What did you do on your layout today?

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