What did you do on your layout today?

Almost nothing...with holiday travel, etc.  But last night, after having all the parts cut

out of the basswood siding for the Steam Era Strutures Feed Mill, I have started gluing

and assembling them.  It looks like I will have to be very creative to get around the

instructions' use of the interior "cardboard" walls, some of which may also form an outer wall...as it looks...further assembly will tell.  I intend to raise the height of the

elevator, so I was going to have to be creative, anyway.  I wonder if this kit holds the

record for most and largest intruction sheets?  (made up half the weight of the box)

It was not on the train layout but it was train related. My father is always telling me how stupid and dumb I am all day long 7 days A week constantly putting me down. Well Mr. smarter than everyone in the universe decided to check the water filter in the refrigerator and apparently water starts spraying under it. Instead of shutting the water off he just starts getting towels out and getting the water up and throwing them in the sink. He goes in my mothers bedroom on the first floor to get more towels to get up more water. The aid that helps my mother gets involved and they use all my moms towels. He sends her upstairs to get more towels and then I finally find out something is wrong. I went down the basement and shut the water off to the house. I go into the laundry / storage room the water is pouring through the floor and onto the shelves. At the bottom of the shelves are 4 bags of balled up newspaper filled with water now that for the hillsides on the platform. 2 bags of trees that were already made from the old layout all soaking wet. A case of GarGraves track that had A few pieces of track taken out that is all filed with water and ruined. Needless to say my dad just cost me close to $500.00 and I have changed that filter 14 or 15 times since we lived here and I never had A problem. I guess this year is starting out just like my life has always gone on something always getting screwed up. Well take care everyone and I now have about 5 loads of towels to wash. Choo Choo Kenny

Worked on a Texas Special PW F3 B unit that was missing a coupler, coupler bracket and spring; and, also added pick-up rollers for LED's.  Everything went together just fine.  Even the soldering the wire to the p/u roller assembly and drilling the hole in the frame for it went w/o a hitch.  Parts came from Hennings' and Olsen's.

And the roll of 300 LED's grj recommends arrived.

Dry it! Hair drier! Even oil it. Done soon, it should be ok. Metal wont really rust until exposed to air too. Maybe weigh it down as it dries if the wood picked up a bunch(warping). 

Ran trains, switched out some engines and cars plus tinkered with the light, which is not good. Better when I run them during the day. topped at my favorite LHS and loaded up on RR magazines to read while we have bad weather. Got OGR and RMC which is mostly HO.  Had a gift card for Barnes & Noble and was determined to get a nice RR book but no dice.  Ended up with a nice, large photo book of the Viet Nam war. I looked over the LHS's O gauge engine selection and it is quite large and nice. Saw some of the engines talked about on the forum. No BBs or Berkshires though. But there were two big ones for $2k. Glad my layout is too small.

I have factory facades around part of my layout.  Today I illuminated one of the facades.  I added 4 shade light fixtures across the front roof line to illuminate the factory front plus strip LEDs under an overhang to illuminate the loading dock.  I changed out the incandescent lamps in the shade lights with LEDs.   Hooked it all up to 12 VDC and had the grand illumination.  Looks grand.

Originally Posted by Mark Boyce:

Originally Posted by Anthony K:

Originally Posted by Mark Boyce:

Originally Posted by Nick R.:

Its Dept 56 "2001 Space Oddity".  I picked it up on craigslist with some other Xmas village stuff really cheap.  Of course the people are huge, but the saucer is pretty detailed and it lights up.  Kinda fun

Nick, That would fit right in at my hometown of Mars, Pennsylvania.  They have a little flying saucer in the little downtown park.

We live in Mars, here's the flying saucer in downtown Mars:

 

There it is.  Like I said, small saucer, small downtown!

Thanks Anthony!!

 

So, do you live in the area too??

 So if you look at me like this, I should run eh?

 

Hey that's a picture of me when I saw the little guy coming out of the saucer!  Curled my hair!!  

If you blink you will miss Mars.  I wrote a check on a Mars Nat'l. Bank check once and they thought it was a fake !!  I had to convince them there was really such a place with a bank.

I got the same treatment with my Mars National Bank Visa card.  I finally got a card with a different bank.  I am one of a small number of people who graduated from high school in Mars and from college in Moon!

What does this have to do with trains?  I bought my first Model Railroader magazine in Mars back in the late '60s and watched the B&O trains there a lot.

Our next door neighbors came over to the layout today with their New Year's weekend guests. Our neighbors have seen the layout before, but not with the changes we made last year. They and their friends were blown away. Lots of fun running all the trains for them.

Nice time with some very nice folks.

Brian - Great way to start the new year. 

Art

Worked on a new mountain that is on the newer part of the layout. Put the plaster cloth on it and now need to paint it. It is looking good so far.

David

Well today I purchased from Walmart 12 huge storage containers, I have not been in my train room for almost a year! So with these new containers, I plan on clearing all the loose equipment, so I may start to clean things up so I can get some trains running again! Baby step for sure, but now that I am retired I have the time! hope everyone has a great day!

Uncle Al

Today started off with a trip to a local train club to see their layout. When I got home I told the wife I'll see you for supper and went up to work on the layout. I used up plaster I had left to do by the tracks in certain spots. Once dried I'll paint it earth tone. Last night I planted trees on the other side of the bridge. I have got to get a list going for scenic express. Ran out of materials. This will be a belated Christmas gift to me..................Paul

THE GLACIER LINE UPDATE:

01-03-2015 Well so much for that plan above for the lower staging yard. After saying I wasn't going to build an “Evil Knievel” ramp from my second level loop I’m in the process of doing exactly just that. I have went back and forth on this issue for many months now trying to decide. Well I changed my mind again. What prompted me was the fact that I discovered a thick board in the garage that fit perfectly as a ramp to the second level loop. I never cut or purchased this board. I found it in my garage attic many years ago! It is now part of our layout.

My daughter came over yesterday, for the sole purpose of going through all of her old toys which were kept in what we call the toy room. It's a very large closet in the corner of the basement. She picked a few things to save, and a lot more to get rid of. 

My reason for having her do this was somewhat selfish, as I am working to take over the space for train storage. On the other hand, she is in college, and hasn't looked at any of it in at least 8 years. 

 Jon and I did this about 5 weeks ago.

Here's what I did this afternoon.

Here's where it all went.

Well today I wanted to put the Christmas Tree away but that all changed when I woke up this morning. Some how my Insulin pump got cut or chewed by our kitten and my blood sugar went up to 578 today. It is at 300 now, so I will be happy when it comes down to 130. So I have the tree to put in the garage , I also wanted to fill the new kerosene heater and then start to fasten down the track I started months ago. some how I make plans then they get changed.

I have been procrastinating on building my PW layout that was inspired by Chris Esposito but for the last two Saturdays I finally got around to working on it. After spending the last two Saturdays working on it I realized today that I had laid the track wrong. It is now too late to go back so I had to sacrifice realastate for an additionaladditional line all I can hope for is that I still have enough room for all of the accessories. I fretted doing the plastercloth work but it is coming out great. Here are some before and after pictures. Paid ting will be my next challenge but as long as it comes out as good as the portion that is already painted it will be good to go.

Wow...lots of progress. Did Barbie's jet make the cut?

I got my new windup running!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcG8dPGpIfQ

 Close one!

Here's your excuse to not "chop it down" yet.....

 American popular belief-vs-old tradition, the twelve days of Christmas are not over. The 12th day is Jan 5th(eve of Epiphany(3 kings), or 6th the day of Epiphany for some others).

Eastern Orthodox? They celebrate on the 7th-19th(on a different calendar). 

 It can wait, cant it?

On the ninth day of Christmas, a piggy I will be

 emptied the gondolas, eating all the cookies

and drank a cup of sweet, and hot tea.

That's it... I ran them & ate all the cookies up from the gondolas.

Had a good time showing my childhood PW trains to my neighbors running around my 4' tree (the trains that is, not the neighbors); pointing out the LIONEL and Harley Davidson Christmas ornaments; the recently purchased LIONEL store and HD factory Dept. 56 decorations; and, such.

Hot chocolate, some adult beverages, and everyone was content.

Also, opened up a couple of recent ebay purchases of power trucks and horizontal motors that arrived in today's post.  So, more maintenance work for the shop before installation and testing.

And received an email from USPS that a  train package sent to Canada had cleared Canadian customs.

A good day.

It's right there in the picture Jon. Flying high on the black tubs on the top shelf.

Starting to build the layout and learning how to post pictures, hope this works.

After two days of fighting my signaling relay panel (figured to use the unused pole on the dpdt relays for crossing gates) to set in a couple of MTH crossing gates, I found out I was using the wrong isolated rail connection at the relay panel to trip them. Huzzah! That's what happens when you don't mess with your stuff for a while. You forget how it was conceived regardless of what your documentation says. 

Got 8" of new snow overnight, so I thought it would be a perfect day to place some Artista figures in some new convertibles I got for Christmas. At the very least. it makes you think of summer. 

So it is...

I went back and added another light layer of color on the last corner of the upper mainline. Now with that done I can start to re tree the far corners of the mainlines. Before I get to that I found yet another power drop. This time on my bottom outer mainline. I added another power connect but I still need one more on the other side. Taking a short break to see what is going on in the real world............Paul

After some inspiration by Gunrunner John with my A5 (he helped me upgrade to LED headlights and clean out my smoke unit) I tried to upgrade my GP7 to TMCC.

The new Command Lite unit from ERR won't fit.  I can't figure out how to stuff it all in the shell.  Had it hooked up and working before I went to bed last night.  Thought "All I gotta do is connect the lights and drop the shell on."

 Not sure what I'm going to do.  It's so close, but no cigar.

What's the issues on the apparently closest options?

Components can always be removed from the board, and located in other remote corners. Removing, or trimming a boards edge isn't too hard. They are laminations, so work lengthwise on an edge, vs short thickness. Ive sanded with coarse sandpaper flat on a table. You can remove whole traces, and replace with wire if need be.

The issue is the sound board is mounted to a plastic plate and the original reversing unit was mounted to a plastic shelf.  Even with one of the shelves removed, I'm still about 1/8" too wide.  I could also just sandwich the boards (all three) with some fish paper between them...but then there's no mounting.  The new Command Lite is thin enough to turn flat.  I can dig some polycarb out of the trash at work tomorrow and probably fab something to mount it above the non-powered truck.

Nylon nuts, bolts, spacers, and washers can be used to create new, or additional stand offs that don't require holes in boards. A board edge sandwiched between two nuts.

You will get a much smaller package out of the "loose package" though. A few loose, bunched up, wraps of tape around the polycarb will provide a lot of cushion, they don't weight much. 

More track laying today. Still shooting for next Sunday to finish everything in this aisle.

Here's what's left to do. A bunch of filler pieces and the hump curve.

The crossover to the continuous running cutoff, and the wall track.

The hump ladder and a couple of filler pieces.

This part of the yard is done.

Looking good, Elliot. You'll make Saturday, no problem.

Elliot the scope of your project is mind numbing but the progress you've made this year is amazing! You have inspired me to get moving on my own dormant layout.

Today I spent the day vacuuming the cobwebs and dust from what's left of the layout. I need to clean it before I can pack away the rest of the buildings, accessories etc.. it was also an excuse to clean the rails on the 0-72 loop so I could take the Big Boy for a few laps.. what an awesome machine!

Maybe Art will let me bring her over to stretch her legs on his beautiful layout while mine is down.

hint.. hint...

Rich - Great minds must think alike.  I was showing Dixie a video of the new Big Boy and she acted very impressed.  How could she not be?  I have been trying to get Chuck to bring his over, but he won't get it until next Sunday and I think Stan is trying to get him to run it on his layout too.  Maybe we can get Stan to loan us a reefer train to pull behind it?

Art

The bewitching hour of midnight made me call it a day or night. But I got the last of the scenery in the corners painted. I ran a extra power and ground to a far side of the outer mainline. Tested the main and now no drop in voltage or speed. I found a couple of bags of coarse turf so I finished off the night taking my super trees and adding foam to them. I had them only painted a green color but now they look a heck of a lot better. Not a bad day at all...........................Paul

Finished installing my MTH crossing gates. Went to fire the layout for some train running and two blocks were shorted out.   Ok, standard troubleshooting procedure. Remove all engines and rolling stock. check. No power. Got a 5 volt trickle on the center rail. Put engine on track and the sound system burps at 3 second intervals. Huh? Ok, crawl under layout and start dropping power leads to find section with short. Dropped them all the way back to the powermaster. Still shorted. Must be bum powermaster. No wait! Lookie at the conv/command switch! Set to conventional! Must have bumped it hooking up the signal relay. Well, the cobwebs are cleaned out from under the table.... Well that's three hours I won't get back.... #feellikeafool...

I finally have a complete loop and a passing siding on the layout. Even the son asked how many years it took. Too many things got in the way and it made a great table   The VL Big Boy was the final nudge to do something 

also ran a DCS test on everything. 9-10 throughout