Dexter- Thanks! I would have preferred to build it 50" tall, but there is a ~40" half wall for my stairs that the layout sits next to. I felt it would look weird if the base of the layout were taller than this wall. Although, if I ever move to a house with better setup for the layout, I could easily change out the legs for taller ones. For now, the layout is about 38" to top of foam (at grade level). This actually works fine for the little ladder that I use as my layout seat. Syrous- Thanks again! Yeah, the underside light I salvaged from an old desk they were throwing out at my office. It'll come in real handy when I do the underside wiring.
On the previous page, I noticed that when I organized the photo in my Photobucket account, it caused their URLs to change. So for the sake of people referencing the images, I'm re-posting them. For some reason I cannot edit older posts? So...I made some major changes this weekend. I felt that before I moved forward with my layout, I should just go ahead and do re-do my benchwork. I wanted to be able to somewhat easily remove the legs, and put the layout in storage if needed. I also wanted to eliminate the heavy 2x4" frame. Mostly because I felt it was a rookie thing to do, and I wanted the layout to be built a little more orthodox. 1. I completely disassembled the old setup. The only piece i planned to salvage for the remodeled layout was the top sheet of plywood. 2. I belt sanded the glue from the foam I had previously mounted. 3. I went to my big box hardware store and had them rip the plywood in store. I don't own a table saw so this is a great alternative. I wasn't about to try to rip plywood with my Skilsaw. I only had them do the necessary long-ways (hotdog) cuts, then I cut the pieces to length (hamburger) at home. 4. Wood ripped, cart loaded and ready to stuff this load into the back of my WRX wagon. I even cut the foam [myself] in store -mostly so it'd fit in my car. 5. At the end of an 8 hr day of nonstop work, I had all of my pieces cut and ready to go for assembly next day.
And here was the second part of that post: ….cont'd 6. Assembly... This is kinda of my own design -not that it's much out of the ordinary. It seemed to work just fine though. 7. Pretty much completed my work for the weekend at this point 8. Little undercarraige shot for ya 9. Floated the track on the fresh setup 10. And finally a close up of the new river/inlet setup The moral of this post is: if you do it wrong the first time, but you can go back and change it before it's too late, maybe you should just bite the bullet. My mistake of going the other route wasted some time and money, but now I am quite happy with the outcome. And after two eight hour days of "construction" work, I am sore and very tired! (shot with iPhone 5, again)
Hello Gentleman It's been a little while since I have posted. I don't have much in the way of visual updates to provide. Most of my work has been Dremeling out the slots on the underside of my Unitrack pieces to prepare for soldering [nearly] every piece of track. The only pieces I won't be soldering are those ≤60mm in length, and bumpers. I'll be out of town this weekend, but I'll likely spend most of next week, soldering feeders, and drilling/dropping them the following week. I am simultaneously planning for the contours in my terrain. This has been quite a brain buster for me. Once again, I would like the layout to resemble the coastal green rolling hills north of San Francisco. The area typically has oak and sycamore trees -other areas consist of mostly Coast Redwoods. Granitic rock outcroppings, and cliffs are also fairly common, and definitely a feature I would like to include. Refer to the image below; the major difference from previous plans is the road coming into the layout from the upper left side of the layout. In this new design, I have the road coming in on the hill and descending down to grade-level. The mainlines run through a tunnel in this hill as well. This would be a pretty steep 12% grade -but that's not completely unheard of for a country road in this area. To support the road, there would likely be some retaining walls closer to the hill, and some levee fill as the road approaches nears the at-grade level. This is DKS's conceptual rendering with a few modifications made by me: Here is an overall shot of the layout with the mock up road grade in the back left corner: And a close up of the mock up road grade: Comments
So we're at my Dad's house in Santa Cruz, CA this weekend. Just down the street is Capitola Village which has a great trestle bridge. To my surprise today, I saw about 20 speeders running across the bridge! They were too far away to capture a good photo, but I did shoot a few other photos of the bridge (below). Also, I came home and Googled Speeders in Santa Cruz and found this article on today's Speeder run: http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/lo...-chug-down-santa-cruz-countys-railroad-tracks
Quick question: should I pull off all of my track and solder all feeders at once? Or leave all other sections taped down, and solder feeders and drop them, doing only one small(ish) section at a time?
Sections at a time, but no need to tape the rest down for this step. I still have sections that haven't had all the feeder soldering completed. I've just waited until I am ready to do the scenery at the location. For your size, getting all the feeders done "at once" is a better proposition, but you leave the rest of the track in place, to help you align where to drill the feeder holes.
That's what I was thinking. Any other tips for this stage of the construction? I've been a bit hesitant to get started on dropping feeders (since I re-did the bench work), because I fear things easily getting out of alignment, and I just want it to be near perfect. But maybe I just have to grab the bull by the horns here?
grab the bull. It isn't difficult at all. If you solder the feeders to the wide pads near the unijoiners, then, starting with an "in place" piece, drill the hole about 3/4" out from the end of it, and drop your feeder there. There will be plenty of slack and wiggle room, to get everything set. The trickiest part I learned was to solder the feeders at the "near end" to an in-place section of track. Also, very carefully mark your sections with "B" and "R", or whatever color wires you will use, and ensure the correct polarity when you have the piece upside down and ready to solder. Not a huge deal on straights -- can be a killer on curves. The number of times I've had to unsolder/resolder....
Your use of "wiggle room" in that context makes me feel much better. I have had lots of practice soldering feeders to spare Unitrack pieces. I use a Dremel with a diamond bur from my dentist to widen two of the under side slots, and solder feeders to those points. I have already done all of the Dremeling to widen the slots, and marked the track for polarity -I just mark which side takes the red wire, then obviously, the other side will be black. A trick I guess I came up for marking the polarity on track was: I built my entire layout upside down, and marked the underside of the track with a red Sharpie. I even with as far as labeling each piece of track (A1, B1, C1, D1, etc.), and have a reference sheet so I know where each track piece sits on the layout. I did this because some feeders need to avoid certain obstructions under the layout. Well, now I'm looking forward to getting started with this stage! Thanks again, Rick!
[TABLE="class: tborder vbseo_like_postbit, width: 100%, align: center"] [TR] [TD="class: alt1, bgcolor: #E4E5E5"]So I had a pretty busy weekend with Mother's Day and all, but I still managed to get a good amount of layout work done. Here you can see very early stages of the new foam that will be shaped into hills/tunnel for the one corner/middle. The piece that sticks out next to the yard will eventually be the road descending from the hill to at-grade level. I'm also planning to paint the walls in this room and install some track lighting for the layout. I painted the underside of the layout a semi-gloss black. Thank God Bob reminded me to do this prior to wiring! Otherwise it would have looked real sloppy had I paintedafter wiring. I plan to paint the exterior of the bench work later on. The bus wire in this picture is just temporarily routed as I am still waiting for my Posi-taps to arrive. I finished taping all the feeders wires under the roadbed of each track piece so they would lay flat when I re-assembled the layout (and obviously prior to dropping feeders). Here is my very first dropped feeder As silly as it may sound, I felt like this was a bit of a milestone for the layout The bus wire is just temporarily routed as I am still waiting for my posi-taps and a few terminal blocks to arrive. I repainted the base color with a lighter brown/tan color. The other color I had was like an Army green that looked weird -even though as I said, very little of the is color will show through after landscaping has been done. I shifted the layout around until I got it into it's final position, and then taped it down with blue painter's tape. From there, I outlined the road with a basic grey acrylic gray paint that somewhat matches the Kato roadbed (ballast will later cover it anyways). I hadn't finished the grey outline when this picture was taken. My next step will be going around the layout section by section to drill and drop the feeders. My Posi-Taps should arrive today or tomorrow, so then I will permanently affix the bus wire under the layout and start attaching feeders to the bus. Cheers! Noah [/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE]
are you going to paint / weather your rail ? I did mine before I attached it to the base. Just painted the side that was visible when its attached. Lots easier doing B4 You put it down perminatly.....Mike ( I used a small brush and a steady hand. )
I don't have a set plan on painting or weathering, but I imagine I will want to some day. I'll likely end up doing it the hard way, with the track already laid. I definitely plan to ballast the track. I have started dropping feeders but haven't glued any track yet.
I really like how you are approaching this project. Very methodical. This is going to be rock solid when done.
Thank you sir. I sure hope it's going to be rock solid! - - - Well, I'm happy to say that tonight, I finished attaching all feeders to my bus wires! It was a quite a big job for my beginner-ness. But I'm happy to have it finished. My track is all correct and looks like there should be no problem running trains -which I'll do tomorrow with my DC controller. Too late tonight. I plan to order my NCE Power Cab and at least one TCS decoder for one of my Kato Dash-9s this weekend. Although, one of my local hobby shops is having a big DCC sale, so I'm gonna try to get over there to support them. Here's a pic from Thursday when I was drilling and dropping feeders... And a couple shots from the finished job. Sorry for the crummy lighting and mediocre photos. I ended up running one main bus (mostly following the double mains), and a shorter one that serves the center of the layout (mostly yard). Both of those bus lines initiate at this small terminal block. It may look odd that the buses come off of the terminal block on opposite ends (and staggered), but it just worked a bit better that way -without having to do some funky bend of the solid 14awg wire. The little wire bundles are the turnout wires (perhaps obviously). Soon I can get on to the fun stuff... like landscaping, structures, and running trains! Cheers Noah
Using DKS's method for water, I made a sample this evening on a small 6x6" piece of wood. And I built this small pier from a $10 eBay kit. Still unsure if it'll end up getting used in the layout.
Couple quick updates for you guys: You can see the result of adding land next to my yard tracks. It worked out quite nicely. I also did a little more foam shaping, but more has to be done, in addition to adding to the fascia to help define the contouring hills. Swooped some Manzanita tree armatures on a hike near Lake Tahoe last weekend: Here's one using lichen that I found: I used vinyl tile to make a bridge abutment. The bricks are rather large for N-Scale, but I'm trying not to sweat it. And last night I built the frame for my command area. The shelf is 26" and removable. The gap at the bottom will be used to route wires. My turnout control panel will be 11" wide (plexi or stainless steel, with LED indicators), and next to that there will be a 4" wide panel to mount my Powercab. The remaining 10-11" to the right will be used for car card/way bill holders, and just in front of them will be a flat area on the shelf for writing notes. I think that's about all that has happened in the last two weeks. And I'm still lovin' every minute of it!
Here's one more shot and before and after of adding the land back over the bay/inlet near the yard. If you didn't catch the topic, I was stumped as to what to do with my yard tracks because of the lacking space. This was my solution to that problem... Before During After The little building is just there as a place holder and to use for giving an idea of how much space I have. I plan to do a lumber yard here eventually.
