Weekend Update 8/14/11

[sirenwerks]

Gorgeous E5, Bill. I always look forward to your posts.

[M.C. Fujiwara]

Yeah, not so much Bob. It would still be in the living room.

Just keep the hookah on top of it until she leaves on errands / girls night.

[eric220]

@Eric - too bad my wife hates coffee tables or I'd ask for your specs.

Well, here's a diagram anyway.  Minimum radius is 10".  Grades are under 3% (tried to keep them to 2%, but a couple got away from me).

[Chris333]

Chris, that'll be seriously cool. What era are you setting it in?

1948ish, but I will mix a few eras a little to add a few things I like that were there later.

Philip:

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Really cool stuff so far this weekend.

I spent all day yesterday doing some 12":1' work: clearing off the B&O museum's "open passenger car" superstructure from the CRHS's newly acquired flat car.

Using hand tools, a few sawzalls and a chainsaws, it went from this:


To this:





To this:


And now, I am sore as ****... good thing I'm heading off on a beach vacation this evening!

[Puddington]

While working on the little depot that I began last week I struck upon an idea that will totally alter the plans for the new layout; but more about that in a minute. The depot is now part of a Pacific Great Eastern barge terminal depot and service facility. The little depot, while not receiving any passenger traffic and very little LCL freight is technically on the timetable. It serves as a home base, locomotive servcing and tie up point and track gang deopt for the Puddington Valley barge slip. The depot will be located about a quarter mile away from the barge slips and will be one of the interchange points with the CPR

(For those that know anything about the PGE you would realize that it never came south into the interior but my "theory" is that CPR wanted to abandon the barge traffic and the government stepped in, bought it for a dollar and now the PGE operates it for the government, interchanging with both the Great Northern and Milwaukee Road across Lake Angelo.....it works for me !)



The idea that has come into play is regarding staging.... you can never have enough and hidden staging is a pain; albeit a required evil most times...right ?... Nope............ I'm going to "stage" in plain sight.

The barge traffic is my way of bringing cars on and off the layout. I was going to have four tracks of hidden staging at the back of the layout but it dawned on me that I could move that "staging" to the front IF I moved the barge to the far right side of the layout ( think "U" shaped layout) and had the entire front of the layout, about 10" deep lower (at barge level) with an insterchange track leading gently up to main layout level from either end and putting the "yard" right in between.......This will afford me five tracks of totally accessable staging, the longest track being about 13 feet long !

The little depot will be on one end, farthest from the barge and will have a train order board (not yet installed) that guards the PGE main which will run into the far corner of the layout, terminating in a  tunnel after crossing under the CPR mains and that will seve as a tie in to the CNR main (which are not modeled) allowing me to bring CNR traffic into play.............

I'm really happy with the elmination of all but two tracks of hidden staging (these will hold the eastbound and westbound CPR Dominion passenger trains) while at the same time increasing the amount of staging I will have.........

The depot still needs work but it's coming along.

[eric220]

Ed, Russ, et al, good job on that flat car!  It's going to make a nice addition to the CRHS's collection.

The condition of that G behind it is downright painful.

[Catt]

Well this is part N scale. ;D





The dio itself was a gift from a friend ,it came with track ,engine,and gray paint on the hardboard.The centercab is an old Mocolova Model Works shell kit with a scratchbuilt cab on a LifeLike switcher chassis.Did the scenery last night while gabbing on Skype.

[rochsub]

Been working on bridge piers and the floor of the rotating bridge on the Mississippi River crossing in Clinton, IA.  More info on the blog @ genevasub.blogspot.com

[diezmon]

I finally figured out one of my finicky turnouts... Am I the only one that seems to struggle with getting my power through turnouts w/out stalling?

turns out this one had a hump in it right at the frog, which was causing all kinds of hair  pulling when trains went through.


do most of you solder our turnouts in place?  what a drag removing it 
Got the new one in place though.

[Zox]

I spent Saturday up at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania, helping MARRS staff its HO-scale layout for its "Hogwarts' Express Parties" weekend.

[ArtinCA]

Spent the whole weekend doing train stuff..

Saturday was spent running at a friends SP layout.



Sunday was spent with a couple of quick honey-do's that also let me go fetch some stuff for my own layout.



Lower level staging with the mainline working upgrade.

More photos on my blog... http://adventuresinmodeling.blogspot.com/

[Puddington]

I finally figured out one of my finicky turnouts... Am I the only one that seems to struggle with getting my power through turnouts w/out stalling?

turns out this one had a hump in it right at the frog, which was causing all kinds of hair  pulling when trains went through.

As I enter the new layout building phase with over 40 Atlas code 55 turnouts in stock here you are NOT inspiring me with confidence in this product line.....

[Bsklarski]

As I enter the new layout building phase with over 40 Atlas code 55 turnouts in stock here you are NOT inspiring me with confidence in this product line.....

I would not sweat it. About a year ago I was at the distributors and went through several boxes and noticed many were bowed from end to end. I really needed some to finish my mainline cross overs, so I bit the bullet and got some. I glue down my track and when I did, the bowing was gone. They do take some time to install, but they have never given me issues. For the price, they are really nice switches.

Brian

[M.C. Fujiwara]

Started building the carfloat for the Summer Shunting Shelf project:



It will be fixed in the water.  Cleats & bollards on the way in the mail.

Also started mocking up buildings:



This will be the "Bella Fonte Cannery", a play off of the huge Del Monte structure in Alameda.  Will probably have backdrop photos of buildings peeking over from behind the flats.  Still figuring that part out.  Will use DPM brick sections to create the freight warehouse on the left (up back against the power pack box).