Being pretty new to Trainboard, I haven't seen this whole thread yet. Wow...outstanding work nolatron! It was fascinating to watch the past year's work all at once. Your electrical work is so well thought out and clean I have to figure your an electrician or phone installer or such. Just wonderfully clean electrical work that I will strive to emulate as I put my layout together. Your benchwork and trackwork is also really, really good. I have to wonder how many swear words are going to come out of your mouth anytime that you get a car off the tracks in your staging...not a lot of room in there! Not trying to but a hex on anything...I'm just a firm believer in Murphy's Law...even to the point that I decided to not even do hidden staging for my own plan. But then...Murphy just sits on my shoulder and laughs and laughs... Smooth rails!
I don't worry about too much really. Since the upper deck was installed, I've probably only had enough derails to count on one hand and all of those were caused by me either forgetting to throw or throwing the wrong ladder switch. The derails have all been on the yard ladders. It's a small space but reaching in to pluck a derail car out isn't that big an issue.
Very nice! The tank car, 6th from the back has something stuck in its front truck. May want to check that out so it doesnt cause a derailment.
That's actually the occupancy resistor and conductive paint on the axle. Keep forgetting to go back and paint them things black so they don't stand out so much like that.
Sweet video Shaun! Looks like everything is progressing very nicely.. Also kinda funny going from "Solar Sailer" to Charlie Brown.. biggrin:
Been doing a little off and on work on the scenery this past week. Mainly I'm trying to get the "terrain forming" done for the hills and tunnel portals. This morning I finished up almost all the cardboard webbing. After taking the pics I started putting down masking tape but ran out! So I didn't get very far there. One spot I left open to give me access to the interior of the hills for where the overpass is (see pic #1). Still working on what to install here, so I left this open so I can get and install a tunnel interior or something.
Got some more work done on the layout this weekend. Finished up most the terrain work on the layout. Just need to do the interior tunnel for the overpass so I can close up that hill. Then the next step will be applying scultamold. In photo #2, I was originally planning on doing some tunnel portals here but think instead I'm gonna try and have the tracks just disappear into trees/foliage instead. An idea I got from the July 2009 Model Railroader article.
Almost completely done with track work. Just need to sand down a transition on the cork here, glue down the track, and drop some feeders and I'll be done. Then it's on to ballasting. And a look at my corner lake that I painted and sealed with caulking. Added a rubber rock casting too.
First of all, Shaun, the layout is coming along great. I'm especially digging the new panel setup. And the button to initialize the points to default settings is terrific. Now, about the mountain, what about this. The mountain itself I think is great. I'd say keep it. But I think the top is a little too pointy. Why not lower it just a little up there, and flatten it out a little? And then, on the right side, you've got some water with the tracks jutting out over it. Why not use that as an excuse to continue with that a little further? You could bring the front of the mountain out closer to the edge and make your shear rock faces on the front, as if the mountain was cut through at a logical point. Maybe even put in some cover for protection from rock slides, and even make that little triangle of space on the left a short ridge, leftover from the cut. I think that'd make for some good photo-ops when it's all done.
This morning I started work on my mountain makeover using some good ideas from the modeler community. The first thing on the list is to get rid of the cone shape top. I pulled off the masking tape, cut and removed the cardboard strip webbing, and cut down the foam supports. The 2nd thing was it needed to be more vertical along the tracks, more like a cut was made by the railroad to put in the tracks. So I removed the tape and webbing from the bottom portion of the mountain as well. Here's what it used to look like: The cardboard webbing is still pretty intact so I placed it on top the hill as I think already it's beginning to look to better with the shortened, rounded off top:
