Looks good 

Looks good 

Greening Up

Moving forward on the scene the base layer of static grass and ballast is down at the Urbandale runaround.

This is the first of what will be many layers of scenic materials. It also represents the final long stretch of "wilderness running" on the Grimes Line, which means I need to move to working on the more industrial parts of the layout.

James

Grass

I like your base ground cover.  What brand/color/length(s) of  static grass are you using?

Farm Pasture

Thanks Rob,

I'm using Scenic Express Farm Pasture as my base. Two passes gives me the depth I want and the blend has enough color variety that I don't feel the need to add additional shades. I'll of course go back and add additional materials on top of this, but its a start.

James

NICE WORK

Looks great. Makes me think of my wifes hometown in Council Bluffs Iowa. So, where do you find IAS model locos? Did you custom paint them? I model the UP in the Council Bluffs area on my layout and i have seen IAS trains in and about the yard there. Would like to have a few on my layout as well. Not to hard to weather as they keep thier equipment looking brand new all the time. Unlike the UP.

Looking good!

James,

This is really looking good!  Can't wait for the next set of pictures!

Rick

IAIS Motive Power

The Iowa Interstate locomotives are Athearn units released a few years back. I modified the shells to fit on an Atlas drive and detailed them following my friend Joe Atkinson's lead. Joe models the Iowa Interstate's Sub 4 West End from Atlantic to Council Bluffs, Iowa in 2005. His layout was featured in the 2011 edition of Model Railroad Planning.

For the record I consider my modeling a 2 and his a 9.94 on the scale of prototype fidelity.

The IAIS does a great job of keeping their units clean, but I need to dust up the trucks and fuel tanks to better match the prototype.

James

Shut off for crossing signals?

Reading this post reminded me that in the City Of Industry/Walnut area of So Cal the U.P. main has probably 6 or more grade crossings approaching the Industry Yard.  Often a train will stop just short of a crossing waiting for clearance to enter the yard.  When stopped as close as 5 feet from the crossing, the gates go up and the crossing signal ceases flashing.  When the train has received clearance to proceed, the crossing flashers are activated, and the road allowed to clear of traffic, then the gates come down and the engineer blows the horn and starts the train to move into the yard.  I haven't looked at the electronics involved, but am wondering how difficult it would be to put a switch inline between the sensor and the signal allowing the operator to shut off a crossing signal if working a train close to grade crossing where the road would not be blocked by a train?

Thanks for the info.

Thanks for the info James. I will see if i can find any of those athern units.

GCP Options

Not an issue at all.

I use Logic Rail Technology's Grade Crossing Pro to control my crossing signals. They allow either automatic triggering using photocells or IR detectors or can be manually triggered. Overriding the system is as simple as flipping a switch.

However...

On the prototype Meredith Drive is about half a mile from the north switch on the runaround, space I had to compress on my layout. While they've got no issue with triggering the crossing gates I've got to be careful. I didn't want to manually trigger the circuit since it's automatic on the real thing. Hence the need to shorten the runaround.

James

Weekend Update

First batch of trees went in yesterday in between troubleshooting a Tsunami decoder. The Urbandale runaround has a rather dense tree line to the east/rear of the main track so I wanted to fill the space with a lot of foliage.

 
IAIS 708 leads Train NTSW-14 through the South switch of the Urbandale runaround

James

One Last Update

Finished up the trees and most of the scenery along the Urbandale runaround. I'm going to continue to add underbrush over the next few days to thicken up the scene, but it's definitely an improvement over what was there 48 hours ago. I'm going to take a break from construction and just operate for a while. Right now I need to get the layout room cleaned up.

Thanks everyone for your kind words.

James