Latest progress on Chugman's Layout New Holiday Video Added 11/25/2018

  Looking real good !

I'll follow your progress here. Quite an expansive and we'll planed layout. I admire your precision on every aspect. Great work.

Lookin good!    Another layout I would like to go vist someday eh

Very cool, Art! You'll need a towboat and some  barges for the Mississippi scene!

Chugman posted:

I have been posting the progress on my layout on the "What Did You Do on Your Layout" thread, but I was asked to start a new thread this time.  My son and I have been working on getting my fascias installed.  We left the hardest one to last which was the one around a tunnel.  This tunnel you enter from the left hand side of my curved stone arch bridge.  It is about 12 feet long and has my double-track mainline running through it.  Today we finished putting the top on the tunnel.  Access to the tunnel will be via a lift-out section on the far right side and by the sides in the balance of the tunnel.  Here are several pictures of the almost finished top.

 

I can't thank my son, Jim, enough for all his hard work the last few days on the layout.  He has made some impossible jobs go smoothly and get done.  Building new control panels is the next major job for the layout and he has begun that process.

Art

Art- glad you are starting a new thread too. I have been following your progress on the other page. Keep up the good work. Everything looks great so far.

Bob

Outstanding ART, nice to work on it with your son!  Keep up the good work.

Hey Art, what to keep the Bar high for the rest of us! Wonderful work!

Art , absolutely beautiful work !!!!! You should keep updating this thread

Thanks, Alex

EXCELLENT

rattler21 posted:

Art, Reference photos one and two.  Is there enough room for articulated engines?  If you don't have one you can bet your bottom dollar some one will want to run one on your layout.   John in Lansing, ILL

John, I have a spot inside another long tunnel that does not show in these pictures that will not let me run some articulated engines.  The uprights that hold the upper deck under my towns of Ruthven and Spencer do not have enough clearance.  When a friend brought his new Lionel Visionline Big Boy over the only place we could run it was on the upper branchline.  I feel badly about that, but I have never had any plans to run large articulated engines and only own one small steam engine which hardly ever gets run.  

And I just learned last night that my 21" California Zephyr cars are hitting my new tunnel liner on my freight mainline so I will have to change that.  I haven't been running passenger trains on that line, but I want to be able to.  During future operating sessions I plan to reroute passenger traffic over this section of freight mainline to bypass freight switching at my grain elevator complex that is only accessible from the passenger mainline.

Thanks for all your encouraging comments.

Art

Wow, great layout!  Please keep updating.

Art: It's not only the articulated engines and passenger cars, that wouldn't clear that area.  These cars: 89' Auto Carrier Rack have been a bigger problem with clearance for me.  I now use them for my test car.  Not only for width but also for height.  

Great work, Art! Keep us up to date as you continue working on this.

Nice work Art. 89' autoracks are the best clearance testers these days 

Fabulous, Art......put up some building pics....your kit-bashing is inspirational! I'd love to see another picture of your parking garage....

Peter

Putnam Division posted:

Fabulous, Art......put up some building pics....your kit-bashing is inspirational! I'd love to see another picture of your parking garage....

Peter

 

Thanks, Peter.  I do love working with buildings.

Art

Chugman,

That is a lot lf layout. It will be a doozy!

Ron H

Chugman posted:

Putnam Division posted:

Fabulous, Art......put up some building pics....your kit-bashing is inspirational! I'd love to see another picture of your parking garage....

Peter

 

Thanks, Peter.  I do love working with buildings.

Art

Isn't this fantastic? What a great scene! I can't wait to see it completley detailed.

Peter

Still one of my all time favorites, an amazing layout. I am sure your layout will remain near the top of many folks' lists. Also nice to see someone else that likes diesels too! That is all I have here, no steam. Also glad you started a separate thread for updates. I will be following along closely. Good Luck!

Looks great Art. Regards, Mike Mellon

Art

great work. This is going to be one fantastic layout.

alan graziano

Hi Art: All looking great, just came from your YT Channel. I do recall you saying you took a year off. Any plans to come back to YT?

Gary

Well Done Art! I like all those bridges too. 

trainroomgary posted:

Hi Art: All looking great, just came from your YT Channel. I do recall you saying you took a year off. Any plans to come back to YT?

Gary

 

Hi Gary - Yes, I have always enjoyed YT and do hope to get some new videos up one of these days.  

Art

Art,

Thanks for starting new thread. Really look forward to your layout progress.

Your layout and work are awesome.  I am inspired by all of the pictures and your updates.

I still look at your YT videos and blog page for ideas.

Thank you for the inspiration.

Tom

 Looks like the makings of a fantastic layout in a really great setting. At this stage of building you can start to see progress every week as it all comes together. I'm at the point of detailing the layout. I enjoy this aspect of the hobby even though at times it can be tedious. I often times miss the doing the big projects. Looking forward to your future updates.

Beautiful!

Art you really have built a fine layout, there is so much to look at and take in...very interesting.  I can really see the effort that has been made and the attention to the details.  Spectacular modeling...thanks for sharing it with us all.

Laidoffsick posted:

Nice work Art. 89' autoracks are the best clearance testers these days 

Yup, that's what I use. Those ladders stick out pretty far on curves. If they clear, you're golden. For height you need an MTH husky stack. Tallest car ever (unless you run your postwar crane with the boom all the way up).

Art,

Did you leave room for the Kraft Champaign, Ill. facility so you can smell BBQ sauce and macaroni/cheese being produced? LOL!

The layout looks good. Coming along nicely.

On our last work day we added a siding to the location of my future flour mill.  One of my operating themes will be the movement of grain and flour cars that will supply my Wonder Bread Bakery.  I will have local grain elevators that will collect the farmers crops, then grain hoppers will take that to the large regional elevator complex and from there it will go to the flour mill.  So, I need receiving tracks for incoming grain cars and outgoing tracks for flour cars.

I had one 072 left-hand switch left and wanted to find a way to use it rather buy a new right-hand switch.  We experimented with many combinations of short pieces of curved track and flex track and finally decided on what you see in the attached pictures.  Oh, I found out that Atlas flex track doesn't flex nearly as well after it has been painted.  Next steps are to build the retaining wall behind the flour mill, add track bumpers, paint the track, and start building my flour mill.

Art

I can see the wiggle to modify for the siding. Critical thinking for your operation. What a great yard ladder. I am thinking about moving a couple of turn outs so I can switch cars w/o fouling the main. 

Art,

Thank you for starting your new topic for construction of your layout!  I can see having Jim available to help with some jobs is a lifesaver!  Please tell him he is helping to make a lot of folks out here in Forumland happy by seeing your layout come to life!   Could you post a photo of Jim sometime, so we can put a face with his name?  

Art, great looking work you have going on there, I have to agree with above, Great looking yard, looks like enough room to part several cars just waiting to be picked up. Love your updates between you and Elliot, Max and a whole lot of other people here I never run out of things to read and think about!

Mark Boyce posted:

Art,

Thank you for starting your new topic for construction of your layout!  I can see having Jim available to help with some jobs is a lifesaver!  Please tell him he is helping to make a lot of folks out here in Forumland happy by seeing your layout come to life!   Could you post a photo of Jim sometime, so we can put a face with his name?  

Mark - I forgot to respond to your request.  I looked through my "train related" pictures of my son, Jim, and found one I don't think he will mind if I share.  It was taken a few years ago at one of my operating sessions.  Jim is the fellow in the center of the picture with a burgundy shirt on and a baseball cap.  He was operating the Proviso freight yard that day with a smiling crew.

Art

Another request that I have been getting frequently was for a copy of my track plan.  My son, Jim, starting entering it into RR software, but I kept making changes to it.  After we completely redone my former Intermodal yard into what I now call my Eola classification yard, he began updating the track plan again.  Then we added a siding at my future flour mill and he had to do another update.

I think that I am finally done with track revisions.  I don't have any more room or switches, so I should be done.  So here are the copies of the track plan.  It is shown three ways:  A complete version with the upper line in red and the lower in black, an upper only version, and a lower only version.  I want to annotate some of the scenery features and yards, but that will come later.

Art

This is really looking good Art 

Clem k

Moving right long, Art--thanks for the update in your own build thread.

Chugman posted:

 

Mark - I forgot to respond to your request.  I looked through my "train related" pictures of my son, Jim, and found one I don't think he will mind if I share.  It was taken a few years ago at one of my operating sessions.  Jim is the fellow in the center of the picture with a burgundy shirt on and a baseball cap.  He was operating the Proviso freight yard that day with a smiling crew.

Art 

Art,

Glad to see who is responsible for helping you!  Thank you and thank Jim!