NYC/ACY Hiles Tower - New London, Ohio in N scale

[btrain]

Thank you for the kind words everyone! I'll collect notes and photos and put them together in a draft for the hobby press when this is done to see who would be interested in it.

[btrain]

I was very busy yesterday building the benchwork for the layout. The wood for the braces and baseboard is 1/2" birch plywood. I had the local home supply store precut the two 4x8 sheets down to 62"x32", which gave me some wiggle room when drawing the half arc along with transporting in my tiny Kia Soul. The remaining pieces from the board were cut into 4" by 13 7/8" braces that lined the diameter of the board like spokes in a wheel, along with other leftovers supplying benchwork for two future Free-moN modules I'll build next winter.



I found the center on one edge of the board and drew two radiuses, one at 16" and the other at 30", with a string held with my thumb and a pencil. I double-checked the measurements of the lines and drew 45* & 90* angles where the bracing would be glued and screwed with #8 screws. The board was cut with a decently powered jigsaw at a slow and modest pace.



Shop cat says I'm taking too much time getting splinters and not enough time giving pets. 



The legs are made of 2" sq. pine cut to 48" in length with furniture levelers on the bottom. Braces for the legs were from the leftover plywood with 3/8" holes drilled in them so they can be bolted onto the benchwork when it's set up.



Here are the fruits of my labor. I tested the legs on one of the tables, and I'm relieved to say that at such a tall height, they don't weeble or wobble too dangerously by itself when given normal bumps. I also ripped 1/8" Masonite into various sizes for the facia in the scenic and staging portions of the layout. Those will go on after I make another set of legs and get the 1" foam glued down.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Oh man, I love it! That looks great!

[Cajonpassfan]

Nice camo job on the poor kitty...🙀
Otto K.

[btrain]

This popped up on my Youtube suggestions this morning. I haven't shared much in the way of prototype photos or videos of the location. Here's Hiles in the 1980s, when the Big Four was singled tracked up to the tower with a double track section stretching to Wellington. Conrail closed the tower in 1985 along with neighboring towers in Shelby and Grafton around the same time.

Also, here's an article about the Big Four line's tower closures. https://library.biblioboard.com/viewer/dab13dc6-25bb-46ca-b42e-ddaee52eda43

[btrain]

Time for an update on the doughnut layout. The baseboard construction is complete with an inch of foam glued down and ready to serve as a scenery base. Work was also done on the endplates by installing brass table-leaf alignment pins I bought from Lee Valley Tools. I knew from previous experience that having distant tracks and axes aligned on module ends was going to be a royal pain. So these will keep everything in balance and running smoothly.



I've also been preparing the backdrop for painting by lightly sanding the 1/8" masonite and applying DAP Plastic Wood Putty to the corners. As you can see in the backdrop portals, the module ends have been prepped for track work with PC board ties superglued in place and wait to have rails soldered on them.



Tonight was a great milestone in the layout build. Track was glued down at the site for the interlocking with Bluepoint turnout controls installed. The switches and the diamonds were tested before the adhesive caulk was put down, and thankfully everything rolled very nice and smooth. The gap in the cork on the far right will be a small wooden bridge over a stream on the AC&Y side, while the NYC will have a concrete culvert.



And lastly, as a diversion from all the track and woodworking, I whipped up a batch of bashed Atlas telephone poles for code lines. A nice technique I learned from @Chris333 here is how to make the insulators really stand out. First, apply Tamiya XF-16 Flat Aluminum as a base and then apply their X-25 Clear Green. It gives a nice mini jewel effect in changing light.



This weekend looks to be a slow one for me. I hope to have all track work done on the staging module and everything wired up by Sunday night, then it's time to JFRTM!

[basementcalling]

Are you using Atlas turnouts and crossings?

Love the prototype photos and plans.

I've got a 3 foot diameter solid 1 inch table top (no legs), so I am considering a roundy round design.

Still searching for a good example from real life to inspire the juices to flow.

[Brian M]

I'm enjoying seeing your progress on this unique layout.  It's really coming together nicely.  And as a fellow NYC guy, I'm looking forward to seeing those Hudsons traversing the interlocking...

-Brian.

[btrain]

Are you using Atlas turnouts and crossings?

Love the prototype photos and plans.

I've got a 3 foot diameter solid 1 inch table top (no legs), so I am considering a roundy round design.

Still searching for a good example from real life to inspire the juices to flow.

Yep, it’s all Atlas for those components. Everything checked out to the NMRA gauge, but one curved switch had to be returned because the washer on the back that holds a switch rail was missing, hence that rail was all flobby.

The advantage for a roundy round design is the space saved. I’ve crammed into five feet of scenic area what almost eight foot would do on a linear layout, and that’s not including space for the curves back to staging if this layout was that long. The downside is the curved switches, which some equipment can be finicky about navigating.

I look forward to seeing what you’ll create!

[btrain]

I'm making good headway on the layout lately. I just registered for Ohio N Scale weekend, where I plan to exhibit the layout this May in Columbus. So with nothing like a deadline to provide good motivation, I checked off a few boxes on my list this past week.

The trackwork is all done. I was running short of code 55 Atlas flex track. Thankfully, Depot Train & Hobby in Cleveland just received a shipment. You can mark that one up for the local hobby store saving the day compared to waiting for an online shipment and disrupting project momentum. Rails connecting the modules were cut with a Dedeco 0.009 cut-off disc after the rails had been soldered to the PC board ties, and test trains started running round the circle.

When testing track, I use all the locomotives that will regularly run on the layout. I've found out that using six-axle diesels are good at finding sharp kinks, dips, and other problems with trackwork. The scenic module passed with flying colors, but the staging module had a kink that needed attention. It was fixed by realigning the track after gingerly prying it up with a putty knife and banking the curve with some 0.020 shims. I can't remember if I sanded the cork before gluing down the track, but it will be something that I'll pay more attention to in future builds.



Something that I wished I had considered when building the Bellevue layout was wiring with terminal blocks. I'm sure this is an old hat to many of you, but it was such a good feeling to crimp and connect wires and save the sodering for track connections.



Today a coat of primer was put on the backdrop. I know this will carry a lot of the visual weight of the layout, so several other pieces of masonite were primed for practice paintings of a hazy winter sky with farmland and woods on the distant horizon.

[w neal]

Go Btrain! Go!!

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Hell yeah!!!

Also, double hell yeah for crimp-n-go wiring. For something like this I really like the terminal block solution. No need to worry about suitcase connectors when the feeder runs are all relatively short.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Are you thinking about bringing this to Altoona too?

[btrain]

Are you thinking about bringing this to Altoona too?

Possibly, I don’t have anything lined up at the moment for that weekend in September.

[unittrain]

LE&P in Bradylake makes for some awesome modeling opportunities you have the Pennsy switch tower right next to the Erie Lackawanna mainline where it crossed over the Pennsylvania Railroad you had switching where the LE&P switched on and off the Pennsylvania there were 2 LE&P tracks one of them claimed a grade to cross the Pennsylvania tracks on a large truss bridge, there used to be a 4 track lines West signal bridge there too. I model this area in HO.