The JACALAR RR

Extending the town to the foothills

For July 4th, I celebrated by working more on the town. Rather than detailing, I realized I needed to extend my base back towards the foothills, so that everything transitioned smoothly. That meant more terraforming and priming. First, though, I had more ops-session time, including speed matching an IM FT-A/B pair I picked up on TB's Trainstore!

Here's an overview of the now extended town area. Only first coats are down for road and parking area, so don't worry about color match (and, you see the world goes white, where there must have been a sudden July snowstorm ).



Where the striped parking lot ends, and the lighter grey begins, I'm planning on putting in a small passenger depot, for commuters from the town to the city. Here's a slight pan to the right, showing the transition into the foothills, and also seeing the Drive-In burger place more clearly. I put the hill in to help delineate the scene




Here's a close up of the WS Drive 'N Dine

 

Here's looking at the foothill area. The road will ramp up from the town, past Sonny's Gas Station (which will have lots of trees surrounding it) and then cross over the lower tracks to descend into Laurel Gulch by the river





Here's a closer view of the gas station



Still have lots to do here, but you compare to how this area looked previously

 

Got back to work on the scenery, today. First up was installing 2 double headed spotlight signals, some of the last ones made by Serge at SMD. These photos are after I did the rest of the scenery. Lights wired to distribution points, but don't have the logic controller installed yet -- maybe next weekend

 

Here you can see more of scenery around Sonny's Gas Station. This is a well known stopping point on the long drive up to the gold mines of Laurel Gulch. It is also a great place for rail fanning, as the SP and other lines come through here quite regularly. 2 tracks immediately behind Sonny's, with another down the slope behind those, and another in front of the road!



the road is in rather rough shape in front of Sonny's. One of the most remote spots on the road, the state highway department hasn't been through in years, though I hear they may be doing some restriping soon, and possible guardrail replacements



You can tell the altitude, as we are in the transition zone from scrub and oaks, to conifers

 

It's a good thing we're back in the 50's - those are some nasty looking oil stains/spills on the gravel

 

Progress has been slow the past couple weeks, but did get a little scenery work done around the town - finished striping the road, weathering the one section between the crossings and the hills, and just minor touch ups. Also, last weekend was MAJOR CLEANUP time; including scrubbing the floor in the train shed with brush, while on hands and knees. Had been too long since I really cleaned, and wow, does it look better!

Then, it was onto getting the signals working, trying to get them to operate appropriately for block occupancy and switch positions. Here's a look at the new wiring panel under the town



There are eight sections being monitored. I'm using TeamDigital DBD22s for block detection (didn't need more, so didn't want to spend extra for the digitrax BDL168). 5 of the sections provide sensor inputs to the TeamDigital SIC24AD, while 3 will provide inputs to an Azatrax MRX1, which will control the crossing gates.

And... here's how they look!

Here, a small SP freight gets the go ahead to proceed to the next crossing (yellow over green), while UP's COLA waits for its signals to change from red over red (out of frame)



This photo gets both signal mast in frame, but from this angle, you can only see the top of the back signal

 

The SP freight is pulling just a short string, but the first couple of cars are new MicroTrains weathered Pacific Fruit Exchange reefers

 

I can't take credit for those. :tb-err: They come that way from MicroTrains

 

Cherylton Gets a Name and Depot!

The town on the JACALAR is now called Cherylton (Cheryl, my eldest, is the CA of JACALAR). This weekend was spent building the depot for the town.

I chose to use American Model Builder's LaserKit Springfield Depot. I needed a small depot to fit the space, and this generic little depot fit the bill perfectly. This is basically a small commuter depot, taking folks into the city for work, while also a place for excursion trains to stop. It is not the mainline through town.

Here is a front (trackside) view of the completed depot



I painted in traditional SP colors, as is the station in Laurel Gulch (Laurel, my younger, is the "LA" of JACALAR).

Here's the freight and street side

 

Scratch built platform for depot

Of course, with Unitrack, one needs to raise the depot a bit, to overcome the roadbed. I scratch built this platform



You can see the passenger waiting room, and the cement steps leading up from the parking lot (plus a couple spots still needing touch up)

Here's with a piece of Unitrack in place, to give you the idea of the platform height



And, the other end of the platform

 

Passengers Waiting

I decided to add some passengers into the depot. There will be a couple of lights installed inside, and out, and they will be visible

Here's looking down without roof



and, looking in the windows, with roof off, so that it is lit

 

Depot on layout

Finally, it was time to see how all this looked, in place

Here, we see the depot across from the burger drive-in, on the main road out of town



No sooner than that, and a UP commuter pulled in - an SP daylight is on the main tracks, across on the other side side of the drive in!

 

Nice work on the station!

 

Depot gets lights

Well, after my spurt of industriousness two weeks ago, I went back east for a week (work/family), and then had so much work this past week, didn't even get to the trains until yesterday morning. What with having more family errands to attend to (signed contract for the venue for elder daughter's wedding), didn't get too much accomplished this weekend.... But, I was able to get the lighting for the depot installed.

I have two Ngineering Super-White micro LEDs inside, and 3 Super-Incandescent White micro LEDs on the outside (2 facing track, one facing street), plus this old streetlamp in the platform corner. Haven't dropped the wires through the base yet, hence the slight angle in these photos (you can see them on the right); plus still have to fix the roof in place, now that the lighting is in.



Dusk shots

 

Thanks, Michael. That's the "Thompson's Travelin' Trailer" from Woodlands Scenics. They have quite a lot of nicely detailed autos. I like theirs and CMWs the best.