Another weekend has left the station but before our minds switch back to work, lets see how we did. Saturday for me was very productive. Having completed the first basic module and finally settling on a layout hight of 51 inches from rail head to floor, my first task was to get leg levelers into each leg. Carefully drilling holes in the middle of each 1X2 leg, I inserted furniture foot levelers. I next added two 1/8 inch cross braces on each end of legs and this helped the rigidity immensely without adding much weight. Much work on Google Earth provided enough information to show I could build a pretty believable switching modules based on Concord NH with four industries, albeit slightly compressed. I'll be able to get a lumbar yard, scrap yard and two smaller industries I need to research into this module before building a corner module that will connect to Potter Place. With such a good amount of momentum, I thought I would surely be able to get the risers and sub roadbed up. But Sunday brought with it a "Honey do" list of making breakfast for everyone, going and getting a tree, Christmas shopping, laundry and grocery shopping. So Sunday was an epic waste of time. Such is life during the Holidays. So how about you? Did the Holiday rush get you too or did you avoid it and get some things done on your railroad? Let us know how you did and encourage those of us who were unable to work on our miniature empires. We'll come back on Friday the 13th and do it all over again. Until then, have a happy, safe week and... ​High Greens!
Sounds like you got some nice bench-work done Jim! The boy and I got almost one of the double figure 8's done on our mainline. Setting plywood to the proper slope and location. There is one that I want to fix (tonight) then should finish be able to get the other figure 8 done within the next couple of nights. It doesn't look like much, so no pictures yet. A lot of it was figuring out what the heck we were doing! My son is excitied to see his layout starting to take some height. As for holiday, wife went shopping with the kids and the boy and I took a break to clean the house while she was gone to "justify" our being in the garage for all of 2 afternoons. Take care, Stew D
Accomplished more than I thought. Man, I was sore Saturday and Sunday after working on my pickup on friday night. I ran my new-to-me U28C and a pair of GP7's around Ravenswood Yard one last time. All but 4 or 5 cars are packed up and most of the sctructures are removed, too. I am well ahead of my goal of getting the layout completely removed by the end of March It is looking like I can begin removing the first section by the first of the year. This is slightly disappointing, as I was hoping to get pictures of the new Trainboard exchange car as part of the last G&OM train out of Ravenswood. I found out there are some NMRA members fairly local to me who are interested in car pooling to division meetings way down in St. Albans in the future (120 miles to the south). Looks like if we can develop a core of us at the extreme northern end of Division 9, we could get to host a meeting or two in 2014. Looking forward to this, haven't been active in a few years since I was still in MCR Div 2- Keystone. Hoping to make it to Cleveland for the national convention this year with my Keystone buddies.
It was a great weekend for me, although photographically I don't have much to show. I went to the train show in Marlborough, MA, and found it much more to my liking than the Greenberg show I went to a couple of weeks back. There were a couple of layouts I'd never seen before, and some vendors, too. No big purchases, but I found enough to fill a small bag with goodies. On the way back, I stopped at a local electronics place and picked up wire, shrink-tube insulation and a fine-tip soldering iron. The devil is in the details. The big project for the weekend was finishing up the concrete pavement around the tannery. Over the Thanksgiving break, I cut and fitted all the Hydrocal castings in place. But, there were still gaps, so I spent some hours Saturday with drywall compound, using it to fill the gaps as I glued each section in place, then carefully removing the overflow with a dental tool, sanding screen and a wet paper towel. It looks much better now. The show provided other details from Bollinger-Edgerly Scale Trains (BEST) as I bought fans, gas tanks, fruit baskets and other goodies for the tannery and elsewhere. They make metal castings that are perfect for adding finishing touches.
I decided that a pole trestle is a required element in this transition scene between my yard and refinery, and I have sent many happy hours taking pics of same said in many parts of Louisiana - so first hand observational data is indeed well in hand. The real issue is I'm trying to add a cross-over to a yard lead that doesn't have one, without having to relay a ton of track on either side, and lacking either curved turnouts or a way to move a pesky wall that's in the way. I had though about a ballasted deck in some form, but I'm trying to balance a complex set of Givens and Druthers: Givens: Fixed yard throat on "Elkins" Removed track as much as possible on Refinery Module Two right hand turnouts kindly donated A need for something to bridge the short gap between the yard and refinery DRUTHERS Swamp or Bayou scene to allow for practicing of cypress swamp modeling before getting to Devil's Swamp dock on the other side Scratchbuilt or mostly scratchbuilt elements Avoid removing further track on other areas So working from that list, I am sticking to the trestle idea. As you can see from this photo, one of the turnouts is now safely on dry land, and the other is on the back of the bridge, almost across it on the other side: If there weren't that pesky wall and the need to bend track around it I could probably have moved the switch back to the yard lead side. As it is, I can get walkways on both the outside track and the outer side of the behind track, and have them look good. Frankly, since the layout is set 1995-2005 I can plunk one of DKS switch machines down over the throwbar to hide the bell crank from my Humpyard throws. I can also get some bridge flex on the front track since its nearly all going to be after the switch. Down at track level, things look pretty good - though I obviously need to grade the bayou a tad:
Had a fun time at the Oklahoma City Train Show in spite of the weather. I stayed an extra night to let road conditions improve before I headed home. There was still a lot of crusty ice covering overpasses all the way from the Oklahoma/Texas line south on I-35 south through Dallas. Traffic was heavy and slow with lots of wreckage still visible from the previous day of bumper cars that was pushed off to the side. This is just a shot I took from inside our layout loop while standing on a chair.
No photos to prove it, but there was a ladies night here at our house so I took the time to work on my MK&E layout. It has been in the middle of wiring for a while and now most of the track is wired. I even ran a train around just to check for power gaps and found a joint the light weight cars didn't like. See they come in handy now and then. Fixed that and "U can come down now" text found me and so it waits till another day with nothing else to do.
