First shots of my railroad (unnamed)

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

Before I throw the photos up, a few concept ideas for the railroad.

It’s situated in a North-South 35’x12’ (approx) room with a door midway on the western side and windows on each end. The room itself is now complete except for carpet, but I am moving ahead with constructio, leaving the layout semi-modular so I can remove the tables later to install carpeting.

The railroad itself is a realistic fictional layout. It will portray a small railroad that starts at the foot of the Rocky Mountains and goes right into the mountains, through various valleys and tunnels, and culminates in a steep grade that tops the Continental Divide with a small town on the other end. There are only two cities on the layout, the city at the base of the mountains (We’ll call it City A since it’s unnamed now) and the city before the long climb over the Divide (We’ll call it City B, and since it isn’t even in existance yet all talk about it is planning).

City A has a Walthers 130’ turntable and a six-stall roundhouse, with two stalls extended to 145’ for the big ones. City A also has a passenger station, a small 5-track yard, andsome industries to the West of the terminal (south in real-life, in the corner.) As the line moves West into the mountains, a spur leads off into the mountains to go to an interchange with the Union Pacific (it’s actually an under-table staging yard.) The line then continues to a logging area, over a river near a waterfall, and by a coal mine, where we also have the only passing siding on the line. From there it progresses to an oil field, and finally, to City B.

City B is the small city at the base of the Continental Divide. It will have a few industries, although these are not marked on the track plan as of yet. It also has an interchange with a local narrow-guage logging line, and to save operating costs (and construction headache) the two guages share a dual-guage wye. The narrow-guage line climbs back into the mountains, up above the standard g

2

It looks great!

You’re off to a good start!

Keep up the great work. It all just takes time and patience.

Ed

3

Chris, first off, [#welcome] to the forum.

You and grandpa have done a very nice job so far. Looks like you’re off to a very good start.

Tom

4

Looks like you’re having fun ! Have you thought about adding a backdrop or skyboard ?

They are much easier to do before the scenery and also may effect your track plan

5

Very energetic and imaginative. You did do a lot of work in a month, especially if you did not have some of the structures before. I assume Grandpa also works on this. May grandkids come over and help with mine, but are not inclined to want one at home. Keep us posted.

I decided you were a teen about the second paragraph. Most of us old guys do not write that clearly.

6

Looks like you have a good start to what could become a great layout! Keep up the good work and the pics are a good touch!

-beegle55

7

Thanks for all of the positive feedback! It’s replies like these that keep me motivated to do stuff like this.

I am hoping to get a backdrop in soon, before I start adding mountains. I have several sheets of Masonite set aside for the job, I just have to get it mounted and then either paint it or find someone else to paint it while I’m at school (the latter would be best as it would really help speed along the process.

Thanks for the warm welcome [:)]

Actually, I have about a total of eight structures right now, and all but one of them are trackside structures. My intent is to put in the track first (railroad is king here!), then the trackside industries, then the city roads, and then buy additional structures based on what space I have available. That way I’m not buying a ton of buildings and then finding out half of them won’t fit; this way, I know ahead of time what dimensions I need, and it also makes choosing buildings easier. In addition, my kitbashins skills are hardly worth writing about or showing off, so it’s convienient to simply buy something that fits instead of making it fit.

To be forthright, my grandpa is

8

That’s about all for now. What I’m thinking in terms of updates is to simply post updates every Sunday evening, after a weekend of work (Monday evening if I have a Monday off) and then discussing construction ideas with the community during the week. Does this sound like a good, reasonable thing to do?

Until next time!

-Chris ™

Sounds like a plan Chris

You can also post pictures to the Weekend Photo Thread

If you would like to post photos instead of links

you can start by clicking on this link

http://photobucket.com/

This is a free site

Then go toRegister now to open an account

http://photobucket.com/register.php?link=register_now

And follow the prompts to register

Once you’ve completed you’re account home page will display

and you will see a box labeled Browse

click on it and a small window will open showing your C drive

using this go to the file on your computer that has the photo you want to upload

double click on the photo and you’ll see the name of you picture in the small box

then click on upload

once the upload completes you’ll see a message “Upload competed”

if you page down you’ll see your photo on the page

there will be a small white box under it

place you mouse pointer on it and click

this will put a check mark in the box

Then page on down to the bottom of the page

and click on the box marked Generate HTML Code

this will automatically generate the code you need

on this page go down to the line of code that says

IMG images for message boards

high light the code by draging you mouse accross it

once the whole line is high lighted right click and click on copy

once you’ve copied that line Paste it into your message here

on the forum

When you are typing your po

9

I’ve used Imageshack in the past, before I got my own website, but now I find it easiest just to put it all on my website.

What I’d like to do is use the forum function that allows my pictures to be displayed as thumbs, and when you click on them they enlarge with an option to minimize them again. But I haven’t yet figured out how to use this function. So for now I use links. Plus, it reduces bandwidth consumption [:)]

-Chris ™

10

[#welcome] Welcome aboard!

VERY nice work so far! Looks like a plan that should develop into a very interesting railroad to operate.

Only one question - very much tongue-in-cheek. Do you live in California? Your benchwork looks like it’s designed to be earthquakeproof!

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

11

Nice going there Chris.

Looking foward to seeing this railroad take shape.

If you want to post a photo, just use your website as the server. Click on the Img (Tree) icon and copy and paste the address of the photo in.

And your benchwork does look like it would hold up a truck! Should be real stable.

12

Well, the benchwork actually is very strong by design. My grandpa had built 3 workbenches before that, all very strong and meant to hold the heavy tools. The railroad’s benches are essentialy those workbenches, without the wood and masonite on top or decorative wood on the sides, as well as more support braces.

In the photo below you can see what those workbenches look like; this one’s modified to the layout height (37" from floor to tabletop) and has the side wood adjacent to the layout removed, but is essentialy what the full workbench looks like.

But going back to my previous post (before the image hosting reply) what do you guys think of removing the oil field and moving the coal mine to where the oil field was? I’ve changed the master track plan already and it looks like it ought to be a good idea on paper, but what are your thoughts on this?

-Chris ™

(P.S. I live northeast of Denver, CO)