A year ago I had a empty room. Recently there were a number of posts I made referring to the railroad I am working on. So I make some pictures of two. One half of the room here and the other half there. But first off…
The corner supports of the benchwork are cheap metal/hard plastic tables from walmart. I have watched them closely since last fall for signs of weakness or failure in integrity. The main part of the benchwork is 4 discarded doors that we no longer needed after replacing several doors many years ago. These doors were sitting in various aspects of storage for years both outside and inside in all seasons and did not display warps or any issues. So onto the tables they went.
After everything was somewhat level, level enough for a train to think that the track is level and the rolling stock to stay put after being switched… nothing in Arkansas is level It’s either crooked, bent or off by this much. Heck, the room the table is in is has a three dimensional twist and not so true on all the floor, walls and ceiling.
Makes for a interesting twist to layout building. Perhaps I needed a crooked house to make everything I do look good =)
Anyhoo. You come out of staging and into the branch. A few laps later arrive at the industry with a small train of 16 cars, give or take a few depending on the previous day’s work. Mostly inbound loads, some empties to be loaded with the finished product.
After the road engines come off the train to be turned and set out of the way, the switchers come in and take the train apart and get into the switching. The switcher set is dedicated to industry but sometimes uses a caboose to take special loads to and from staging. The switcher also can get into places the big road engine cannot.
When everything is finished and the train reassembled, the road engines now take the train out the way it came. Depending on the pow
Bravo! I give you a digital hand clap… Something is always better than nothing, and a few hours here and there can make a big difference. You’ve got a great start on a great model railroad. Good job.
Thank you everyone for generous replies. It is much appreciated!
Yes Buildings are out of both the Sterling and Tannery Kits built to fit a purpose and space availible. It would take a few of these kits to make it happen over a long time.
Painting was problem. I left the plastic bare tan. However some patching needed doing and painted over gaps and such. Docks and foundations were painted Tamiya’s Buff color and some were sprayed light sand as a subtle alternative depending on availible store stock. The roof, canopies and windows are medium green from testors… #1913 to be specific. The black is flat from testors. The mcgraw tanks in the far corner were gunmetal from Tamiya spray. The fire tower in one of the buildings is oxide red with battleship grey bottom. The tall water tower is undecorated walthers already built.
The brown top is 1/4 inch birch in the best I could find locally counter sunk with about 450 number 8 screws tetonic plate style to ride with the seasons however the house is pretty constant. I didnt want to have to paint the awful doors.
I have started to experiement with Bradgon weathering on spare panels to choose which tints make the glue spots and off color paints blend in. Not there yet.
It was a rather expensive way to make a industry, however I think from the box of spare parts, alot of those buildings were built from leftovers.
Each building as a purpose in the over all plan. However it is not hard to convert the entire complex to do whatever it is you need doing. I kept to a two-three story maximum in height because they were high enough already with the switching to do.
Next up is electrical work and final track laying. Stay tuned.
Last, looks pretty good, my next layout will be done in the same fashion. Will you run the layout from the inside of the layout or the outside? Few more pictures would be nieces as well. Buildings look top notch.
It will be run both inside and out. There is a duck under… ok… tunnel on the west side. That is where kadee couplers and extremly strong magnetic uncouplers come in. The one end of the loop serves as the drill track during switching, that way I can get to either end of the cars and thence to any siding. The problem becomes interesting when all the different cars must be pulled and spotted.
I deliberately kept it simple because there will be enough going on without making a hash of stuff.
The buildings are not quite ready for closeups … they are stacked at the bench undergoing work one by one. Keep in mind that eventually the loop will be unwrapped and the industry rebuilt in it’s own area along one big wall of the addition.
Nice layout. I like your yard area, and I am planning to add a similar yard to my layout. How long is your yard area? Also, what # turnouts did you use? Lastly, it looks like you used sectional track - did you have to use any odd lengths/special cut track segments to build the yard ladder that you did? Thanks!
It looks like a yard, but it is only a set of spurs off a short runaround.
The ladder was in need of several varying lengths to make it all work. The Ladder drove me crazy because it needed to work and behold … it did.
The only track I cut was a short section of straight to remove the ballast to build a walthers conveyor grate kit to provide for a coal unloading pit. That was done in a mitre box with a saw. I will need a small bag of kato ballast mixed with woodland scenics stuff to blend it all in. Will have photo of it later when the chaos clear away.
Kato Unitrack all around. Number 4’s I preferred number 6 but those were just simply humongous and not used here.
The short run around will hold 4 50 foot boxcars and there is room for two engines to get to any industry building with at least two to three cars anywhere in the complex.
The room is a little less than 12 feet by 8. Layout is 2 foot wide rectangle around a man opening in the center.
There were many different unitrack peices used in different ways to make it all fit. I just bought a small batch every few months and kept going until the layout plan fell into place. The last of the track is on order and I expect to drop them into place later this month.
The long runaround will hold at least 18 cars and two road engines. Unfortunately the curve radius inside the complex is low as 21 inches off the main and that is why the two switchers are there.
The switches were power selecting, so I had to insulate the frog rails and defeat it with feeders all around, since there is a large resistance on the Kato rail anyway, many feeders is good. Every track has at least one feeder.
Waiting on the PDB’s to arrive so I can run bus and connect the track. Switches go with the DS64’s tied to loconet to the Chief when the tra
I admire your tenacity. If it took me a year to do what you have done, I think I would give up. By that I mean I have a tendency to push and rush so that the layout is up and running. I wouldn’t be able to temper my pace and end up with what is a clearly nice and polished layout that you are building. So, my admiration and compliments go out to you.
The wood sub surface is great, but some of the track is too high for the buildings with raildoors. I moved the team track over to another oppertunity spot that worked out really well. Also that introduces the need for the rule saying switch engine gets a cut of cars as a handle to get to these gondolas.
Anyhow I put down some foam with the intent of raising the buildings and succeeded. I ended up laying additional foam around the drill track (Actually 1/4 of one end of a loop…) to help define where the mainline’s final position and to provide for a gradual grade crossing to get the trucks in and out of the team track area. Or they can drive through the building itself to get to it, but what is the fun in that.
Im not exactly happy with the way the foam around the rail doors turned out. I learned to sand some during the process and think in future I can bury those bad spots in scenery of some kind.
Without further ado…
Next up
Stamp house foundation and ladder area. This structure is supposed to recieve coil cars and unload them. The coils go up to second floor to be stamped out into parts and transferred to truck to go to assembly
A bit of progress along the electrical front today.
I divided the layout into 4 zones. One on each side of the rectangle. The track feeders were grouped so that all on one zone can reach the Power Distribution Board near the center under the layout. Care was taken to color code the feeder blue and white to match one rail being the north rail and one, the south rail.
Here is the initial shot of the PDB, one of 5 involved here.
The board had brown stand offs that go into the bottom because the bottom contains metal pins and large metal surfaces corresponding to the screw terminals above. It created a good amount of space between the birch mounting board I cut for it and the rest of the PDB.
I used number 6 screws that were just about an inch long, maybe a tad bit longer. Each of the screws went into the corners and all the way through the birch board behind it adequately. There were a little bit of sharp points sticking out behind the birch board a little bit.
I added a 1.5 inch wide 8 inch long peice to the top and to the bottom rear of the PDB and Board assembly. They were clamped with titebond glue and left to cure for at least 6 hours and to “Rest” for a day minimum before being mounted to underside of the layout with bigger number 8 wood screws. The Titebond was a water clean up after the clamping was done. care was taken never to wipe the pdb or it’s board with any water or liquids.
There are going to be 5 of these boards. The first one will tie the Super Chief Command Station’s Rail A and B outputs. That board will then ship power via 14 gauge Stranded Power Bus wires to each of the 4 remaining “Local zone”
Thanks everyone for the kind replies. It is much appreciated.
The original industry complex did fit into a 2x12 foot section along one wall until I realized that due to a number of reasons too many to list I had to use the Loop construction to get it to all work. It basically bloated on me and still three more structures to build.
Anyhoo. Recently I started electrical work.
I installed the first board earlier today. I called it the A board for the A zone area under one side of the rectangle layout. What I did was install the board, standoffs to the birch, then I installed (Titebonded) the cross structure stripes on the back so to create a 1/2 inch of wood for the mounting screws to bite into in addition to the 1/4 door material above.
More titebond between the cross strips and the underside of the layout 4 number 8 screws driven in revealed this:
As you can see there are several feeders nearby marked for the tracks that they serve. From under the layout I can easily determine which wire goes where.
With the board comes a blue paper with a 12 line chart to be filled out corresponding to which wires you attach to which terminals. Eventually this A zone board will serve 7 seperate feeders.
I already emptied my little town’s supply of machine screws, wood screws, titebond etc. Im about to go out tomorrow morning and empty the town’s supply of cable ties and network clips that mount bus wires to the structure. Ive already counted what was left in my computer repair kit and came up short.
