I've switched to doing a mostly kit bashed and scratch built layout. This means that I do stuff, but the layout is coming really slowly. I just made small piece of "hand laid" track. I used sectional track and removed some ties then glued in shaved twigs. I just kept doing it until I replaced the plastic with wood and have my first section of track. It's gonna take a while to do this even for a tiny oval layout, but in the end I will have a layout that I built with my own hands. Victory!!! What did you make for your layout that felt like a huge success no matter how small?
Finally stripped the flex track and roadbed off a 20 lbs solid wood plank, and moved that monstrosity to the basement storage locker. Now I have a lot more space in my office, and most importantly can finally access my beer keg cooler again! Also put up a door (from storage) to keep the furry critters out when I'm not in the room. One of the cats already did a good job giving the turntable more of a Bauhaus look ('less is more'). Who needs ladders and railings anyway? Yesterday I put down the first 8 feet of camper seal tape roadbed on the 2" foam benchwork, in an area where I feel pretty sure the design is not going to change, a 24" curve in one of the three corners.
A bit of luck, a gob of inspiration, a bowl of plaster and some aluminum foil helped me make a jagged rock face for my layout at the very beginning of construction. I got the foil idea when I tore off a piece for some other idea. I looked at the crinkles, and the proverbial light bulb in my head got hit by a falling apple. Eureka! I said, even if no water was displaced. Well it turned out way better than I expected. Especially when the sun shone through the window and caught it just right. Wow! I said... Way better than commercial molds! That little victory gave me a new impetus for continuing with the layout, and trying new things at the same time. More than running trains on it, building the layout was by far the most of the fun, and that's when I understood why my Dad built my 2 layouts back in the 70s. And painted and detailed locos and rolling stock. He was enjoying it at least as much as I was, but on a different angle. Now I know what he felt and why. Dad passed away back in 2007, but the connection between us is still strong, through the trains.
The snow scene on my layout wasn't hard, but the biggest little victory was "ballasting" marble dust (AZ Rock & Mineral) over the tracks to look like plowed snow. Achieving the look of two rails slicing thru about 6" of snow was the goal. Placing it wasn't hard, but gluing it was immensely challenging. As it turns out, marble dust liquefies with too much moisture. I used an eyedropper to place the glue/water mixture, and there's a very fine line between not enough, and way too much fluid. The line happens before you might expect. When the mixture liquefies the marble dust, it runs like water. Getting the ratio just right took a ton of patience. I only did about 4 feet of snowy mainline; imagine if I had a whole division to do!
That snow looks amazing. I never knew marble dust was so hard to work with. I know that type of scenery well since I've been in the front range since 77. I think you really nailed the overall look of it.
I don't if this is a tiny victory ON my layout as much as it is a tiny victory WITH my layout. After four years, I finally got my 4' X 8' N scale layout moved from my apartment, 40 miles away, to my house as part of finally moving everything out of that apartment. So now, I have three layouts here - a 3' X 4', laid with Arnold Rapido track, a 4' X 7', laid with Treble-O-Lectric track, and this one, laid with Atlas code 80 and code 55 track, some of the code 80, over 50 years old. Crazy, huh. Doug
After over 10 years, I finally resumed ballasting on my layout! Life got in the way over the years, and Quarantine/Lockdown time finally gave me the time to work on my scenery. I couldn't start ballasting until I've finished the surrounding scenery and ground cover, so once I was finally done with that, I whipped out the rubbing alcohol spray bottle, drip applicator with diluted glue, brushes and Arizona Rock & Mineral ballast:
More than a tiny victory, I finally laid track for the last section of the layout. This was the elevated reversing loop for the D&H branch line (shown in blue). It is only to add operational variety and will not get scenery or structures. I timed what it takes to complete a full circuit around the layout, at a scale 35 MPH it takes just over 7 minutes, or almost 4 scale miles of track. It took 20 years to finally get to this point! Now I can run trains while I'm working on the scenery and structures on the rest of the layout. I've attached a PDF of the layout drawing done in Cadrail. I'm trying to figure out how to convert to an image file.
Seems like a neat layout! Unfortunately the yellow is pretty much impossible to see on my display. For output conversion, I usually just take a screen shot, and save it as jpg.
