Well it's happened again, another weekend is gone. How did you fare? I had a pretty successful weekend and got most of what I had set out to do done. The organization and selling of excess started on Saturday. I spent all day Saturday photographing, and adding HO and N scale items to the online auction site. Amazing how long it takes to do that. Sunday I devoted to the layout and Football. Not as much progress on the layout as I wanted as I spent most of the day trying to figure out one detail. In the end, I added ties, painted and weathered the track on the north side of the layout, added more roadbed for Route 4, and started work on the granite curbs and asphalt platform. The little white things are scaled styrene strips cut down to represent the 7 foot sections of granite that is the curb. Obviously they need to be trimmed to be flush with the top of the 7 foot wide asphalt platform behind it. I spent all day looking for that styrene, which is why I have been organizing. I got some gray hair watching the last seconds of the New England vs Baltimore game. I officially have no finger nails. The SF vs Giants game went into OT and sent Big Blue to meet the Patriots in Indy. Gonna be a great time to be a New Englander in Northern New Jersey So how about you? Based on the activity here on Trainboard over the weekend, looks like winter has been productive in all the scales. Post your results of this weekend here, pictures always appreciated, and lets see what you you got done. We'll do this all over again this coming Friday the 27th. ​High Greens!
I started working with the Proto 87 girder rail. The rail sections are about 4 inches long, and you glue them down individually. So, it's important to maintain gauge as you glue them down. It seems to be going OK, but as always I'm taking it very easy while learning a new technique. I only got about a foot of rail down, but one end is the connection to the normal track where the carfloat terminal wye turnout meets the street-running track. Our daughter is on her way to Italy. After watching the Patriot victory and biting off my own fingernails, we had dinner and hopped in the car for the trip to the airport. She should be landing in Florence shortly. Not so much for the layout, but it was certainly an eventful weekend. And next week is the big Springfield show!
Managed to get 6 cars out of the Bad Order/RIP Track line and back into service. Also "painted" some NZT Products N scale used ties with and India ink wash, and installed them along the mainline to represent a section that has recently seen the track gang go by.
Didn't get ANY modeling done. We had a storm come through last week that knocked power out to 180,000 customers. My power went out around 2:30am Thursday morning and didn't come back on until about 11:00 yesterday morning.
Went to a minor model show in Gatineau, though they had a couple of nice layouts, and I found two old AHM reefers, plus a diesel spotter's guide from 1972 onwards (picking up where the 2nd edition left off... I have both previous editions). I also picked up a huge load of detail parts for my locos at 1/2 price. And I had a load of fun - especially watching the younger ones gawking wide-eyed at the trains. I did say I had a load of fun?
Went to the train show at Thanksgiving Point, Lehi, Utah. Got the walls and roof for "Grandmas' House" done, now just wondering which windows to "shutter" and which to leave alone...
I attended the SP&S HS swap meet, and found a nice copy of Steve Hauff and Jim Gertz's book on the Willamette locomotives. I also picked up back issues of the SP&S HS quarterly, and an On30 two-truck Shay stuck to my fingers along with a Banta laser cut wood cab kit for the same. Back on the home front, I got some serious clearing and putting away done in my temporary train area in preparation for the imminent reclamation of the train room which has become the place where my wife half-unpacks boxes and then leaves them. The half-unpacked boxes will be getting moved to the family room where maybe they will seem more urgent, and the train stuff is going to leave the family room and go to the train room. I am no longer living in exile.
Steady progress on my N-scale SD35 detailing project... You can see the fans and grab irons here... Untitled by BGTwinDad, on Flickr Not shown in this photo are the lift rings, sun shades and MU hoses. Next up are windshield wipers and cut levers, then it's off to the paint shop. I'll be doing this one up in a C&O-inspired version of my CH&FR Railroad colors...
I assembled a Bowser KO&G 2-bay covered hopper kit and installed Kadee #5's and metal wheels on it. I made new switch throw rods out of an old Athearn locomotive hand railing, works great! Need to do this for 3 more switches. I also tried to rebuild a Roundhouse "shorty" tank car that was damaged in a derailment (actually during my last move in 2010), but the plastic hand railings on the platform around the top of the car were too far gone for me to get much done with it. I also glued down 1" foam board down on the benchwork on the end section of the bottom level. Planning to get road bed cut and glued down next weekend. This will be a challenge because I have a 22 degree semi-circle to bring three tracks into one.
Got some work done on terraforming the area that will become the foothills and lake area. Here's a shot, with a test siting of the highway bridge, from early last week And here is basically the same shot, as of today You can see the amount of new terrain I put in, as well as starting to ballast the lower set of tracks through the valley (still a small section to finish -- football games called). Roads will be weathered down, and match up with the other roads; extra guardrails, some fill in below the road surface along the hill, etc. All in all, a productive weekend.
While I had the AFC championship game going on the TV (at a somewhat loud volume, since the RR room is next to the den), I: Finished putting up the rest of the benchwork (hollow-core doors and a few shelves atop metal shelf brackets) Gluing the last of the foam to the benchwork Swapped out plastic wheelsets with metal ones on several freight cars (I plan on going all-metal for rolling stock) Scrounged up all the parts for a kitbashing project (a Frisco 53' pulpwood flat) Tried to find all of the code 83 turnouts I had (total= one. Dang....time to put in an order with the Purchasing Department)
The layout is now in the wiring phase and will be for some time (have not purchased all components yet) I ran the DCC track power bus for the layout, ended up using 14 gauge wire as my local Menards (like Home Depot) did not have any smaller gauge wire and I did not want to pay the price listed at my local hobby shop for 18 guage wire. After another trip to menards to purchase the right drop connectors (mine were for smaller guage wire) I wired up most of the layout (20 out of 30). I still have ten more track feeders to wire up to the DCC bus. I guess the bright side in using 14 guage wire as the main DCC bus, I should not have to worry too much about voltage drop due to increasing resistance on a 9 x 12 layout. A good portion of the track feeders are to provide power to spurs and yard tracks. I also connected all but one turnout and dropped the wire through the layout base. I still have to run the turnout contols back to the layout "command center" where six Digitrax DS64 stationary decoders will be used to control the turnouts via DCC. Also will be adding momentary push button switches to installed in the yet to be installed fascia which will also be connected to the DS64 decoders for "manual" turnout control. Also on Monday, I installed the handrails on one of my Atlas Burlington Northern GE C30-7 locos and for now gave up on installing the grab irons after much frusturation. Sometime this week I will install the hand rails on the other C30-7 loco and hopefully finish the track wiring (less turnout control). The wiring right now looks like a mess, but once everyting has been wired up, I will tidy it all up and make it look spiffy
