What did you do on your layout today?

On the mountains all week. Trying some different ground colors out in some areas before trees.

I ran the 1668E engine I repaired yesterday, runs like a champ!

Larry:

Your mountains look GREAT!!

Today, Chris and I finised wiring the yard on our upper level. All sidings work well. Our next step is to put down the snow blanket and screw down the track.

The second and last, a D&RGW version, of the two MTH RPO's I ordered in....hmmmm..

I think it was this century...came in.  No interesting ones have shown up in later

catalogs...in fact, I think the last catalog was pretty sparse of RPO's (at least, with

western roadnames).  Otherwise, since before Thanksgiving, I have accomplished NOTHING, nichts, nada, nary a thing, due to holidays and domestic chores like getting in a new appliance (for the price of a locomotive!).  Talk about unbudgeted expenses....

Reconfigured my 6x8 RealTrax O31 oval to 4x5 to see what I'll have left to test on after I build the 1st module of my new layout. All I can do is sigh................

( See photos below )The muse struck me one day this past week and I was off to the races building the huge ( in relation to my over all 88 square ft layout ) Mount Randolph on the Free State Junction Railway's Mountain Division.   Mount Randolph is named after my friend Randy Harrison ( of Harrison Trains LLC  and a forum member )  who has been an immense help to me on my layout, especially on the Mountain Division.  Actually I could not have done it without him. :-)

 

The reason for building Mount Randolph was due to my purchasing a Bollman Truss Bridge, from Vernon Peachy, at York.  I searched for this bridge for many years and one day I walk into the Orange Hall and bingo.... there it was at Vernon Peachy's booth.  No brainer, I bought it.  The original Bollman Truss Bridge is located one block from my house, as it span the Little Patuxent River in Savage, Md., where it carried a B&O spurr

to the Savage Manufacturing Company.  This particular Bollman Truss is actually one of about 100 bridges of this same design, which were the first iron suspension bridges used in the U.S. for RR purposes.  Wendal Bollman designed this bridge type and these bridges were used exclusively on the B&O.  Bollman also designed other kinds of truss bridge types for the B&O as well and some these bridges still exist too.

 

When I put the bridge on my layout as it existed before this new mountain division, I found the bridge too big.  The Bollman really needed something huge behind it in order for the bridge to be proportionate within my layout.  Thus I thought of tearing down my original mountain division, cutting a hole into the center of my layout to become a future lake over which the Bollman would cross, and build a HUGE mountain behind the Bollman.  I also took this opportunity to raise all the tunnel portals on the first tier of my layout to accommodate GG1 and MU car's raised pantographs when in operation.

 

The first tier of my layout uses Gargraves Phantom Rail with 2 main lines.  An elevated trolly line uses MTH Real Trax.  Originally for this redo of my mountain division I wanted to use MTH Real Trax, which I did put down, but when the switch did not work, I disassembled and used Gargraves track and a Gargraves switch.  

 

The photos here focus on the mountain itself and the Bollman bridge.  I was thinking to do the mountain in white, using a snow blanket, but Saturday morning I got carried away with the spray paint, only leaving a snow cap.  Nothing is permanent on the mountain as of yet.  I've just painted it and set some trees and lichen in place so I can get an idea.  I'm also trying out a snowcap mountain backdrop for placement behind Mount Randolph.  

 

For access to the track and power connection inside Mt Randolph, I have created a pull out drawer type of automobile tunnel.  See photos below.

 

 

 

 

BRAVO!!!! The mountain looks GREAT! Thank you for posting the pictures. I know what it took to get the mountain finished. You sir, have hit a home run!

Did some more wiring this weekend. Installed second transformer and wiring for accessories and switches. Wired the first accessory to the DCS AIU, an Atlas turntable. I used the detailed instructions from Barry's book and it worked great!
Tim C.

Tried to run a Atlas TMCC engine conventional, no luck so I am going to add that loop to my "Legacy" loops. Should have done that earlier but being a little lazy tried the other.

 

Brent

We are installing an Atlas turntable in a few weeks. What is Barry's Book? How do I get a copy of the instructions on how to hook the turntable to the MTH AIU?

 

Thank you.

http://mthtrains.shptron.com/p...k-2nd-edition-e-book

 

There's also a printed version on Amazon.

A Potential New Customer on the ICG

 

 

Amtrak City Of New Orleans on the ICG

I got a bunch of stuff cleaned out for the garbage man from the garage today with a lot more to go before I can build anything. Other than that, I did some NASCAR laps with my BigBoy and my C&O Allegheny along with the Weaver troop cars.

 

C&O Allegheny

 

BigBoy

I spent an hour on Saturday and two more Sunday prepping Tortoise switch machines.

Today my attention turned to a different aspect of the the turnout control project, the panel. All of the panels that I will be creating are intended for long term temporary use, and will only control turnouts that touch the mainline.

 

This panel has 16 toggles which will control 20 turnouts. The 4 crossovers are controlled by one toggle each.


I have 4 hours into this, with something like 3 more to go.


This is the area of the layout that it will control.

 

Patrick had to cancel for tomorrow due to the cold weather, but we are still on for Thursday.

 

Matt is coming over Wednesday, and it would be very cool if we could get a bunch of the machines installed. If I can get the panel finished tomorrow, we could have the first working turnouts.

More wiring to the upper level yard ws done today. Pilot holes were drilled in the track ties in preparation for screwing down the yard track. We have one more yard wire to pull. That is the power to the Lionel 8-bulb floodlight tower that we received today in the mail. Once that is in place, it is time to put down the snow blanket, screw down the track and move onto the double loop of elevated track that will surround the engine storage facility. I have included some photos of the yard and the other elevation project as it stands, now.

Good looking project there Randy.

Found 2 "S" curves I didn't notice before on my layout so I'm ripping up track to insert a small piece of straight into each.  Hopefully this will cure the problem.

 

Also gives me the chance to redo some ground cover I wasn't please with.

Larry: Thank you for the compliment. It should be really good when we are finshed. I lose my help at the end of January when my son, Chris, goes back to school. So, I am trying to get as much done while he is here. There will be more to come soon.

Disassembled the table and base. Kept everything for use as needed on the permanent layout, though mostly for scraps. Moved the temporary 4x5 oval to the dining room table and brought the cars inside.

Threading wire through conduit around 135 linear feet of around the wall benchwork.

I completely tore up my previous track plan and went with a mix of operation and running. It's a dogbone with a few turnouts now and a connecting track! I'll post pictures soon, the 1121 switches all got converted to constant voltage and as soon as I drill the holes for the wires and plug everything in, I'll post pictures.

We finished our yard area yesterday. The snow blanket was placed and all of the yard track was screwed into place. We now move onto the 5' x 6' engine servicing facility area.

Busy day today! Finally got my Disney monorail operational.  I was at my local Walgreens when I saw a $10 RC car.  I decided to buy it and gut it for my previously installed monorail which only operated manually.  Well noone was more suprised than me when it actually worked. Now the monorail starts, stops and has forward and reverse direction. It encircles my layout and even the Wife has tried it out and she actually likes it!

 

Heres a short video if I can get it posted....Pete

 

 

One more pic in case video did not work out

Pete

 

Randy you guys are kicking some serious butt on your layout!!!  Photos of your progress look great!  Congratulations on making such tremendous progress in such a short amount of time.  You are getting much closer to driving the golden spike. :-)

Took down the Christmas layout decorations, did Maintenance on the locos,  lubed and test ran my new Williams scale GG1 (It's getting DCS, it's a jackrabbit otherwise)

I have a Disney monorail. Can you post either a schematic of the wiring or photos of the internal wiring to accomplish what you did?

Thank you.

Also, how do you get such good running operation out of your monorail? Ours, with the battery power, is very slow and stops on certain joints in the track.

Randy, I will e-mail you with the mod since I do not want to hijack thread with this.

Pete

 

 

 

E-Mail sent!

Today I primed a façade building (from Ameri-towne), added some sidewalk to North Center Street, and repaired a Corgi-Birney's electrical pick up(it lost a screw, all better now)/ Also painted some rattan seats for a Japanese plastic trolley kit's interior, the seats are from Q car as is the new power truck. It will be Corry & Columbus Car 11 when done.....

After what seems to be endless snow & ice storms and temperatures steadily below zero, I finally got out to the train room today and ran some trains. This really felt good! Also got to take some photographs for use on this Forum.

ok Elliot... just because it got a tad nippy up in your part of the woods how come Patrick didn't make it LOL.

I can remember those nippy days n nights palm trees stink but sure beats a shovel LOL.

layout is looking good maybe once you get all the switches going you can give us a new video of all the areas your manifest of freight can go.

 

$oo

Continue this week to work on one area putting some different color vegetation on the mountains. I think when I start  planting trees (some day) it will bring it out  better. Still having fun.

Today a had a few hours to spend on the Mountain Division.  Started off by running a coal train through Mount Randolph.  I next removed the train and went to work on partially scenicing the mountain.  Really got into and had fun.  No where near complete as of now but am a bit closer to getting the Mountain Divsion where I want it to be.

 

Here are two photos one with the Bollman bridge removed and the other with the Bollman in place.  Enjoy!

Have been finishing a number of projects; am about done with this New Haven RPO/baggage combine which runs a head end car on my "Merchant's Limited" string of Osgood Bradley coaches.

It started life as a Lionel Blue Comet baby Madison combine. i removed the steps, filled the  4 side doors at the ends, moved the trucks 3/4" outward (necessitating new short shank couplers), filled two excess windows, added window grates, added a mail door on each side, fabricated from brass appropriate steps, painted Pullman Green (Scalecoat II), and added decals (pre the late `30's - early `40's updating). I still need to fabricate mail pick-ups for the new mail doors when i get some more brass.

 

jackson

 

 

Worked on my Lionel Construction crane:

 

https://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/t...14#24659873178231314

 

George

Yesterday, my son Chris got inspired and suggested we clean much of the CLUTTER out of the train room so that we had room to work. We did and found that much of what was there was dumpster fodder. Othe useable stuff was moved temporarily to our storage locker until we are ready to put it back into the layout.

 

After ther big cleaning, we had a clear path to our lower level scene, the city of Christopolis. Though it was not in our original plans, Chris decided to ad a bumper trolly route through the city. The track is in place but has not been screwed down and the bumpers have yet to bo installed. It looks great and will add a bit more animation to the city scene. Great work, Chris.

Pat: The mountain looks GREAT!!!!

Unfortunately, I am spending way too much time on the Forum instead of getting anything done on the layout.  I need to fix that right now.

 

Art