Some "pre Progress" - and a Sad Moment Sad Moment - All track from the Grey and Grandure has been removed. This was a very hard thing for me. I was sooo close yet soo far away from completion. Life goes on. Physical check of the space: Yard area is 18"s deep. It should allow for making up of 5 to 6 foot trains + 2 locos on lead and 2 in the middle. All track has been identified and organized in neet stacks. Tomorrow the GandG bench work will be taken down. Wood will be measured and selected for assembly of the new bench work. Oh, for those wondering: "Why take down the old and build the new"? 1) Rrrrr has fully embrased model railroading and related subjects such as railfanning and the history of railroads. 2) The GandG was 100 percent my planning, design and construction, (with help from the folks here). That made it "Mine". This was not right given the level of commitmant Rrrr had made to the layout. 3) Rrrr wanted it in the living / dining room because she felt the train room was "removed and islolated" from everyone and everything else. (who am I to argue? You want to give me 2 times the space? No? Oh, right, give _"us"_ two times the space. Yes Dear. 4) I have involved Rrrr in every aspect of the new Grey and Grandure. She has come up with several brilliant ideas that I would never have considered. Oh, and there is another reason: I really like her.
Layout Party O Scale Well I would like to get the track up and running in five weeks. I am waiting on ROW order of more tie plates, rail code 138, P:87 s/s spikes, and switch kits from American Switch and Signal. We will see if it all comes in on time. I have some pixs of the ties in my gallery, I will try to take some more pixs of the tie plates that I have layed this weekend.
I have a little more time this weekend so I want to read all the posts to the thread. There are a lot of interesting ideas in these layout parties. Here are two of the three walls just temporarily in position. I will add the third wall tonight and then start on the rest of the building. This structure has an irregular shape. In some ways, this easier to build than one that is exactly square. Here is the picture:
Party Animal List We have 15 participants in this Layout Party. Excellent! :thumbs_up: Here is a list of those working so far. okane Flash Blackman HemiAdda2d ppuinn Cleggie campp Grey One and Rrrr Michael S EricB Doug A. MOPMAN pdx1955 ct_mike Av8rTX L Lee Davis loco1999 Monon64 Just speak up if you were omitted or if you wish to join in at any time. I am determined to get more than one wall up on my building this weekend.
Wow! What an afternoon! Since I'm taking a break for supper, I'll post some stuff. My jigsaw (Black & Decker cheapo; 6 years old, led a hard life of abuse) just about gave up the ghost tonight. it was making some funny noises that it hadn't made before, vibrating more than normal, and even after a blade change, still not cutting very well. Oh well--I'll just spring for the Bosch or Dewalt jigsaw of my choice when this one dies. I'd say I got my money's worth! Now that I got that out of my system, I got all the rest of the roadbed mocked-up, cut, and set in place. I managed to get more than half of the visible modeled layout installed from a single chunk of plywood 8' long, and about 25" wide. Amazing! I have long stretches too, very few joints. Anyhow, I hope to get it all installed tonight/this weekend, and install cork so the steel gangs can do their thing next week. Pics later!
//Psst - "Grey One" _and_ Rrrr thanks. Rrrr (Roberta) will be here this weekend and with any amount of luck we will have trains running in the race track ovals of Phase I (a) Phase I (b) is the yard which I expect will be storing cars by next weekend. Steve
I am interested also. If it ever warms up it's time for some new benchwork. It's about 10 degrees in the garage with the tools, It should be 30 - 40 in the garage this time of year. Hoping for some better weather sometime next week. My plan is to build something almost the size of Hemi's. Hemi your layout is looking great by the way.
Progress for first week: I had to re-engineer my larger module, by cutting it into two pieces. There are some details in my latest blog entry. It was not hard, just an unexpected detour. It had to be done, and just makes a lot of things easier now. Tomorrow, I'll try to work on the backdrop again. Edit: I almost forgot, I have an electrician here right now, upgrading some power circuitry to handle layout lighting. We're adding a double-gang wall switch box, one of which will power the overhead lighting group. That will be nice.
Yes Flash I am in for the Layout Party. My plan over the next 5 weeks is to complete the layout design, get the benchwork built, and with any luck get some track laid. I managed to get the first version of the design completed this past week. I have cut up some of the pink foam board and I am doing test fitting of the track to see how far off base I maybe. Spent a lot of time leveling the room the floor tilts 3.5 inches to the utility room Next week I plan to finalize the layout design and get started on the benchwork. Here is the foam testing above my desk. The rest of the area above the desk. The height of the desk averages 44" with the height of the foam I am at 46" Around the corner and the rest of the layout area. The peninsula will come out from the wall to a wood post surrounding the standard basement support post. The door at the end is the utility room. The Old kitchen drawers are used to store the train stuff. The height is 36 inches so I will have about 8 inches of space between the bottom of the layout and the top of the cabinets. And the Layout Plan Thats it for now, I think this will be a fun exercise
Golden spike, folks! Tonight was the Golden Spike ceremony on the D&RGW Secret Places Sub; as I laid the final piece of mainline into place. Trains can go all the way around now! YAHOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! Serious Glen: Silly Glen:
Here's how we got there: The big curve at Crescent is actually a 150* loop, but since I don't have that sort of space, I slighly more than 100*: The flyover is built, and roadbed for Tunnel 17 and 18 along with the s-curve east of East Crescent: East Crescent Siding: The area from West Crescent to Tunnels 19-23:
That does look like some good help there! :thumbs_up: Golden spike already! You are really moving along. Are you wiring, too. so you can run trains? It really looks nice and good progress.
Progress on the Peoria Heights houses along the Rock Island Kellar Branch on the Peoria and Pekin Union Railway in N-Scale:
Two more pics of progress on the Peoria Heights houses: This last house will get trees and then I'll do some more work on the roads...I'm not happy with how they look, yet.
Adding a few more walls to the Central Warehouse building. I have the structure layout finalized now. Everything is tied together so that I need to add the frontal area where the clients park. This will be three different types of construction. The most interesting part of the structure will be the roof and the different levels and sections. Here is today's progress:
First Days Work or the GandG LV / DR Rrrr and I worked very smoothy together on the project. This was our first team effort. She integrated herself easily with my visual limitations. A sinergy evolved and we achieved our goal: To Have Fun. We started about 9am and worked through till 2ish when the Commisioner of Land Grants / co-designer / planner / and major helper indicated she needed feeding. Celebrations: About 4"s of the foam need to be trimmed. After she left I did a littel bit more: I'd have more pictures but most came out far worse than the ovals above.
Hope it's not too late to join in.... I think I better join in here. I've been a little slack since this cold weather dropped in on us in the midwest. My basement isn't finished and it gets quite cooool down there. Anyway, like I said I've been slack in getting things going so I'm hoping this will jumpstart me. I went down and added some track work today, it's in the drying process now, I had already put the cork down weeks ago and so I glued the track to the cork today. Anyway, what I'm hoping to do is get most of my track laid during this party. I did have a single mainline running around the majority of the exterior of my layout with dual mainline on one section. I decided to go ahead and make it dual all the way. My son likes to run the trains FAST and I really don't want any accidents. So, if it's alright, I'd like to be a straggler at this party. :teeth:
