What did you do on your layout today?

Scared the bejesus out of some passengers waiting at the station....

Well I am no Norm Abrams or Tommy Silva, but I really like how my desk came out.  I tore my layout down last month to build an office for my photography business.  

While not 100% complete, I can now turn my attention to the layout.  

I have started to really get the design down, and hope to really get a lot done tomorrow night.  I want the facade 100% complete and the foam base put in place.  I plain to also paint all the track a nice rust color before I lay it.   My goal is to have a train running in 3 weeks.

BTW the 2 car paintings hanging over my desk were painted by my grandfather in 1948.  He is also the one who gave me my 1st Lionel train set when I was about 6, and got me hooked on trains for life!

            Jim, great looking office and layout area    

            Viewed your photography on your site,   awesome work !!   very nice !

Paul 2 Thank you! So far the mountain has the votes. As for the expansion the answer would be NO! The other day the wife said the money spent on this room would have made a wonderful Master Bedroom and Bath! LOL

Brian, great job on the mountain! When you coming over to finish it! LOL

Mark thank you! The worst part of the 40 day was the drive and the gas money spent hour there and hour back. I hope to see your new set on the growing layout sometime soon!

Jim, the office looks Great! I like your little rain table, looks like its going to be a fun project! I also wanted to say your Grandfather was one heck of a painter! Very nice!

So yesterday before work I got half of my control panel wired back up. I hope to get more done today before work, but have to run to town so I am not sure how much time I will have!

Well its Hump day so everyone go and have some fun today!

          " Brian, great job on the mountain! When you coming over to finish it! LOL"

                            thanks Mike, wish I could...  think it would be fun,

                                             hanging out with you,  working on your trains !

                                                            have a GREAT day !!

Mike, Ima' hang this picture in hopes it inspires me to get off my duff and build a proper control panel:

 Lew

briansilvermustang posted:

 

          " Brian, great job on the mountain! When you coming over to finish it! LOL"

 

                            thanks Mike, wish I could...  think it would be fun,

                                             hanging out with you,  working on your trains !

                                                            have a GREAT day !!

 

I'm so old I remember when GP30s were brand new and the hottest thing on the line. We lived abt 6mi as the crow flies and over a hill from the Pennsy. When the GP30s came along was the first time we could hear the trains from the house. Those early turbos made a peculiar piercing sound.

Lew

geysergazer posted:

Mike, Ima' hang this picture in hopes it inspires me to get off my duff and build a proper control panel:

 Lew

Control Panel? I don't need no stinkin' control panel!

Vincent Massi posted:

geysergazer posted:

Mike, Ima' hang this picture in hopes it inspires me to get off my duff and build a proper control panel:

 Lew

Control Panel? I don't need no stinkin' control panel!

Rat's nests work too! 

Lew

Vincent, Lew, Excellent looking control panels!  Great simplicity!  LOL

Mike, you moved right along getting half the rewiring done!

Jim, the office looks good.  Nice layout!

Since I had no appointments today in my musical instrument repair shop, I stayed home and worked on our circus train. I finished the Elephant Transport car. Photos are below. The interior of the Elephant Transport car is detailed with a weathered, plank wood floor covered in straw with a bail of hay for the elephant. Unfortunately, all of that is not visible in the photos. Only the elephant's tusk is obvious to prove that there is an elephant inside. I also put the first coat of paint on a second passenger coach and I am waiting for it to dry. Here are photos of the new Elephant Transport as well as other cars for the train.

My sincere thanks to forum member rattler21, AKA John for giving his blessing for me to use his design for the interior of the Elephant Transport. I also want to thank Corky, a former veteran clown with the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus, and more recently known to us in the TCA as an Orange Hall vendor at the York shows for his kind permission for us to use his face on the sides of our Bungling Brothers Circus box cars.

Lots of great projects going on in here.....

Finally finished the last of the 268 linear feet of girder sections.  Will be able to start wiring on the elevated line Friday and should be running trains by that night.  Here are some pictures of the last graffiti section as well as the 2 memorial bridges I named after my Father and Grandfather; also just so Paul doesn't think I turned completely to the good side the crossing between the 2 bridge sections has been named The Twin Double D's Crossing.  You know because the 2 bridges look like 2 letter D's not something else you sickos. lol

The Petrolia Turn is ready to pull out of town on the return trip:

Lew

Well...... might not want to think about it but got my PW  58 ready for winter Service...!!!

Taking further advantage of my self-proclaimed day off, I did more layout work. I began classing-up the station platforms for our scratch-built (work in progress) Union Station for the City of Christopolis. Below are two photos of one of the platforms still on the wok bench.

The platform was originally two strips of basswood glued together to attain the desired thickness and painted with light gray primer. I covered the first platform's sides with Chooch, small, flexible, cut stone walls in HO/N scale size. they interlock at each end. The upper surface of the platform is covered with Textured Building Paper, 1:48, Red Brick, from MicroMark. I still have to cover one more long, 1/2 width platform that sits against the mirrors that we use as our backdrop to  give the illusion that our layout is twice its size.

Bryan, The bridges look great!!  Also, that is a nice tribute to you father and grandfather.  Were they interested in trains also?  

Brian, nice steam era photographs in black and white!

Randy, I'm not seeing any of the photographs in the first post about the circus cars, but I do like the platform you are making in the second post.

Lew, Looking good!!  The Petrolia turn needs some tank cars!  Penreco would be a nice addition!

My goal for this layout is to look like a piece of furniture in the office.  It will be having clients down there from time to time and want it to really stand out. 

I decided the facade to be almost wainscoting.  I was going to do black styles and rails but in the end decided to do the gray that I used on the desk.  

I spent the last few hours cutting out the rails.  Sanding them to the fit just right, and then staining them.  I also stained the rails.  

Tomorrow I hope to have time to glue the rails to the facade and have it look almost complete.  

To give an idea of what the stain looks like here is a close up photo of the desk.  

While everything is drying I will go and cut the 1st layer of foam to put on the deck.

Mark Boyce posted:

 

Lew, Looking good!!  The Petrolia turn needs some tank cars!  Penreco would be a nice addition!

Oh, they're there, Mark. You just can't see them in that pic:

Depending on the day there are 4,5 or six tank cars in the consist. Here the crew is working the refinery siding, pulling loads and setting out empties.

Lew

Have 1 side of the facade finished.  Working on the other side soon. 

Mark Boyce posted:

Randy, I'm not seeing any of the photographs in the first post about the circus cars, but I do like the platform you are making in the second post.

Mark:

Thanks for the heads-up. I will repost the photos when I get home from work this evening. My photos are on my home computer.

Jdevleerjr posted:

Have 1 side of the facade finished.  Working on the other side soon. 

That is some top-notch artisanship. The grain elevator pops as do all the buildings because of the staining of the facade. Beautiful!

Lew

briansilvermustang posted:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

          gonna be a hot one today !    have a great day everyone !!

 

 

Night-runs on a hot Summer's night! Nice, Brian.

Lew

geysergazer posted:

Jdevleerjr posted:

Have 1 side of the facade finished.  Working on the other side soon. 

That is some top-notch artisanship. The grain elevator pops as do all the buildings because of the staining of the facade. Beautiful!

Lew

Thank you!  

I really like the color and agree it makes the building colours pop.   

I continued working on my new Lionel 86' Boxcars that kept uncoupling and jumping the track.  After re-oiling wheel axles, kinematic glides, coupler knuckles and pins, I was able to shoot this brief video. … And then the cars uncoupled again.

The new long arm couplers pull up and down on each other as a friction pulling force locks the knuckles together. As a coupler is pulled upward, the pin sometimes dropped enough to uncouple the 86' Boxcar.  The uncoupling occurred only between 86' boxcars, not the engine or passenger cars.  I completely coated the knuckles with Labelle 107 oil to help the knuckles slide against each other.

The 86' boxcars can not go backwards, even without the weight of the passenger cars.  The five 86' boxcars derailed every time I went in reverse on O-72 curves with just five boxcars.  The kinematic swing pattern pushes the car's coupler arms side-ways and off the rails when moving in reverse.  A helper engine will be necessary to pull the cars from the rear of the train when they are disconnected.

Sincerely, John Rowlen

Jdevleerjr posted:

Have 1 side of the facade finished.  Working on the other side soon. 

Looking real good. Keep up the great work. Nice that some of your clients get to see it too!

Curtis

I've never heard of this before, but a coupler broke on a gondala. I removed the back coupling from a caboose I don't like and replaced it.

Circus Train, Take Two!

Thanks to a post from Mark Boyce, I found out that my circus train car photos did not show up. So, I will try again. I use the "Add Attachments" link to the bottom right of the "Add Reply" screen.

4 photos of the new, Elephant Transport car.

The circus wagons,

Cast member transport.

Some, please let me know if the photos are visible.

Lew, I knew you had to have a few tank cars.  Thank you for the photograph!!

Brian, excellent photographs of the NS and CSX.  Yes, the night ones are great!

Jim, I agree that fascia looks great, as does the elevator and all!

John, I have never run cars that long, but your description of what is going on makes sense.

Randy, I see all the photographs!  Yes indeed, there are elephant tusks shining brightly in the shadows!  All the Bungling Brothers cars look great!!

Still trying to disguise a short corner of the layout in the laundry room..

Looks great, Howard.  Those corners can be a problem, but you are making it a great scene!

Hi guys, haven't been around this topic for another bunch of days because I haven't touched the layout. Never did get downstairs the other day. Doctor said the knee is good to go, so I gave it a bit of a workout today, with more to come on Saturday.

If you want to see what I have been up to, CLICK HERE.

I'll have to play catch up next week.

Mark Boyce posted:

Looks great, Howard.  Those corners can be a problem, but you are making it a great scene!

thanks!

Hi everyone, What great work being done here! I haven't been on in a day or so as I have been busy fixing my small tractor so I can try and make some extra money for the layout! I would like to comment on all the great work, but I am short on time this morning. I will give you all a rundown of my day later.

Well its Friday!!!! So I hope everyone has a great weekend and please have FUN!

Mostly I've been working on putting a roof on the bridge I'm building.  I found corrugated tin actually made out what looks like tin.  Think Reynolds Wrap only thicker and sturdier.  It's not the best stuff I've ever seen, not to mention it's the only stuff I've ever seen that doesn't say polystyrene, but it's the closest thing to actual tin I've ever seen.

Cutting it with an xacto knife is not easy, in fact it's excruciating, so I use scissors and reform the bent valley with a toothpick.  Gluing it down requires me to stand and hold it in place for a 100 count in some cases, but for the most part it submits quickly and doesn't fight me too much.  I use spring loaded potato chip bag clips on the end where it meets the eve of the roof to set that part while I hold down the part along the ridge.  Slow going but it's fun.

Finally found an MTH Milky Way Cylindrical Hopper in California.  Guy wanted way too much for it, but I gave him an offer and he upped it a bit, but far better than the price he originally wanted.  Nice guy.  Said he liked my honesty.  I told him in my offer it was only priced at $50 bucks on the MTH website and it was used to boot.  So I threw him a bone and he countered and now I have an expensive but way less than it could have been hopper.

Just curious.  Does anyone know what scale protocol Lionel and MTH use to build their rolling stock?  I searched the web and based on what I read, they both use the 1/4 inch scale as a guide, but Lionel "Standard O" and MTH "Premier" are the categories that actually stick to the 1/48 scale pattern.  The rest follow sort of a pseudo quarter inch scale pattern that causes them to be smaller than actual quarter inch scale.  Railking is an example.  They stick to the details and build a close to scale size model, but if you actually measure the product, it wouldn't quite measure to the actual length of a real box car.

The reason I ask, I have two flat bed intermodal trailer cars hooked together on one of my trains.  One is the MTH Dr. Pepper trailer, the other is a Lionel Nesquik trailer.  You can look at the two cars and tell that MTH dwarfs Lionel.  The trailer is obviously larger in every way it can be.  Yet both companies use the quarter inch scale as their guide.  I'm just interested in knowing a bit more on how they massage the sizing.  Anyone not familiar with model trains comes to my house and sees my trains, first thing they see is that some box cars are this big, and others are bigger yet they are both O gauge sized.

Did a little scenery today Put walnut shells under and around trestles

Well I am finally ready to start getting something done. This weekend I am going to be cleaning out the back of the basement which has junk that has been sitting there for twenty years. Going to start with taking apart the old shelves under the window. The newer white shelves I am going to reuse them for table tops. Then the wife has to come down and the two of us have to go through all the stuff there and see what gets thrown and what is kept. The last pic shows a storage area under the old porch. That is where I am going to do a grain facility along with a water area for a freighter. Of course this is down the road a spell. Have to get the basement cleaned out first. Pics.............Paul 2

Paul, I always wonder where junk like this comes from.  It just seems to accumulate overnight like mushrooms!

Johan, that is a nice looking Gulf tank car.  Nice little tank facility as well!

Lew