Progress Photos

I did take time to snap a few photos whenever I reached significant milestones, so I'll go ahead and share them here. In my last blog post during 2010, I had just finished repainting my garage walls that had previously been covered with shelf racks.  A few months later, after deciding against building a multi-deck layout, I got busy on the benchwork. 

Here are some views of how it looked as of early December, 2010:

Northwest corner, future site of loco terminal, looking north

Northwest corner, looking west

North peninsula, future site of classification yard - looking east

South peninsula, northern side, future site of industrial park - looking east

South peninsula, northern side, looking west

South peninsula, southern side, future site of semi-rural main line - looking east

Coming next: Installation of blue-sky backdrop.

Working from Back to Front

One thing the Coach* advised me as soon as I finished building the benchwork, was to avoid ever having to lean over - or sit on - my trackwork to make structural changes.  With that in mind, I started by first laying the staging tracks since they were the farthest back.  This included not just attaching the track, but wiring it as well, running test trains over it.  I wanted to finish everything on this rear track before starting on the stuff closer to the front.

[* "Coach" is what I nicknamed the guy who convinced me to tear down the old layout and build this new one.]

My next step was to paint and install the backdrop panels.  I was totally amazed at how they transformed the space by hiding the windows and the ugly garage doors:

This helped me maintain enough enthusiasm to continue with the rest of the tracklaying.

Glad to have you back.

Ken, Glad to have you back. Looking good.

Tom Wilson 

I have a concern about the ramp by the engine terminal.

It looks like a few short pieces of plywood butt joined together rather than one piece.  One piece of plywood that is bent up to make a transition into a grade will make a natural easement.  The transition from level into a grade is called a "vertical curve" and it is even more important to have those curves eased than the curves in your track work.  Almost any vertical curve that is not properly eased will result in knuckle couplers coming apart when a train goes through that section. 

Secondly, when you put a piece of plywood on top of another piece of plywood to make that grade, you need to deal with the thickness of the plywood.  You can make a ramp to gradually transition up to the second ply, but it is better to cookie cut your plywood top to start the grade.  An additional advantage  to cookie cutting the plywood is that you get an easement into the vertical curve.  If you need to splice two pieces of ply on a grade, use a splice plate made of plywood underneath to make sure that you have not installed a vertical curve into the grade.

...and I'm glad to be back!

Thanks Tom,

I wasn't sure I'd get even this far, but I did - and *dang* it feels good!

That grade isn't actually so bad...

Russ,

I hear ya - If this was a main line I guarantee I would've never put in such a steep grade!  But there's only going to be 4-5 cars being pushed up on it at any one time, so no worries about broken couplers.  It leads to a pair of stub-ended interchange tracks, so the locos will always be at the lower end.  I've tested it out a few times with P2K geeps and it appears to be working fine.

I hope to start hosting operations in ~ another month, before I put in any major structures or scenery.  These sessions will reveal any unanticipated weaknesses that can [hopefully] be easily corrected.  If my local peddler crews complain about that grade, I'll redo it as you suggested.  Thanks for the tip.

Finally - Some Trackwork!

The period between late October 2011 and January 2012 was a whirlwind of 20-hour layout workweeks.  I suspect I may be bipolar, because during these days I often stayed up until 1:00am, arose at 5:00am the following day, and didn't suffer any ill effects of sleep deprivation - go figure?

Before I put down any track, I covered the yard areas with sheet cork that I bought in bulk from an online school supplies dealer, Home Depot and Lowes stopped selling this stuff a few years ago.  As soon as the cork was down, I covered it and all the other visible surfaces with brownish-colored latex paint, to prevent the layout from looking totally like a Plywood Central.  It will be much easier to blend in turf and foliage on areas already colored like dirt.

My layout has 5 separate power districts: (1) staging; (2) main line; (3) classification yard; (4) engine terminal; and (5) the steel mill.  I focused on one power district at a time: Laying the track, soldering-on the feeder wires, installing and soldering the buss wires, and test-running some of my fussiest locos and rolling stock.  I found it much easier to avoid being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of unpleasant work if I separated my chores into manageable chunks. 

Once all my track was in place, I test-ran a few trains over every inch of it to make sure every individual section had feeders (i.e., not depending only on rail joiner connections).  Then I spent the early days of February installing Tortoises on all of the hard-to-reach turnouts.  

And that is where I'm at today.  Once I declutter the layout surfaces and do a once-over with the Shop-Vac, I can start hosting op sessions once again...woohoo!

Here are some more recent progress photos.  Still lots of tools, hardware and junk lying around, and none of the new tracks are glued - only spiked in place.  I don't want to have any track permanently attached in case I discover early-on that some of it needs re-positioned.

Starting in the northwest corner, here is a view of the classification yard looking east:

The engine terminal tracks [if you can see them thru the clutter], looking west:

The classification yard, looking west, with northern wall staging tracks visible in the background - these are disguised to look like a distant part of the yard.

The main line and passing siding thru the industrial area on north side of the southern peninsula, looking east:

CSX train in staging along the east wall: Now you see it...

...and now you DON'T:

Looking north toward the throat of the classification yard; drill track is on far right, main line bypass on left.

Last but not least, my one spaghetti-free area: semi-rural main line thru south side of the southern peninsula 

Since I had plenty of leftover flextrack, I decided to add a second track In the steel mill for coal hoppers.  This will make the rotary dumper crew's job much easier, having that extra spur to park empties on.