The Evolution of the Plywood Empire Route

                   this is awesome LEW  

           You always have great stories in all your posts, on both real trains, 

                  and trains running on your layout, and I really love reading them all !!

           You are very fortunate to of been around so much train activity,

                   experiencing more things than I will probably ever read about.

            You have a "gold mine" of train photos, please keep them coming !!

                   looking forward to see, more of the, "Evolution of the Plywood Empire Route"...

                                                    Thank you...             

Thanks, Brian. We'll see how it goes, won't we. 

Lew, Thank you for putting the story together.  I do remember you moving those sidings around.

Meanwhile the East End evolved as well, the product of experience gained.

It started like this:

And then with the first track-plan change room was made for an industry:

Then two more industries were added:

And then this tweak was tested:

Then a big change came to the PER: a Lionel 282 Gantry Crane! Real Estate was developed so this wonderful Post War operating accessory would have a home front&center:

This mock-up shows where a stub siding was added for the Gantry Crane:

The Crane worked beautifully in this spot but after testing with operating sessions I decided to re-design the East End so that everything would fit and all East End traffic would come off the Mainline on a branch track. After moving Oil Creek Northward I added the necessary decking and laid track:

Thus the East End became an Operator's delight with switching there taking up to 40 minutes.

Another significant track-plan change was made between the East End and the West End: the elimination of the short run-around siding, going from this:

To this:

As well as being a simpler track-plan with no loss of operation interest, this change eliminated two track switches.

Those were all good changes!  In the midst of that, it looks like you painted the walls as well.  That must have been interesting with the layout in place.   

Yes, I can attest to the importance of doing all room prep work BEFORE constructing a foot of Benchwork but like so many others I was in a hurry to see trains run. I managed to not get paint on any of the beautiful trains though. 

Looks great Lew. A testament to "a layout is never done"

Like you, I'm making a change on my layout that has improved the operations of my RR.

Bob

geysergazer posted:

Yes, I can attest to the importance of doing all room prep work BEFORE constructing a foot of Benchwork but like so many others I was in a hurry to see trains run. I managed to not get paint on any of the beautiful trains though. 

I think your track work looks good very straight 

steve t

That is an interesting layout in a nice room with windows through which to view the outdoors. Much better than a layout like mine in a finished basement. Is your layout point-to-point or does it loop all the way around the room?

MELGAR

The most recent track-plan change was the elimination of the passing-siding/engine escape/runaround and the consequent necessary changing of  West End track switches such that all points face in the direction of travel from interchange to town.

First was the ripping up of track:

Gotta' break eggs to make an omelette!

Emperor Joseph II said of Mozart's newest opera that it had "too many notes!" and that is how I've been feeling: "too many tracks!" The Emperor suggested that Mozart should just "take some notes out" and I decided to take out some track....a passing siding, to be precise.

That is to say, I was not finding engine-escape moves to be operationally satisfying but rather just distraction from the real work of pick-ups and set-outs. So out it came. Track was re-laid in it's new configuration and everything put back in place.

The West End:

Studying the area I realized I could change things around a bit and gain a bit of open center space. This is supposed to be a spare bedroom and the Pike has been encroaching a little too much. The next small tweak pushed the front of the layout back 6"-8" while actually improving operation:

One more small tweak improved operation by creating another car spot for the Paint Factory on the Fuel Wholesaler's siding (covered hoppers of Titanium Dioxide pigment which are offloaded and stored in that tall white silo). The Paint Factory has the gray lighted storage tank and the yellow tank while the Fuel Wholesaler has two storage tanks (seen in the background): The West End as it is now:

The Paint Factory has (4) car-spots and the Fuel Wholesaler has (3) while the Paint Factory has a fifth spot on that siding as well.

The East End is now an Inglenook:

Four industries, (5) car-spots and room for switching maneuvers.

An overall view of the South wall showing the connection between the East End and the West End. My Atlas station finally found a perfectly suited spot with the Mainline in front and the East End Branch passing behind:

MELGAR posted:

That is an interesting layout in a nice room with windows through which to view the outdoors. Much better than a layout like mine in a finished basement. Is your layout point-to-point or does it loop all the way around the room?

MELGAR

It does continue around the room in a simple loop. The North wall and the return loop in the next room:

Trains usually make two loops before reaching their destination (unless I feel like watching it roll ). Most operating time is spent switching though. There has even been an evolution in Interchange operations. I started as many do by simply assembling trains on the off-wall (North wall) but I soon tunneled into the adjacent [sewing] room and installed a return loop there. Today (6) consists are in play on the PER, 4 of which are stored around the return loop:

Let me ask you something. Forgive me if you have mentioned this as I may have overlooked it. My layout is very similar to yours including the use of fastrack. Is yours noisy? My train is very noisy almost to the point of drowning out the train engine sounds. I’m thinking about spraying underneath the plywood with flex seal to see if it will dampen the sound echo. Thanks for posting your progress. I really like the plan.

I have no noise issues wrt Fastrack but the top speed on the PER is maybe 20smph. I know people do complain about Fastrack telegraphing noise. There  are threads here about it. IIRC one fix is to fill the hollow underside with silicone seal (a bit expensive for my taste).

I may try the silicone route if the flex seal underneath the plywood doesn’t work. Keep up the postings. I look forward to it.

Lew - you have a wonderful switching layout!  It looks like lots of fun to operate. Thanks for sharing the layout's story and photos.

Lew,

  Very nice. Hope you continue to make progress and post updated pictures.

Tom 

Very nice Lew.

An important driver of evolution on the Plywood Empire route has been the car-stoppers I invented and deployed at remote uncoupler locations. I put up a Topic laying out the whole story here:

https://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/...85#90547142152123785

so I'll just summarize here. After running Lionel PWC NW2s the Plywood Empire Route recently acquired three MTH PS3 SW1500s and a new era has begun. With speed control these engines make switching moves at a [scale] walking speed possible. Unfortunately Lionel “claw” couplers require a lot of force to couple so they need more like an Olympic sprinter’s speed and that defeats the realism of slow-speed switching. A switch to Kadee couplers would solve the problem BUT the only space available for a return loop/interchange track/fiddle yard requires an O31 circle so truck-mounted couplers must be used and no one yet offers a way to mount Kadees on MTH freight trucks. So I’m stuck with crash-coupling claws. What was needed was "brakes" for standing cars so I assembled and installed several such devices.

The basic bit is a Circuitron Tortoise slow-motion switch machine. It actuates a 5/32" brass tube which is fitted inside a larger 3/16" piece of tubing.  The 3/16" tube is friction-fitted and hot glued and the whole assembly is attached to the underside of the plywood decking:

Installed in the roadbed adjacent to an electromagnetic uncoupler, it looks like this:

In the raised position:

This is how it works:

The train approaching from the left is able to couple slowly because the tank car's truck-frame is securely stopped against the raised brass plunger.

Anyway, the thing is that because coupling became suddenly so easy and reliable switching became so much more satisfying and entertaining and this in turn drove Operations to evolve in the direction of more and more switching. While I am also a Looper with no intension of doing so, by now I could do away with the traditional train-watching and still have a satisfying pastime of operating an exclusively switching pike.