What did you do on your layout today?

Packaged up two MTH locomotive to send off for repair.  Had to start addressing the deadline.  Too many locomotives ended up on it.  Next off will be a Weaver which quit running, then an Atlas switcher which stopped responding to commands.  The Williams Big Boy I'll have to sort out myself.  Never ran right after conversion to TMCC by another company.  I'm beginning to fall into that camp that instead of upgrading a locomotive, it's about as much (with the component cost, labor cost, and shipping) to just shelf it and buy a new one with the new system and a warranty.  Tired of shipping them back and forth after upgrading for repair and re-repair.

Veddy classy!  I approve!  

 

Mitch

Well, I doubled the number of gi-raffe cars in my fleet (courtesy of a chum of mine) and took delivery of a Williams GG1 to pull the consist!

 

In future, the Williams chassis will receive a repainted postwar Lionel shell with all new fittings from the Train Tender (couldn't stand to paint over that pretty paint job)...

 

Mitch

I screwed some track down.  Put out my covered bridge and some houses that I've been stepping arounf

track down, all clean, all vaacumed

ran a complete loop, all switches switches (jury rig with aligator leads)

did not break anything

10months from bare dirt to a new toy room

Worked on windows and doors on the feed mill morphed into elevator kit...boring and

tedious as some doors are not Tichy or Grandtline and have to be made. Glued the

bucket house on top the elevator. and when I get doors and windows done, I can

paint the building...white for the store, barn red on the elevator, and gray for the

warehouse. Still roofing material, loading docks, their awnings, and details to add after that.  Oh, yes, have to put "glass" in a lot of painted window frames.

Boxcar Graffiti • The Set-up

  Click artwork to enlarge.

Ran Trains............Couldn't play outside!!!  See attached pictures of what it looked like when I got up! (we had 6 to 8 inches of new SNOW in Omaha, NE)

 

FREDSTRAINS

Replace all my MTH batteries with BCR2s all 9 engines.

I have been making up more trees. In the garage I found two more large  boxes of super trees to work with. I glued down some grass foam in spots. Today a little something different. I started laying down the lead track to the yard off the mainline. But as I put down a section of gar graves I ballasted both sides of the track and added some grass foam too. Multi tasking today..................Paul

Thank you, Mitch!

I stripped the buildings off the top deck and began laying out the access hatch. Want to do this smart so the seams aren't under a structure or feature. May get it cut tonight if the game sucz. I'll have to lay in some extra bracing underneath so the decking isn't flimsy feeling while I work on it.  

I finally was able to upgrade my DCS to 4.3 with the help of Barry, Marty F, and Gregg.  Many thanks to them for advice.  Then I was able to run my Hudson right off the bat!  To get to this point, I had to overcome computer trouble then I overlooked one key point in the procedure.

 

While this is a no brainer to some, it was a big event for me!  

I have had two vignettes, a frat party and unloading of the Dixie Chopper, about 3' apart on a mountain on the layout.  (1st 3 pics).  No road took them down to the flatlands.  I am remedying that.  First, the side of the mountain was cut (4th shot).  Then cardboard and plaster cloth were added.  This will connect the 2 scenes, then a road will go down the hill behind WPLA (hopefully). 

I finally finished the wooden roof for my silver Lionel passenger car. Fine sandd it hen sprayed it with a Rustoleum semi gloss clear coat. That brought up the wood fibers so I sanded it lightly again then gave it two good coats. Dried smooth as glass. Can't tell it is wood. Will paint it silver tonight.

 I have a tip for that Jim. Before a final sanding, & top coating, a brushing of denatured alcohol let to dry will raise the grain. Sand raised fiber tips lightly, then topcoat with less poke through. 

I was working on wiring the new layout and building a new control panel, still got lots to do though....

 

 

 

 

Paul

Packed up two more broken MTH locomotives to send in for repair.  This is getting tiring.  And expensive.  Glad the next two coming to the property this year are TMCC engines.  Maybe they will run longer without developing electronics problems.

Mark

 Glad you were able to get it done. I still have to do mine. I get to it eventually. I glad you surgery went well. Operating with one hand can prove interesting especially if right handed and that is the one was worked on. In my case it was a rebuild or I should say an attempted rebuild of my right shoulder.   I glad your lay out is up and running and am looking forward to see the completion of Phase I and the start of Ph II.

 

Doug

Doug,

thank you very much!

Railroad Dining.

  Click photo to enlarge.

i hooked up my stereo in the basement.  i bought it when i 1st started working 25 years ago.  my 16 year old is all excited about this new thing they call vinyl.  it's like a cd only bigger.  i told her i had one and she got excited.  so, i hooked it all up and now i can jam and run trains at the same time.  unfortunately, i had cassettes and cd's.  the only vinyl around the house belongs to my wife...streisand and the carpenters.  love the wife, hate the music.

That is a funny story. Some of the younger set get excited about the "old times". I had a young lady tell me how she loves the "50s". I laughed and told her that was "my times"-high school, college and the Army. I just told her things were a way lot different than today and that we had a lot of fun. Finished my passenger car roof and doesn't look too bad.  Clear coat and  coats of silver paint looks like the plastic roofs.

My vinyl, sold all but the favorites last year, out of a 10-12ft stack. A 60's, 70s, and 80s "Rockers delight".

 Kept a box of cassettes of variant version recordings, and a box of 8-tracks (mostly Mr. N. Young, Carter Family, & Hank Sr).

 Sold the 350w per. Sansui (for more than I paid for it 20 years ago),before it bounced another train to its death.(pictures off the wall too, well over 100db, stupid-loud, but still clear outside mowing the grass.

  What does this have to do with trains? Storage was shared with the trains, and the trains won.

driving around rural southern Ill, there are many many one lane bridges, some pretty old.

I have a place on mylayout for just such a bridge.  so i decided to try and make one

now here is the first attempt at scale for one lane

just has base coat of color on it and i will try to weather it to the following specs

county has little money for upkeep, since it is a county road state not involved in upkeep

weathered even to have some mold on it

planks are sturdy but ugly

 

there will be some trestles under neath but this is going over a two lane road 24' in width  14 foot underneath

 

i am considering very similar control panel

questions

will you use some kind of signal indicator for switches ( i use ross with two led's)?

will you have the actual control device on the schematic drawing or separate?

imho i would think that having green for straight thru and red for switch left or right might work?

then there is the tmcc option and using the tmcc to create routes and have all switches "switch" with one command?

tnx

Ira

 

Ira,

I am using mini-toggle switches for the track power right on the track plan broken down into blocks for multiple train operation on the outside loop.  I'm still a conventional guy but I do plan on installing TMCC but I do not have any TMCC engines though. 

 

I will have LED's next to the toggle switches to indicate track power on the main loops, siding and engine yard.  Also, I will wire in separate toggle switches and LED's for city, yard and bill board signs in a separate area near the top of the panel.  I am using the Ross Custom Switches turnout control switches that came with the turnouts and I'll have them numbered across the middle of the control panel along with numbers at the switch location on the track plan. 

 

I'm not sure how I would wire the indicator lights for the switches on the track plan because the inner loop is basically a double reverse loop and the switches throw automatically using the non-derailing feature of the two switches.  I'm not knowledgeable enough to figure out how to wire that.  Good luck on yours.

 

Paul

weathering a bridge (part 2)

thinking about wood that has been exposed to elements for a long time, it either turns gray if in sunlight ( seems that way from my 29palms california days in the old ghost towns there)  but old wooden structures in mountains of NC seem to turn greenish/black/gunk with touches of gray ,  but after many many years of having stuff driven over it and most of the time in early vehicles they leaked oil or tranny fluid (all of my pre 1960 stuff did)

 

waiting for what is done to dry and see what is next  probably some gray,,

So Far today I finished loading some trains onto my new wall display.

I needed to remove some trains from the layout so I could move on with landscaping.

I also worked on the farm scene and that is moving along AOK..

Thanks for looking.

Brian

 

Absolutely NOTHING!!  Still on the Big Island of Hawaii,  On the Kona coast it is warm and dry.

 

Oh - yes - the  Big Island had a small railroad-ran sugar cane to Hilo. 

when a large trestle was destroyed in 1946 by storms, that was the end of it.

I ALSO HAVE A FRUIT STAND BUT WHERE DID YOU GET THE BUSHELS OF FRUIT???

COOL

Added some gray to the thing,  across the street is a old barn built before WWII

lot of gray showing,  so felt gray was needed. Probably no more color until the four trestles underneath are fabricated,  will use 1/4" basswood  (12" to scale" and that sounds pretty accurate.  My bride called her uncle who still farms near Lumberton NC and they have a bridge going across a creek and it is one way single lane and she asked him when was the last time the county painted the bridge.  he chuckled and said something about President Hoover, its primary colors are Gunk. mold black, mold green and gray.

sounds about right to me!!

 

 

 

I set out to a lot this weekend but wound up getting next to nothing onto the layout...

I had decided to mount the blue point turnout units to small sections of 1/2" plywood, to have all the hardware done so mounting them underneath the plywood would be - theoreticaly- easier.

I did all this and am glad so far that I didn't mount them from underneath as they need a lot of work that way.

Putting 12 of them together, I broke out all the mounting kits I'd bought for them and found that all the hardware was short one set. I was less than happy to say the least.

I've e-mailed the manufacturer yesterday but heard nothing from them yet. I bought all this in a massive order from Micro Mark, but that was several months ago and I'd imagine they'd just refer me to the maker anyway.

So, i have 12 blue points mounted on 3X4" sections of plywood, all ready to be connected except the one that is lacking all the hardware. Still not happy as I wanted to do them all at once. But at least I got something done, I suppose, as cutting, drilling and screwing all that stuff together did take a while...

I also was going to prime the masonite fascia and then paint it. I had the right color green I wanted mixed at Home Depot, but then I realized I had no clue how I was going to mount the pulls for the blue points. So all the paint is still in the cans.

It has been a long time coming, and everyone has had a hand in it, including my wife.

 

We have track power on the upper deck!!!

 

I enlisted my wife's help to hand me tools and materials while I made the final connections. That wedge pillow makes all the difference.

 

The giant inchworm wiggles down to the next work zone.

 

Kerrigan - The one train that I tested ran very nicely. The chicken wire ground plane seems to be working just fine.

 

 Elliot,

Those photos remind me of my earlier days in electronics before I moved to engineering 7 years ago.  It was no fun working like that for The Man, but working on a layout; that is much more worthwhile!  Don't fall asleep on that nice bed!

Nah Mark, I can't sleep on my back.

LOL. Me neither!

Now thats some sturdy benchwork

Load tested.

 

If I remember correctly, the upper deck held you.

 

 

Granted I probably have you beat by about 100 pounds.