I love the overall and in-progress views. MR has been doing more of that lately and to me it really allows one to get a better feel for the overall layout. Your simple track plan has really reminded me that less is more when trying to achieve realistic scenes. Great accomplishment and congratulations again! Jamie
Thanks, Jamie and Otto! I'm curious - would you folks like to see some shots showing the rest of the room - like the windows and such?
New to the Sub - the Firefly FRED! Very nice very compact device - has a page on Facebook if anyone's interested, and sells on the Bay also... I think it adds to the overall appearance.
I too would like to see that. After all, most with room size layouts have windows and stuff to deal with. For those of us in the planning stages, it would help to see what others have done.
Any pictures will only add to the brilliance of the layout, we will get to see how everything fits in place
Congrats on your MR article. By my standards, you have accomplished a great deal in a relatively short time to have a layout that is finished in appearance. Yes, I know none of our layouts are ever "finished" but some including yours appear to be. Keep up the good work. Jim (aka mopman)
Thanks, Jim (MOPMAN)! From the git go I decided I'd do it to the "Just good enough" stage and then be able to work to my heart's content going back and adding and detailing as the impulse struck me.
Just got my MR in the mail today and saw this awfully familiar looking layout featured. Congratulations, Jim!
Thanks, Eric and Phillip! The Oak Tree Tutorial is about as easy as can be: Take 1 bag Woodland Scenics TR1571 Value Trees, Green Mix 2-3" (23). (Or many bags! Cut off the locating pin and drill for a 3 penny nail that you have cut in half. Glue the nail to the tree with the sharp side out. Pull off excess foliage, live oaks are sparse. Trim bogus plastic. Plant trees to your heart's content or until you go broke... Seriously, I had a LOT of trees left over from my first layout but I had no clue just how many this layout would take. I can tell you my fingers got pretty sore from drilling those smaller trunks, and I drilled my finger more than once. My thought is if you don't bleed a bit, the project will fail. This is another way of saying there's a lot of me in the layout!
I haven't bought a Model Railroader in years, for me it's been replaced by Trainboard frankly, but I picked up the issue that featured the Oakville Sub. Nice article and pics. It was a lot of fun seeing one of my Trainboard hero's in print. MR has been using the same distinctive graphic style for their track plans for as long as I can remember. How much of a thrill was it when you first saw the Sub rendered in that style? Do you have a framed version of it hanging in the train room yet? Congrats!!! Oh... and way to go slipping the reference to Trainboard into the article. YOU THE MAN!!
Thanks, Smitty and Virginian! I though it was only fair to mention Trainboard....and it's to their credit they left it in! When I first saw their drawing (which was taken from mine, see early in this thread or the web site) I found I had neglected to show the entry/exit for staging properly. I sent them some pictures to show what I meant and they were good enough to fix it. The Oakville yard was also rendered incorrectly and they fixed the worst of that as well. They DID mix up the rooms, I have the south (with staging), the main (with the bridge), and the north (with the yard throat)rooms. They show the main room as the north room.....very minor details. If the article advances the scale in any way, I'm more than happy. You don't HAVE to have a spaghetti bowl with buildings crammed together to have a good layout. It's YOUR layout, and you should have it the way you want it. Judging by the comments I've received, I've made some people think. And I think that's healthy!
Jim, Great MR article. It is great to see the entire Oakville Sub in one or two shots and not just the closeups that you can shown us here. Just an excellent piece of N scale modelling. I will continue to follow your progress. Charlie
Thanks, Charlie I'm going to take and post some shots as requested above. It will add a new dimension, I think...
I’ve been asked to show more of the Oakville Sub basement so folks can get a better feel for how the layout “works”. So here we go: This is the south room. The Caliente crossovers are right center. Staging is underneath. A shot from further left. CP Canyon is left center, the Caliente crossovers are below the cell tower. You can see the staging schematic at right center. We turn the camera 180 degrees and see the main room. The Bealville crossovers are straight ahead and a bit right. The bridge is out of view to the left. You can see where the electronics for DCC are at left, and the bay to the right. East Oakville and the east end of the yard are over the hills against the far wall. Now we turn again looking back toward the south room and Caliente. Wedding Cake Curve is at the right, the big fill is toward the center. The desk with computer used for programming is this side of the door to the back yard. Behind Wedding Cake curve you can see the bridged doorway to a utility/exercise room and the stairs to the first floor. There’s a bathroom back there also. Continued next post
Continued… We turn to the right and see the north room – the Oakville yard throat is behind the water tower. The yard schematic is to the right, and you can see my work area (messy) below. Now we’re in the north room looking back. East Oakville is at left, Wedding Cake curve at right. Finally we move forward and look right. CP Cliff is straight ahead, Wedding Cake curve is left, and you can see the Bealville siding to the right. I hope you’ve enjoyed this wide angle view of The Oakville Sub!
The bridge - here's the original as seen a week ago from behind: And the layout side - note the height of the plastic and that it is two pieces (split in the middle): Here's the first change - the plastic is now one piece and extends lower and not quite so high on top: And after a trip to the paint shop: There's more to come. I've had this project in mind for quite a while now; it's time!
