer. Not likely that these would have whole train cars, but the larger ones did. The tank cars hauled the product in. Also, there was a big discussion about whether propane tanks (long, horizontal tanks) and crude/fuel tanks would be together at the same location. I don't know if they would not be together because of safety or because the industries are not normally operated together. Just a little more info there.
Well, much to my operating partners dissmay I installed, I also was not looking forward to all the wiring modifications I had to make to wire this CP6 short protection in but I feel good about it now. I now have 4 protected districts/blocks. I drilled hole in the fascia so that we can see the light when they go off. Yes cheap but I am on a bear budget but like my Bacardi. I do have the NCE interface yet to deal with but it looks like my old PC will not be any good to me so I will mount the interface under one of the car card sorting fixtures and use one of my kids laptops if I can ever pry it from them. Nothing of real visual interest , but this will all help the layout experience improve and give some piece of mind.
I seem to have fallen behind with holidays, anniversary, and family events. However, I did spend today clearing out the layout space so construction can begin. I'm way behind on what I had planned for this party, but I hope a big push from here through January will catch me up. I did spend the day yesterday getting inspiration on a trip to the California State Railroad Museum. (I'll post stuff about that trip in another thread soon!)
Hi all! Luckily holidays brought a little spare time to spend on the layout and I've been very prolific. I almost completed the hill that hides the horseshoe curve coming from the staging lead track. Some basic Woodland Scenics fine turf on the background hill and ballast on the horseshoe curve track: Basic terrain added to the background hills along the Callender siding: Here the foreground hill gets its basic form, a combination of foam board and cardboard strips: And here is the result, for now. I need to add static grass, bushes and trees. For a full report with more pictures, check out Southern Pacific Coast Line in N scale: Winter Layout Party, week 2
Well, this has been quite a challenging party for me. I knew it would be to some extent....not only the holidays but the first two full weeks of the year are the busiest for me work-wise. Couple that to some other non-layout model railroading projects I'm working on (and a new one thrown in) and my list of goals has scarcely been looked at. So, here's what I have done in the past few weeks, first from my list of goals: -Reviewed my detection/signalling plan and made some updates to reflect how the first BDL168 is currently set up. Still have not put this completely into electronic form yet. -Started work on cork roadbed for the upper level. Sanded the super-el curves between Irving and Mockingbird which was a mini-disaster but overall should turn out OK. Had sander malfunctions that put big gouges in a few places before I realized it. -Started work on backdrop/center divider. Copied side 1 onto another piece of masonite so it's ready to be cut out. And then my "off-task" items. -Ordered the new N-scale Kits "Ribbon Rail" kits. This one wasn't on the radar, and wasn't really a project/product/expense I needed right now. But, I committed support to the manufacturer when it was being considered for production and I'm generally one that will "put my money where my mouth is". So they're (hopefully) on the way along with a couple more 48ft spine cars. I also bought some flat cars for the project from my LHS. While the ordering/purchasing didn't take long, I've spent considerable time researching the cars on the web, plus trying to research and find appropriate models to accomodate the bunks. -Paint stripping. I've had several freight car projects cluttering up my workbench so I decided I would gather anything that was going to require paint and/or lettering removal and attempt to do a "bulk stripping" project. (and flat cars above also added to the mix) So that was in process and I've continued forward with that. I've had various containers of alcohol in my sink for the past two weeks now and I'm almost done disassembling my last set of cars for dunking. -Freight car detailing- going along with the above project, I've been going through and prepping cars and clipping out GMM detail parts for installation onto cars. -Organizational tasks- One of the benefits that kinda goes unrealized in these layout parties is I generally start Week 1 and realize I need to clean up and organize. This time it was mostly due to my recent move and not knowing where I put everything but one side-project I did was to fashion a storage system for my paints and other chemicals. I try to avoid leaving paint in a non-climate-controlled area so that means it stays in my tiny apartment with me. I needed a good solution so I installed little plastic organizers I got at Wally World 4 for $1 onto eye hooks installed on the inside of the doors of my hutch that is kinda my MRR project/tool storage. So, I'm finding all kinds of creative ways to not get my goals accomplished, but I am making PROGRESS! :eh-smiloe:
Denny, Very nice weathering on your SP units. Oh ya the scenery is moving along with good results too.
Again, there has been some nice modelling accomplished over the last week. I really enjoy watching the progress. Jamie your layout benchwork looks first class, great woodworking skills my friend. Can't wait to see the helix and the trackwork. I have a glitch in my plans, I have no tall pine trees left to complete the upper level scenery at helix two and I don't have enough turnouts to complete the lower level yards. I have placed an order with one of our supporting e-tailers so my progress is going to be slow for the next few weeks. Although, I do have ballasting and weathering work to do on the upper level track to go on with and planting out some small trees, shrubs and grasses. The track buckling issue I had seemed to be confined to just two areas and was an easy fix. Gently lift the track by prizing a blade between track and roadbed to break the glue bond, slip the rails out of the rail joiners and trim a small amount off the rail ends, refit, re-glue, done. It was good that the areas concerned had not yet been ballasted and the access was easy. I post some pics of what progress I do make later in the week. Keep up the good work guys.
Nice work folks. I have gotten nothing done except planning. Hmmm, Ok, I have gotten nothing done. Hopefully I can get to the table work this weekend. Did make some progress in my thoughts of building a city: Do not try to build a 3 foot tall sky scraper first. Start with a short six inch squarish building and get a feel for the material. Material will be blue foam for structure Painted in latex flat white Various forms of windows printed on shades of white to grey or black paper Use various "thingies" laying around the house for details.
Finally underway.. Though my start has been delayed due to an order of risers and inclines not making it my way. I decided to take it another way which has proved to be cheaper and possibly easier. The original plan was a layout on a 30x40x1/2 piece of foam art board. Now, as the risers/inclines are still on order (with an unknown delivery date) I suppose I may save that layout/plan for a rainy day. However I tried out a new approach to building grades and rises. I doubled my layout size to 40x60 (two art boards). First I laid out the plan with unitrak onto two 30x40x3/16th art boards and traced the track. Then I cut out the path of the track with 1/2 inch on either side of the trace making it roughly 2 inchs wide. For the elevated track and inclines, I took a 40x2in strip and cut slightly off of exact diagnal. Guess what that made? yep, a perfect 2% incline. I added a 20x2 inch strip in between the 2 40 inch triangles and measured and cut the difference to create a full 100 inch rise from 0 to 2 inches. Unfortunatly I forgot to snap a pic before I glued the path cut out over top of the incline and riser strips. Basically I took the length of 3/16 inch foam board and glued it upright along the centerline of the track paths. With my small layout packed with curves, this approach is sturdy enough, however for long straight aways, I'd probably want to create two identical uprights for added support. The last 3 pics show the track path all glued in place. Now I'm on to terrain. As you can see I'm using expanding foam in a can. :-/ I'm going to finish this layout using this foam for experimental reasons. Unfortunatly my other alternitave is bead foam which is 100 times messier :-/. I like how the foam in a can is working perfectly fine so far
Er.. 4 pic max.. Here's the final 2 pics... By Wednesday night, I expect to have the rest of the foam filled in and will be sculpting terrain Thursday morning.
Lookin' snazzy everyone! Finished the helix base today by covering the outside with 1/8" tempered hardboard. Eventually, the helix base will be primed and painted using the same dark tan color used on the walls of the layout room. In the second photo, you can see the blended light/dark sky colors on the lower level backdrop to the left; this will be overpainted with the solid light sky blue used on the rest of the backdrops that I think just looks better. Jamie
Progress... Over the past few days I have worked on the first industry building for my Tacoma Tidewater Flats area, the Wheeler Osgood Plywood plant. Here are two pics of the "real thing" (again check out the Tacoma Public Library: Excellent information!!) Front View: SideView: And here is my version: Overview: Construction is with Styrene and Grandt Line windows. The big windows in the front wall are metal screens. The water tower is the Walthers City Watertower with shortened legs. The girder under the loading buildings are leftovers from Walthers New River Mining kit. The smokestacks are plastic tubing. Still to be done: Paint the remaining smokestacks and the big swadust extractors on the backdrop Complete the windows (the uppermost windows in the sidewall are still empty Add the lettering on the sidewall and the watertower (though I have no idea north of hand-painting how to re-create the text-style on the sidewall...) Add details (ladders, pipes, bracing cable for the smokestacks) Weathering Cheers Dirk
