What did you do on your layout today?

I finally finished wiring up all buildings that can be lighted and/or are easily accessible. I do have one large station that needs to be lighted but seeing it is permanently embedded in the scenery and surrounding platform, I'm really in no rush to get that out to wire it. I'll do it eventually but not for a few months. Probably sometime over the summer. 

I also planted some more trees, a few more to put back out. I also worked on my freight station area, I'm hoping to get the station placed, wired, and scenery finished tomorrow. 

Got everything off the floor and vacuumed 

I added Kadee couplers to one of my Legacy 0-8-0.  A forum member made me some a bracket for the front coupler and it was very easy to install.  The hard part was removing the stock coil coupler.  I had to remove the smoke unit, the legacy  boards, and the bottom part of the shell from the chassie just to be able to remove the coupler.  

Started building an REA freight house using parts from Pecos River Brass Summer Street Transfer Station.  And, ordered a bunch of Kadee #805's to try my hand at conversions.

Put down some ballast onto the end sections of the micro-layout. Put in a reinforcement on the side frame of the main section so I can install a carrying handle.

Also went out onto the remnants of the Redlands Loop to get some "official" Redlands Loop dirt for ground cover. Noticed that one of the trestles over a creek was still standing (the tracks were pulled out some time ago.)

This is a shot of the bridge footings for the SP Redlands/Crafton branch that ran parallel to the ATSF Redlands Loop.

After all these years, the creek's still flowing.

After Friday and Saturday in Chicago at the O Scale Show, I decided on, built, and installed a two course water wheel for this mill, installed the chimney acquired in Chicago, and am well along on a two course flume.  I won't build a spillway for this mill until/if it is set in place.  Now building the trestle for the flume so there is light at the end of the tunnel, and this should soon be finished.  This will no longer be "your father's MTH grainery".

Did work on one of the two rehab areas for the layout. Laid out 14 new sidings. Took both Saturday and Sunday to do this.

I added 8 toggle switches to cut power to engines that I don't want powered up all the time. Also rewired some areas with 14 gauge stranded wire, should have done it right the first time. I now have solid 10's on my MTH signal on about 98% of my layout. A few spots dip to to 8's and 9's but that is fine with me.

STill working on my 'Streets country road, section II.  That area of the layout was completely barren of any terrain, scenery, etc, so I am building that up at the same time and it is taking a long time.  I added scrubs and brush today, along with big rocks.  Tomorrow, small rocks, scree, and bigger trees.

I have been taking some time away from actual work on the layout and been adding Kadee's to all my rolling stock.  I have already converted one locomotive, a legacy 0-8-0 and started on a Lionel caboose today.  I need to head to P&D tomorrow and get a few more couplers to finish up the caboose.  By next week I should have 90% of my rolling stock converted and another locomotive.  

I will be back to work on the layout itself next week.  I need to do more plaster cloth and I want to start wiring my buildings.  

I spent the last five days updating five Williams diesels to TMCC command.  It went faster then I thought it would.  Put them on my layout and shelved my steam engines to give them a rest. 

I finished cutting all the pieces for the wall-mounted arms of my benchwork and installed the first one.

Yesterday, after reworking the water wheel to correct an omission, I finished kitbashing the MTH "grainery" into a water mill with annex, double course wheel and flume.  When I get the photos on here, you can tell me if it is an improvement or not.

Today I photographed the mill, and have now begun going through material stock to see what I would need to scratchbuild that creosote plant forumites have been good enough to provide prototype photos of.  I was hoping I'd have enough Korber brick walls left over from other kitbashes to begin with a boiler house, but it does not look like it.  Because of the track work, I think I will have to build this on a plywood

sheet or something, as a module,  to keep it all together as a unit, and then finish it with scenery and groundcover.  That Altoona kitbuilder was showing a really nice cast "brick"smoke stack at the Chicago O scale show, but it is $75,  so I will have to work something up, probably a  "steel" stack from plastic tubing.

Put in the last piece of roadbed on the main level at the lead to the engine service facility.  Next comes filling cracks, sanding and painting.

Cleaned up the room and broke my chop saw. 

I looked at it.

NOTHING

Gave the layout a good vacuuming.  Seem to be a lot of dead house flies this time of year.  They're pretty much scale blackbirds, or crows, or something.  Whatever they are, they're dropping like flies.

Put the last of the blue board in place, ordered two more ross #6 turnouts, cleaned out the garage and under the layout. Tomorrow start carving the blue foam into mountains.

Finished my 8'x8' suspended test track table in the garage and am about to lay down an O-84 circle of fastrack to test my new UP Centipede, using a ZW with Legacy control.  It still feels weird walking underneath it...

David

Just finished up modifying my lionel caboose to have kadee couplers.  I had to remove the lobster claws and take a dremel to them to make enough clearance for the draft boxes on the kadees.  Well worth the effort.  

 I should make a zoo for my stinkbug collection! I get 3 a day.  I could train them to stay in pens or you could have a herd in the meadows!! lol

Chris

Installed a roadway and a parking lot in what had been a bare corner of the layout.  Used what they call "cove molding" which is the mop rail for vinyl floors.  I cut off the curved area and used the flat gray surface for the road.  Looks OK but it would be nice to have some curves and bends in the road.

Next, I've got to make a road crossing over the RR track.  Planning on using stick lumber for that. 

Also, I built and installed a "charging shelf" right near the circuit breaker box in the basement.  Finally, I can put all of my rechargeable tools on charge in one place, which is now, where I can find them without wasting a lot of time.

Paul Fischer

I'm running my post war stuff......675, 2025, 2333,2344,623,622,624 and 6220. I'm getting an Ozone Buzz!   Tom in PGH

I started to replace the ballast today. Went very well and I got as far as I had hoped.

Sizing up the new bridge for installation.

Super bridge; who constructed it?

Looks like the bridge leading to Bend Oregon on the old SP&S ....

Its a custom bridge from Stainless Unlimited.... 100% stainless steel, welded, and powder coated. It will be a lift out 50" long, single track

Fixed my chop saw!

I have done nothing for over a week. I haven't even run any trains. I injured my knee last Friday at work.  It hurts pretty bad. I have a torn lateral meniscus on my left knee. I haven't been able to get down my basement stairs because I am on crutches. And, I live in a spilt level home with four levels. There are SO MANY stairs when you can't do them!! I can't stand for very long due to the pain , even with crutches. I will find out this Tuesday, the 26th, what my options are as far as surgery, etc. I can't work either due to the fact that I drive a truck for a food service company and I need to be on my feet. We wheel up and down our ramps, into customer delivery areas and up and down stairs, ARRGHH!! Hopefully I will be able to make a full and speedy recovery.

Cobrabob.

Not only am I unable to work, Car Show and Cruise-in Season are about here!

Cobrabob.

Nothing yet today, but yesterday ran trains with my grandson.

One by one, I installed trout in my trout stream (really ) - about a dozen scale 10 to 18 inch fish swimming in the deep part of the stream that I had to insert and positio one by one as I poured the "water."  When the Woodland Scenics water hardens (it's foggy when first poured) I'll post pictures - I think it is going to be very cool to actually see the fish in the stream swimming about a scale foot below the surface!

I went out to the breezeway started to clean up a bit then decided to come back in the house.I know I want to get going but I guess I am having one of those weeks with nothing done on the layout . Then I  planted seeds for the garden which its hear even if its been in the upper 20's all week.

Changed out some wheelsets on my MTH diesels then worked on a problem turnout, and carved a tunnel portal. Since everything is clean again I test run some trains. Have a lot of carving to do, waiting for nice weather. 

Today I side tracked all my PS2 & 3 engines and ran my one remaining conventional, a  Pere Marquette PS1 ABA with matching 7 passenger cars.  It ran beautifully.  Sounds good too.

.....

Dennis

Added a new commuter train for the layout and received a new custom train station.

Decided today that I wanted 2 trains running instead of just 1 so I split the single track up tonight. Should have 2 separate tracks by Saturday night.

Added some "porch lights" to a few buildings. Bought first can of denatured alcohol and cleaned track. I had been using 91% alcohol before. No problems with the 91%, just wanted to try it due to so many posts about denatured.  

Looking at a small re-design in my industrial area.  I did have a Woodland Scenics Duces bike club there but it was a bit too big for the area.  I have decided to put a small lumber yard there behind my hardware store.  I contacted Alex Mailliae to build a custom lumber shed for that spot.  

I goofed off yesterday and went to my LHS and picked up the last item of my pre ordered 2012. The USMC Alco and it's Dmy. I already picked up my X628 Alco U.S. Navy freight set. So, I'm standing by for the 2013 catalog.

Guess I'll go back to wiring.. Can't even run them yet. Still having fun.

This is what I did,took one line and turned it into two rail lines. 

http://youtu.be/BxFtrBZdfWM

Started converting from claws to Kadee couplers (rolling stock only) - 4 down - a bunch more to go.

Doing the same, but also doing locomotives.

Tonight I plan to do some more plaster cloth in my river area and then will be laying a nice earth colored brown over the entire right hand side of my layout, getting it ready for ground cover.  

Carved and painted foam all day sunday, today more of the same. Have to be ready for  Blissfield railroad days April 20 and 21. Needless to say I will not go to York. 

Renovation project is well under way. I am working now on fine tuning the engine service area (roundhouse and turntable portion of my layout) and I relocated all of the accessories and re-wired them. Fortunately they all worked on the first try. Next step is to re-ballast they area with new material and put the engines back into service. I would like to get this part of the renovation done by mid week.

Then it is on to the new siding yard.

I made it down to my train room for the first time in over a week and just ran some trains. I ran my Post War 675, Williams Pennsy Sharks and Lionel CC 726 Berkshire.

Cobrabob.

My grandson discovered that the beige MTH Christmas passenger cars look like Clarabelle, and Annie, so we pulled them from the shelf and ran them with Thomas, James, and Percy so he had passanger cars that lit up. Once running, he noticed that unlike the regular passanger cars, these had no passangers. He is five and misses nothing, runs DCS remote better than many adults! He disappeared for a minute, and popped up from under the layout with a package of 48 seated figures, and beamed, "Hey, Poppy. We need to put these people in the cars! So, yesterday, we populated the cars. Sharp kid. I guess I'll need to find better hiding spots for Christmas and birthday presents!  

.

Wow I didn't realize there was 2 of these posts going.  Someone resurrected a thread from July!

Today I started cutting out sections of 1 inch foam for a mountain I am building. I have 4 out of the planned 10 layers cut. Sorry I don't have any pics.

More work on the renovation project. Today we re-installed all of the engines assigned to the engine service area of the layout, ballasted part of the elevated track level, and did some work on the waterfront. Good day working on the layout, all in all.

Cleaning track and connecting signal wires.  And . . . cleaning the wheels and replacing traction tires on three locomotives.

I'm gathering Gargraves track and switches for an around the layout and just made a great trade with Jim Sr.  We bartered my Lionel B&O Tugboat for his surplus GG.  Jim's happy, I'm happy and no one had to spend any $.  You gotta love the barter system. 

In the home stretch for the Micro-Layout contest. Test fit the buildings, then pretended I was a politician and started throwing dirt around. By the way, given this is influenced by East Highland on the Redlands Loop, I used genuine Redlands Loop dirt. I'll have the rest of the dirt on it tomorrow night and should have it finished Saturday evening or Sunday in time for the deadline.

Ballast and ground cover on the 3 rail layout.  Ground cover on the 2 rail.  Repaired gargraves switch, recovered pieces of weaver tank car (a casualty of the latest cat attack)

Matt, Your Micro Layout Contest module looks great. I like the broad sweeping S curve on it.

Cobrabob.

Toady was dedicated to working on the relocated refinery. There is much more room for it in it's new home. I installed a roadway to this area which will connect to other areas of the layout. It was one of those days when all went very smoothly with the installation of the roads. I hope this continues with the rest of the renovation work which is fairly extensive.

Thanks. That was the challenge -- 48" radius (O-96) in 13 square feet.

Chris,

It's rough getting down to my basement train room, but, I'LL MAKE IT!!!

Bob.

Nothing on the CL&W today but drove out to a friend's place where he is building a good sized layout with a complex track plan in a converted RV building.  Heck of a project. 

Re-inspired me to see what one can do working 6 hours a day on building one.

Finished my benchwork. Time to clean up from that.

Installed kadees on the last of my Atlas cars, and started converting my Atlas 0-6-0.  

No layout work, just took #357 out for a run! 

More painting and carving of blue board, also started the scenery. now some reporter wants to interview me and take photo's of the train display for the upcoming railroad days festival, I am not ready.

Any suggestions on how to wire the above for DCS. 

well, I ran some trains. attached the new BNSF sd-70 mac to the dash 9 premier to see how she ran.  big engines and I need 072 for those  I have o54 now.  watched tin plate legends on I love toys trains!  love that show.  also trains and locomotives!!

FINALLY started putting tops on my bench work. Cutting biscuits for the joints and painting the bottoms "ceiling white" takes a little longer.

Two or three pieces to cut today and I'm ready to paint the tops!!

Gilly, Do you have a tentative track plan? Please show us if you do!

Cobrabob.

Finished sanding all the homaboard joints, vacuumed the whole area, filled the joints with White Lightening, sat back and pondered the track plan and possible mods to it before laying it down.

Next is painting the base coat.  I'm thinking a dark ash grey for the "steam part" and a more brownish dirt color for the electric and diesel area.

Installed 4 Gargraves O42 DZ-2500 switches.  I am replacing my Lionel O42 6-65168 and 9 switches, all 38 of them.  I am so amazed at these Gargrave switches.  Zero dead spots, excellent remote movement and every engine and car, postwar and modern move effortlessly over them.  I found the best price at www.wholesaletrains.com $55.95 per unit. 

I originally started with O27 track and remote switches 1122E with auto derailing, moved to the O42 switch and curves and am now switching to the Gargraves switch.  From a cost, reliability and appearance point of view I like the O27 track.  But, I really want to replace all the track with Gargraves and put down a roadbed.  It is a question of $$$$ and time.  So I am going one step at a time.  When it is all done I will probably spend 2x the amount of money then if I had done this in one whack...

O27 track can be made to look very realistic by adding wood ties to it. If you like the track and already have it on your layout, just slip some roadbed under it and add the ties. 

I cleaned up the construction mess yesterday. Hope to get foam panels glued down to the table today.

Good morning

Last two days all the scenery blue board, painted and textured and put back on the layout

did all the painting and texturing in the garage then let it dry outside. Have to blend the edges of each section and prep for ballast. Made some test sections of ballast to see if my three year old ballast cement is still good. Have four gallons of this stuff the first gallon was still good. TWENTY MORE DAYS TILL OPEN HOUSE at Blissfield Railroad Days.

Clem   

I worked on the new siding yard, in particular a siding that goes over to the new refinery location. Progress comes sometimes in small steps and this was the case yesterday.

I repaired my Premier F7 rear facing "A" unit's drooping pilot and coupler which I showed on here in a thread a few months ago. Repair was delayed because we were in Florida.   All is well with it now and I am quite pleased with its appearance and operations.  

.....

Dennis

Hung a pegboard over my work table and started organizing some tools that before had been scattered all over the place. 

Made like a gandy dancer and relaid 45 feet of track.  Hope to finish tonight to make room for more trains. Done with main line but storage tracks to be installed.

Happy Easter!

Al

Thanks to the great photos put up on here by forumites, I have my creosote plant

planned.  I found lighter tubing with thinner walls than PVC for the retorts. But I found

Plasttruct has a minimun order which my retort doors and supports won't reach, so that is on hold.  So only have the base and the retorts cut to shape.  Will have to build a  LARGE corrugated building for the retorts, and find that none of the structure kits I

have is suitable for the separate office building.  It looks like a lot of scale wood will be needed for the piles of before and after ties and poles.  Also will have to track down at least four captive flat cars to run into the retorts...so....this won't happen fast.  And the company is in a tizzy, for the loggers are cashing their checks, the sawyers have been cutting ties,  loaded log cars are clogging up the sidings, money is going out, and none is coming in.

Replaced a curve switch.

Tested my most quirky engine over it.

Hosted Gilly@N&W so he could test out his Weaver N&W Pacific.

Peter

Trees, trees, trees, trees!

Gilly@N&W,

Nice track plan. I also like a double track mainline for watching trains run. It looks like you have a pretty lengthly run there. I also like your reverse loop and the fact that you put a reversing wye in your plan.

Cobrabob.

Got 1/2 the foam glued down, then ran trains through my 1024 switches. Those old girls are smooth as silk. Gots to look into some 1121 remote versions.

Got my test track up and running with Legacy control.  Spent the past week just running my traditional stuff on the O84 circle and was entertained enough by that.  I wish O96 was available in FasTrack.

The UP Centipede is going to make its debut tomorrow.

David

Saturday... I was bad today didn't do anything on the train display, just to nice outside. Rain for tomorrow so hopefully I will get some more work done .deadline now 19 days away

Clem 

I made some Truss supports for my elevated track I will soon be adding (I hope).  I used basswood for some of the supports, but then later switched to birchwood which I cut with a jigsaw.  I then glued pieces of styrene for the beams and details, spray painted them flat black, and then added rust and weathering.

I took up all the track, pulled the wiring and said goodbye to my layout.

adjusted the outer loop of fastrack and put in the inner loop of fastrack O31.

trains run very well on the new O31

i was mixing fastrack with realtrax and finally decided the realtrax had to go.

glad i made the decision on the realtrax.the layout is 100% fastrack now.

terry............

I must say this is my favorite thread on the forum.

I finished the front girders and the joists through the corners on my benchwork.

A couple of weeks have gone by since I posted to this topic. A lot has been done.

March 16




March 29




All of the roadbed is down and ready for track and the backdrop is up, ready for paint.

We installed MTH grade crossing flashers as well as a set of Lionel crossing gates.  

Finished weathering and installed my first structure - REA transfer station flat.

 Started final shaping of track side and ballasting track. 19 more days to open house