Welcome to my BLOG ! I hope this is the first post of many, many more.
BACKGROUND
Having been a modeler for the last 25 years, I have surprisingly little to show for my accomplishments. I think that is because I have collected stuff at train shows and off of eBay with the thoughts and dreams of, "someday, I'll do this..." That qualifies me mostly as an armchair model railroader.
About a year ago, I started building my benchwork for my HO scale empire after a basement flood. At one point, I had decals made for a fictitious railroad called the TranSouth System. I exchanged decals for a while, so you might have seen the logo in the past.
Even though I have a whole bunch of these decals left, I am not sure I like the logo any longer. I relocated from Texas to Indiana, so I am more interested in a Midwestern theme or maybe some Appalachia coal. I have thought about names like Midwestern Pacific (MWP) or something like MetroRail because I really like commuter push/pull service, street running and heavy duty, gritty, urban industrial settings.
THE LAYOUT
I started with buying some steel tube in two different sizes and making some bench supports that are strong enough to hold up a railroad with two main levels.
The tube on the top holds a valance which will be used for kit storage, holding lights for special lighting effects (color changing LED strings / lightning / or other ) The fascia will be used to hold railroadania, small pictures, metal stampings, etc.
The bottom level will hold a staging yard on this first wall.
The benchwork is made of 1 x 2.5" boards cut from high grade plywood. This is very strong and takes screws well. most joints are glued. The idea is that it is modular (kinda like the dominoes concept) yet designed to last!
These pictures were posted before in the discussion forums. A couple of comments indicated that such a linear look was not something that they liked. Well... It's my railroad. I have reasons for doing it the way I have done. One of my reasons for keeping the layout off of the carpet is to keep carpet crushing to a minimum. I have no plans to sell my home anytime soon, but at some point, I am sure it will happen. As others have learned, selling a house with a model railroad is often difficult. This room has really nice carpet in it and I do not want to have to replace it anytime soon. As it is said, "necessity is the mother of invention." I have designed and will soon be buiding layout support blocks. These will have an extremely small carpet contact points and should help keep the floor in good shape, while allowing me to "pull the layout off the wall."
I am cutting masonite into 1" strips and will use that for spline roadbed where there are just a couple of tracks. Any more than that, I will use solid plywood.
Having seen an article about EZ Mat many years ago, I started buying rolls of it on clearance and other sales.
This stuff comes with some surface primer and has a self adhesive backing, but it did not seem to stick well, especially at the ends. Once it is properly installed, it is essentially a 1/4" foam bed which should work nicely for sound absorption.
It works really well for large areas but I found that I had to use some contact adhesive such as 3M 90 High Strength and a roller to ensure good adhesion.
As it turns out, this layout is MUCH bigger than I ever imagined it would be. Initially, I thought it was small until I got the staging yard completed.
This staging yard is approx. 22' feet long from yard throat to the end of the stub tracks. Spacing is a little tight with only 2" track spacing. I am okay with this because it is my belief that hands should not be on the freight cars very often. NOTHING is a substitute for good trackwork. I am a little concerned about using the Atlas switches and had asked about improving them in previous Discussion Forum posts.
The bottom line is that with 11 tracks, all which are at least 15' long, that is A LOT of track. I estimate this yard can hold approx. 150 freight cars. That is way bigger than it looked on paper.
