A construction update

I've spent most of 2017 adding benchwork to the southeast wall of the section house. It's been a slow grind. Other other things have sucked up my hobby time. Also, because much of the time I'm working on the layout by myself, there's a limited amount that I can do a few hours a week. Anyway, I thought I'd share some progress photos.

So in March I went to Tulsa for the LDSIG/OPSIG weekend where I was asked to present. Of course, I took the opportunity to operate too, including on one of my favorite layouts, Jim Senese's Kansas City Terminal.

Bernie Kempinski was the featured speaker and I was able to get him in a selfie while he was selling some of his great books.

I also operated on Steve Davis' KCS which I first saw when it was in about the same stage my layout is now.

Tom Fausser has a new layout based on a waterfront warehouse district in New Jersey.

By the end of April I had brackets up and the beginnings of an upper shelf.

I needed to remove the track from the section of spline the was completed because the latex caulk didn't work well. You can see the track has come unglued here.

I had a few folks over for a work session including Matt Latham here with Eric Mumper behind him. Did I mention that you can never have too many clamps?

Things were starting to get messy as I added spline.

After the work session I stuck this piece of curved Masonite backdrop in to help give the illusion of a backdrop. This piece was from my old Camas Prairie layout and it's been held together as a curve for the last 14 years or so.

Sometimes you forget to read the fine print in eBay auctions.

With the track in, by the end of July it was time to add some paint to the valence and backdrop.

 I told TJ about how much fun painting was and he couldn't wait to help.

One of the dangers of painting track above your head.

 My resistance soldering iron is my absolute favorite tool for adding drops.

 In August, I started adding foam base scenery.

Unlike most of the US, 2" foam isn't easy to find in North Texas. This came from a company in Lewisville that makes walk in refrigerators. Foam goobers were everywhere.

It does make a very nice flat surface and is super easy to work with a hot wire cutter of a saw. This section is between Lodge Grass and Parkman and will be rolling hills covered in cheatgrass with the north end of the Bighorns in the distance. Below is the Billings yard.

At the end of the peninsula is Lodge Grass. The buildings below are just being stored, but the Billings freight house and TOFC will be at this end of the yard.

I used small pieces of thin Luan plywood as a screw base for the Tortoises and then hot glued the base to the Masonite spline.

As of August 15, this is the state of the expansion. I spent a couple evenings vacuuming up all the drywall dust and foam goobers before I start removing more drywall to support the lower deck.

I need to build a swing out bridge at the door for emergency egress. The upper deck is wired to the west end of Parkman, which is above the turntable. I still need to add two more Tortoises and more foam scenery to give the area a hilly feel. I also need to figure out how to create some photo backdrops of the distant hills and mountains. I'd like to get back to operating, but I want to have track in along the wall on the right so the trains have some place to go past Billings.

Drop me a line if you are interested in visiting. I work on the layout most Saturdays and Sundays in the afternoon and evening.

Holiday update

I took a couple weeks off after the DFW Interchange but one thing that was nagging at me was the lack of staging. I remember reading that my SP&S buddy Bob Willer in Kansas City had written a short article in Model Railroad Planning a while back describing his battleship staging yard. This is portable staging yard that can be moved around as needed. I decided something similar was in order.

Starting with the 4 dominoes from the switching layout that Matt Latham and I built for the 2013 LSR convention in Irving, I started working on a staging yard ladder that takes off from the end of the layout near the Yellowstone River bridge. The staging yard track is also salvaged. I used Altas #6 switches from the old layout and Micro Engineering code 83 flex track. The old switching layout had 1/2" Homasote covering it.

A couple weeks later, another domino and more track. I wasn't working on the layout ever night like I was leading up to the DFW Interchange.

By the second week of December I had use all four dominoes and all the track from the switching layout, but a test showed is wasn't quite long enough. Oh, and I had wired the lead so that trains didn't stall out.

By Christmas, I was able to show my mom my layout progress. A lot of changes since she had seen it.

By the end of December I had added a 5th domino and had all the track in, making the staging yard 20 feet long. It will be interesting to see how I move it.

July Progress

July was a very busy month. After the open house in June the layout room was clean and ready to be torn up again. Of course, the bad thing is that when the room is clean I can never find my tools, so I spend most of my time hunting.

After the convention, this is what the Billings yard looked like. I needed to figure out a way to get the turntable pit installed close to the backdrop.

Yard looked like a stub yard at the beginning of July.

I decided to cut a template with a big plunge router and then use a trim router to cut the actual hole. 

Here is the crappy trim router from Harbor Freight. It died about 3/4 of the way through and I had to finish with a rotozip.

This is what the hole looked like before I removed the template.

And with the pit dropped in. I still need to get the correct screws to hold it firmly in place.

It didn't take long to lay the rest of the yard tracks.

A closer view of the west end of the yard ladder.

I had to insert ties in the gaps where the flex track comes together.

At the end of July I went to Durango, Colorado with Speed to take the Soundtraxx Academy. It was a lot of fun and one of the highlights was seeing their surface mount assembly floor. Here is a production worker testing decoders using a functional tester that they have special built to emulate a locomotive.  

We rode the Durango and Silverton on Saturday with the Soundtraxx group.

On Sunday we went over to Chama and rode the Cumbres and Toltec. It was a spectacular weekend and I highly recommend it to anyone.

May progress

My big event for May was a trip to Ireland with my mom. We came and went from Dublin, but the majority of the 10 days were spent in the west - mostly Mayo where my mom's grandmother left in 1900 when she was 19 years old. I also made great progress on the layout in order to be ready for the NMRA region convention in June.

The typical mall bookstore in Dublin had an amazing selection of train magazines.

A hobby shop on the north west side of Dublin mostly had plastic vehicle models and Hornby trains.

The line to Kiltimagh has been abandoned, but the depot remains and serves as a museum.

Back home, I continued to lay track.

This pano was taken where the slight bend is around the furnace closet. You can see the bucket on this photo and above.

One of the biggest challenges in linear layout design is the turnback blob. I am using curved turnouts from Walthers to add crossovers in the blob.

This side of the peninsula is primarily the Billings warehouse district and passenger station.

By the end of May, most of the switching area was in and I had moved around to the other side which is mostly the Billings yard.

April Progress

April was a pretty productive month. A lot of changes took place on the layout. Mostly centered around the Billings passenger station and warehouse district, but I also put the connection to the other side of the section house in by adding shelves along the wall in what used to be the bathrooms.

On the first Saturday of April I had a group of guys from the division over to see the progress. I gave a clinic on the spline benchwork I used on the upper deck.

I had my two best helpers painting sky.

Katy is a great helper and her attention span is infinitely longer than her brother's. Here she is mounting the top of the valance to the wall where the bathrooms used to be.

I picked up some LED strips to add some light for the lower deck. I went ahead and doubled up the LEDs, but I think another two strips will be needed to make it bight enough. That's makes the cost about $48 for 16 feet plus a $10 power supply. At $3 a bulb, the light strings are about $52 for 16 feet - but produce a lot more light.

With both shelves in along the wall where the bathrooms used to be, I was able to see where the Yellowstone River crossing is going to be. Somewhere I have a third bridge. I'll paint them all black. The tree boxes also need to be built. I was thinking about kitbashing these Walthers kits into 150' bridges. They are a little short now. The middle pier is from Chooch and the concrete abutment is from Walthers.

Starting to get some track along the downtown Billings section. The LED lights aren't on in this photo but the lights in the valence provide good light for the front of the layout.

More painting for Katy. I recycled masonite from Shane's old layout here. I'm not sure I like it the way it is, but it was easier to work with than the sheetrock. The Homasote is painted with some light brown Oops paint I picked up that is perfect. I need to figure out some kind of cover for the breakers that I can paint blue and will be easy to remove in an emergency.