Welcome back everyone. I hope you all had a good and productive weekend and maybe even got to see the eclipse. No eclipse for me as we had constant cloud cover as typical here this time of year. Let's see what we accomplished. Saturday: As predicted, my back woke me up but at 4:00am. I semi slept until 6:00am then got up, got dressed and headed to the lumber yard. This time I ended up going to two stores to get everything I needed. When I got home, the wife surprised me with her homemade blueberry muffins which I enjoyed with my coffee. In the workshop, I started to work on the shadow box frame. By early evening I had the outer frame that includes the base, backdrop frame and valance finished, and I called it a day. Sunday: I started the day with my coffee and got a lot cleaned and organized in the layout / workshop. As a man, I had forgotten that this was the last Third Sunday Market of the year, and this is one of my wife's favorite antique events. So, after coffee and blueberry muffins, we got ready to go to the event. I was on a quest to get a new desk lamp and since it is so hard to find quality electronic items like this made in America, this show usually is a big help. Sure enough, I was able to find a mid-century modern desk lamp in excellent condition for $20.00. Other than stocking up on licorice made by a small family run company, we didn't see much. We had a nice lunch on the way home then once home, I set up the garage workshop. I first mowed the yard then finished installing the Halloween decorations then finally cut the backdrop for the shadowbox. By the time I finished I realized my weekend was over. They go so fast. So how about you? What did you accomplish this past weekend? Let us know. We'll assemble again on Friday the 20th to start the process all over again. Until then, have a great week, be safe and as always... Hi Greens!
Saturday it rained, so while I got a reprieve from yard work. I did a little gardening, harvesting a lonely (last one for the season), tomato and a few peppers that seem to be okay. I got soaked watching my youngest’s soccer game, and then stayed home with her as my wife took my oldest to her volleyball game. Sunday, the bushes still seemed to wet to trim (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!) so I did some paperwork odds and ends and did a mock up of an industrial park on my benchwork. I’ve been in track plan purgatory, just fiddling over and over again and thought if I did this it might break something loose. I think it did. On the left side is a food distributor-8 rail doors for reefers and boxcars. A non-rail served building is on the right, and on the other side of the double main line tracks on the right is the beginning by of a chemical plant (generic at this point so I can run different types of tank cars through it). In the left foreground is more chemical plant through the red push pins. Other side of the red push pins is a beverage distributor. Food distributor is along the wall, with a gap between it and a smaller non-rail served warehouse. In this corner, in front of the main, I’m actually going to leave open-it’s going to be part parking lot, part vacant lot to support a “scenery only” zone. The water tower will move toward the back wall, near the transload facility. Not pictured, moving to the right, behind the tracks, will be a set of up to four Walthers Bralick buildings (or kitbashed into 2x long versions out of the four). In the near term, this will be right next to a little un-sceniked staging yard so I can run some switching ops. In the long term, this will become a small intermodal yard, proto-freelanced from CP’s Schiller Park yard in Chicago. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Good morning all! Weekend went as planned. Only had some time yesterday to actually do any modeling work. I spent time running trains since it is has been several weeks since the layout has actually be "powered up". Also spent time working on the SL Cabin. Pretty much got the roof finished and built the stairs and ramps. Have a great week all!
Received more wiring supplies, some trees and a needed coupler conversion. Threw my neck out at work, so there the stuff sits. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....
Good morning from cloudy, cool and rainy Northeast Ohio! Friday, spent some time getting some cars out of storage to take to the club and put away the cars I had used the last time I was at the club, then went to bowling and had the best night for me this season a 180-256-204 for a 640 series. I won the second game jackpot and am in the running for our monthly tournament. Saturday, went to the club and I ran a train made up of mostly my fleet of Campbell Soup cars that serviced the Factory in Napoleon, OH on the DT&I railroad. Later I finished adding all the parts (Plano Roofwalk) to the covered hopper and it is ready for painting. Sunday, Did the laundry and pained the covered hopper car, also started decaling a 50' Atlas 5077CF Boxcar and the worked on repairing the couplers on a club car where the Athearn clips had come off the car and it needed new couplers, on one end the little nubs were gone and someone had tried to glue the cover on, well the glue got all over the spring etc. and was quite a mess to cleanup. I also ended drilling out the coupler box for a screw and now the cover is held on by said screw. Metra-Man, I remember a soccer game like that and I ended up being the linesman in a driving rainstorm and was soaked in a few minutes. Rick Jesionowski
Happy Monday! The weekend pretty much went as expected. didn't make it to the workbench Friday evening due to the wife having other ideas. Did at least find a couple of things while out that I needed for upcoming train related projects. Saturday was work all day. I killed some of the small hurry up and wait times here on TB at least. Sunday, I did spend time drinking coffee and running trains but didn't get anything else done. Hope you all have a great week
As usual, Friday was pretty much homework all day, except for the few hours that our daughter came over to say goodbye to her cat Stormy. Stormy has been with us since Lina was 8 or 10 and now she's 28, married, and a NICU nurse. Stormy has been declining for a couple years but in the last few months has been losing a lot of weight so we switched her to canned food and even gave her supplements but still it was obvious that her time had come. So, the two of us took Stormy to the vet for a final goodbye (and a later burial under at tree at Lina's house with my Mom's last cat). Saturday was homework for the first half of the day. Like Jim Wiggin, I had thoughts of viewing our 30 percent eclipse and even dug out my NASA eclipse glasses from 2017, but northern Ohio had nothing but clouds and rain. At its peak, it was hard to tell if the darkness outside was from the eclipse or clouds (or both). After I finished my week's homework I carried a pickup truck load of firewood that had been delivered on our driveway to the back of the house and stacked it. The original plan was to go to our son's house that afternoon, get more firewood from him, and go to dinner together but he cancelled on us last minute. But, since I've been fighting a cold all weekend, I didn't feel like doing much else and we mostly just watched television, did laundry, or other chore. I did spend an hour or two working on my pile of donated train stuff in the basement. This week I pulled together all of the brass track and switches into one pile. I'm not sure that brass track has any value at this point so I'm not really sure what I'll do with it. Sunday was church, lunch, then train club. At the club we cut a foot off of one of our countertop workbenches so that we could rearrange the workbenches to fit under the logging section of the layout, better accommodate visitors at our November open house, and generally make that section of the layout more accessible for operations and maintenance. Track laying is temporarily stuck until we get four more left hand switches but we did open up the crawlspace and get some measurements of the access door, the joist spacing and the joist depth (all for future reference at this point). As promised, I did remember to take a couple photos of our progress on the new port facility which I will post below.
Good morning everyone, I got the new windshield wiper blades installed on my wife's car and picked up the oil for the truck but still have to get the filer so the oil change did not get done. Did my quota of yard work including some sprinkler repairs. Continued work on the Ntrak staging yard, mostly improving ways that interconnecting cables are secured. The the LED's and their resistors installed on the control panels for my friend's staging yard. Picked up a sheet of 3/4 plywood and made up the back boards for the control circuits. After laying out the components, I came up with a 12 x 16 size. Then came up with a way to clamp these onto part of the layouts steel framing. Every fall for quite a few years now I've had some bench work project but not this year so this project filled the desire run some power tools. By Sunday evening I had a coat of primer on both sets.
Good frame progress. Excellent rail service planning. (I love foam board people. ) Time running trains! Wonderful! Neck pain = bad pain. So sorry. I am hoping the "glue person" has come to the realization that the only way is the right way. Wow. I have said before, pets are like family. Port facility looks cool. Crisp circuit work. This past weekend I became the mayor of procrastination. This was induced (seduced?) by glorious sunshine weather. Also, my brother came by Sunday to drop something off for my daughter. He did look at my latest projects. So there. Have a great week.
Awesome progress on several fronts. My parts finally came in today, so off to work on the GP18 tonight while watching football/attending the LSR Div 5 meeting. About all I managed was some photos...focus stacking is fun!
I set out to rebuild over 20 Fast Tracks turnouts from old projects, but fell a bit short. I did get 5 #8 quick sticks ties glued onto the rails. I also removed the old wood ties from all the #6, cleaned them, repaired, but no ties glued up yet. Model Railroading will be fun once all this construction is complete.
I'm quite late getting to post about this.. But here are my accomplishments from last weekend... A new layout being built with a target "build complete" date sometime in late June / early July 2024 so it came come with me to the NMRA 2024 show in Long Beach. I've been modeling in N scale for over 25 years now and as part of going through the NMRA AP I'm moving up to a larger scale since it will be a lot easier to build cars/locos/buildings/etc and be able to include extra details. The new layout will be modular and modeling the RGS Telluride branch (Vance Junction to Pandora) in the 1910-1915 time period in On30. The overall plan is 10x10ft utilizing a no-lix approach to transition between the levels with mostly prototypical grades (1.5-4% depending on area). The plan below is a very rough draft based on the 1919 Sanborn maps with the Pandora mills trackage to be filled in once I have approximate building sizes determined which will ultimately determine the track plan for that section. Lower level: Upper level: I have a section on the NMRA Interchange for the layout build / details as well as a Google Photos album which I'll be updating as things progress. I'll create a thread on here as well once I reach the build phase (soon!) since there will be a lot of custom hardware being designed and built for this layout which likely will be available as commercial products at some point. But what I can share now on that are the following data points: LCC and DCC integrated across the full layout. The traditional DCC bus routed along the entire layout will *NOT* be present, instead each module will have a local DCC booster / circuit breaker built as an LCC node There will be BoD on all trackage but there will not be signals (they didn't exist at this time period) All of the switches/turnouts will be controlled via LCC, including three way switches. All will be done using servos or similar with N stop points. The CS and throttles are currently in development with plans to demo them at Amherst. Fast Clock controlled lighting effects (simulation day / night cycles) and and building lighting control (fast clock based and random) I'll share more on the NMRA Interchange and on here once I reach the build phase.
I like the idea, but am concerned the nolix will add challenges. The switching areas need to be flat, as I am sure you know, thus reducing the grade space for the nolix and the transitions. Just my $.02.
Very true, there will certainly need to be some "flat" spots for setting out cars and storage without resorting to push pins or similar to keep things in place. I initially considered a helix but it was eating up a considerable amount of floor space and would end up complicating the transport options. I'm thinking perhaps adding a 6in wide shelf on the back side of the backdrop to allow running a single / double track loop around the inside to gain some extra elevation and reduce the ruling grade from constant climb from Vance Junction to Telluride to instead be closer to prototype with 4% grade from around bridge 37A (top left corner of lower level) to Keystone (bottom left corner of lower level) which drops to ~2% and then to ~1.1% to Telluride. This would add probably ~26ft of linear rails to gain an extra 6in (~2% grade) or I could push it to 8in (~2.5% grade). I'll need to finalize the track elevations to know the actual height needed to be gained, but I'd like to have 12-14in visible on the lower level between levels (which means ~16in separation between levels).
I like the idea of running behind the backdrop to gain elevation. Keeps it simple without taking up very much valuable space.
