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I have been posting the progress on my layout on the "What Did You Do on Your Layout" thread, but I was asked to start a new thread this time.  My son and I have been working on getting my fascias installed.  We left the hardest one to last which was the one around a tunnel.  This tunnel you enter from the left hand side of my curved stone arch bridge.  It is about 12 feet long and has my double-track mainline running through it.  Today we finished putting the top on the tunnel.  Access to the tunnel will be via a lift-out section on the far right side and by the sides in the balance of the tunnel.  Here are several pictures of the almost finished top.

tunnel1tunnel2tunnel3tunnel4tunnel5

Another area we worked on was adding plywood sections to the Illinois side of my Mississippi River valley to shape the bank in preparation for plaster work.  We also had to redo and replace part of the fascia here to show the correct reveal for the river bank.  Here are a few pictures of this area.

riverbank1riverbank2riverbank3

I can't thank my son, Jim, enough for all his hard work the last few days on the layout.  He has made some impossible jobs go smoothly and get done.  Building new control panels is the next major job for the layout and he has begun that process.

Art

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Last edited by Chugman
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Chugman posted:

I have been posting the progress on my layout on the "What Did You Do on Your Layout" thread, but I was asked to start a new thread this time.  My son and I have been working on getting my fascias installed.  We left the hardest one to last which was the one around a tunnel.  This tunnel you enter from the left hand side of my curved stone arch bridge.  It is about 12 feet long and has my double-track mainline running through it.  Today we finished putting the top on the tunnel.  Access to the tunnel will be via a lift-out section on the far right side and by the sides in the balance of the tunnel.  Here are several pictures of the almost finished top.

 

I can't thank my son, Jim, enough for all his hard work the last few days on the layout.  He has made some impossible jobs go smoothly and get done.  Building new control panels is the next major job for the layout and he has begun that process.

Art

Art- glad you are starting a new thread too. I have been following your progress on the other page. Keep up the good work. Everything looks great so far.

Bob

rattler21 posted:

Art, Reference photos one and two.  Is there enough room for articulated engines?  If you don't have one you can bet your bottom dollar some one will want to run one on your layout.   John in Lansing, ILL

John, I have a spot inside another long tunnel that does not show in these pictures that will not let me run some articulated engines.  The uprights that hold the upper deck under my towns of Ruthven and Spencer do not have enough clearance.  When a friend brought his new Lionel Visionline Big Boy over the only place we could run it was on the upper branchline.  I feel badly about that, but I have never had any plans to run large articulated engines and only own one small steam engine which hardly ever gets run.  

And I just learned last night that my 21" California Zephyr cars are hitting my new tunnel liner on my freight mainline so I will have to change that.  I haven't been running passenger trains on that line, but I want to be able to.  During future operating sessions I plan to reroute passenger traffic over this section of freight mainline to bypass freight switching at my grain elevator complex that is only accessible from the passenger mainline.

Thanks for all your encouraging comments.

Art

 Looks like the makings of a fantastic layout in a really great setting. At this stage of building you can start to see progress every week as it all comes together. I'm at the point of detailing the layout. I enjoy this aspect of the hobby even though at times it can be tedious. I often times miss the doing the big projects. Looking forward to your future updates.

On our last work day we added a siding to the location of my future flour mill.  One of my operating themes will be the movement of grain and flour cars that will supply my Wonder Bread Bakery.  I will have local grain elevators that will collect the farmers crops, then grain hoppers will take that to the large regional elevator complex and from there it will go to the flour mill.  So, I need receiving tracks for incoming grain cars and outgoing tracks for flour cars.

I had one 072 left-hand switch left and wanted to find a way to use it rather buy a new right-hand switch.  We experimented with many combinations of short pieces of curved track and flex track and finally decided on what you see in the attached pictures.  Oh, I found out that Atlas flex track doesn't flex nearly as well after it has been painted.  Next steps are to build the retaining wall behind the flour mill, add track bumpers, paint the track, and start building my flour mill.

flourmillsidings1flourmillsidings2flourmillsidings3flourmillsidings4

Art

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Art, great looking work you have going on there, I have to agree with above, Great looking yard, looks like enough room to part several cars just waiting to be picked up. Love your updates between you and Elliot, Max and a whole lot of other people here I never run out of things to read and think about!

Mark Boyce posted:

Art,

Thank you for starting your new topic for construction of your layout!  I can see having Jim available to help with some jobs is a lifesaver!  Please tell him he is helping to make a lot of folks out here in Forumland happy by seeing your layout come to life!   Could you post a photo of Jim sometime, so we can put a face with his name?  

Mark - I forgot to respond to your request.  I looked through my "train related" pictures of my son, Jim, and found one I don't think he will mind if I share.  It was taken a few years ago at one of my operating sessions.  Jim is the fellow in the center of the picture with a burgundy shirt on and a baseball cap.  He was operating the Proviso freight yard that day with a smiling crew.

jimandgroup 

Art

 

 

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Another request that I have been getting frequently was for a copy of my track plan.  My son, Jim, starting entering it into RR software, but I kept making changes to it.  After we completely redone my former Intermodal yard into what I now call my Eola classification yard, he began updating the track plan again.  Then we added a siding at my future flour mill and he had to do another update.

I think that I am finally done with track revisions.  I don't have any more room or switches, so I should be done.  So here are the copies of the track plan.  It is shown three ways:  A complete version with the upper line in red and the lower in black, an upper only version, and a lower only version.  I want to annotate some of the scenery features and yards, but that will come later.

Art

ArtWilliamsCompleteLayoutArtWilliamsLowerLineArtWilliamsUpperLine

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Last edited by Chugman
Chugman posted:

 

Mark - I forgot to respond to your request.  I looked through my "train related" pictures of my son, Jim, and found one I don't think he will mind if I share.  It was taken a few years ago at one of my operating sessions.  Jim is the fellow in the center of the picture with a burgundy shirt on and a baseball cap.  He was operating the Proviso freight yard that day with a smiling crew.

Art 

Art,

Glad to see who is responsible for helping you!  Thank you and thank Jim!

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