Rainier Great Western Const Update

The golf course shots were taken by me at the exact course along the old Milwaukee Line ROW. It's Maplewood Golf Course in Renton. I took a series of shots, then used photoshop to stitch them together. Once I had them how I liked them, I also used photoshop to add trees, delete golfers, take out tee markers and the like; anything that wouldn't look right for HO scale. As for the path, part of the path was visible in the picture, but I made it wider to give better perspective to the cart path we used on the layout. So to answer the "chicken or egg" part of your question, the path on the picture came first. M

 

Thank you for the info! Great work as always!!! JMS

 

Thank you Tom, I really am very lucky to have such good friends. The modeling expertise is just secondary. M

 

Red letter day on RGW (yes we have a lot of them) as we celebrate Ed's fantastic work on getting the entire under deck lighting system completed. He has been at it for some time now, but like the postman, neither equipment delivery issues, foot problems, nor nmra national duties, shall stay him from his accepted duties.

With one flick of the switch, we have light:









The last pic is our return loop which had been poorly lit by a temporary set up until last night. Wow, what a difference. Thanks Ed!

Now the superintendent needs to get off his duff and switch the roof lights to LEDs.

 

In addition to the lighting project, I spent more time on the new bridge project. First step was to take out the existing roadbed and track.



Then I started rebuilding the landforms with 2 inch blue foam. We are going to have to be pretty creative to hide the backdrop.



We laid in a temporary bridge from Scott's collection (looks right at home frankly) and this is where we are today:





Scott completed the next wash on the timber cribbing:



He then set out to fine tune one of our bridge fences at the two bridge scene. We found a minor clearance issue which needed immediate attention.



That was last night in a nutshell, thanks for checking in. M

 

Through truss, but I kind of like his.

 

One other item that we worked on last night was the location of the acrylic panels that will protect the lumber mill bridges. Bob spent time in the helix to survey any spots for screws that would hold them in place.

After a quick review we may have to use special screws to attach the panels so as not to interfere with the helix itself.





In these two shots Bob has placed markers where there is clearance for the screws to go without impacting helix operation. We will install them next week.

 

That pony truss does grow on you. Might have to rethink the through truss. M

 

You could always run 3 spans, ponies on the ends and a thru-truss in the center span. That would be interesting!

 

We already have a similar set-up, plate girder, through truss, plate girder. It's cool.

 

Here's a look at that bridge combo:



The right side of the bridge is the high point on the railroad. It is 58.5 inches off the floor.

 

Two spans with pony trusses would be neat.

 

Last night we had the normal crew, but two projects took center stage. First, Bob added the acrylic sheets to protect the lumber mill road approaches. Here are two views of that work.





The other sheet is in place, but we need to acquire longer screws to make it sturdy. We will also need to round off the corners for safety.

Wain added the wire to the fence line on the golf course out of bounds stakes. He also added some trees at key points to hide corners.



He concluded his evening with a ballasting of the tracks in the scene.



I was only able to get a couple of foam pieces into the bridge scene, but here is where we sit so far:



Ed began adding turnout mechanisms in the Renton industrial area and Doug made some progress on the City Hall parking lot. Rey is nearly finished with the flatcar lowering project so I'll detail that next week. Thanks for checking in. M