What did you do on your layout today?

Wonderful Mitch!  Great fun

Don

Went to the basement where it is cooler and ran some of the new Atlas O Multi-Max Auto Carriers.

John Rowlen

The walls are going up!

Have a great day, everyone!

Peter

After a bad case of procrastination, I've been busy assembling 4 former LIONEL offset vista domes in NP NCL livery. I learned a couple of lessons from the one fully assembled car that served as my Beta assembly version.

First, mask the area where the vista dome is to be installed to avoid small paint chips that expose the white primer. I learned my lesson and the three remaining domes were installed without issues.

Second, lighting the interior of the dome with a 3 LED segment in the ceiling of the dome works well, but the bottom of the interior needs LEDs also to avoid a darkened middle of the car. (Also, experiment with the regulator at some output below maximum.)

Adding a 3 LED segment to the base of the dome interior was pretty simple and I've retrofitted the two lit models. (Photos to follow).

Procrastination is over, hopefully, and I can complete the LED installations, and proceed to installing the interiors and mounting the regulators. This went smoothly on the mule and should be easily replicated on the remaining three cars.

I think I'll spend the evening assembling the frames with trucks and associated wiring.

Carl, the vistadomes look great!!

@VinceL posted:

I now have 3 sheets of plywood and 2 sheets of hardboard in the garage to cut and install.

The plywood has been cut.  I can tell I am getter older.  It was a lot tougher to handle these new sheets of plywood than when I handled the original plywood sheets for the layout about 8 years ago.  Below is the Mianne extension covered with plywood (not screwed down yet).

A month or so ago I built a 3 shelf stand out of PVC pipe to hold the transformers and related gear.  I put a piece of plywood on top of it to see how things will fit.  Now to cut the plywood for the other 2 shelves.

I have cut the hardboard into 4 pieces to fill the openings in the back of the display shelves that I built.

Good evening everyone!

Back at it again with the cross bucks. Instead of attempting to find a properly sized decals I decided to make my own. So I pulled up the good ole writing software and began messing with font size. That ended up being the easiest part.

After finding the correct size I cut them out and glued them to the two cross bucks.

With both finished I placed them back on the layout.

They are not perfect but if I can save money by making something on my own I’ll do it.
Thanks for reading and have a good night!

Your work looks good, Trainmaster04

Made progress on the park area.  Working on the wild grasses along the track and still can’t find the brick pattern paper I safely stored somewhere for use under the carousel.

I actually turned the layout power on.......

OK- there was a good reason. Just unpacked the latest addition to the fleet. It a Railking B&M SW1 w/ PS3. I still need to service it and reset to factory default so it will run with my remote commander. Runs well in conventional though.

Bob

Bob, That's a pretty snazzy looking B&M SW1!  I like the color scheme, better than B&M blue.

@Mark Boyce posted:

Bob, That's a pretty snazzy looking B&M SW1!  I like the color scheme, better than B&M blue.

Funny you mention the blue and white scheme. That was the only one I was familiar with before seeing this one here on the forum. I have an RS3 in the same paint as this one. Tune in to SWSat tomorrow........

Bob

@VinceL Great progress on the layout, I like that control table!

@Trainmaster04 Nice work on the crossbucks!

@jstraw124 Park is looking good.

@RSJB18 Nice looking B&M engine. Strange, but I don’t recall seeing that part of your layout before. I’d like to see more of it.

@pennsyfan posted:

@RSJB18 Nice looking B&M engine. Strange, but I don’t recall seeing that part of your layout before. I’d like to see more of it.

It's the upper loop behind the Lionel tower. I don't take as many pix of the trains up there as I do on the main level.

Thanks for asking.

@Pingman posted:

After a bad case of procrastination, I've been busy assembling 4 former LIONEL offset vista domes in NP NCL livery. I learned a couple of lessons from the one fully assembled car that served as my Beta assembly version.

First, mask the area where the vista dome is to be installed to avoid small paint chips that expose the white primer. I learned my lesson and the three remaining domes were installed without issues.

Second, lighting the interior of the dome with a 3 LED segment in the ceiling of the dome works well, but the bottom of the interior needs LEDs also to avoid a darkened middle of the car. (Also, experiment with the regulator at some output below maximum.)

Adding a 3 LED segment to the base of the dome interior was pretty simple and I've retrofitted the two lit models. (Photos to follow).

Procrastination is over, hopefully, and I can complete the LED installations, and proceed to installing the interiors and mounting the regulators. This went smoothly on the mule and should be easily replicated on the remaining three cars.

I think I'll spend the evening assembling the frames with trucks and associated wiring.

Great job - thanks for sharing Carl!

Thanks Bob.  Yes it is solid.  I used 3 inch deck screws to fasten it together.

Added a few scenes here and there.

Adding this huge rock wall to the expansion of my layout.

Very nice Ryan. Your rockwork is particularly well done.

Dave

@Lionelski posted:

Great job - thanks for sharing Carl!

Thanks, John.

Procrastination was held at bay as the 3 LED strips were added to the base of each interior in series with the other 12 warm white 3528 LEDs previously installed.

Initially, the new strips were attached to sheet styrene as the previous strips had been installed to the ceiling of the aluminum shell.

However, when attempting to install the interior, there was insufficient clearance for the interior's partition walls to clear the newly installed LEDs. The solution was to remove the LED segment from the styrene and attach it directly to the bottom of the dome interior. Also, some material was removed from the tops of the interfering partitions using a drum sander attached to a Dremel tool. The tops of the partitions are not visible through the windows.

The new lighting was tested and worked fine. Due to the positioning of the interior's partitions, one side of the car is somewhat darker than the other.

With the LEDs added, the frames were assembled and wired. There is a switch installed in each frame that allows the lights to be switched on/off.

The final photo shows a working mock-up with the regulator (a @gunrunnerjohn DIY model) wired, but not yet installed, and drawing power from the track. My fingers are holding the red lead to the output side of the on/off switch and GRJ's regulator.

Next steps will be installing the regulators to the interiors, then installing the frames to the interiors/shells, and finishing up with attaching the plastic car ends.

It was a very good couple of days with no major setbacks. The mule car will need to be disassembled for the LED segment to be added, but that will complete the four dome cars to go with the combo car ("dormitory car" in NP parlance), baggage car (a "water baggage car" in NP parlance), diner, day coach, and sleeper previously completed leaving only the observation car to be assembled.

@luvindemtrains posted:

Very nice Ryan. Your rockwork is particularly well done.

Dave

Thanks Dave. I can’t take credit for the rockwork- they’re actually Scenic Express just painted and weathered. I got them from a friend of mine who’s changing from O scale to HO scale. They’re very nice castings and it’s been very easy to make a wall and blend scenery.

Entrance to my Train Room.....

Here’s what I did on the layout over the weekend, on video:

Final assembly of NP NCL dome #559 was completed: (1) assembled frame attached to interior and shell; (2) regulator (@gunrunnerjohn DIY version) tested with track power then mounted to partition wall; (3) car ends attached and completed car tested. Two more to go; plus, updating the original mule car.

As pictured, the regulator is attached with double-sided 3M tape to a partition wall. There was a partition wall opposite it that had to be removed to provide room for the height of the assembly. The red and black conduit going off the photo to the right is attached to the assembled frame which sits on a powered section of track -- this was the final electrical test before the frame was attached to the shell/interior base.

Fortunately, no surprises during final assembly. Hope the other two go as smoothly.

Incidentally, of the 4 assembled cars done before the dome cars, and for these four dome cars, I haven't installed windows/glazing, yet. I'd like to use a blue tinted acrylic product to compliment the blue tint in the vista domes, but I don't have enough material on hand for all of the cars. Still working on a solution.

Picked up a set of 6111s at Joplin on 7/15:

No logs, but I did have some 3/8" dowels knocking about the garage, so, a little X-acto miter box work later:

Voila! 

Mitch

Ryan,

What a layout.  Great work.

Manny

More progress over the past few days.

Only need to screw the plywood down in a few more places to flatten the warps.

The display case is nearly done.  I have track on a couple of shelves and put all my Menards M&M's and related rolling stock on the shelves.

I already have my plans just about finalized for more display storage.  It will give me 12 shelves with each shelf being almost 12 feet long.

This afternoon I cleaned up the garage bay where I did all of my sawing...lots of sawdust.

Here's what things look like tonight:

Added a little desert scene for my Santa Fe's.

Good evening everyone!

Still at it with the balsa wood. This time I decided to build a smoke house for train crews. It is a simple little structure built out of a failed project. Most of the structure is complete but I still need to add a pair of chimneys to the smokers.

I just realized I never posted an update on my progress with building new Plasticville houses here... somehow... anyways I did this several months ago, but I assembled and custom painted three: one "house under construction" kit from the original run, which I found amidst a large collection of Plasticville at a thrift store, and two modern production Cape Cods. They now represent a postwar expansion of my village. The blue, black & yellow house is based on an actual Cape Cod house in my neighborhood's paint scheme, and I think it came out rather nicely. The contrasting colors on the corner blocks, doors, and shudders go a long way to making a relatively simple kit look alot better! This was inspired by an article I have in an old CTT issue, and of course coming across the original kit. You can't quite see from this angle, but I also added a concrete floor to the house under construction, using a piece of cork to give it that just poured look.

I still want to add window glass to them, but last time I tried that, I couldn't get the plastics to bond together properly. So I may try a different type of plastic at some point or else use tape on the inside to attach windows. And possibly use some LEDs to do lighting!  

Replaced an old shelf under one of my display cabinets with a moving dolly.  This will let me access the boxes behind the display cabinet.

Haven't done much but I've been running the new SW1 that I purchased recently. I don't have a TIU but run DCS through a Remote Commander. The RC's work great for a small layout like mine where your only running one or two trains at a time. Basic functionality, sounds, and electro-couplers are accessible and that's good enough for me.
However- the engine has to be set to the factory default or the RC won't recognize it, which is the problem I had with this one.
My layout power is from an old KW, so I tried a conventional reset with a Z-750 that I have but that only resets conventional commands. So I did a few searches here on the forum and found out that newer PS3 (after late 2014) engines, can be reset with a RC or a TIU. So 3 quick button presses on the RC with the engine in neutral- and two horn beeps later, back to factory default! The RC instructions mention this feature as well but who reads instructions....

Bob

@Redshirt214 posted:

I just realized I never posted an update on my progress with building new Plasticville houses here... somehow... anyways I did this several months ago, but I assembled and custom painted three: one "house under construction" kit from the original run, which I found amidst a large collection of Plasticville at a thrift store, and two modern production Cape Cods. They now represent a postwar expansion of my village. The blue, black & yellow house is based on an actual Cape Cod house in my neighborhood's paint scheme, and I think it came out rather nicely. The contrasting colors on the corner blocks, doors, and shudders go a long way to making a relatively simple kit look alot better! This was inspired by an article I have in an old CTT issue, and of course coming across the original kit. You can't quite see from this angle, but I also added a concrete floor to the house under construction, using a piece of cork to give it that just poured look.

I still want to add window glass to them, but last time I tried that, I couldn't get the plastics to bond together properly. So I may try a different type of plastic at some point or else use tape on the inside to attach windows. And possibly use some LEDs to do lighting!  

This houses look great; really can’t see the floor the you referenced.

@Redshirt214 posted:

I still want to add window glass to them, but last time I tried that,I couldn't get the plastics to bond together properly. So I may try a different type of plastic at some point or else use tape on the inside to attach windows. And possibly use some LEDs to do lighting!  

Try Canopy Glue. That seems to stick pretty well. Plus it dries clear and will not mar the windows like normal glue will.

I used the 12v roll of LEDS, cut them into 3 LED sections and soldered a JST plug connector to them. I used different sizes to avoid connecting 4.5V and 12V LEDs to the same power feed. Then added a dimmer to the circuit as I found the 12V LEDs were quite bright. The dimmer allows me to change brightness for day and night-time operations.

Morning guys, all I can say is wow what wonderful projects everyone is doing and what amazing layouts are being shown! As a lot of you know me, I usually comment on most projects going on. But I have been away for too long and you all have done way too much for me to comment on everyone!

But I did just hand out a train load of likes! LOL I would have done more but today is really the only day I have to work on the layout. I still have track to paint while its dry outside and I want to place some buildings to see if I really like the placement of some of them.

I hope you all have a wonderful Sunday and that you all find time to have fun with your layouts and trains!

P.S. I will try to check in before next Sunday! LOL

Redshirt214,

I love Plasticville too, and customizing it.

Check out: From Plasticville "Junk" Comes Unique Buildings (warrenvillerailroad.com)

The layout expansion continues....slowly.

I had to put some pieces of track on the new extension just to see how it will look and fit.  This picture shows the Y coming into feed what will be 6 track yard and another track that will feed a 2 track engine storage/service area.

Here's a view of the cluttered expansion showing that I will be able store trains up to close to 15 feet long.

Progress is slow now that I am wiring panels.  Here is a picture of one of the panels partially wired.

@pennsyfan posted:

This houses look great; really can’t see the floor the you referenced.

Here ya go!

Some more pictures of the build in progress. Should have led with these, but had to track them down! The painting went relatively quickly, but then finding a glue that wanted to pond with Plasticville plastic was... difficult, to say the least.

Great work Chris