What did you do on your layout today?

brwebster posted:

Mark Boyce posted:

Country Joe posted:

The Ceiling Central looks great, Mark. I'm glad you're feeling better and up to the task of completing it.

Thank you Joe!  I could not continue due to a reoccurrence of carpal tunnel syndrome.  I had to go though a year of braces and treatments, before getting my second surgery on each hand in 20 years last winter.  I still have some issues but doesn't everyone who is 60.  LOL

I hear ya, Mark.   It seems the only thing golden about our golden years is the medical cost.  Actually, layout construction has helped me deal with the pain of fibromyalgia.  There are days when I over do it though.  It's sure great that we can also operate trains at ground level when our nose bleed layouts are inaccessible.

Bruce,

Oh yes, I know some folks with fibromyalgia.  It is no fun at all!  I would not have started the Ceiling Layout, but my wife suggested it because I didn't have any better space.  During the hiatus, one daughter got married and moved out, so I now have a 4x8 temporary layout in her old room.  Once our other daughter moves out, (I'm hoping her wedding is this year, they haven't set a date,) then I will be able to use her whole 12x12 room for a layout.  In the meantime, since I had over 3/4 of the shelves up, I did want to complete the Ceiling Central.

Yes, Working on the layout helps one deal with pain.  My dad is a great example, not on a layout, but other work.  He is 85, still mows 2 acres with a walk behind Gravely that is older than me, paints his 2-story house and outbuildings, did some concrete work last year, shovels his snow.  When I ask if he needs help, he says he is okay and that I have my own work I have to do.  Anyway, he says he already has a helper, Ben Gay!

     Well it happened again! The past few days I have been getting fork crimp connectors and soldering them to jumper wires for the double pole double throw switches for the tortoise switch machines. I got all 40 soldered together and screwed on to the switches using a soldering iron from Patrick H. that he had given me when he took down his layout.  I had it in a box with some led lights and some wire he also gave me that was under my layout. I went down tonight to start working on soldering some jumper wires on to the Ross switches. I went to go get  my soldering gun from the tool box and it was gone along with my fathers soldering iron that he has had from when he was a teenager.   In case everyone does not know my mother is disabled and in a bed and we have aids that come 2 times a day to help her out. We had things stolen before and I started locking the tool box. Apparently my father does not remember where the keys are so when I told him where they were the other day at he left the tool box unlocked all weekend and now more tools are gone. The aids go down to the basement to do mothers laundry and while they are down there they help themselves to whatever is not nailed bolted screwed or chained down or locked up. It just P me off to no end that these people take whatever they want and when you call the agency to report things being stolen they say if you did not see them take it a theft did not occur. I hate to feel this way but I hope karma bites them right in the A.  Well I guess I will find something else to go and do. I have to hang on until the beginning of next month till I get my disability check to buy another soldering gun. Thank you for letting me vent my frustrations and everyone take care. Choo Choo Kenny

Going with the theme of getting some things finished up I worked on a half finished building today. here's the results. to work on it I needed to move my table back where it belongs too.

I pulled things out of box's that have been sitting for years and went over a few items with my son to see if we should sell anything.  I also packed the empty box's in plastic bags for storage. Yep, sweep up and clean up, that's part of the hobby too.

I published video #37 in my LCJ&I Lines series, filling in an awkward corner of my layout with a removable lower spur, which still provides access to the layout when needed.

I got a train to run on a start up track.  It felt good to see something run!

Bob Anderson posted:

I published video #37 in my LCJ&I Lines series, filling in an awkward corner of my layout with a removable lower spur, which still provides access to the layout when needed.

I like watching your video's so who is Joe and Pete real people or fictitious?

I tried to fish my 25 ton plymouth industrial locomotive out of the Mt Randolph Tunnel to no avail.   Since the Lake Christopher ( which acts as an access drop down hatch ) hatch is temporarily installed, I thought it easier to fish that little critter out by walking across the layout and using my long reach grabber.  Well I gave it the good old college try  but did not succeed.  I did succeed at moving the little switcher to the side so at least now my docksider can run through the tunnel. When I get more time I will drop Lake Christopher out so I can have total access to the tunnel.  At least I now have trains running on the Mountain Division again.

I ran trains this morning for a while.  Just love to watch em run!!!

Jhainer posted:

I like watching your video's so who is Joe and Pete real people or fictitious?

JHainer - Thanks for your comment. Joe and Pete are just simple monosyllabic names that are easy to drop into a dialog. They are deliberately not anyone I know! 

well continuing with finishing up 1/2 finished projects. also avoiding going back to signals which the last time frustrated me. I pulled the station off of the layout to continue working on it and hopefully finish it off this time I worked on adding reinforcements inside and attaching the overhang roofs and then painted the decking all around the building I wanted old dried out wood look where the wood turns greyish over time so I mixed up some watered down grey paint and tested until I got the color I think would work . The whole time I had 3 trains running in the background. I moved some cars around put all my hoppers on one train then all the boxcars on another. the third had both spline sets. also ran my yellow bonnet passenger train for awhile. my daughter was wanting to know how to use the remotes so I let her do it all she is starting to get interested in trains she took my n scale set but said she doesn't like it (too small) so now she is doing an Ho set and seems to like it she had her Ipad out researching scenery videos

My 4th Santa Fe aluminum Hopper showed up today.

Last night I got the one end of the attic wall painted but when I went to the other end I found out I didn't have the long arm of the law reach and couldn't paint the wall. I remembered I had a little brush holder that fit on a handle. So this morning I was able to reach and finished the front wall. Pics of before and after......Paul

Paul,

Excellent improvement!

paul 2 posted:

Last night I got the one end of the attic wall painted but when I went to the other end I found out I didn't have the long arm of the law reach and couldn't paint the wall. I remembered I had a little brush holder that fit on a handle. So this morning I was able to reach and finished the front wall. Pics of before and after......Paul

It came out real great. Especially with the depth that the murals created.  

p51 posted:

Moonson posted:

p51 posted:

I tried to make some headway on the scenery forms over the past few days. ...

Hold-on there, Mr. P51; don't think you're getting by with just a few words. There is that excellent turntable bridge surface itself, complete with aged, 100-year-old-looking wooden planks, dirtier nearest and between the tracks, no less, and the visible, grimy seams and joints...Perfect. Who would want to change a thing? NObody. Real, real nice, Lee. (Plus, I just went to your website and saw its close-up there; it's even more authentic seen in-close.)

FrankM.

Frank,

Thanks for the kind words. That's a Peco turntable, covered in coffee stirrers. I weathered them with inks, then put nail heads with a pen.

I then liberally used rust paints and powdered chalks, and a lot of floquil weathered black... I have been around a lot of RR yards over the years, so it was easy to know where to put the heaviest weathering.

-Lee

Lee,

The turn table is an real eye popper.  Coffee stirs, great idea and the effect created.  

A lot of great work being posted.     Here is my contribution.

This started out just replacing the Fast track in the bridge with Atlas. Then the good idea fairy had its input. So now I have replaced most of the fast track with Atlas. Switches and one curve left to go. Of course since I dipped into my track supply for my new layout that will be built in my garage.  I now will need to by more Atlas track now. Once I have finished I will blend it in with the fake snow.  Defiantly a lot less noisy.

Mark and Suzukovich, thanks for the compliments. Those are the only two murals I did and that was over 11 years ago. I had watch the art of painting with William Alexander on PBS and became intrigued with his style of painting. So I decided to try and those are what I ended up with. I don't know if I would try that again with all the backdrops out there now. But it was fun doing something I never did before........................Paul

SO the trees are painted on the wall?  If so, WOW! It looks really, really good.  No doubt, it fools the eye with the illusion of depth.  Ha!  I love the way you just built right over the window.  I did the same thing in my train room with my layout.  Awesome work!

I put 2' X 8' pieces of Masonite over each window. Then I proceeded to paint the murals in place. I applied white latex first once that dried I started working with the Acrylic paints....Paul

Have moved into the landscape stage. Tried to use cotton balls to imitate smoke from Windows for a fire scene. DO NOT ATTEMPT. Those suckers really burn.Wanted to reduce in size some WS course foam . Tried a knife and a onion chopper. No go. Used my late wife's food blender. Worked like a charm. But if I am lucky enough to join her some day as Desi Arnez said , I will have some splaning to do. Tstark

Went for a ride on the Interstate to pick up my, 2015 National Lionel Train Day Boxcar.

Forget gun law's?  It's murder what some of us can do with a Dremel tool.

Bruce

Wow Bruce, you sure have pepped up a post war classic there.

I finished putting the shingles on the station so maybe I can consider it done But it's never had a permanent home on the layout just no place seemed right for it well my daughter put it up on the top level and wow it looked nice but didn't fit so testing out many places we decided on where a Mnt was. took the top of the  mountain off built up the layout around the base of the station leveled it out and here it is still have to carve and scenic the area but the upper level runs behind the station. in my travels yesterday I happened to see 5 old rusting trains on a track in Monroe Ga. took a pic of one of them .

That is a mighty fine looking station!  A lot of hard work, and recovering from a mishap paid off handsomely!!

thank you very much there's some things I'm not happy about but over all I'm happy with the outcome.

Started putting in a hill at one end of my small 5x10' layout. Got the plaster cloth on. Will put coats of gypsolite on over weekend. I did this on my last layout and was happy with it. This time I am going to add a little brown paint to the mixture.

Bought some new equipment for the layout, some real old O gauge. A fair bit appears to be handmade, probably from the early days of the scale movement. In it was a hand built model, O gauge, of an old time 4-6-0, with a beautiful (but rusted) body, intact drivers (probably replacements of the AF variaty from MEW), and a working motor. However, whoever made it made the frame from wood, and it is almost rotted away. I would like to make a new frame, preferably molded in some way so that I can replace the mainframe again with ease if necessary. Has anyone ever used resin to cast a replacement part like a frame? How durable is it?

Hey Madman, I have never made a frame out of resin but I did once make one out of extruded aluminum members and aluminum pop rivets.  Most upscale hardware stores have many different aluminum extrusion you can select from and they are normally quite reasonable.  I have an aluminum cutting saw blade for my chop saw so I was able to get precise cuts both at 90 deg. and at any angle.

Unfortunately, I sold the engine several years ago so no pictures.  Incidentally, I have a Flying Yankee motor I bought that runs great but the yoke and pivot ball were missing.  I am currently making a yoke out of a U shaped aluminum extrusion I bought at my hardware store and I think it is going to work very well. 

Good luck on your rebuild!

Jim

Cleaned track(ugh!!) and made a real band aid repair on several passenger cars I have. They are Lionel-14" long in the 1600 series. Not expensive light weight and lighted. that was the problem-the lights-lots of flickering if they did work. The rollers were loose  making poor contact so I took some foam rubber with peaks on it, snipped them off to put under the rollers. It works-didn't cost me anything so I am OK with it until I come up with a better fix. I have other better cars but like these behind some of my older, smaller steamers and the GG1.

suzukovich posted:

Lee,

The turn table is an real eye popper.  Coffee stirs, great idea and the effect created.  

Thanks!

Tomorrow might be somewhat sunny and not nearly as rainy as in the past several… weeks  (it was just announced that this has been the wettest winter on record here). If so and my wife has no better ideas, I might be caulking those pink foam terrain shapes into place (as I need to open a window to vent those fumes) and getting them looking as finished as I can. I’m also looking to hit all the track with a coat of rust-colored spray paint in anticipation of later adding ballast once the majority of the scenery is completed.

Hey there P51, Where are you in WA?

mike g. posted:

Hey there P51, Where are you in WA?

South of the sound, between Olympia and Centralia.

Hoodsport Here!

Made a mock-up of my next scratch built industry, Troegs Brewery. A favorite local watering hole, in Hershey PA.

Im going to attempt this one in wood, with styrene details.

Its Friday and I love coming home from work and going to the train room!!  I had the entire layout running.  I did some fixing of things on the layout such as re - securing a bumper for the trolly.... and actually added another foot of trolly line ... so the run is a "bit" longer before the trolly tags the bumper, giving passengers a case of whip lash

I changed out a lockon that was heating up the rail.  I don't know why it was doing this.  The lockon looked perfectly fine and there was no foreign metal touching it.  However.problem is now solved.

Tweaked some scenery.  Changed out some engines.  Took photos/video for Switcher Saturday and other forums as well. 

Here's a video of some of Patsburg and a photo of a house under construction ... dedicated to my brother, Chris, who is a home builder.

Bob Anderson posted:

I published video #37 in my LCJ&I Lines series, filling in an awkward corner of my layout with a removable lower spur, which still provides access to the layout when needed.

Hey Bob - Very nice scene!!  Very creative corner filling!!!

Jhainer posted:

I finished putting the shingles on the station so maybe I can consider it done But it's never had a permanent home on the layout just no place seemed right for it well my daughter put it up on the top level and wow it looked nice but didn't fit so testing out many places we decided on where a Mnt was. took the top of the  mountain off built up the layout around the base of the station leveled it out and here it is still have to carve and scenic the area but the upper level runs behind the station. in my travels yesterday I happened to see 5 old rusting trains on a track in Monroe Ga. took a pic of one of them .

WOW!!  Totally awesome station Jhainer!!

Working on a background using flat structures from OGR Ameri-Towne & Korber Models. This short video will show you what I have been working on. Enjoy.

Gary • Cheers from The Detroit and Mackinac Railway

Got my modified Zstuff signal bridge up and running finally.

Due to lighting issue in my basement I was never able to get this signal bridge to work correctly on my Layout. Dennis at Zstuff modified the bridge to disable the built in infrared sensors and to only accept input from the two DZ-1070 sensors I've installed next to the track.

trumptrain posted:

Jhainer posted:

I finished putting the shingles on the station so maybe I can consider it done But it's never had a permanent home on the layout just no place seemed right for it well my daughter put it up on the top level and wow it looked nice but didn't fit so testing out many places we decided on where a Mnt was. took the top of the  mountain off built up the layout around the base of the station leveled it out and here it is still have to carve and scenic the area but the upper level runs behind the station. in my travels yesterday I happened to see 5 old rusting trains on a track in Monroe Ga. took a pic of one of them .

WOW!!  Totally awesome station Jhainer!!

Thank you very much!!! I have been working on it off and on for about a year. At one point it was dropped and made a mess of it. I then lost interest because putting the shingles on which is easy just very boring I didn't want to get back to it. but the theme this week was finishing up 1/2 finished projects so this was one of them projects. as was a korber building. so today I added fiber fusion to the pink foam area and some other areas on the layout. then I figured I would get back to a signal and see how the new boards I picked up worked and I have to admit I liked them they worked flawless atleast the one I hooked up. photo's of that later.