New to forum

Welcome.  You came to the right place.  Just ask away.....                JP

Welcome to the forum, Jeff. It seems we have some things in common, in that I have a small collection of classic cars and a layout under construction. Thus my time and interests are divided and it takes longer to complete individual projects, but it also keeps everything fresh, I believe. If you get satisfaction from working on your layout and can get your trains running reliably, that's the main thing. Share some photos of what you've got underway!

PS: If you can build an engine, you can create scenery. YouTube, magazine articles, and how-to books are all great resources and provide inspirational ideas.

Welcome to the forum. Kind of a newbie myself. This forum has a great group of people with great knowledge and layouts. In other words you're at the right place. Enjoy!

Would love to see pics of your layout.

Here are few pictures of the layout so far.

Welcome. Nice looking layout. Your scenery looks good to my eye. Good job of blending the backdrop into the modeled scenery.

Amazing layout!

Thanks for the kind words on the scenery so far, but that is very difficult for me to do. I don't have that "arts/Craft gene, other people have. Give me wiring, benchwork, track plans or building circuits to control things and its easy work to do and I know others struggle with those items. We all are good at some things and not so much at other things.

It is operational and that's some of the scenery problem not getting done. Way too much fun to run 40 to 60 car trains that take an hour to get around the layout one time. It's way more of an operator's layout than for its scenery. Has over 100 signals that you run by signal indication with all aspects beyond just red/green/yellow like advanced approach, approach diversions, clear diversions and so on. It makes it fun to run in Command Control and follow what the signals are telling you. The circuits I built dispatch the mainline with all signal indications, changes the main line switches, decides who get permission to cross the crossovers and hold trains for the single-track sections. So, it does all the work for you, and you just run trains!!!

Looks to me like you do have the arts/craft gene! My lay out doesn't hold a candle to yours.

Dan

Welcome to the forum, Jeff!  Your layout and the Packard look great!

Welcome to our little corner of Heaven! I can tell you from experience, everyone here are very nice, willing to help, and at least one of us will have an answer to any question. Your layout looks amazing and you should be very proud of your accomplishments!

Hi Jeff. Welcome to the forum!

Where the heck have you been hiding?????

That's one beauty of a layout. The scenery is right up there with some of the best layouts I've seen. Love the Packard too.

Keep the pix and questions coming. Plenty of help to be had around here.

Bob

Thanks everyone for the kind words!!

For Bob, I have not been hiding. I'm just not a social media guy, no face book or twitter or anything other than e-mail. Lots of people in Indiana know me, have seen the layout, and even run trains on it. Thats why I made the layout was to run trains, Not to take pictures of it. But I will be the first to admit that running trains is much more enjoyable when you have scenery to run through. And I struggle with scenery even if you think the pictures look good.

Here are a few more pictures where the scenery is done or close to being done. But there is still so much to do!!! What the layout does operationally is where I think it has things I have not seen on any other layouts, like the miles of mainline track self-dispatching via homemade electronic boards. One picture is for the electronic guys of one of the six control board centers around the layout that control everything. It's old TTL logic with and/nor and or gates but it works.

Glad everyone enjoys the pictures of what I have got done.

Did not see that other option, thanks for the tip!!

Jeff

Great layout. Wish I was as "bad" at scenery as you are. The wiring is most impressive also compared to my small rats nest.

Click on the blue star lower right of your post(s) to edit or delete. When you edit a post, you will see a black star indicated you’ve edited.

Both very nice Mopars!! Either have a 440 in them?

Also, thanks Mark for educating me about how to work this site

@Jeff Green posted:

Maybe there is an edit button somewhere, but I don't know where it is. The statement in the post above should have read " But that doesn't mean I don't have questions".

I only know what I know and know enough to know I don't know it all.

The edit button is a drop-down from the little “tool wheel” in the bottom right of your post.

Guys....your real automobiles are very nice however please keep the purpose of this forum on track!  Post your auto pictures on another forum that is more appropriate.

I chuckled when I read 30x50 layout.   That's amazing.  Then to hear it takes an hour for the train to make a lap is unbelievable.   Great job.  The scenery looked first class to me.

@Jeff Green posted:

Thanks everyone for the kind words!!

For Bob, I have not been hiding. I'm just not a social media guy, no face book or twitter or anything other than e-mail. Lots of people in Indiana know me, have seen the layout, and even run trains on it. Thats why I made the layout was to run trains, Not to take pictures of it. But I will be the first to admit that running trains is much more enjoyable when you have scenery to run through. And I struggle with scenery even if you think the pictures look good.

Same here Jeff. The forum is about as close as I get to social media. I work for a University and many of my co-workers can't believe it when I say I'm not on any.
The world would be a better place without them all.

Bob

I'd gladly take the scenery you have to where I am, you clearly got more of the artistic gene than I did!

With lack of a "scenery gene", you sure are doing one heck of a job! I love the way the layout and background blend together! Keep going with what you are doing! Absolutely no complaints here!

Chris

LVHR

Well maybe I should rephrase my lack of scenery statement. I hate doing scenery because I really don't know what I'm doing, no matter how it turns out. If I need to build a circuit to control something, I know what resistors, capacitors, diodes or chips I need to make that happen before I do anything. So, it turns out exactually the way I planned it. With scenery I know how I want it to look without a clue how to exactually do it. If it looks good then some of that was by accident, not because I had a plan how to do it.  And that's why I hate scenery.  Someone with the true arts\crafts gene has a plan and knows how to do it.

RSJB18, I had a high-level job where putting myself on Facebook would most liked get me friend requests from hundreds of employees that I would have to reject to stay private. Didn't need the people I was over to know I had the trains, cars or other stuff. So all forms of social media was not a great idea for most of my life until I just retired last year when I hit that magical 59. Still have no real desire to have those but do look at others Facebook to see what they are doing and enjoy it.

John, I'm sure you could teach me a few things on the electronic side. The electronics running my layout were built over 20 years ago and while the laws of how stuff works has not changed, the way you do it has to a degree. But that TTL has been great!! I put chip sockets in for all the 7402, 7404, 7427 and so on but they have not failed. I was sure it would have issues over that much time but it just hasn't. 

Welcome to the forum Jeff.  As others have said while scenery is hard for you what you have accomplished is incredibly well done.  From the pictures it seems like you've got a terrific operational layout complete with ballast and ground cover, wonderful back drops and some sceniced areas.  As you get more enjoyment out of operating your trains than building models I'd say don't sweat the scenery, you've the basics done, and better than most of us at that.  When you get the inclination and time to more pick a small area and work on that.  True your layout will never be finished but few ever are, even the best and most sceniced layouts are always evolving.

@Jeff Green posted:

John, I'm sure you could teach me a few things on the electronic side. The electronics running my layout were built over 20 years ago and while the laws of how stuff works has not changed, the way you do it has to a degree. But that TTL has been great!! I put chip sockets in for all the 7402, 7404, 7427 and so on but they have not failed. I was sure it would have issues over that much time but it just hasn't.

TTL?  What's that?   My, how times have changed!  I remember whacking stuff together with TTL, that was some time back!  I still have some 1980's test equipment that works as good as the day I bought it, not sure the stuff I'm buying now will be working 40-50 years from now.  I must admit, I've had to adapt to mostly surface mount stuff for my boards, you can't get a lot of the parts in thru-hole anymore.

Joe, doing a little section at a time is the only way I get done what I do get done. It gives you a feeling of accomplishment, so you keep going. You have no idea how much ballast it takes to do a layout this big!! To the point I made my own ballast and sold it to others back in the 90's so it would be much cheaper for them to ballast a layout. I remember the DC High Railer's buying a bunch of it as well as others. Sold it for $1 a pound.  Do the pricing to buy commercial ballast for a layout like this and the number is just nuts. Speaking of nuts, I am because I hand painted the sides of all the rails on the layout so it would look good which I think was around 3000 feet of track. Not sure I have the energy to do that again so you will not be seeing me posting that I'm building a new layout to replace this one. Thanks again for your positive comments.

John, flat packs came out when I was halfway done with building all the boards to run the layout. You can't really deal with those, or at least I couldn't, as they were meant to be disposable and not repaired. So while the TTL, that is Total Transistor Logic for anyone that cares, is like back to the future stuff, it has been reliable and glad that's what I have at this point. And it is still repairable as the Texas Instrument chips are still out there and I have tubes of them also. I have computers for the race car that run on old programs that you can't get anymore and a new computer with new software won't run the programs, so you have to keep old laptops working which is hard to do at this point. Even a new battery for them is getting hard to find. I think you hit a nerve. 

The TTL I think is transistor-transistor-logic, which was preceded by the RTL resistor-transistor-logic. 

For people not selling their designs on the internet it is quite adequate, especially if you are doing the diagnostics and repairs on it.  I still use it.  But then I still use discretes also.  Not particularly good for packing into the micro space of today's fancy engines, but there's usually plenty of room under the layout.

I'm still struggling with the 30x50 size of the layout.  That's almost the size of my house.  When I drive by the mega trucking warehouses next to interstate hwys I fantasize about a layout with four loops of track around the inside of it.  With different color overhead block indicator lights that indicate where each train is in the building.

Maybe someday

Aussteve, you are most likely correct on TTL. We always called it "Total" but that may not be correct.

I built the house for the train layout. It's a ranch house so it would have a large footprint. I tried to get them to build it so the basement had no support beam poles in the basement. They wouldn't agree to that structurally, but I got them down to only two support beams by putting in the largest steel beam they would agree to.

The layout is three levels with no curve greater than an 072, even on a siding or in the yard. No grade more than 2% so you can back 100 car trains without derailing them. The only level track is the 40 foot train yard, everything else is on a grade but it's so light of a grade you really can't see it. Because it's three levels, and all really one track, is why it takes an hour to complete one lap. But if you where here, you would think it's all double track mainlines, with single track sections in the mountains, and difficult to tell where they ever reverse and become the other track direction. At no time do they just go in a tunnel and just turn around. I have had train people here watching it for hours and still not figure how they end up going both directions on the double track mains.

Picture shows about 1/2 of the basement.

This looks like a layout that's worthy of a tour!

@Jeff Green - apparently I've been living under a rock, as I not only missed this thread but also was unaware of you or your layout until the recent article in OGR.  Great work!

In any case, I live just a few miles from you (Carmel).  I thought I knew most of the local guys, but apparently not.  Do you accept visitors to your layout?  There's no email in your profile, so hoping that you'll respond - my email is in my profile.  Thanks. 

Jeff

That is a great layout.

You did it the right way, building the layout with tracks and controls first.  You did great getting the trains running, with all operating functions which took several years.  So now you can run trains and enjoy operating while slowly undertaking scenery which will take many more years at your pace.

I did the same with my small 11ft x 6 ft layout when I built the layout with tracks, switches, track diagram control panel and homemade turntable in 9 months shooting for Christmas time.  It only had three building from my childhood layout and Plasticville building stuck together.  It is portable and for over 44 years it has been in 5 houses and expanded and run for 2 months a year for 30 years.  It is like yours now mostly an operating layout with most additions being operating accessories but has been enjoyed all these years.

Your will enjoy this OGR forum.

Charlie

@Jeff Green welcome. Please share your layout with us. We can learn from you and you can learn from us! Enjoy!

Mike

@Jeff Green Jeff, Your layout looks great. Take things at your own pace.

Tom

@LT1Poncho posted:

@Jeff Green welcome. Please share your layout with us. We can learn from you and you can learn from us! Enjoy!

Mike

@PRR8976 posted:

@Jeff Green Jeff, Your layout looks great. Take things at your own pace.

Tom

There's an extensive article about it in the latest issue.

Thank you everyone for the positive comments. It's a work in progress.

And yes, I also feel like I live under a rock. I see and know how much O gauge stuff is manufactured and sold second hand, which says there are a TON of people in this hobby. Yet I only know a very small circle of them locally. But I know that small number can't be the case of how many are really in this hobby!!

A few more pictures of some more progress.

The CSX freight is on main track #2 and will be coming to a stop at the interlock and main track #1 has a signal displaying an approach diversion, so that train will be crossing tracks in front of the CSX train heading into the yard.

The other picture is an update with more of the scenery completed in this area.

@Jeff Green posted:

A few more pictures of some more progress.

The CSX freight is on main track #2 and will be coming to a stop at the interlock and main track #1 has a signal displaying an approach diversion, so that train will be crossing tracks in front of the CSX train heading into the yard.

The other picture is an update with more of the scenery completed in this area.

Great layout!

Peter

Jeff, great looking layout!  Yes there are scads of model railroad enthusiasts hiding under rocks all over the place!  😄

@Jeff Green, Wow, you have a terrific CSX train and a fun to run model railroad, I wonder if you use Lionel’s Legacy System, or MTH’s DCS system? Either way, it’s nice to see your workmanship on this OGR Forum. Are you anyway near Evansville, Indiana?
We have a lot of friends with trains in that area, also Owensboro Ky.

Thank you for showing us the beautiful pictures of your layout. It’s really nice. Happy Railroading Everyone