What did you do on your layout today?

A lot of great work here, nice contributions everyone!

Here is an update of an area I had planned years ago.

 Here is a before photo...

...and almost complete. Letting ballast dry and have to paint wall and railing.

Cesar

Work continued on repainting the railings of the Hale Gate Bridge. The project is taking a long time. I guess that should be expected with those O-gauge sized paint brushes.

The painting on the Mackinaw Bridge never stops either. By the time one side is done,  the other side needs repainting.

Since York, little was done until yesterday, when I discovered I had to completely redesign my logging and coal mine branch trackwork, as the grade into this "mountain

valley" was going to be 4% (7% works for Cass, but I understand 2% is better for

three rail?).  All was printed out with the defunct Atlas program, so....now...pencil and

paper...

Had a buddy over and ran some trains. He is an HO guy but he was impressed with the size and heft of our O Scale trains!!!

Cobrabob.

After a fun morning at the Allentown Train Meet, I finally got the last two pieces of cork roadbed down.  I had to test out my purchase.  FINALLY got some pictures to share.

Had a whole weekend to work on the layout and with no Ohio State or Cleveland Browns football to distract got a lot done.  Station 2 coming along got railing up, doors, lighted figure, wall advertising with light.  Got 7 new signs hung in the train room and even hung a tv so now can watch/listen to games while working.

I ran trains for the 1st time in weeks.  It felt good and me and my kids had a great time with the 1225 pulling around an extra long freight train.  She then did an excursion pulling some passenger cars near the lake front. 

Got the retaining wall up, added ground cover and ballasted tracks leading into Kansas City Union Station past Signboard hill.

Completed an upper level of 054 curves.  I also ran trains on the new upper level with my son for an hour or so.  Tomorrow I will vacuum and clean the lower level and run more trains.  I can now focus on scenery!

Got rid of an O54/O72 switch on my layout. I got tired of not being able to run certain engines on my outside loop due to pick-up spacing.

Peter

Today, with graph paper, redrew track plan to double the original planned width of layout branch, for eight feet of it, to provide for an unwanted 42" radius U-shaped curve dropping six inches around the end of the "box canyon".  Originally drawn as a dead end box canyon, like Telluride or Ouray...still a box canyon but now with this descending curve around one end...I don't like it!  It loses some of the realism of a point to point, and may make branch that isn't a loop, look like a loop.  There is no room to switch cars on the floor of the canyon unless....and most sidings and other trackage, structure locations, etc. have to be replanned, and logging branches eliminated, with just a track into a tunnel mouth for an imaginary route off into the woods (going to have to figure out how to save at least one logging extension).

I continued work on the apparently never-ending project of completing all my 1:50 scale 'Streets big rigs.  

I played with smoke units and "odorless" smoke fluid some and will report on that - interesting stuff - when done in a few days.  

I though about what to do with the ugly odd corner of the layout I have. 

Fixed a turret on an Army tank car, fixed a Plymouth switcher that had hit the floor a long time ago and fixed quite a few other things that were broken and incomplete. However, best of all, I ran trains this evening along with streets. It was great!  Terry

First time in a long time I got time to work on the layout.  I added some street lights to my city but didn't get them wired in.  Also planned how the next street will look and made a list of what buildings I will need to pick up.  I also cleaned the train room a little bit.  It got a little unorganized this summer.

I installed the final piece of plywood to the bench work top.

I finished clearing off and moving some shelving units, to make room for my new workbench. Pics tomorrow when Patrick and I are done.

In the last few days I finished and installed the remaining wall mounted brackets for the bench work and got about 70% of the lgirders installed. But alas, painting the living room prior to Thanksgiving company takes priority for a while and the train room becomes a storage bin. (I think I can find a way to spend a few cycles in the train room though late at night)

Nothing on my layout today, but, I wired my uncles layout with a new MTH Z-4000 transformer, a new loop of track and lighted buildings.

Full on disaster recovery. My 4 year old grandson spent last wekend with us. He always leaves my layout looking like a tornado hit. He has a good time doing it though!

Patrick was here this afternoon, and the space I cleared is now filling up with layout and workbench.

This may look a little strange, but when complete there will be a small yard up there.

Patrick assembles the missing piece of the upper deck.

I decided to go with the same LED lighting for the workbench as I'm using on the layout.

Patrick salvaged those cabinets from an old bank branch. I'm still pondering the best configuration for them. I think I'm going to move the one with the tools in it, to the  right side.


Patrick will be back Friday. I'm going to try to build some toe kicks for the cabinets to sit on, and polish off the electrical.

I am in the planning stages of building a new O gauge layout using old post war tinplate track, mixed with some gargraves straights....this will be my second layout. The first one I built back in 1991. 

Got someone with a truck to come by, but bought foam because it was raining and snowing last night so Homasote would not have done so well on the trip home. Today- dragged my wet foam in the house, and unscrewed the temporary screws from the track. Took out the switched figure 8 from the center oval and toyed with the looks of a yard instead. I don't care for switching much, but I love yards. I think its gonna happen.

 the room is about 14 feet by 12 feet, and I want to build a perimeter layout so you can walk in the middle of the room.

Well, it’s taken me more time than I expected but the latest revisions to The Ironbound are finally complete, and TODAY, I posted some of the revisions on my website. Notice that I did a lot of work on integrating flat backgrounds with fully-dimensional foreground models, allowing me to squeeze more modeling into my limited space. More to come, but here's a quick look at a few of them.

http://trainutz.com/I-CNJSTAcu.jpg

http://trainutz.com/I-GEILINGCHEMcu.jpg

http://trainutz.com/I-WESTELEC.jpg

http://trainutz.com/I-shinermed.jpg

http://trainutz.com/I-BettysFSDinerNight.jpg

More can be seen on my website at

http://trainutz.com/ironbound.shtml

~Andy R!

I cut and fitted the plywood to level off my layout's top level so that we can put down the snow blanket, lay track and eventually install the Atlas O turntable.

This was really fun today.  I dragged my pile of Greenberg reference books to the layout and spent a few hours finally identifying some of the plethora of various ancient tinplate signals and lights.  Bing, Ives, Hafner, Marx, Flyer, along with all the Lionel stuff that I had pretty much already ID'd.  It's kinda neat to find, 'yep, that's the one!'   Often pinpoints the year they were made, too.  Makes for longer entries in the inventory spreadsheet.

Also set up the Christmas trains on the tracks, I'm ready.

Just taking a break from wiring.  I have a schematic all done thanks to Schemeit by DigiKey.  The relays work great (6VAC DPDT relays).  Got the banjo signal swinging.  Made some last minute tweaks to the blocking.  Just printed a revised schematic.  Might have a piece of Halloween candy and then back to the basement!

Stayed up till after Midnight, but I got the basic blocking and automation done!  Tested it out with my M&M's hand car and Strasburg #475. I'm a bit worried about longer consists skidding over the dead sections of track at higher speeds.  Not much I think I can do about that with conventional control and relays.

Going to have a cup of coffee and then shoot a video.

Then I'll have to figure out how to embed videos on this thing.

I wasn't sure what the "Brotherhood of the Crappy Basement Layout" meant...is it a crappy basement, a crappy layout or both? I am a member now.

So, Last week I made repairs to the stucco that covered the block basement wall. Then I set about removing years of nails, old wiring hangers, screw eyes and anything else from the floor joists. I then installed some nice track lighting with daylight (5000K) CFL bulbs. What a big difference!

The crappy basement will have a somewhat crappy 12' x 12' train room. But, I suppose, since I'll still be in the basement it will be a nice layout in a nice train room in a crappy basement.

Modular wall panels(like theater or tv set) for the other two walls next, then sky and wall paint.

More foam bashing this week.

Tested and ran equipment that will run on a Christmas layout that Im building at a music studio where I teach.  

Also worked on my permanent layout today most of the day..... relaying some of the track work on my bottom inner loop, testing my one and only tight curve with a string of freight cars, installed a k line switch on the inner loop ... figuring out a wiring scheme for that same loop ... organized boxes that are under the layout.... repositioned locomotives on my wall storage shelves... lubricated some locomotives.... worked with my new dremel tool ... took some rolling stock off the layout and put it on shelving..... ran some trains ... did some general planning.

Set and adjusted poles and overhead wire on my short line electric. Don

Larry & Don, Looking Good! Im looking forward to similar fun.

Thanks for the photos. 

Still changing over to Kadee's

- did some fine-tuning of a couple of my 18-wheeler "Streets trucks.

- played with the new MTH Galloping Goose some.

- worked on measuring out a new section of a town.

- started work on bashing/converted the Lionel 0-4-0 into a saddle-tank 0-4-0

Yes.  Thinking is real work.  Especially with the size of some of the layouts I'm seeing on here.  I spent a lot of time this weekend checking and double-checking my schematic for my conventionally controlled layout with relay automation.  The thinking is some of the best fun!

Nothing really to show at this point.

The attic layout is two halves. The benchwork and the room is on the "finished" side is done. I'm currently working on the "unfinished" side. Yesterday I bought the last of the plywood for the unfinished side. Took 7 4x8 sheets of plywood and turned big pieces into smaller pieces. Humped them up to the attic. I'll post some pics of this phase once the painting is done.

Gilly

Matt was over on Sunday, and we strung the detection wires for the section of the upper deck where he laid the track last month. All that's left to do is tie the ground wires together, and run everything back to the power supply.

I started to lay out Pigs Eye yard.

It was difficult to find a good "before" shot of the new workbench area. It seems that I always take pictures of what I am working on and not just random stuff. On the left side you can see the old plastic shelves.


The blank slate...


It's not done, but it's getting close.


I've been gathering tools and parts from all around the train room. It feels good getting organized.