It turned out to be one of those run around weekends. Started with the normal grocery store runs and evolved into the dreaded shoe and clothing shopping excursions. Sunday proved to be better, however, as the family took in and enjoyed a movie: “Lady in the Water.” I made about thirty trees of varying size for the layout. I also finished planting trees and foliage on most of the hillside above the rock face. I spent some time running test trains around the layout paying close attention to next area to be tacked down. I was getting ready to lay the road bed when I discovered that I had not glued down several big pieces of the pink foam board, so I had to that and that ended any track laying.
Well, seems like I worked on the roundhouse all weekend but did not get as far as I would have liked (instead of posting the same pics here, see my thread in Narrow Guage "On30 Roundhouse So Far"). Did some honeydo's so that took up some time too John
I got my CGW GP40-2 painted / decaled (no, CGW didn't have any) I also got the backdrop painted and installed Friday I assembeled 2 freight car kits The boxcar didn't come with metal wheels, I stole them from a Walthers well car
Some grass, some ballast between the rails, and the first layer of farnish on top of the river: here are the latest pics of my Z scale layout: Atlantic & Pacific RR
We got out to ride behind some steam! Okay, it was 15" gauge steam, but it was pure coal-powered steam! The ride at Little Amerricka lasts about 30 minutes, and there are plenty of sharp curves to get some video of the locomotive. I took a bunch of photos, just haven't downloaded them from the camera yet.
Friday I spent the day reading up on DCC and laying some track on the Conn. Div. of the B&M. Saturday was cleaning day as we had guests come out to run O three rail trains. Sunday I cleaned up my RC shop as I would like to get a new RC airplane done before the summer is done.
I got the profile boards mounted on my small 2x4 n-scale layout. Plus I started stacking the styrofoam for the scenery base along 2 of the sides. Still lots of work to do. One of these days, I'll start a thread and post progress photos thus far.
I started on the superstructure of the freighter Beavercove. What a job, as it has curved surfaces in all three dimensions. I needed about seven hands to glue it up. I can usually do a complete superstructure in half a day. The first story of this took nearly all day Sunday.
I installed the rotary switches for the staging blocks and wired them to terminal strips. Now I just need to install the cab wiring and the block feeders to make it operational. I'll post pics in my Mopac Layout (HO) thread later this week.
Well, I made it to San Antonio and back with my van loaded to the hilt with modules and trains. Had a great time running trains and talking to folks while at the show. I managed to run some of my few DCC engines on the Red Line around the entire NTRAK layout. It was fun until the system would become overloaded and all kinds of squirrly things started happening. I gave up when a long passenger train I was running stopped, then took off like a rocket in reverse and derailed my entire train scattering cars left and right. I did not tell it to do any of that. I bailed on that opperation and went back to running on the analog loop. I can take only so much of this modern high tech stuff.
I continued to work on the addition to the JJJ&E. I also finished the last backdrop building that goes in the switching yard. Stay cool and run steam.......
Well I was able to complete the decaling of 3 Athearn gons. THey are for my Mid-America and Northwestern (MANW) wich is a fiction based r.r. from the IC of the 60's to current. I did 3 differnet styles. Also finished building one Walthers kit and almost finished another.
