N-Scale Picnic Table

I have been doing a bunch of reading about scratch building structures and ordered lots of styrene strips and sheets to start working on downtown buildings.  While I haven't exactly decided what type of building I want to attempt first, I did know that I needed a couple of picnic tables for the break area of the mill.  Using a picnic table plan that I found online and using .010 x .040 strip styrene, close to the N-Scale equivalent of a 2x6, I built the table top out of 5 strips and benches out of 2 strips side by side. It took me less than an hour and it turned out pretty nice.  Once I get a coat of paint on it, I think it will look great.

Sedalia Spline and Mill Siding

Ive had some time off and am getting the chance to work on the Model Railroad a lot these past few days.  Today I didn't really have a plan when I walked into the room, but, after looking at it for a few minutes, I ripped out the basic landform behind the incline toward Sedalia(behind the mill and fuel facilities).

All of the area that appears to be covered in masking tape, and the area in the far right of the picture with the paster cloth on it went straight into the trash can.

The problem with this area is that we are fitting the grade to Sedalia along the back wall of the layout in as small of an area as possible while still making the landscape between the two height diferences believable.  My first attempt at building this was using plywood as sub-roadbed, and I have cut the ply to about 2-4in wide, which resulted in some of the terrain between the two levels as a sheer cliff and in one six inch section, the top of the cliff protruded further than the base.  Rather than attempt to fight it anymore, In the spur of the moment this afternoon, I ripped it all out and decided to put in a new spline roadbed for this section. 

Spline Roadbed is quite an easy process, just some what time consuming.  It seems to always be good to have another project that you can work on while the glue dries a little bit before we have to take clamps off to put in the next section of spline.  For our spline we use 1/8" Masonite(hardboard) cut into 3/4" strips. I put a screw in the middle of every riser so that I could clamp the first stip to it and work outward from there.  With 1/8" Masonite, it takes 7 layers to be wide enough for the cork roadbed.

Once I completed the Spline to Sedalia, I began laying track in the siding for the mill/fuel area.  Most of the turnouts for the layout are being hand laid with the FastTracks system, but I only had a few of them completed currently. I still need to build 4 more turnout before I can lay the two tracks for the fuel area, and all of the tracks for the mill.

Mill Facility

The mill has been a long project and over the course of the project things keep changing.  It was originally going to cover a lot of ground with a few tracks for staging empties and fulls, a track for the local switcher, and pull through track for the elevator unloading.

This mill build actually started based on this set up and elevator (Walthers Kit), transfer building (PikeStuff), large warehouse/manufacturing building (PikeStuff), loading dock(Micro Engineering), and office(Micro Engineering).

This is where the mill stayed for almost 9 months.

In those nine months we chose to run a point to point layout instead of a loop which changed the placement of the mainline and siding for this area.  The mill land ended up swapping with the fuel facilities for this section of the layout and the buildings needed to be rearranged to fit the area available.

This is what we had settled on as a building arrangement.  There are a few things that we were not happy about with this arrangement, but we did not want to start over with the mill so we were happy enough.

Today I finally started to finish up the buildings on the facility and in the process of the finishing I was playing around with spacing again.  I have finally found a building layout that I am happy with again.

The finalized layout has the buildings back into an L shape and the area in the corner of the L we have decided to make into a concrete patio that we will be able to put a few picnic tables and benches.  The area will be great of adding workers taking lunch or coffee break.   

The mill still has a long way to go.  Lots of details to add, parking lots, sidewalks, bushes, roof details, lighting, interior of the office, and weathering.

Helix Approach

Started working on the sub-roadbed from the river crossing to the helix today.  The area will also including the siding tracks for Sedalia Quarry, and part of it will need to be removable to access the window.  I decided to put in spline roadbed, and had completed that when we decided that we could put in a small 8" deep lift out section and just scenic the whole area.

Since the bridges are still part of the incline grade to the helix, I notched out part of the supports for the spline to sit down at the correct level.  I used a 12" piece of plywood to clamp to the spline as it went in so that area stayed straight for the turnout to be placed there.

Here are a few pictures after a few of the spline have gone into place.  I seems we use a clamp spaced about every 4-6 inches to make sure it is held together nicely while the glue dries.  The area below the spline is covered with shop towels to catch any of the glue that drips out.  While I am very particular about no glue squeezing out on the top of the spline, I dont really care about the bottom.

This is the part where we decided to change it all up and add an 8" deep section of plywood that will be the lift out so that we can put some rural scenery around that tracks as it crosses over to the island of the helix.  Had we know we were going to do this at the beginning of the day I wouldn't have put in the spline roadbed, but now that both are in, it will look nice having the elevated track and have the scenery slope down from the track in front.

A couple pictures of a few of our locomotives lined up in the staging yard.

Staging Area Lighting

Got a fair amount accomplished today on the layout.

Started by finally getting the hardboard in above the staging yard for the helix base.  Once the hard board was in the lighting for the staging area became a need.  We were concerned with the type or even color of lighting that we put in on the staging area as it is mostly there just to check on thing and a little bit of work light should cars derail.

We are using LED lighting on our layout and from working on another project I had a section of blue LEDs that were pretty close to the right size, and I had already soldered on the leads!  Mounted the LEDs on the inside of the front piece of 1x4 and it is illuminating across the tracks.  The LEDs run on 12v, and though I will eventually add a larger 12v power supply to the area when lights are added for the helix area and other lighting in the nearby area, today I just found an old 12v power supply from something that disappeared awhile ago yet the power supply went into a box.

May Update Video

June Update

Staging Yard

The staging yard has now been completed, It has four stub end tracks and then a 5th that also serves as a reversing loop.  We have installed ground throws for the staging lead turnouts, the cost of tortoises didn't seem worth it for the staging area, especially since all turnouts are very accessible.  We used a Digitrax AR1 on the reversing loop to control the power of the isolated track.

 

River Crossing & Sedalia Quarry

When the trains enter the layout from the east staging, they enter here on the lower track of the river area representing the track between St. Louis and Jefferson City running along the river and through some rock outcroppings.  Once the train has passed through Jefferson City it begins its climb up to these bridges that cross a river here on the way to Sedalia, where we have decided to make home to a Quarry.  The Quarry will have a siding off of the mainline here before the mainline crosses over the staging to where the helix will be (above St Louis Staging).

These are the two areas that have been much transformed in the past few days.  For the basic landforms we have used a few different methods.  Most of the river area is cut from 2" thick foam board, the rock cliff between the river and lower tracks is made of layered ceiling tiles, and the Sedalia are is masking tape on cardboard strips.  All area have now been covered in plaster and soon will be on to paint.

Milling Facility

While the layout continues to change, the milling facility has been through many different configurations.  This is the latest and hopefully final configuration of the buildings to best fit the space, now I just need to finish the buildings, foundations, loading dock, windows, doors, details.  The roadbed has finally gone down into the facility, a pull through track just behind the elevator, holding track next to it, and then the short track in front of the elevator will the the locomotive holding track for the town that the Milling and Fuel facilities reside in.

GATX SD40-2

Well it has been a few weeks since I have posted anything, but lucking this was because at least a week of it was a nice vacation.  

We have managed to get a few things done with the layout and this undecorated Kato SD40-2.  The paint job is completed, as I have been handeling the hand rails some of the blue has been flaking back off of them, this seems to be normal and after im done with all of the decals I will touch up the handrails before a clear coat.  The larger decals have gone on the loco and a lot more smaller decals to go.