Weekend Photo Fun 6-3-22-??

A 2021 Christmas Layout memory

The center area of the 14' wide layout.  Closeups coming

- walt

Added a VW dealer to my layout, modifying the Menards Valley Motors. Will have to make some room on my main layout to fit this in. And a new MTH Canadian Northern gondola from the CTTA club.

Trains anxious to stretch their legs.

3 backdrops up. 3 to go! Once they're all up and the top is painted blue, I'll film my next YouTube update.

- Jason

From last weekend's run session at the modular layout.....

It was nice to see how well traditional-size Lionel cars went with my scale Conrail F7 ABBA set.

It was also nice to see the Wabash and Rock Island diesels (since all anyone ever sees when I'm running are northeastern roads).

Have a great and safe weekend, folks!

Peter

A few quick videos of the session......

Peter

Here's my photos of the fun kind for this fine weekend!  Thanks Scott for getting us going today!   Have a wonderful weekend everyone!  

The industrial section of town.

A repair job of some kind is taking place out in the wilderness.  

The rail yard.  Always an interesting place!

          Faded colors...

Great photos and videos guys, great inspiration also.  I'm taking a short  break from working on my shelf layout, I had cataract surgery yesterday and the 2nd eye will be done on the 20th, I'll sure be glad to get that out of the way.  Everyone have a great weekend.

I'm  a bit late posting today, but here ya go....

This week, I have something new. After taking a break working on the layout to do some home remodeling projects, I got back to work by beginning to finish the Spruce Creek bridge on my layout. The prototype is a skewed classic PRR stone arch bridge. It is built of offset stone rings to create the skew (angle) over the Juniata River. I built the core of the bridge 17 years ago out of about 21 layers of 1/2' thick plywood and there it sat until about six weeks ago. I began by building the stone footers which are plaster castings. Those are shown in the first few pictures. Next, I had to create the stone arches which was done through a bit of grinding with my Dremel motor tool, but mostly with acrylic paints. Now I'm starting to build the concrete reinforcement that Conrail retrofitted the bridge with back in the 80's to prevent the spandrels (side walls) from collapsing. There is still a lot of work to do, but wanted to share some images of the work to date. The last picture is of the prototype and was taken by my son Steven. the river is under the arches to the right of the one over the road.

@PRRMiddleDivision posted:

I'm  a bit late posting today, but here ya go....

This week, I have something new. After taking a break working on the layout to do some home remodeling projects, I got back to work by beginning to finish the Spruce Creek bridge on my layout. The prototype is a skewed classic PRR stone arch bridge. It is built of offset stone rings to create the skew (angle) over the Juniata River. I built the core of the bridge 17 years ago out of about 21 layers of 1/2' thick plywood and there it sat until about six weeks ago. I began by building the stone footers which are plaster castings. Those are shown in the first few pictures. Next, I had to create the stone arches which was done through a bit of grinding with my Dremel motor tool, but mostly with acrylic paints. Now I'm starting to build the concrete reinforcement that Conrail retrofitted the bridge with back in the 80's to prevent the spandrels (side walls) from collapsing. There is still a lot of work to do, but wanted to share some images of the work to date. The last picture is of the prototype and was taken by my son Steven. the river is under the arches to the right of the one over the road.

Every time you post Neal, and I mean every time, I am blown away by your modeling and craftmanship. Thank you for sharing this latest project with us. Inspiring as always.

- Jason

Doing some urban planning on my under construction tinplate layout.

Happy Weekend.

Johan the blend of scenery and backdrop is incredible.

The new (to us) Girls Train really captivates our dog.  

https://youtu.be/Mo6NfneSdqk

@coach joe posted:

Johan the blend of scenery and backdrop is incredible.

Joe.

Thank you. 🤝

Johan

@jdstucks posted:

Every time you post Neal, and I mean every time, I am blown away by your modeling and craftmanship. Thank you for sharing this latest project with us. Inspiring as always.

- Jason

Jason,

Thank you for your kind comments!

@Glenn Fresch posted:

The new (to us) Girls Train really captivates our dog.  

https://youtu.be/Mo6NfneSdqk

Nice video and set, Glenn. I wonder how Fido would react if the amazing smoke from that MTH engine was turned on.

Our club has about 10 Lion Chief locomotives available for visitors (young and old) to operate on the 20' x 43' permanent layout on Saturday mornings making up trains from the freight and passenger cars on hand.  Here's some raw video from this morning with a young guy operating a Great Northern steamer pulling some O27 passenger cars:

Don't you just love their enthusiasm?

The chairs are not normally against the layout.  But work on a couple of the club's modules from the traveling layout necessitated their temporary placement.

@Strap Hanger posted:

Nice video and set, Glenn. I wonder how Fido would react if the amazing smoke from that MTH engine was turned on.

Haha.  He usually smells the smoke, but I don’t think he likes it much.  

@BAR GP7 #63 posted:

Happy Weekend.

this is truly amazing.  It looks just like New England.  

@scott.smith posted:

It's time for WEEKEND PHOTO FUN!!!

Amazing layout and trains. What kind of track are you using here?

@Glenn Fresch posted:

Amazing layout and trains. What kind of track are you using here?

Well it varies. There are 8 loops. I have 3 O-Gauge Loops of MTH RealTrax. I have 2 multigauge (5Rail) tracks combining Standard Gauge and O-Gauge track. I used MTH Wide Radius (72) Standard with Lionel O-Gauge. I also have a Standard 42 combined with Menard's O-42.  There is a Gargraves SG 54 and a Gargraves SG 72. The Gargraves Standard Gauge 72 is going away soon. I have USA Track on order to replace it.

If you are wondering why so many different types, it is what I had on hand when I started. That much track would have bankrupted the clubs bank account so I went through my attic stash of track and used nearly everything I had.

Scott Smith

@Glenn Fresch posted:

this is truly amazing.  It looks just like New England.  

Glenn Fresch. Thank you very much. 🤝

Johan

@jdstucks posted:

3 backdrops up. 3 to go! Once they're all up and the top is painted blue, I'll film my next YouTube update.

- Jason

How many Roadrailers is that train? Are they all different numbered trailers?

Very happy with this weekend of work. I never ever thought I would be able to get things move about such as the evil treadmill and the one dresser in the back bedroom, but it has finally happened. I think it has been well over 7 months of trying to get a free weekend to be able to get into the back bedroom to actually do some work. Every weekend before this one has been nothing but plans having to be delayed because of family obligations, helping out at times, other things arising to push the plans off, or outside work taking priority over them.

I am happy to announce that the treadmill has been disassembled, taken completely apart, and the dresser moved downstairs into the east bedroom. Here is a small picture of the after of clearing those two items out. Yeah, there is a lot of train boxes in the back bedroom along with some other stuff, but at least these are things that one person can manage on their own(me). My brother helped me to get the treadmill and the dresser out, couldn't have done it without him.

Some of the items will be relegated out to storage to another place in the house that I won't have to pop in and out to grab something as they are not to scale items that I will be needing. There are some other things that I will need to consider where exactly to pop them to as I am not sure what to do with them. There are some non-train items that will make their way somewhere else out of additional train storage, figure out what to do with them after layout is to be built in this room.

I had originally come up with a quick plan, which took a bit to get together, but I thought that it was something that would work well. I had this design for a good while, and recently I started messing around with it to see what else I could come up with. This design below is the first design which I did like.

I just threw in some buildings for stand ins to sort of give it a bit of something so that it just wasn't rails. At the top right hand corner I placed a coaling tower that was in AnyRail, sort of fits in there. In the below left corner I think that was a dairy building if I am not mistaken. I just threw in other buildings like the sanding spout and water tower to sort of think that was what I wanted on that side of the layout.

Below is the new design which I do think is far better.

Again the top right is the coaling tower, I eliminated the one siding on the right in the inner loop. I moved the sanding spout and water tower on to the left side on the curved switch siding and popped a small building as yet to figure out what that could be, maybe maintenance building of some sort. Down in the lower left I decided maybe a small station, which not sure how much space there will be over there, but figured there are small station kits that may fit in there. In the top left corner on the new siding is the dairy building on the new siding. I figured I could have a switcher run up a car or two depending on how the building would fit there, and or any other parts of buildings to be made.

One of the things that I was thinking about, was the possibility of using flats raised up behind the sidings to indicate a hill looking down on the railroad, maybe the main part of town. I had thought about having a road run from the right side underneath the switch area just under towards the white area which is a hole, towards the river. I thought about changing the course of the river to run more towards the right. I figure that I could have that part where the river is be a lower table piece since I do have the bridges there, which I will have to most likely build from scratch.

That is my weekend photo fun, and I am so happy that the treadmill and the dresser or gone from the back bedroom. More to come in the coming weeks, maybe I will get a layout topic started when I get to clearing the room to start worked. We shall see.

Dave,

Now that you cleared the blockage. Get something done everyday no matter how small. There were times I just looked around and made some notes. Which then resulted in gathering tools and or supplies so I was ready to go the next time.

Yup Bob, that is the plan. It will be slow moving at first, but a journey has got to start somewhere right?