What did you do on your layout today?

Yep...that's basically it, Elliot.    Just figured you'd want to fill up those empty pockets before the wife fills them with shoes. 

 

Bruce

 

It's OK Bruce, I'm safe. My wife has big feet.

I cut all my fascia last night, using a sabre saw on a table on the beck deck. I'm assuming the saw noise confused my neighbors so late at night...

I also drilled all the holes for the DCC plug faces and spots where I have carriage bolts for the leg supports (just in case I ever need to take the layout apart, I don't want to have to rip all the fascia off for that, I'll be painting the bolts the same color green as the fascia so it'll blend in eventually).

I was going to start mounting the pieces but it was really late and I was exhausted. But at least I'm at a point where I can accomplish a lot indoors and without any further help. I've already bought a bunch of small C clamps to hold the pieces in place while I'm drilling holes through the masonite for the wood screws. My plan is to have all the fascia mounted no later than by the end of the weekend.

I would do it on Saturday, but I have to take some drawings I'd been commissioned for on a book project to the author. That'll give me some spending cash for some hobby shops very close to where he lives, but I'll have to squeeze further weekend work in between that trip and the NFC championship game on Sunday. Normally I wouldn't care much about football other than my alma mater playing in NCAA games, but Seattle might make another Superbowl run.

To the layout, nothing.  

 

On the layout: I literally used a corner of it to work on the new RMT GG1 - disassembled one just to look inside it (diecast metal shell!) and modified it so it does not jackrabbit.  

 

And while I did that, the trains ran.  Always run those trains.  Today, just for fun, all LC+.  I have five running.  Nice!

Baby A.J. visits my layout today. He is watching the Lionel Trains.

Check out his very cool shirt..........

Got the NP dark green North Coast Limited paint out and painted he edges of the scale porthole windows; used black paint on the lenses for the scale number boards in prep for number decals; painted a bulkhead door for the vestibule end of a previously painted GM&O coach that was missing the piece (how I assembled the car w/o the piece years ago remains a mystery); and, test fit the module for LED lighting in a 15" passenger car and planned where and how the wiring would be done.  I also used the Dremel with a sanding disc to remove the non-scale number boards from PW LIONEL F3's in preparation for installing scale, brass number boards.  Also used the Dremel to shorten headlight lenses so they could be installed as second headlights in a couple of repaints--the holes for the lenses had been drilled, and bezels made and installed a long time ago.

today i worked the telephone - ordered two "southern railway" accessories from the "train loft" -

 

this is a start

 

rdeal

p51, did your neighbors enjoy the saber saw late at night ??  Work on the layout and listen to the games on the radio ?

I ran trains today for an hour looking for problems but didn't find any. Might do it again later just to be sure. Can't be too careful.

Jon came over today. We got a couple of things done, but we spent much of the afternoon talking about the layout. 

 

We started off by finishing running the camera wires that we started last Saturday. After that we snapped chalk lines to start drawing the track plan for the Ford Plant. It's not too bad working up there. Most of the track will be toward the front edge anyway.

 

 

It was about that point when we got sidetracked as Jon discovered some photo albums on the bookshelf. The first one was from enterTRAINment, the second was past layouts that I built. The third one was reference photos of the locations that I'm modeling on this layout.

 

We were well into the discussion of scenery, when Jon asked what season I plan to model. I thought for a moment, and said why not all of them? I have four aisles, one per. 

 

All that talk made me want to start unpacking trains, but Jon talked me out of that. Instead, we took my intermodal collection of containers and trailers down from above the bookshelves, and I started to spread them around some of the more finished areas of the upper deck. This is actually the very beginning of scenery. The stacks on the left now conceal the opening in the backdrop. 

 

 

I still need to work on it, but that's the general idea.

 

 

Here's the view from "backstage".

 

 

It was just a fun afternoon. Patrick Sunday.

 

 

I added a new crossing guard!  ;-)

 

 

 

Mitch

Spent an enjoyable 2 hours last evening rebuilding my Culvert Loader. (Unloader was tackled last week). Seems one of the pulley axles was loose. Well, since I don't have a press to tighten it up, I just swapped out the complete vibrotor assembly with a spare I picked up a number of years ago. Now, to go to the local repair guy to rent some press time with a number of roundtuits. We're getting there with the layout reconstruction!

I posted a couple of pics to a topic on the scenery forum. So when I was looking at the pics I did not like the way some of the evergreens looked. I had bought some smaller ones with a plastic base. So I found a bag of fine green turf and I sprayed glue on them and added the foam. They look better. On some I can take the base of leaving the wire which I will drill a hole in the area and place them closer to the ground. Once they dry later tonight I'll plant them where I took them out from. Got more leaf foam in the mail and now I can go back to making hardwood trees...............Paul

Mitch,

I think he is up to the job!  Pull out in front of kids, and he steps on your car.  

Today we got down to brass tacks (figuratively speaking). Went to Home Depot and got a roll of rosin paper. Worked diligently and placed the rosin paper on the floor of the room to mimic the top of the benchwork we are installing the new Christmas layout. Traced the double track system which really works out well to what I drew on paper. Tomorrow we start laying out all of the special design features on the rosin paper.

 

It pays to have a plan before you start to cut the wood. 

Ran trains with my son.  We got out a few packs of trees, the kind you get for holiday village setups, and he placed them around the layout.  I also have a bunch of plasticville buildings on the layout and he changes where they go depending on his mood.  

 

He is really getting into this layout, and I made sure there is nothing on it that would break my heart if it breaks.  I love to let him explore how he wants things set up and he loves to play with the figures that came with the polar express with the trains.  

I decided to switch gears today and take a break from track laying. I wanted to try my hand at weathering track.

 

A while back I bought a gallon of regular latex wall paint, in a lovely dark brown color.

 

 

The trick is to mix it with just right amount of water. Too much and it gets runny. Not enough and it clogs the airbrush. This is the perfect job for my ancient external mix Badger.

 

 

It really makes a difference!

 

 

Things were going along pretty well, until I accidentally dropped the airbrush and the bottle shattered. Sheered the neck right off with the threads still in the body. I took that as a sign that it was time to stop.

 

 

I also set up my drafting table. I'm a dinosaur, and don't believe in using a computer to draw layouts. Mine is too big and complicated to do that anyway. Now that the track is almost done, I can redraw both levels, get prints and mark them up for electrical and such.

 

 

 

No Patrick tomorrow after all. He has to work. I'll probably go back to track laying. 

Elliot,

The track looks great!  Yes, I agree the bottle breaking is a sign to stop for the day!  Super drafting table.  I used those quite a bit way back.  I'm not much on the CAD programs either.

I ordered some more Fastrack and picked up some 2 inch foam and some other things to start to build an 4 x 8 layout that will be easy on my hands while I go through some operation on them this winter.  The Christmas layout will probably come down tomorrow to make room for this one.

A lot of foam carving by you all as of late. Not wanting to be left out, I began carving green foam again too. I did do some in the summer. I thought it was great. Bruno either didn't like the results, or wanted to taste the "fish oil" in the primer? Doesn't matter Bruno is the star. Normally he watches the trains from a footstool, and only wants to inspect/ sniff or guard them from the other dogs. Especially if moved. Like this...

.  

 

 

 

Its going well enough, but my camera is down, so you get Bruno.

 But, I want to remake my layout in SCARM, to test out some Super O curve measurements for the Super O SCARM Library. Ill post a SCARM screenshot, of what I'm up to soon as I finish the track swap out. 

Here is a "pretty version". Not fast to lay, just an pretty accurate "object".

 

 

I have also been working on an item for my Looney Tunes/ Marvin the Martian layout again. I'm loving it... War of the Worlds meets ACME M.O.W.... gotta find the old camera's power pack. 

 

 

 

Mitch you better hide that red art deco rocket in the background if I should visit.

That could lead to embarrassing questions .

(I have that Santa! He will be safe enough )

Lookin good Elliot. Painting the track is always a huge improvement, gets rid of all that shiny silver. Good choice.

Got the layout moved inside to its new room for now

That is awesome! All is good when a train can bring a smile to a child.

Sent from my iPad

Brought home Mutt & Jeff from the repair shop yesterday. A Lionel PW 1835e steam loco and  Lionel #41 army switcher with new gears.The largest and smallest that I have, both  run great.  Have 5 Standard gauge locos running now plus too many to count Os. I like engines.

Worked on my Baseball field vignette that is situated near my elevated subway.  The field is being glued down to the fold down door located under my turntable.  When not in use I will be able to close it up where it will be hidden.  Anyway that is the plan. I still need to scratch build the dugouts and bleacher stands.

 

 

 

This is how it will look when the fold down door is up

 

 

 Heres a quick video of the Subway system

 

-Pete

Very nice work Pete

 

 

Just routine maintenance work today: cleaned the wheels on a bunch of freight and passenger cars, as well as three of my locomotives.  Tedious work, but it has to be done.

 

cleaned all the debris from initial work up,  still go to clean floor from some paint spots and clean the workroom portion of the building

train room is behind door and the entire building on left

this was bare ground in jan 2014

and it has all been painted,  but outside shop is a mess,

BUT!!!  ALL TRACK DOWN AND TERRAIN ROUGHED IN, NOW TO MAKE IT PURTY

going to try the "Woodland Scenics" carved rock stuff,  should be fun, just go to remember that better to create small sizes many times rather than large size once

Very nice! What a great idea & it gives you a variety for scenes.

Sent from my iPad

Used the Dremel with a cutting attachment to open up the number board openings on repro F3 shells to accept P&D Hobby brass 45 degree number boards for one project.  Will due the PW LIONEL TS 2245 A shell tomorrow on a different project.  Need to vacuum up the plastic bits on the floor. 

The long-planned fascia is finally mounted. One section I had to cut three times and another really should be cut again, but all in all it's almost completely done. I've drilled all the holes for mounting screws for the DCC plug faces and the throttle pocket holsters. I just need to prime and paint it before mounting all that hardware. Soon, I'll be mounting the blue-points for the turnouts.

 

Note the plug faces for the DCC plugs in the center of the photo, lying on the bench work. The holes in the fascia are for the DCC wires to pass through to hook up throttles to. There is a plug every few feet.

The hole in the back of the section to the right os for the carriage bolt to pass through for the leg support, just in case I ever need to take the layout apart. I made it in sections to be dismantled if I ever have to move.

That's a high-modified Woodland Scenics Ethyl's gas station near the center of this shot.

I agree with Al.  

that would scare you know what outta me

pictures??

i lashed my challenger up to my big boy

In other news, Oscalien managed to blow the breakers in his ZW transformer, the house and half the neighborhood... 

 

Mitch

Have to admit that is one impressive lashup!  Way to go Oscalien!!

Very impressive!

Sent from my iPad

G'day Elliot

 

Your YouTube video clips make great viewing.

 

I love the layout run.

That layout looks like hard yakka mate, many hours of intense work there.

 

Keep them coming as you progress mate.

 

Cheers

Al

The Great Procrastinater has been distracted by other snakes to kill, and has not glued

one stick onto another on this feed mill morphing into an elevator kit for at least a

week.  He did walk through one train show and managed to glomb a rare structure kit

(as if he needed another one) at a good, but not great, price.  That one down and only

one known to go...(although something unheard of by me will surface, sooner or later).