The days between Christmas and New Years are mostly time off for me, and one of my most productive times on my layout each year. Here’s what I accomplished:
Finished wiring some main line track I layed a month or so ago.
Layed about 20’ of main line track, including roadbed, and wired it all–main is now about 60% complete. I anticipate completing the main in January.
Finished the foam portion of the last bit of scenic form on the layout. I’m glad to have all of this finished.
Cut and hung about 50’ of facia. Now all of this is complete and ready for painting.
Cleaned the layout room really well prior to visitors over Christmas (it really needed it).
I feel like I really accomplished a lot. So tell us what you did over the holiday.
I did a small test area for scenery including Woodland Scenics static grass, but sure would like to see some of the Notch results instead. I nstalled some portals bit need to detail around them also.
I installed a SB3 booster to my powercab, but I need some operators now.
Not much but a bit here a bit there and before you know all there is to is super detail.
I finished the lumber yard buildings, paved the layout and striped the paving. I also added some more ground cover/scenery near the roads. Fixed some missing ballast. Added some ground cover and the like to parts of my mountain. Also added some height to the mountain. Lastly I placed a few buildings that I received as Christmas gifts I have been off on holiday since Dec 20. I go back to work on Wednesday. I posted pics in an earlier post yesterday
It has been a successful work week on the Cedar Branch & Western. The railroad obtained twelve more feet of right of way, invested in a modern control system, and has been re-working some recently acquired rolling stock. The signal maintainer’s been out examining a lot of wiring and muttering something about new DCC stuff, while the head monkey wrench has been crawling inside a couple of engines looking for places to put something called a “decoder”. [:-^]
One of the maintenance of way crews spent a week tweaking the lift bridge. The speed limit is up from 10 to 20 mph when crossing the bridge. The joints are much quieter now and there’s only been one derailment since the improvements were made. [#oops]
The supply depot says the gates are on order for Endor crossing. A lot of track re-alignment and ballasting is in the spring plans. Also, work is speeding up on the new Weyerhaeuser wood plant. When completed, the CB&W should see a jump in tonnage. [:P]
All told, yep, a lot has been accomplished over the holidays! [:D]
In between various visitors, meals, and football games I managed to put in some plaster cloth and get a first coat of plaster on top of that. Will work on it some more this evening.
I logged some serious time on my BN Racetrack. Continued work on benchwork and roadbed. Made a slight design change for the overall layout that I am pleased with. More to come…
Well I started on saturday morning and removed all 19 turnouts and 200 feet of track. I just finished taking apart benchwork and the plywood, I still have 20 feet of shelf along the garage wall to remove. Hopefully sometime this summer I will start over again on a new layout in a new house. I listed all of the track for sale on ebay and my diamond scale turntable. I will be switching to N scale at the new house. What took me nearly a year and a half to put up came down in 3 days.
Zilch. I was far too busy dealing with Holiday stuff and with our three girls home for the period. I did have some items that I had sent out for work come back to me all ready for a new push on the layout, but I still have to decommission the house from Christmas over the next two days. Next week, I start the first of two concurrent courses that I am teaching, so it will be slow for the next few weeks.
Well, the Yuba River Sub is a “California Basement” (garage) layout, so since Winter has set in, I went over all of my rail joiners with a flat screwdriver, checked the joiners on the curves to make sure everything was even, ran my new “California Zephyr” just for fun (Okay, I’ve got some Diseasels, but steam is still alive and well), cleaned and re-lubed my new Sunset used brass Rio Grande ‘1550’ Mountain, did a little re-wiring on my under-table sound system, and when everything was up and running, sighed and wished that it were Spring so that I could get to work on some more scenery (I don’t do scenery in the Winter, here, too damp and takes too darned long to dry).
Oh, yah, I’ve got a dead spot on one of my Sinohara curved turnouts. Gotta fix that for SURE!
I installed the double crossover and the first 15 feet or so of track on my new layout. Rigged up a power pack to the in-place track and tested it with a couple of locos. That’s the first I’ve been able to run anything in about four years - it was a short trip to be sure but it felt reeeeeeeal good.
I accomplished nothing technically. I did however make more soda machines for my layout. I also practiced weathering with some of my mothers old earth tone make up she was getting ride of works pretty good. Also been slowly installing a decoder in my Athearn SW1500 making it Directional lighting.
I didn’t do very much. I installed and powered my Walther’s 90’ turntable (the finished one, not the kit). Found out I didn’t have track to connect to it, so right now it just sits and turns in circles with no way to get locos on or off! [sigh]
Turntable work for me, too. I finally bit the bullet and started the Atlas pit-bash I’ve been planning for months. I cut the pit all the way through the foam, and then put a piece of 1/4-inch masonite-like stuff on the bottom, mounted from underneath with 1/4-20 carriage bolts. The briidge is an Atlas deck bridge, which I cut in half horizontally so it’s only about an inch tall.
I’m going to install a false pit floor over the white square you see, which is built up from 8 or 9 layers of styrene. The pit walls will be a hydrocal stone wall casting.
I didn’t make ANY progress. Any layout time was spent operating. At the beginnning of Christmas vacation I ordered a bunch of MRR stuff. Of course, it won’t even ship till the end of this week. And now my vacation is almost over [:(](back to the grindstone tomorrow)
I finished the benchwork for the lower level (this was a 12 x 1 ft. shelf and then a 4 x 4 ft. table). So now the garage is completely encircled and can only be entered by crawling on the floor. It’s a pain but at least I’m young enough that it doesn’t bother me that much.
I also laid ~20ft. of track and finished another 4ft. section of the backdrop (painted plus added photos).
Anyway, this was a good amount of work though not as much as I had hoped to have accomplished.
Well my current ‘layout’ was a circle of 18" radius Atlas tru-track around the Xmas tree - but that’s gone now!! Actually it worked pretty well, used my BLI NW-2 and 3 40’ cars and a caboose alternating with Thomas, Annie and Clarabell.
I did get gift certificates for the local Home Depot and hobby shop to use to get the new layout going so that was nice. (I moved this summer, still getting the basement organized.)[:)]
I have been off on holiday since Dec 20. I go back to work on Wednesday. I posted pics in an earlier post yesterday 