What did you do on your layout today?

Mark Boyce posted:

c.sam posted:

Progress continues on the new club layout with all of the benchwork roughed in and a lot of new track down. This thing is really big!

A new member has come along a few weeks ago and enjoys wiring - thank goodness. He's about 15 years younger than us old fellas and most welcome. Thanks Larry!

Anyone else out there want to be a part of this from 'early on'?  Come visit!

 

Looking mighty good Sam!!  I'm glad you got a new member; and he likes wiring!  Hooray!!  What is the exterior building construction about in the photo I forgot to include?

Mark,  the building belongs to the Buffalo Creek Vacations business and will be used as their office, laundry & storage. Supposedly, they will make it look like a station. They've graciously given us the 30' x 50' open upper level for our layout. The Seaboard caboose is the first of 4 that they are converting into 'hotel' rooms. Our layout will become an additional 'attraction' for them when we're further along.

I just finished painting and installing several castings on the layout. First, I split a grouping of birds up into two segments, half of them are now pigeons, and the other half are crows. The crows, naturally, are in the cornfield or sitting on the posts around it. I kept one in my extra parts box for the eventuality of getting a scarecrow someday.
Next, I painted and weathered enough shovels for all of the locomotives, and placed them on the fireman's side of each tender. It just seemed to be needing that. Then, I finished the passenger car step stools, weathered them, then place them on the back decks of each end of each passenger car.

Adriatic posted:

Said "uh oh".

Wow, some people are known to have a few screws loose or missing some marbles.  I see in your case, one came loose and fell on the track.....  

Feng shui..... BUT fung shway would be a cool name for a funky, swaying jazz tune

I "shoveled snow"  and shifted things around so my new station would fit the Christmas layout. I really had no idea why I had decided to paint that piece of foam grey.  I tried it as a landing off the castle steps; as a loading platform by the rails; and even moved it to 2 other layouts where it looked....  like nothing. Its a little better here imo.

  A bit more snow around the steps, some more fussy shifting things about, and I think it will be ok. I think the rink and tiny tree need to come forward more, but I want paths between snowpiles too,  and to still retain the lights on the ground. (those are led and have been on 24/7 since Turkey day on the same batteries,  and the same batteries as last year, also on for weeks then, lol.

Yea,  one day I need to paint the flat foam to eliminate the round textures too.

Great detail Lee, most impressive! Just reminds us the little things make a big difference.

BAR GP7 #63 posted:

Old K-line T.P&W. box car, trucks and wheels still need more weathering. I also put the fruit box load inside the car.

The box car looks real good, esp. with its load visible. Bravo.

Frankm

c.sam posted:

Mark Boyce posted:

c.sam posted:

Progress continues on the new club layout with all of the benchwork roughed in and a lot of new track down. This thing is really big!

A new member has come along a few weeks ago and enjoys wiring - thank goodness. He's about 15 years younger than us old fellas and most welcome. Thanks Larry!

Anyone else out there want to be a part of this from 'early on'?  Come visit!

 

Looking mighty good Sam!!  I'm glad you got a new member; and he likes wiring!  Hooray!!  What is the exterior building construction about in the photo I forgot to include?

Mark,  the building belongs to the Buffalo Creek Vacations business and will be used as their office, laundry & storage. Supposedly, they will make it look like a station. They've graciously given us the 30' x 50' open upper level for our layout. The Seaboard caboose is the first of 4 that they are converting into 'hotel' rooms. Our layout will become an additional 'attraction' for them when we're further along.

Sam,

Sounds great!  So the model train fan will be able to schedule a time to visit your club and sleep over in a vintage caboose motel!!  Cool!  My wife and I will be ready to make a reservation when the time comes!!

My layout started over two years ago, has now slowly been expanding from my Living Room into what used to be my Dining Room, by authority of my General Manager (Suzie) ...

I now have the ability to operate TWO mainline trains, in opposite directions, as well as FOUR trolleys on separate r-o-w's...   Power, for everything, is substantial.  2- ZW's ;  1-LW ; 1-KW and 1- Z ...

Mark Boyce will love this !!  He has always given me encouragement !  I have far too much rolling stock !  I got carried away on my purchases.  My LAST major purchase as of November 13th was that beautiful K-Line 'Great Northern' Empire Builder with an A-B-A diesel set plus SIX cars !

We're talking about SIX motors and smoke generators in each diesel unit.  I won't unpack it until after Christmas.

Happy Holidays !!

KRK

keyrouteken posted:

My layout started over two years ago, has now slowly been expanding from my Living Room into what used to be my Dining Room, by authority of my General Manager (Suzie) ...

I now have the ability to operate TWO mainline trains, in opposite directions, as well as FOUR trolleys on separate r-o-w's...   Power, for everything, is substantial.  2- ZW's ;  1-LW ; 1-KW and 1- Z ...

Mark Boyce will love this !!  He has always given me encouragement !  I have far too much rolling stock !  I got carried away on my purchases.  My LAST major purchase as of November 13th was that beautiful K-Line 'Great Northern' Empire Builder with an A-B-A diesel set plus SIX cars !

We're talking about SIX motors and smoke generators in each diesel unit.  I won't unpack it until after Christmas.

 

Happy Holidays !!

 

KRK

Ken,

The K-Line 'Great Northern' Empire Builder with an A-B-A diesel set and six cars must look very impressive!  The GN green and orange is a very handsome paint scheme indeed.  I can't run smoke in the house, it messes with my wife's asthma.

Moonson posted:

BAR GP7 #63 posted:

Old K-line T.P&W. box car, trucks and wheels still need more weathering. I also put the fruit box load inside the car.

The box car looks real good, esp. with its load visible. Bravo.

Frankm

Frankm: Thank you very much. 

-Johan

Cleaned tracks and ran marx 999 set with dcs remote.

BAR GP7 #63 posted:

Old K-line T.P&W. box car, trucks and wheels still need more weathering. I also put the fruit box load inside the car.

Great weathering job!

My friends Sam, Lynn, and Tom were over Sunday to help with wiring switches and power drops.  Then we ran a test train to evaluate DCS performance.

Anthony K posted:

My friends Sam, Lynn, and Tom were over Sunday to help with wiring switches and power drops.  Then we ran a test train to evaluate DCS performance.

Anthony,

The yard looks great and so does the scenery!  You are progressing very well!

Is that a Buffalo and Pittsburgh or another affiliated company engine in the lower left?  What model is it?  I have a B&P GP 38-2 from MTH, which is very nice!

P51 Lee

Not that I don't half expect to see Maliki's face in the corn every time I see those rows, but the shovel is an un-thought of detail above and beyond. It makes me want to add one to everything I have, toyish or not. Bravo!

p51 posted:

I just finished painting and installing several castings on the layout. First, I split a grouping of birds up into two segments, half of them are now pigeons, and the other half are crows. The crows, naturally, are in the cornfield or sitting on the posts around it. I kept one in my extra parts box for the eventuality of getting a scarecrow someday.
Next, I painted and weathered enough shovels for all of the locomotives, and placed them on the fireman's side of each tender. It just seemed to be needing that. Then, I finished the passenger car step stools, weathered them, then place them on the back decks of each end of each passenger car.

Nice attention to detail. Only observation, I thought crows were black and rats with wings( pigeons ) were gray.

P51 -I like your imagination and what ou do with your layout !!  Keep them coming. Do you have a scare crow in that cornfield ??

p51 posted:

BAR GP7 #63 posted:

Old K-line T.P&W. box car, trucks and wheels still need more weathering. I also put the fruit box load inside the car.

Great weathering job!

Lee: Thanks.

-Johan

jim pastorius posted:

P51 -I like your imagination and what ou do with your layout !!  Keep them coming. Do you have a scare crow in that cornfield ??

 

Nice attention to detail. Only observation, I thought crows were black and rats with wings( pigeons ) were gray.

Yeah, a scarecrow is coming. I've been eyeing a casting of one, but I'd have to order it from England. I might just make one instead.

As for the pigeon/crow colors, these cell shots don't do them justice. The crows are indeed black, but they don't shot it so much in the photos. The pigeons are indeed grey...

I think a home made scare crow would really work !  A casting is a casting.

jim pastorius posted:

I think a home made scare crow would really work !  A casting is a casting.

Yeah, and now that I'm getting to just having the small detail stuff to work on, on the layout (I painted a bunch of resin castings last night), I have some time to make one. But still, I really like the looks of this one...

That said, one I made myself would be more satisfying, I'd think.

p51 posted:

jim pastorius posted:

I think a home made scare crow would really work !  A casting is a casting.

Yeah, and now that I'm getting to just having the small detail stuff to work on, on the layout (I painted a bunch of resin castings last night), I have some time to make one. But still, I really like the looks of this one...

That said, one I made myself would be more satisfying, I'd think.

    Its the little details that makes layouts stand out.    Now about this one...    I done with being stuck in the cornfields.

Reeling from a 4500.00 repair bill on my truck( M1028 CUCV)  Was looking at my last video and decided to reshoot and edited scenes(SD7 in the lead). Now It all flows better with the music.    Adriatic, Its still November Rain.  

suzukovich posted:

Reeling from a 4500.00 repair bill on my truck( M1028 CUCV)  Was looking at my last video and decided to reshoot and edited scenes(SD7 in the lead). Now It all flows better with the music.    Adriatic, Its still November Rain.  

 

Wow!!    I don't feel so bad with a bill that is going to end up around $1400 on my car.  Of course my car is only worth about half what your repair bill is.  13 years old, but still in good shape.  Like my dad has said, it is only worth something to me.

Once again, a super video!!  December snow, I would say!  

Mark Boyce posted:

suzukovich posted:

Reeling from a 4500.00 repair bill on my truck( M1028 CUCV)  Was looking at my last video and decided to reshoot and edited scenes(SD7 in the lead). Now It all flows better with the music.    Adriatic, Its still November Rain.  

 

Wow!!    I don't feel so bad with a bill that is going to end up around $1400 on my car.  Of course my car is only worth about half what your repair bill is.  13 years old, but still in good shape.  Like my dad has said, it is only worth something to me.

Once again, a super video!!  December snow, I would say!  

Its a restoration project. still a shock but once they found the short and repaired that it was go for the other stuff. When done the drivetrain well have been completely rebuilt. It might be old but its paid for and has that cool factor. As for the video. There were a couple of errors in it that was bugging me. The last section transition from the SD9 to the SD7(scenes added )with the SD7 flows with the music now.    Also had just finished adapting a Red Caboose GP9/7 shell to an RK GP9/7 Chassis. Still need to do some finishing work and still may power it down the line. 

Got the lights wired up on my little station finally.

Still trying to visualize a scenic design for a redo of a corner of my layout and how I would construct the base and back elevation.  Also trying to figure a diy turnout indicator for a couple of atlas switches to easily see how they are oriented. 

suzukovich posted:

Reeling from a 4500.00 repair bill on my truck( M1028 CUCV) 

 

Cool! Still had those in my first active unit when I first showed up in 1998.

Someone wanted to sell one to me, for a good price, but my wife vetoed it, as I already have the 1944 MB jeep in the garage...

I've been working in the train room every day so far this month. The countdown clock is running, winding down to April 29th, when I will be part of the NMRA division layout tour. I have some solid and achievable goals for the end of 2016.

In November, I finished the last of the mainline switches, 124 tortoises, all working. I was never happy with the temporary power supply that I had been using. It was just an old MPC transformer with a bridge rectifier. I shopped the Bay and found a nifty 12VDC 5A supply that came with an adapter to connect wires, for just $6.67.

Here's that little adapter with its screw terminals.

The Tortoises work much better now. This one is installed on the north side of the room, but serves the whole layout. I bought a second unit, and will add it to the south side of the room to reduce voltage drop. Eventually they will also power the signals which run on 12V.

That little piece of curved track next to the end of the backdrop was almost the last piece on the entire layout. I still have to build one last bit of benchwork in the big helix for the other turntable, an old Bowser. The connection and garden tracks will be the last. Target date December 31st.

It's up to me to pickup where Matt left off, and finish the last 10 manual switch throws.

A little more bending and fitting, and these 3 will be done. It's the next 3 that are going to be tough, because 2 of the switches are above the bookshelves. The push rods will have to be spliced, and the wires will have to be bent in the very confined space. Yikes!

Here's one of the 3 new lower arms.

And this is what they look like up top.

See the stud by the light switches, the one that isn't as dark as the others? That one was bowed out almost a half inch. I took my planer and shaved it down, then used a chisel to finish the chunk between the boxes that the planer couldn't get. After all that, I had to carefully pull the nails out of the electrical boxes, and re-nail them at the correct depth for the 1/2" rock.

Now the rock will go on nice and smooth. This wall segment was just too short to not repair the stud.

Elliot,

I am astonished by both the work you are doing on this extraordinary layout, and your willingness to photograph it and share it here.

BRAVO, sir.

I completed several resin castings for detail parts around the layout, then added loads to several my gondolas. Most have coal, cinders, or ballast in them. They're just the loads that came with the cars originally, covered with far more realistic looking material.

Thanks Carl. I've always enjoyed playing to an audience. When I was a kid, all of my parents friends would visit the basement when they came over. In my late teens, I was doing weekend train shows at malls. That just kept growing, until the "big one", enterTRAINment at Mall of America.

This layout is even bigger and better than that, but it is back to being a hobby and not a business. As such, I don't have the financial and time constraints, but the downside is there is a limited audience. This forum is a perfect platform to share what I am up to, with a large group of fellow train enthusiasts. I've said this a bunch of times over the last four years, but it's all of you that keep me going on this thing.

As always, there is a standing invitation to visit in person, for anyone on the forum that manages to make it to the Twin Cities. All you have to do is drop me an email and set up a time. I'm almost always available.

Coming along very nicely Elliott, I have those same adapters and use them as much as I can cause they are easy to work with! Thanks for the update. Good luck with the other switches.

Elliot,

Neat adapter.  We have seen Matt is limber, but to get up to the bookshelf he may need to visit his chiropractor when finished!  lol

Yes, fix the stud while it is open.  Shaping up well!!

Thanks guys.

Mike, I had never seen those gizmos before, but I became an instant fan. My original plan was to just clip off the connector and hard wire it. That is much better.

Mark, the chiropractor will be all mine, Matt won't be doing those switches. I'm working to formulate a plan to get my hands in the 3-1/2" space and bend the wires. I think what I'm going to do is bend the bottom part first, feed it up through the tube, then bend the top part. It's going to be tricky, because the top bends need to be precise, and are hard to do when the wire is in place.

Mighty nice of you to save Matt the trouble!  :-)   I have so much trouble with tricky things like that any more that take dexterity and good hand-eye coordination.  My hat is off to you once again!  :-)

Big_Boy_4005 posted:

I've been working in the train room every day so far this month. The countdown clock is running, winding down to April 29th, when I will be part of the NMRA division layout tour. I have some solid and achievable goals for the end of 2016.

In November, I finished the last of the mainline switches, 124 tortoises, all working. I was never happy with the temporary power supply that I had been using. It was just an old MPC transformer with a bridge rectifier. I shopped the Bay and found a nifty 12VDC 5A supply that came with an adapter to connect wires, for just $6.67.

Here's that little adapter with its screw terminals.

The Tortoises work much better now. This one is installed on the north side of the room, but serves the whole layout. I bought a second unit, and will add it to the south side of the room to reduce voltage drop. Eventually they will also power the signals which run on 12V.

That little piece of curved track next to the end of the backdrop was almost the last piece on the entire layout. I still have to build one last bit of benchwork in the big helix for the other turntable, an old Bowser. The connection and garden tracks will be the last. Target date December 31st.

It's up to me to pickup where Matt left off, and finish the last 10 manual switch throws.

A little more bending and fitting, and these 3 will be done. It's the next 3 that are going to be tough, because 2 of the switches are above the bookshelves. The push rods will have to be spliced, and the wires will have to be bent in the very confined space. Yikes!

Here's one of the 3 new lower arms.

And this is what they look like up top.

See the stud by the light switches, the one that isn't as dark as the others? That one was bowed out almost a half inch. I took my planer and shaved it down, then used a chisel to finish the chunk between the boxes that the planer couldn't get. After all that, I had to carefully pull the nails out of the electrical boxes, and re-nail them at the correct depth for the 1/2" rock.

Now the rock will go on nice and smooth. This wall segment was just too short to not repair the stud.

Looking good Elliot.  Keep up the great work.  I am looking forward to the April visit. 

Dave

Thanks Dave, I'm looking forward to your return too. I've been putting in 3 hours a day. If I can maintain that pace, you may not recognize this place in April.

Ive been wiring switches for the last three nights

Just got the second mainline up and running.  The video is not great, but it feels like a great day!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asNjEpBpYQE

I am hoping the last section we completed becomes a trestle bridge.