Photographs for your consideration and comment

Pictures outdoors for now ..

Bottom right to left is the Main, Bottling Plant (Hawaiian Water), run around, sugar mill spur, Main Line up to Wye, Hotel track, and Mainline with Passenger train.

Track!

Ahh, the smell of fresh plywood is invigorating, and placing the track is fun...will look forward to seeing this develop. Looks like you can have some interesting operations, I like the bottling plant...something you don't often see modeled.

Too much track?

Verne: Thanks! I like this part. Seldom do I lay it out full size but the Hotel needs some breathing room so here I am. Also been following Rob's blog and love the simplicity of his track work. A mine with a single spur and the graceful lines that he gets through the scenery makes me wonder if the Ellison influence is too strong. Could I do more with less track? 

Like many of us, I operate mostly alone so giving me things to do is also appealing. With the future of computer controlled trains and onboard cameras it seems as though others could conceivably run a train from Arizona or Texas by sitting at the computer and watching the signals. For now it's just me. 

Ill give it another week and see what other's thoughts are as I am modifying shelving brackets to screw to the wall. 

More soon!

Neil

Cut out the cookie

Not being too patient I suppose but bit the bullet and traced the track layout onto the ply wood and cut out what didn't belong. I sure hope no one says "How will you switch the .. with a grade outside of both ends of town?"  

My Homosote is all warped and no one carries it anymore so it may need to sit under some weight for a while. 

Neil

Plugging along

or, chugging along. Once all my warped Homosote was cut to shape and glued to the plywood I let it dry under some weights my brother in law gave with some sort of storage bench - well that's how I use it. 

Starting with the switches first to show how I lay them out in place right over a FastTrax template glued to the roadbed. The only drawback is that the On30 switch ties are not as deep as cross ties. So, I build up those with cut lengths of cross ties. Easy-peasy. 

I like to start with a frog rather than the stock rails as each is made to order and not a specific angle. These are between a 6 & 7 frog spiked down and the stock rails going in after locating where the points will meet and filing a place for them to mate. 

i remembered to drill for future under table switch motors! Once all the pieces are in place the soldering iron will come out to set things in guage forever (?). 

BTW my ties are wild and loose on purpose.  Once the rails and ballast goe down it looks right. Right now it looks weird - I know. 

Comments and suggestions are always welcome. Not many modelers on the Big Island to get feedback from. 

Neil

Finally had some time to lay more rail

 The main to the left will come up from the junction along a stream and past the bottling plant. After some research it turns out that the wealthy Hawaiians actually have been bottling flavored soda water for almost 100 years prior to my period. The bottles were hand blown and become quite collectable. Not sure if one was ever served by rail but will soon!

Below is looking the other direction. A passenger car has been set out at the hotel spur opposite the sugar mill. The main heads up to a wye a few miles beyond. 

BEAUTIFUL !!!!

Beautiful work !! Keep us posted.

O Scale

Thanks Nick! I have following your build and see that you built your own track as well. This is one of my favorite parts of the hobby. 

This town, I realize, could occupy my time for a long while even if not connected to the rest of the layout. It is 12' long and not very wide but everything in O scale, even narrow gage, is really big compared to HO.  It resides on our porch outside so is not very easy to work on at night. With lights on the bugs are overwhelming! 

It looks like Hurricane Guillermo is now downgraded to a tropical storm but will still be working it's way up our coast in the next couple days. Tut tut, looks like rain. 

Neil

Chunky Trackwork

Neil - love that chunky O scale track - it has real presence.

Also, you have a superb 'natural' backdrop

Any problems with warping (of anything on the RR) due to high humidity?

Rob Clark
Cornhill & Atherton RR

Warping

Rob - Thanks! I love the chunky, hunkered down look and hope to move on the modifying my Bachmann models to get down. 

My roadbed is Homosote (lots of discussion since Joe's editorial). I buy stuff years in advance and the Homosote was no exception. It warped badly in storage but sat under weights for a few days and glued down flat as a pancake onto the plywood. 

The first sections I built were done the same way but I was dismayed to find that I'd built a warp into them! They have been screwed down to the L girders for a year or so and seem stable. It was depressing to see the train go over the joint and couplers separate 

Time will tell but our humidity is pretty consistent at 80 to 100% (that's what we tell the tourists anyway). 

Neil

Humidity/hurricane

Ahh yes, too familiar with humidity and hurricanes down here in Florida. So are you planning to keep the layout in the porch ?  Because I was planning to do an outdoors O scale layout on the side of my house. I have a slab on the side that is 12' x 90' that is not being used at all and was planning to do a simple loop to have continuous run  to break in my engines. Our wet season is in the summer. I have no shelter on that side off the house at all, so it will be wide open.

Train Room

Nick: It actually rains here a lot - up to 240" a year (20'!). Below is half of my former drafting studio at home. As I shifted to more computer drawings the physical space for drafting and layout space became less important and this space became a depository for old books and magazines, children things, music equipment, and anything broken that needed fixing (I see rolls of tracing paper in the photo, lower center). 

This area is much further along now but I want to wait until Haleiwa (Hall-Ā-ē-va) is installed over the staging on the left before taking pictures. Small rewards - or maybe a teaser? 

Neil

Golden spike!

Finished the five switches and track work on this section and felt so happy that I made my wife dinner.  Can't wait to do some test runs and a little switching. I've been adding fishing weights to my box cars (7-7.5 oz each!) and love the way they go through the turnouts. Cheers!

No pictures today as I worked up until sunset. With lights on the bugs would drive me inside anyway!

I added a poll for fun. "Like" without commitments

Neil

https://www.facebook.com/mrhmag/posts/1100839273278314

CONGRATULATIONS !

CONGRATULATIONS !   Avery good feeling after finishing laying tracks.

Water

It finally quit raining here for a couple days so, while dodging Mosquitos ...

Couple more pictures

I have been thing of adding a dam and try to bring some indoor lighting to the hotel like they got up at the Queen's palace so we can attract them kind of folks out to the country. The board and clamp are where it is intended to go.

I 

First time using envirotex so am happy so far.  After some grass and weeds I hope to decoupage the surface to indicate motion. Almost hate to see that glossy surface all go so we'll see.

Thanks for looking!

Neil

Looks like that rain got some

Looks like that rain got some water on the layout, maybe you should have brought it inside?

Cool!

Nice water Neil, and it looks like the curved backdrop on the sloped ceiling worked out too!

Side note:

What are you referring to here?  - Oh, do you mean the post on Facebook?

Thanks, Neil

It's a treat watching this come together.

And please, send more rain clouds up here. We could use a Pineapple Express!

New Garden Railway?

@Rob - Hey now, that's not a bad idea. This 12' section could be my little garden railroad. Since my engines have batteries there is no worry about the electrical ....hmm

@Bill - too funny. The "other" train room still has a sloping ceiling to deal with. God's version is pretty nice though. 

@Paul - Thanks! I'll be up your way for the national show so will pack as much Hawaiian water as I can carry. 

Neil

ps Rob it's a good thing Leroy ain't here as this stuff takes days to set up. I've been going out with the propane torch to just burn off the bugs lol

Stream Bed

Envirotex looks great.
How did you prepare the stream bed before the pour ? - I'm interested because I'm close to a similar task.

Rob Clark
Cornhill & Atherton RR

Layers and more to come

Thanks Rob. I honestly have had the material for years. It took a lot of reading other posts here and weblogs that others here point me toward (hobbes for one) before I got the itch to get going. 

After the foam was glued and shaped I filled gaps with sparkle and painted the whole thing with my goop (a bunch of colors at the local hardware store were on sale for $10 per gallon so I mix a little of this and that ...). While wet I can't help sprinkling on some ground cover just because. 

Once dry the stream bed was "poured" with soupy plaster. It turned out to be more like yogurt than pancake batter so had to spread it with an old brush. This was a disappointment but when dry the lumpy areas were easy to sand down and the low spot weren't too low.  The stream bed got a couple of coats of gloss black just to find the weird spot - plus it looks cool at that point. 

My wife said it looked too black.  I have a bunch of paints for my backdrops so just played with the colors until it looked ok but still left the deep black spot show through.

The rock would have been easy to harvest from somewhere nearby but I've had the flu this week and didn't feel up to the exclusion. Instead, some crumpled aluminum foil in a pie tin served as a mold that got a (correct) soupy plaster pour. When dry it went into a sock in pieces and bead with a hammer until I was happy. All stuff I could do at home in the rain. These were colored with simple alcohol and a few drops of ink. 

I'm too fussy about little stuff so tell myself that random is good. The rock went in the stream bed pretty much where they fell. I removed a few from the center of the bed but soaked it all in wet glue (about 25% glue with water and a few drop detergent). 

From there I followed the instructions on the Envirotex box. The first coat was barely enough to cover the whole area but gave me an idea of how much to use on the next.  This layer had some bubbles. I should have left them but tried the propane idea to pull them out - too much and it will burn!

This stuff stays tacky a day or two so I read some other sites that suggested adding a little green Floquil. The next coat was much thicker and I wanted the Hawaiian blue sky reflection so put a few drops of blue in the mix. This time I have just left it alone except to burn off a bug or two. 

Neil

Neil, I am going to have to

Neil, I am going to have to let Leroy know how famous he has become he is really enjoying his notoriety. After the last time when we placed the wet paint sign it has become a club joke that we need Leroy after every painting project we undertake and he loves being called upon as the official tester.

After my last video had a brought to you by for the Erwin screw company we will be doing one for our man Leroy and filming a video in the company town named after him. Leroy is really a good scenery builder and since he built the town I named it after him much to his protests and the name has stuck, he even refers to it by that name now with pride I might add.

The Blue

Neil - thanks for the information on the stream bed. The blue is inspired and gives it a great feel - well done !

Rob Clark