What did you do on your layout today?

Thanks Jon, and yes I am. I have no reason to get up in the morning. I expect to sleep well and long tonight.

How are you doing after yesterday's adventure?

To employ the vernacular of the adventure, I'm still a bit stupefied! Since I didn't have a work session on your railroad empire today, I'm nearly recovered. Yesterday was a great day and I thank you very much. You are the ultimate tour guide and a gracious host.

Looking good Elliot!!!

Worked on a few repairs and knocked them out, more importantly I got some RA's done for some defective choo choo stuff Ive been putting off

What'd I do today?

A LOT.

I went to a hobby shop to buy a lot of ballast and some other things.

Then, I went home and started the benchwork. Finally.

You're seeing part of it, it'll be in 4 sections. This is the center section on my trackplan, just upside down.

I only have one long section to go, cover it all with plywood, then get ready to lay track. Once I've done that, I'll be cutting out sections on the tabletop where there'll be depressions in the landscape.

Everything should be done by tomorrow afternoon, benchwork-wise that is.

Finished double-gauging my old Lionel 104 bridge for both Standard and O gauge!  <3

Mitch

Looks like you're off to a great start, Lee!  Keep us posted, and keep the magazine in mind if you might like to do one or more articles for our readers.  You'll earn some $, which will also help defray the costs of layout building.  Just shoot me an e-mail if you're interested and I'll send you the details regarding what is needed.

That is a great start to what looks to be a fine layout. Keep the progress photos coming.

Got some track just half to wait for the rest come in the mail to get done with the yard. 

We hosted a summer outing yesterday for about 25 folks, and part of the festivities was a tour of our layout. Lots of fun. Good food, good conversation, boat rides, and layout tour.

I finished off my subway station and put in led lighting.

Brian - That sounds great!  I know that you and Elizabeth know hope to throw a great party, I wish I could have been there.  I'm anxious for someone to post some pictures.

Art

Here is what i am working on.

Here is what i am working on.

What a nice looking trestle!

I doubt you'd want anything on my layout, it's going to be On30. I Assume you don't go much in the magazine on that gauge?

As for the status. I just finished the last section. My arms feel like they're gonna fall off, so I'm taking a break for an hour or two. Then I'll go cut and nail down the plywood, which I've already marked for cutting. As far as benchwork goes, I have the heavy lifting done already...

Still playing in the dirt............

Lee,

looks like you have been busy.  Good work.  I am interested in On30 also, but just plan an On30 logging branch up the mountain from my hi rail O gauge main layout.  I'll look forward to seeing your progress.

Laidofffsick that is a most excellent scene. The scale of the model blends well with the backdrop. Nice work!

Today, hmmm. Installed a temporary plywood span over a river cutout that will eventually be spanned by a Silk City Truss. Wired the lift gate section of my second main line and added the second of four power drops on the main section of this same line. Shot a GN scene for another message thread. Now it's business travel, vacation for a a week and then college moves. I've tentatively penciled in Labor Day weekend as my next layout engagement.

along with the trestle posted earlier this is also what I have been doing today.

Laidoffsick knows how to build a layout!  I mean d@mn!

Ordered some 072 curves from Ross today...  tomorrow start on new benchwork.

Congratulations!!

The entire weekend pretty much was dedicated to layout construction. Building a layout in sections has an advantage and a disadvantage to building it new in a room as you do. The advantage is if something screws up, you don't have much to fix. The disadvantage is you have no idea what it'll look like until you get it all together.

And only once I laid the sections out on the ground and measured them did I realize, this simply isn't going to work. The center 'U' shape section is simply way too big and takes up nearly all the space in the center of the room. There's just no room to move around at all.

Better to find out now, but it was really annoying to know that the hardest part of the build is the one part I probably can't use any part of.

So, right away I realized the best thing to do is to just have the center section come into the center of the room at a 45 degree angle and stop there. It'll give so much more space to move around in. I'll lose some track, but it's better to realize that now.

I was totally worn out and thought I was done Sunday evening. Nope, I'm going to have to build a totally new center portion. I hope I can salvage a lot of the 1X4s from the center section, thankfully I have a large sheet of plywood from the build, and plenty of screws, nails and hardware.

One image shows it laid out, the other is a photoshopped version I took later showing roughly what it's going to have to look like.

Needless to say, I was almost crushed at the realization it wasn't going to work. But at least the newer version won't be nearly as tough to build as this one section was...

I am sorry your plan won't work as designed.  Yes it is better to find out right now.  I will have a similar problem when I design my layout; trying to put something in the center of the room, but leaving enough room to get around.

I'm not putting the blame on the guy who made the track plan for me, as I didn't tell him there are book cases and dressers along the walls of the room (they house my books and contain my collections of WW2 and RR stuff) that take up more space into the room than he was aware of. I made the 'along the wall' sections slightly thicker because it made no sense to me to have the other stuff stick out from under the benchwork. Might as well put trains in that space as you can't stand there anyway, right?

I really should have stopped and thought about that center section. I don't think that was ever going to work well even if it did fit okay.

At least it was only one part, but that took several hours to build, and now it’s all for nothing. I thought this plan was overly ambitious, but I guess I so badly wanted it to work anyway. I see that I was deluded now that I look back on it. That said, everything else along the walls should work fine.

In a way, I’m sort of hopeful for that center section. If it’s a section about 20-24" wide and just long enough to get into the center of the room to allow freedom of movement, it’ll open up the room a lot and I can use the back side of that section for a hidden staging track. I've always wanted to have a hidden staging area anyway. I’m now thinking I’ll reverse the flow of traffic (that center section was supposed to be the end of the line) and have the interchange with the main in the center of the room now, and the end of the line will be to the upper right corner in that old track plan.

I’m really bummed about having to build more, yet hopeful at the same time. At least I found out now instead of after it was totally complete with track, wiring and scenery.

It's not like the timeframe for the layout is pushed that far back anyway. The guy who desgined the initial track plan has volunteered to help me lay track and do all the wiring (he says he has all the stuff for the wiring, has done it before on other layouts and his own layout runs really well with DCC). He's out of town until a week from today, so nothing much was going to happen even if everything came together yesterday. Maybe I can get a new concept for that center section, get the benchwork made for that and really have it all ready for track and wires in the same timeframe as before!

Fingers crossed.

The last of the sheetrock is up, next is the floor trim and the dropped ceiling. The second coat of the floor paint and we are done with basement construction. By the end of next month the layout will commence. Normally I would celebrate with a bottel of old Royal Crown but not this time, I do not want a hang over stopping the beginning of the first phase of the layout one second.

Right now I am sitting out by the fire pit, having a good cigar and a fine scotch while working on my layout plans.  Deconstruction starts tomorrow on the old layout as I am staring to sell most of my Fastrack.

I got a 350 transfer table today so I spent the day cleaning it up and just finished testing it out drove a gp20 on and off of it via fastrack now just need to make a few custom pieces of fastrack so that thhe center roller doesn't fall in between the table and the track or I could use the transition piece I bought. but I would rather use fastback for the whole thing. the thing is louder than I thought it would be. 2 pieces of Masonite under the track puts it real close to the same height as the table. I have some 1/4 mdf I might try that too.

Tree's... tree's and more tree's... I have been making tree's while i have been saving up to pay for the lumber to start my benchwork. Thanks again to everyone that has posted pictures of their benchwork, and those that have written me back with info. I really appreciate the help! 

Matt was over on Sunday, and went through another batch of engines. He's going to order some parts and some ERR boards so we can convert a few Rail Kings to TMCC. While he was working on that, I assembled electrical boxes and light sockets.

Jon came over today, and we ran power to the upper deck, then piped and wired half a dozen lights.

The conduit goes down through the lower backdrop...


then across


to the junction box.


Our afternoon's efforts.


Next time we'll work on setting up the track lighting, which will cover the other side of the aisle.

adapted fastrack to a lionel transfer table. did a little scenery over the weekend I never showed. wired up the transfer table to a aiu . tested it and it works fine just real loud is that common? the open ends of the track are just there for fillers once I get some bumpers they will come out plus there will be a piece of mdf on the side as a fascia with a lip to keep the engines from jumping off the table.

It's good to hear somebody else enthusiastic about trees on layouts. I feel they add immeasurably to the overall effect. Perhaps, you will agree with me on how I have used them and find some ideas here, Nateao, among these shots of my layout, Moon Township.

Nate,

I agree with Moonson, unless one is modeling the desert, you can't have enough trees.  As shown, the occasional dead tree really adds to the realism.  Thanks for the great photos, Moonson!

What a beautiful layout and GREAT trees.

I have to agree that trees probably add the most to our scenery efforts.  It's amazing how much better the layout looks with them. 

Moonson yours layout is beautiful!

Art

some more work today not much tho.so here is just an over view of the layout at this point

Moonson:  Gorgeous scenery, there!   

I have a couple of Lionel 105 bridge approaches that were knocking about not doing anything in particular, so I masked off the roadbed and resprayed them to match a Lionel 270 I also had knocking about not doing anything in particular:

Also, the latest addition to the Razorback Traction Co. fleet is this Bowser Birney which showed up sans trolley poles.  A bit of work with a micro drill bit, and I adapted a pair of K-Line/Lionel poles to the Bowser bases!  Also refined the battery powered Lionel 57 streetlight I'm modifying for a chum to include an on/off switch...and, as always, where there's a streetlight, there's Princess Daphne.  ;-)

Photo submitted without further comment.  ;-)

Mitch

Mark, Chugman, Laidoffsick, & M.Mitchell, I much appreciate what each of you said. I am especially grateful for the enthusiastic words you each used. It's gratifying to share efforts and ideas with my peers in this hobby and find that I've received their approval. Thank you very much.

FrankM