Seven day model railroad

Once more around?

2011-09-14T10:54:00.000-07:00

It's been a good while since Wingetts was rested from the exhibition circuit and I've been flitting around in the model railroading world doing a bit of this and a bit of that and a bit of the other. All good fun. But lately I have had a hankering to do another layout in the 7 day mode. As followers will know I've purchased a few APA Boxes from IKEA and find myself wondering about building a 7 day layout in one of them. Perhaps using Fiddlestick technology in some way. I have plenty of Micro Engineering flex track and turnouts. Modern Stock to cobble dogs with. So it wouldn't be too difficult. If I think about it too much I'll end up doing it. This old blog needs a new lease of life anyway...

'Ello 'ello

2011-02-02T12:01:00.001-08:00

A quick word of welcome to those dropping in from Carl Arendts website this month.
There's not much to see here now as the layout is in a semi retired state but I have other blogs for you to peruse:
more-t-please
smallmodelrailwaylayouts

both are pretty active currently and contain much of the same witty entertaining banter that this blog was noted for... ;-)

See you there!

Another new blog

2010-12-14T18:47:00.000-08:00

I can't cover the construction of my next model railway on this blog so I've started a new one specifically about small model railway layouts for model railway exhibitions.

Its called Small Model Railways I hope you check it out.

A Challenge worth taking?

2010-12-13T13:14:00.000-08:00

At the Granite City Train show over the weekend I was challenged to re-create Wingetts recycling in 2-Rail O scale by a 2 Rail modeller there.
I have to admit to being sorely tempted by the idea. I like O scale. I like the size and the feel of the stock. They have a mass that HO scale models just don't have.
Whether I would re-create Wingetts or not is another thing. I wouldn't want to do something exactly the same. But a the idea of a small layout in O scale holds a great deal of fascination for me.
We'll see. I have to build something new for the Easter edition of the Granite City train show anyway.

What a day!

2010-12-11T15:52:00.000-08:00

Well we did it!

We managed to go to the Granite City Train show, exhibit and return home all in the grip of a major winter storm.

We left home just before 7am, hoping that would give us plenty of time to get to the show and set up. We needn't have worried. It was still early in the storm and the wind was keeping the road clear of snow in the exposed areas. Though there were deep patches of snow where the road was sheltered by trees and buildings. We managed to make it to the exhibition hall in about 45 minutes only about 10 minutes longer than usual. Though when we got there I discovered that I had forgotten to bring the tripod that supports the fiddle yard. So I ended up building what can only be described as a Jenga tower of freight car boxes under the fiddle yard to give it some support. Apart from that, set up was a breeze and the layout operated very well indeed, which is the norm as regular readers of this blog will know.

Attendance at the show was lower than other years, not surprisingly, and a few other traders and exhibitors did not make the trip. But a lot of the regular usual faces were there and we got to meet and joke with several old friends again.

Another regular occurrence when attending this show is my appearance on AM 1240 W-JON, local radio, being interviewed by local personality Bob Hughes, talking about the layout I have bought along. I do my best to present a positive image of the hobby. I'm getting quite the veteran on local radio now!

With attendance being low due to the weather many exhibitors started to pack up early. An hour early though is way to early in my books and I kept on running trains until about 15 minutes before the close. Normally I would run right up to the end but as there was nary a soul about, it seemed an OK thing to do and we were out of the Hall heading for home 5 minutes after the doors had closed.

I'm glad I went, the show is always enjoyable and I send out a huge vote of thanks to Ed Olsen and all involved with the running of the show. Thanks for a great time and I'll see you all on April 30th 2011, and if you readers know what's good for you, you'll be there too.

With our farewells said we headed home. Once again the roads weren't too much trouble, (unlike those in we are hearing about in Southern Minnesota) and we got home in good time. Then began the hard work of digging our driveway clear of 6-8" of snow so that we could get the car into the garage.

this could be fun...

2010-12-10T17:49:00.000-08:00

It's the wonderful Granite City Train Show tomorrow. I wouldn't miss it for the world.

It's just that lining up to the west of the state is a very large snowstorm that could dump up to a foot of snow on the Saint Cloud/Princeton corridor by the end of Saturday. I hope that there won't be too much snow about in the morning when we drive there and that the snow ploughs have the job under control when the show is done. It will be quite the adventure I'm sure.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends

2010-12-07T13:25:00.000-08:00

Once more, we head out to an exhibition.

This Saturday I was planning to take Gonou, my T scale layout to the Granite City Train show in St. Cloud, MN but when I got the layout out for a test run this week the controller had developed a mysterious fault. I don't have time to order a replacement controller. So Wingetts Recycling will be heading over there instead.

The Granite City Train Show is at the National Guard Armory in St. Cloud, MN on Saturday December 11th from 9am to 3pm

Exhibition Pictures

2010-11-29T16:21:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of fellow exhibitor Barry Schreiber, here are a couple of pictures of me working the layout and keeping the punters interested at the Princeton show over the weekend.

Two days in Princeton

2010-11-27T14:34:00.000-08:00

Another weekend, another train show.

The Rum River Model Railroad Club show in Princeton, MN this time. My home clubs show. It's very brave for a small club to put on a 2 day show but the Princeton club do very well and the show is well supported by the townsfolk.

There was a very varied selection of layouts in all scales. My favourite was a working display of vintage Lionel/Marx tinplate trains from the 1920's and 30's superb stuff that was well cared for and ran beautifully.

I was sited alongside an S scale American Flyer layout. Chock full of working accessories, like coal loaders, sawmills, level crossings, cattle docks. It was really amazing to watch them all and to think that these were all 50 or so years old. It's amazing what they created with electric motors, cams, pulleys and levers back then. I loved it.

Wingetts ran well on both days, though the Kadee couplers didn't work as well as they could, they still need some adjustment. Something to work on.

The atmosphere at this show is quite different to any other I've attended as an exhibitor. Everyone knows everyone and it really is a social gathering for the town. As a consequence operation was less strenuous than at other shows.

Being more relaxed allowed me to people watch while I was operating. I noticed that men just came up and watched the trains only some of them read the blurb accompanying the layout to explain the layouts operation. Whereas the vast majority of women read the blurb first and then watched the layout.

One thing I noticed with small children is that they were more interested in watching the trains when the cars on the layout were brightly coloured i.e Yellow CNW hoppers rather than brown SOO ones. The continual back and forth movement kept them quite occupied.

Once again all viewers were taken with the presentation of the layout, which begs the question.

"Why don't more exhibitors over here do it?"

Unstoppable

2010-11-27T06:33:00.000-08:00

Last night after the days activities at the Princeton Train show the wife and I headed down to the cinema to see the Railroad themed movie "Unstoppable"

It was OK.

To my mind there have only ever been two good railroad/railway movies made. Buster Keatons "The General" in 1927 and the Ealing classic British Comedy "The Titfield Thunderbolt" from 1953.

Unstoppable is a runaway train movie and once you've seen one runaway train movie you've seen them all. All the same tired old disaster movie cliches are there in great depth. From the relationships of the characters to climactic ending. Even though the tale is based on a true story even the lightest research reveals just how much Hollywood exaggerated things.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy it. I was quite taken in with Tony Scotts direction and the action sequences were well shot. Apparently many of the crashes were actually filmed and not CGI created which in these days of CGI is quite gratifying.

But ultimately I came out of the film feeling quite disappointed.

It ain't over yet

2010-11-24T10:27:00.000-08:00

It's the annual Rum River Model Railroad Club Thanksgiving Train Show on Friday and Saturday. A much more relaxed affair than the Worlds Greatest Hobby show.
I'm looking forward to it.
The old Depot 1st Street. Princeton, MN. Friday and Saturday $2 admission.

Spare my blushes

2010-11-22T13:19:00.001-08:00

The first embarrassingly positive write up about Wingetts recycling has appeared on the internet
http://look4trains.com/2010/11/when-they-say-worlds-greatest-hobby.html

Thanks Jim

WGH Show Day 2

2010-11-21T17:10:00.000-08:00

Ah, the joys of owning a small layout. Inside 2 hours after the show closes we are home and the layout is unpacked out of the car and I can reflect on another day at the show.
Another interesting day. I awoke with a pounding headache. Not quite a migraine but awfully close. It took well into the afternoon for it to clear. I was thankful for my wifes help to take over some operating duties on the layout while I took it easy at times.
Then there was the issue of actually getting to the hall. No problem you'd think as we had a room in a hotel just across the road. Well just walking there was a problem. Freezing rain in the night had turned the roads and paths into a skating rink, it was a very hairy walk to the hall.
It was difficult to forget about the conditions even after the door opened because attendance was low. People certainly took their time getting in. I cant say i blame them the newspapers say there was some 300 accidents in the metro area.
So to the show, how did the layout perform? Just as well as the previous day. So I can't complain there. Over the two days I'm very very happy with the performance.
The reaction of the public was very much the same as yesterday too. Many were very taken with the presentation. The proscenium arch received countless favourable comments.
The real big surprise came around lunchtime. Two guys stood looking at the layout taking in the scene, passing comments and chuckling to each other. People can chuckle, I don't mind. Just don't make snide comments about the layout to my face. Then one of them spoke.
"You've got a couple of very special guests here today"
"Oh really" said I kind of expecting a joke of some sort.
"We used to be the owners/managers of Phillips recycling"
To say that I was flabbergasted would be a colossal understatement. They had been looking at the photographs I had on display and had been comparing them to the model. They were very positive in their appreciation of the model and I learned quite a bit more about the prototype location. For instance, when applying for planning permission from Saint Cloud city council to build a structure to house a new shredder, they built an N scale model of the premises to show the council so they could see how its construction would affect the surroundings. Needless to say the council appreciated being able to see the plan in 3D and rubber stamped the application in minutes.
I also learned about the marks painted on the ends of the wheel axles, White, Blue and apparently Orange. The colours, as I knew, signified different weights of wheel. White for 50lb wheels. Blue 75lb and Orange for 100 pounders. I remarked that I had never seen any Orange marked wheels before. That is because the 100lb wheels are wanted and can be sold on quickly. Once they get a wagonload of those 100lb wheels they are shipped out straight away. The other weights are not so popular and thus lie around the site for longer lengths of time. This was invaluable information and something that I hope to incorporate onto the layout at a later date.
Meeting these guys was very special and made me very proud of the layout indeed.
Really, you can't top that and the rest of the afternoon passed rather uneventfully by comparison.
However there is more. During one of my afternoon breaks I took a look around some of the traders looking for something to buy. You HAVE to buy something at a model railway exhibition don't you? Well I do...
I was very surprised to see the Atlas Trainman plus Genset switcher for sale. I'd been wanting one for quite some time and had been getting rather fed up with the delays to the delivery to the shops. It looked like a quite beautiful model in the photographs A truly modern up to date prototype, suitable for my modern up to date layouts. I had to have it. It was on sale too. So it was a done deal. I rushed it back to the layout to try it out. I was not disappointed. It looks great and ran as well as it looked. I think that after the layouts reception over the weekend it deserved a treat. Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it...

So all in all I couldn't have had a better weekend for the layout and it doesn't stop there as it is also appearing at the Rum River Model Railroad Club show at the historic Princeton Depot next weekend.

So to close I want to thank Randy Bachmann and his crew at the WGH organisation for putting on a great show and I hope to see them again in another 4 years or so.

But an even bigger thanks goes out to my wife for helping out allowing me to take breaks especially today when I had my pounding headache.

WGH show Day 1

2010-11-20T16:36:00.000-08:00

What a day!
I'm knackered as we Brits like to say.
What a lot to remember I need to note it all down.
It all began when I opened my email at 8am and there was an email from fellow Rum River Model Railroader, Brian Snook he was having problems setting his layout up and could I spare some time to help him. I dashed over as soon as I could and helped as much as I could but I still had a few bits to do to set up Wingetts.
Then at 10am the doors opened and within minutes my first blog "follower" showed up Tracy McKibben.. Great to meet you Tracy I'm glad the layout lived up to your expectations. Next a group of ne'er do wells from the outstateminnesota rail fan group off Yahoo! appeared to show their support for me and the layout I expect pictures and comments to appear on some of their blogs soon.
People stopped and talked all the way through the day be they blog followers or just model railroaders. Some very knowledgeable about microlayouts and others who knew nothing were very excited about the concept of "small but perfectly formed" model railroads. Some people recognized the layouts presentation as something popularized by fellow Brit model railroader Iain C. Rice though luckily no-one confused me with him this time.
One person very interested in the layout was an editor of a certain well known model railroad magazine who suggested that I should submit something to his magazine perhaps for publication. Who knows? You'll have to keep watching this blog...
Someone else who turned up and was most impressed with the layout was Minnesota Viking legend and noted model railroad enthusiast Carl Eller. He certainly liked what he saw.
As for the operation of the layout itself. It had its ups and downs. The locomotives ran flawlessly, without any shadow of a doubt. Full marks to Athearn and Bachmann there. At the Start of the show the layout was nice and square and level and the couplers worked and cars
stayed where they were spotted. However clumsy viewers wether they be adults or children managed to knock things about a bit and by mid afternoon a slight grade had developed and cars started to move of their own volition on the middle road. My perfectly adjusted Kadee couplers became unadjusted after some time, so things aren't set up as well as I thought. But I really prefer operating couplers by hand anyway so that's not too much of a hardship. In the middle of the afternoon one of the turnouts developed a mysterious electrical problem that a bit of cleaning managed to clear up. But that's about it the rest of the way was fine.
I just hope everything will be as good tomorrow. But tomorrow as they say is another day...

Calm before the storm

2010-11-19T19:23:00.000-08:00

Here we are sat in the hotel right across from the exhibition hall resting up ready for tomorrow.
Set up went really well as always. Such is the great advantage of a small layout. You don't even want to know how quickly we set up, you really don't...
It was very definitely a squeeze getting everything that I needed for the show into our little Scion but we got here safe and undamaged and a quick test test run showed everything was OK.
I'm looking forward to the weekend this little layout has garnered quite a bit of interest on the Internet and I'm looking forward to meeting some of its fans.

Squeaky bum time...

2010-11-18T05:59:00.000-08:00

No, that's not a song title. Well, not that I know of anyway.
It's getting close. The show is getting close.
Tonight I pack the layout up ready to set up tomorrow night for the weekends great adventure.
So we had a final test run with the layout. And after 15 minutes head scratching wondering where the mysterious electrical short had come from, (note to self don't leave your Kadee coupler gauge on the track...)
A final adjustment on some of the couplers and a few replacements, and now it all works OK.
Now to get those exhibitor badges finished

Badge.

2010-11-17T10:32:00.000-08:00

That's much better. The sounds of Eric Clapton and Cream are tumbling through my head now. But what on earth does that have to do with the layout?
Well last night I worked away doing a bit of weathering on rolling stock and scenery. Which looks pretty good for now. Quite pleased with the results, I must say.
Then it hit me. I hadn't made any operators badges for my wife and I for the show.
Badges are one of those small details that help with the presentation. It ties you to the layout and makes the whole thing look professional. I've done them for many of my layouts. It pains me to think I won't have any for this show.
Perhaps I'll have time tonight or tomorrow to knock something up.

Last night

2010-11-16T10:28:00.001-08:00

So, taking great care to come up with a post title that doesn't lodge an annoying 80's plastic rock tune in my head. Here's a quick update from last night.
I tried ALL the rolling stock that I intend to use on the layout for the show and the couplers all work perfectly. Excellent news as I was expecting to do some adjusting somewhere. But it looks like it won't be needed.
I also added a few vents to the roof of the building. I felt it needed them. Even though the prototype structure didn't have any. The roof was flat and boring before, the vents add a bit of interest to the roof. They might be totally and utterly prototypically incorrect. But the overall affect over-rides that I feel.
Tonight a bit of weathering perhaps.

The final countdown...

2010-11-15T08:29:00.000-08:00

Oh crap!
I wish I hadn't written that. I've got the flippin' tune in my head now...
I've got 4 nights left to get on and finish the layout off.
Well three, as I've got to pack the layout in the car on Thursday night.
Three nights. Couplers, scenic doodads, test running.
I'd better do something to it tonight...

A little diversion...

2010-11-02T17:41:00.001-07:00

http://ians76mgb.blogspot.com/

Busy Busy Busy (an update)

2010-10-21T10:37:00.000-07:00

The World's Greatest Hobby Show in St. Paul grows ever closer and things are coming along with the sprucing up of the layout in preparation. The front track had the uncoupler magnet adjusted and the track was relaid and ballasted.
Some serious track cleaning has gone on, much more serious than expected. The Soo line bandit MP15 works perfectly the same cannot be said for the trackmobile. It is so small and short of weight that it has problems navigating the switches. I've cleaned them until they sparkle like new yet the trackmobile still has issues. I've cleaned the trackmobiles wheels as well as I can and still it stutters and stumbles across the pointwork. Most annoying.
So I took the decision the other day to order a back up loco to work the scrapyard sidings. A Bachmann GE 45 ton switcher. The one with the outside counterweights and connecting rods. This should make the loco interesting to watch as it potters about. I ordered mine from Micromark. They had a deal where if you weren't bothered about the colour (like me) you let them pick the loco off the shelf you'd get it for just about half off the recommended retail price. That, my friends is too good a deal to pass over. I'm looking forward to see it run.
The next task is to sort out the couplers on the cars so they all work perfectly. That will be an interesting job. I am standardising on Kadees and have a selection of them to fit to my cars so they are all the same.
Then there are numerous detailing bits and pieces to do as well. Plenty to keep me going. The show is just a month away...

So unlike me

2010-07-09T14:11:00.000-07:00

It really is so unlike me.

To get on and replace and reballast the track so quickly. But it's 90F outside and there is no way I'm mowing the lawn in that heat... So this morning after work I headed down to Hub Hobby in Richfield and picked up a couple of lengths of Atlas Cose 83 flex-track and some Chooch scrap bale loads for the gondolas. Therefore a few hours after I had got home things were looking pretty much as they were before I ripped the trackwork up.

The remounted Kadee coupler magnet works a treat. So another important task before the show will be to make sure all my stock has Kadees on them, all properly adjusted.

Here we go..

2010-07-02T10:27:00.001-07:00

There.

The track is now lifted and the magnet removed. All I needed to do to bring it down to the correct thickness was remove the plate that is used to increase the magnetic field.

Next task, buy another piece of flex track...

The Ayes have it.

2010-06-30T12:34:00.000-07:00

OK then. that was easy enough. The form is filled in and mailed off.
Time to think about what needs to be done.
First and foremost I should probably re-lay that front siding so that there is no slight hump over the hidden uncoupler magnet. I should probably do that soon too so if I screw things up really badly I have time to rebuild everything
Then standardize on couplers - Kadees. Get them fitted and properly adjusted on all the stock. Be nice to have them working perfectly it does look good when they work properly.
Another task should be to finish my Northern Lines GP10 conversion finally by adding the decals and handrails and bits.
Rolling stock. I pretty much have everything I need on that score. I'd like to do some extra weathering on them some of them are much too clean.
I'm sure there are some other miscellaneous bits and pieces that I could find to do. Details to finish the scenes different scrap loads for the gondolas. Plenty of things. If any of you think of anything post it.

Perhaps the story is not over.

2010-06-28T16:42:00.000-07:00

Wingett's recycling sits in the model railway room untouched but not unforgotten. Why just this weekend I started on a article about it to submit to Model Railroader magazine.

To a certain extent layout building interests have moved on. But then today something happened to make me think about the model again.

I received an invite to the Worlds Greatest Hobby on Tour show at the Saint Paul River Center on November 20-21st 2010. A great show. A great BIG show. When I took Purespring Watercress to the 2006 show the estimated attendance was over 30,000.

I love exhibiting model railroad layouts and I think Wingetts recycling deserves a big audience. Don't you?

Granite City Train show report

2010-04-25T13:43:00.000-07:00

Another show done.

The Granite City Train show is always fun. It's good to meet up with old friends and share stories, catch up with what's going on.

Wingett's performed well, though not perfectly. I know what needs to be done and that will involve relaying some of the track. But I don't have to think about that now.

I even appeared on local radio once again to talk about the layout as it was inspired by a local industry. That drew a few people to come and see the layout later on in the day.

A rather glowing write up of a persons impression of the layout can be read here...

Now I think layout development will shift back to my T scale projects until I decide what to do about relaying that track.

I'm a B-a-a-a-d Boy...

2010-04-08T07:20:00.000-07:00

March 15th. Thats when the last post was dated and thats when I said I was going to start work on prepping the layout for the Granite City Train show.
Have I started?
Have I heck. I went out and bought myself a new camera and embarked on a picture a day project.
Though give me my due. I have turned the layout around so I can work on it from the rear to build the extension to the fiddle yard.
I find myself with two weeks to do the tasks I need to do.
Build a fiddle yard extension, paint and decal my locomotive conversion, add some scenic details and make sure it still all runs...

No problems...

It's Time...

2010-03-15T13:04:00.000-07:00

With the Granite City Train show looming (now under 6 weeks away) It's time to devote some attention to Wingetts'. Not all that much to do though to be honest. The two most important things to do are build a fiddle yard (offstage storage) and finish painting my GP10 so that it will pass as a copy of the loco that used to serve Phillips up until last year.
The other tasks are some detailing like painting the axle ends on some of the wheels blue and adding another building (perhaps two) to the backscene. If I was panicking I'd be doing all this on the night before. But I'll try to avoid that I really will...

the layout effect

2010-02-21T08:27:00.000-08:00

Once in a while something happens. Something that comes at you so totally out of the blue that just blows you away. Wingetts recycling has already done that to me once with Jeremiah and Brandon at the Princeton Train show and yesterday it happened again.

I was presenting the first of a series of workshops on designing and building a small model railroad at the Princeton Model Train Club. The first session was well attended and I think I captured a few peoples imagination.

One person in particular. We shall call him Tim (for I think that was his name, sometimes I'm so bad remembering names). He had bought has father along to attend the workshop. He wasn't really all that interested in Model Railroads. But then he took a look at Wingetts and pulled up a chair and started to take a very serious interest in the model. It turned out that he works at Phillips Recycling! He recognised the building and the piles of wheels. He was very impressed with the model the atmosphere was exactly right. The only thing that he could see missing was some holes in the sheet metal walls of the building.

I did glean some interesting tidbits about the real thing. For example you will have seen in some of my pictures of Phillips that the piles of wheels have white and blue patches painted on the end of the axles. I often wondered why this was. It turns out that this was to identify different size and weight of wheels for when they are sold on.

Once again, I was blown away that this little model, that I knocked up in less than a week could interest someone so much.

More T please

2010-02-11T17:47:00.000-08:00

Is the name of my blog covering my activities in T scale the worlds smallest model railroading scale. You should pop over there to see some inspirational examples of work that T scalers produce. I'm all fired up to work in T again.

Another layout, another blog

2010-02-05T18:19:00.000-08:00

As you may well be aware if you have been following this blog I am to be presenting a series of small layout workshops at the Princeton Model Train Club in the forthcoming weeks. I was planning to use the layout featured in my protocrastinator blog as the example for the workshop students to follow along with. Well. I had a rethink and I thought that it might be a bit big and involved for that purpose. As a result I have started to develop a new idea. A much smaller layout that will be much easier to build and complete in the alotted time set out by the workshop classes. As you may well know all my layouts have a blog and this new one will be no exception. You'll be able to follow it at Cwm Lwch. There you go, another layout, another blog. I'm a troubled soul I really am...

Saved!

2010-02-03T17:39:00.001-08:00

So here you go. After a little bit of cutting, filing and filling I'm just about ready to nip over to a hobby shop and get some grey, black and yellow paints for this project. Though I might try to find some yellow striping instead of paint, as yellow paint is notoriously lacking in its coverage powers.

To be honest I'm really pleased with how it's shaping up. I never expected to be doing a kitbash/conversion like this. So expectations weren't that high. But I think I'm doing OK. Paint will tell.

Welcome new visitors!

2010-02-01T06:06:00.000-08:00

Hello there!
Wingett's recycling has just appeared in this months edition of Carl Arendts small layout scrapbook. (Thanks Carl)
To those of you dropping in for the first time. A big hello to you all.
Those 7 (well 5 actually) days that were taken to build the layout seem so long ago now. But the layout still serves me well. In fact for those of you resident in Minnesota Wingetts will be at the Granite City Train show in Saint Cloud, MN in April if you want to come along and take a look.
So all you new visitors you might want to pull up a comfy seat and a glass of your favourite tipple and read the entire story that starts back in September of 2009...

Git back on yer bike...

2010-01-29T15:23:00.000-08:00

Oh how my moods shift!

To think that not but a few short hours ago I was feeling pretty darned sorry for myself at the thought of having ruined my GP10 project.

It's at times like this I remember the words of my late Dad. Who, when I fell off my bike when learning to ride as a child would tell me to get back on and not let it beat me.

So I took a closer look at the chassis and the body together and saw that there was no way on earth that the body would fit over the chassis. The weight was far too big for a start, it was shaped for a hi-nose not the cut away nose of the kit.

I saw that it wouldn't take too much work to trim the weight to fit. So I decided that the best course of action would be to cut the weight down to size and then splice the Kaslo kit cab and nose onto the P2000 GP7 body. This I did rather speedily and a picture of a test fit can be seen below...

I think it's going to work... (by the way that large lump of metal is the weight removed from the nose)

Box o' junk

2010-01-29T12:51:00.000-08:00

Well that didn't last very long. My first foray into the H0 scale resin kit assembly that is.

I assembled all the stair treads onto the front and rear steps and fixed them in place continuing on from yesterdays slow start. Then, after that had set, I decided to pop the body onto the chassis to see what it looked like. Like a GP10, I hoped. The body was a very tight fit over the weight on the chassis. It was supposed to be a "drop on fit" according to the instructions. So I set to and started to file some of the inside of the casting away so it would fit easier testing the fit every so often. It started to go on easier. Then at one point it slid on a ways and then stopped. It was stuck. I tried to carefully ease it off and then CRACK! The side walkways broke clean off and the rear steps as well.

So there we go. The kit would appear to be pretty much toast. Perhaps I could try and stick the broken pieces back on or, I could try to graft the undamaged nose section onto the P2000 body.

Whatever I do I'm not in a hurry to do it. It kind of hurt to take the photograph and write about it. Confidence took a battering today.

Box o' fun

2010-01-28T16:43:00.000-08:00

For quite some time now I've had this below...

A kit from Kaslo shops for a Paducah rebuilt EMD GP10. For the most part that used to mean nothing to me. But it is was what the Northern Lines Railway out of St. Cloud operate and that is what I intend to model. You can even see I've marked the box RLCX 1704 which as it happens is the loco below. For a few years the NLR operated RLCX 1703 and 1704 they were leased from Relco locomotive services from the start of the lines operation.

So the plan is to model #1704. I took plenty of pictures of it So hopefully I will be able to get it right. I have the Proto 2000 GP7 chassis to fit underneath it so it's all a question of putting everything together. It's a bit more of a complex kit than I'm used to and it took me about an hour last night to add just 4 stair treads to the front nose steps. I'll do bits to it here and there but it would be nice to have it finished ready for the Granite City Train Show and see if anyone recognises it

Model Railroad Planning 2010

2010-01-25T16:45:00.000-08:00

I've done a considerable amount of model railroad/railway planning in my time so I'm always open to picking up books and magazines on the subject to see what they have to say. MRP2010 by Kalmbach is no exception.

I've always had a soft spot for the MRP series ever since they featured on of my plan back in the 2004 issue. (If anyone has the issue I'm on the page opposite the inside of the back cover...)

More often than not MRP features the diametric opposite attitude to planning of my viewpoint. They feature the big basement filling opus. I like the smaller layouts. MRP 2010 is no exception.

That is not to say there is nothing in it for me. Far from it.

There's a very interesting feature on the Richmond Pacific Railroad in California. Some very inspirational pictures. Though the actual plans discussed later are large room filling empires. I bet there are plenty of locations on this line that would be very suitable for the small/micro layout builder. My interest in the line is most definitely piqued.

There's also some super pictures of a Midwestern Prairie Layout with some unconventional baseboard construction and scenery that just shows you don't have to stick to the established ideas.

Layouts for smaller spaces do get a look in with a feature on a shelf layout creating a SOO Line scene in Minneapolis.

Freemo modular model railroading, DCC for interlocking, and turning passenger trains are some of the other subjects covered.

So all in all quite a reasonable magazine that you might want to consider buying.

More from ExactRail

2010-01-23T11:42:00.001-08:00

Following a previous review of an ExactRail product you will know that I'm very impressed with them and that I want more of them. This, as regular followers of this blog will know has been fraught with difficulty. I've missed out on the Thrall Railgon, the Pulpwood cars and the Gunderson gondola in the past few weeks. Clearly these cars are very popular and many folks feel the same as I do.

However quite by chance the other day, whilst searching for something else I came across the website for Traintimehobby and they had the Gunderson gondola in stock. Well, I didn't think twice. I ordered the baby there and then. Within three days it was with me. Superb speedy service. Thanks. Here it is.

I'm going to use it to help recreate this detail that I saw on a gondola over in Staples a couple of years ago. I find the fact that the ID number is sprayed on like a graffiti artist would do most amusing.
So let's talk a little about the model. ExactRail have four levels of model. Express, (the basic level) through Evolution, Platinum and Signature which I assume to be the highest standard. The Railbox was an Evolution level model and was stunning I hate to think just how good Signature might be.

The Thrall gondola is an Express model, the basic level. But don't be fooled by the term basic this model still has the equalized trucks of the more detailed models.

The most noticeable difference is in the detailing on the car where the laddering on the Railbox was seperately applied here it is integrally moulded. That was an initial disappointment but heck I paid under $20 for it. My LBF railbox that I love so much also has moulded handrails so it's comparable there. There is also more detail below floor level than on some of my other cars

For its small size it is suprisingly heavy. I noticed that the moment I picked it up. Something else I noticed immediately is that that the interior floor appears to be too high. When you look at the outside of the model it appears that the inside should be about 19mm deep in reality is 16mm deep so perhaps that extra depth is used to hide the exceptional weight. It's really not an issue though as on Wingetts you would rarely be able to see inside anyway. It's just something I noticed that's all. It comes with McHenry sprung couplers like the railbox. My preference is for Kadees though so I'll replace them. Again, not an issue. I know folks who love McHenry's.

It's the kind of model that will look perfect on Wingett's.

Once again, I'm very happy with it.

Ain't nothin' like the real thing...

2010-01-23T07:54:00.000-08:00

Last Monday was the Martin Luther King Jnr. holiday hereabouts and as a result I had the day off work. The weather forecast had been quite promising so I decided to go over to Saint Cloud to photograph and film some trains on the main line. (I am TrainspotterUSA after all) Unfortunately the predicted sunshine never materialised. So all my photographs and video are somewhat grey. But I was rewarded with some film of the Northern Lines Railway working the Northern Siding at Phillips recycling. The Northern siding is where the gondolas are loaded with scrap metal.

Enjoy.

After I had posted this on YouTube, Jake Nelson, a fellow outstate Minnesota railfan alerted me to some film he shot a while back of the Northern lines working the West siding. This is where cars are left for scrapping. His video is here:

With these two pieces of film you get an insight into the rail operations at this small industry.

If you want to see more of my Youtube railfanning videos they are on my YouTube channel

http://www.youtube.com/Trainspotterusa

Icicle works...

2010-01-13T11:56:00.000-08:00

Some of you will have seen this already if you're on your toes.
Otherwise http://railwayeye.blogspot.com/2010/01/ice-to-see-you-to-see-you-ice.html
What I find fascinating is that the icicle is pretty much shaped to the loading gauge...

Do us a favour will you?

2010-01-10T09:10:00.000-08:00

Pop on over to Terry's blog for his hobby shop http://lakesidehobby.blogspot.com/ and answer one of his monthly questionnaires will you?

Lakeside hobby is a brand new hobby shop and with these questionnaires Terry is trying to get a handle on what consumers want and are looking for in a hobby shop.

With more feedback it will help Terry make his (and my) Local Hobby Shop a better hobby shop...

The new header photo

2010-01-10T06:15:00.000-08:00

Do you like it?

I do.

Two things that bug me about it though. So I must make a point of correcting them before the Granite City Train show.

Can you spot them?

The first one concerns the pile of junk wheels. There's quite a lot of wheels in that pile there with pin-point axles on them. Real wagon wheels don't have pin-point axles. Need to flatten the points and paint them white or even blue like the ones in Phillips yard.

The other one. That roller door in the wall there is unpainted plastic as it came from the Walthers kit.

Still it's a short list of things to do so the addition of a couple of other small tasks doesn't matter much.

Exhibition news

2010-01-09T10:26:00.000-08:00

Wingetts recycling is now confirmed for the Granite City trainshow in Saint Cloud, MN on April 24th at the National Guard Armory.

It's a very good show, one of the best that Minnesota has to offer. With the layout being inspired by a Saint Cloud location I'm looking forward to attending and seeing if the residents recognise the inspiration.

Happy New Year 2010

2009-12-31T16:11:00.000-08:00

As the new year turns folks take the time to reflect on what has happened in the old year and what the new one will bring.

For "Seven day Model Railroad" its been quite the year. Three hundred and sixty five days ago I never even considered building a model railway in 7 days. But I did it and with some considerable success I think you'll agree. Where things will go from here are uncertain. The layout is still on display in Lakeside hobby and I expect it will make a few more appearances at shows in Minnesota in the coming year. To that end I'll still need to do some work on it. Add a proper fiddle yard and add some photographs to the backscene are the main tasks. Anything else would be extra.

So it was quite the year this last one. Who knows what the new one will bring?

I hope it brings you as much fun, enjoyment and success as I hope to get out of mine.

Going beyond the train set

2009-12-23T13:44:00.000-08:00

Wingetts recycling has had an effect.
Now Terry at Lakeside Hobby has gone public with this announcement http://lakesidehobby.blogspot.com/2009/12/getting-beyond-train-set.html I can talk about it. I will be presenting a series of workshops on building a micro layout for under $100 (or thereabouts). The sessions will cover everything all the way from design all the way through all aspects of building a layout that should end up not much bigger than 4' long. In order to "put my money where my mouth is" I think I should be building a layout along with everyone else.

Support your Local Hobby Shop

2009-12-20T09:11:00.000-08:00

Wingett's recycling is currently on (non working) display at Lakeside Hobby in Zimmerman, MN. I'm hounoured that Terry, the owner thinks it worthy of display to hopefully encourage other people to consider small model railway layouts when getting started in the hobby.

But that's not what this post is about.

With the opening of Lakeside Hobby I am now very lucky to have a truly Local Hobby Shop. In these days of internet shopping we all tend to go for where we can get the best deal when buying stock for our model railways and forget about how important the L.H.S. can be. Lets not forget that until very recently most of us bought just about everything from their L.H.S. Then internet traders with no premises and low overheads started to offer things at ridiculously low prices that the L.H.S. couldn't compete with. I've seen hobby shops close to me shrink to a shadow of their former selves in the last 10 years.

But the hobby isn't just about buying trains cheaply and running them on your model railroad. There's the interaction with like minded souls at exhibitions, clubs and hobby shops. Your L.H.S. owner is likely a keen modeller too. Buying stuff at an L.H.S. is a social experience.

"Come in, take your coat off and pour yourself a coffee" is the sort of atmosphere Terry is after. I'm all for that. I might just spend more money that way.

On show (again)

2009-12-18T03:08:00.000-08:00

Just a quick post to say that the 7 day layout will be on display at the opening of Lakeside Hobby at 12197 Freemont Lane, Zimmerman, MN this Saturday December 19th.

That's awesome.

A new local Hobby Shop for mid-Minnesota, I mean. I won't have to travel 30-50 miles in one direction to get layout building suppies. This one is so close I could almost fit it into a marathon training run...

Say Hello to the Protocrastinator

2009-12-06T16:49:00.000-08:00

(n) Protocrastinator is a person who puts off finescale Railroad (and railway modelling) for no good reason.

That would be me then, and by some incredible co-incidence Protocrastinator is the name of my new blog.

Why another blog?

Well, Seven day model Railroad is nearing the end of its journey. It was planned as a seven day layout and that's pretty much the time I've spent on it. So it fulfilled all my dreams. There are still things to do with it and there will still be a couple of model railway exhibitions it will attend as well as being written up in the model railway press. So there is a lot of life left in the old dog yet.

But I've been a frustrated finescale modeller since I discovered the concept. There is nothing that disappoints me more when I look at this layout and most others than looking at the wheels. Those Steamroller wheels. Then there's the pointwork, those flangeways. They are nothing like what they are on the real thing. As I was building this layout several times I thought to myself.

"I should have built this in P87" But It wouldn't have been a 7 day layout then.

You could ask why I don't re lay this layout with P87 track and turnouts. It would have to be a bigger layout then. Turnouts would have been longer and the layout would have lengthened. Besides I am very attached to this layout and I don't want to tear it up.

So there you go. Seven day layout is not dead, not even sleeping. But there will be 3.5mm scale developments going on elsewhere and you might just want to drop in and check it out.

You heard it here first Protocrastinator.

Snapshots

2009-12-03T18:02:00.000-08:00

In the few moment I had before the start of the show on Saturday I managed to get a few pictures taken. Here's a few. I hope you like them.

Trackmobile rests outside the building
Jack Trollopes "dirty old lady" is glimpsed between a couple of box cars
A view down the layout.

I'm such a Luddite

2009-12-03T08:52:00.000-08:00

I reproduce here a copy of a post I made on my 4mmscaleagonies blog. I've changed a few terms to suit the US outline blog.
I have now read through the latest copy of Scalefour News. (A UK finescale magazine)
DCC operation of couplers. Mind boggling.
Blimey Charlie! I haven't even got around to the DCC operation of my locomotives yet.
DCC. Technology marches on.
I suppose I should at least try it out somewhere.But why should I fork out an extra $100 for a locomotive just because it has a computer chip in it (then lets not forget a new controller for another $150) when my straight DC loco's work fine as it is. You should have seen my FDT trackmobile on my US outline layout at the weekend. Ran to a perfect crawl. Same with my Athearn Genesis MP15-AC. So I just don't see the need currently.
(Was there a pun there? Sorry)
What about other features like digital sound? Someone will chime in.
What about it? Say I. Surely the sound coming from our HO scale locomotives should be 1:87 scale too.
How loud is a C-44 throttling up? 90 decibels?
What's 1:87 of 90? 1.2 decibels?
How loud is 1.2 decibels? Would you even hear it?
Just a thought from a Luddite. I'm sure that the subject has been hacked to death somewhere on the internet already.
Ironically the one DCC feature that interests me the most is the one that boggles my mind the most. DCC operation of couplers...

Model Railroader 102 Realistic Trackplans

2009-12-02T12:54:00.000-08:00

"Back by popular demand!" it says on the front cover. I must have missed it the first time and been following a different line of model railways.

Still fired up after last weeks show I saw the magazine on the shelves and decided to buy it.

So what follows is a review of sorts.

This book reprints some of the more popular plans from previous issues of the stable of Model Railroader magazines.

In the past I've had mixed feelings about Model Railroader and their track planning books. Sure, they've been nice enough to feature one of my layouts in their pages, for which I am very grateful. But for the longest time their idea of a small starter layout was something on an 8' x 4' board. Judging by this book that fact seems to be changing. Plans start as small as 5' x 3'4" in HO scale that a true beginner could hone his skills on before moving onto something bigger. As to wether or not a loop of track and two sidings on such a small board could be deemed "realistic" per the books title is for your personal opinion. This small layouts section of the book also inclues a couple of very nice 2' wide switching layouts which are very definitely food for thought for me. However the main let down for me in this section is the cliched Z scale in three suitcases.

The book then moves on to cover their ubiquitous 8' x 4' starter layouts which, apart from an On30 layout do nothing for me but that's just my personal opinion.

Then there are three more sections covering progressively larger layouts. Even these larger trackplans contain sections that would work as smaller layouts by themselves.

The sections are broken up by some informative track planning articles to give you ideas on how to develop your own schemes.

All the way though the book I found some interesting planning ideas that I could well try to incorporate on my next model. All in all this book comes recommended.

A change of scenery

2009-12-02T11:49:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's that most wonderful time of the year again and I felt I should mark it with a change of header. It should, however, be pointed out that the actually is no snow in my part of Minnesota at the moment. Perversely they actually had some in Dallas, Texas this morning.
A wonderful time of the year. My favourite time of the year. How many of us actually started out on this wonderful hobby of ours at Christmas? I know I did. A Hornby Freightmaster train set when I was 11 or 12 years old and I've never looked back.
So a Merry Christmas to all and I hope you all are getting some model railroad related gifts in your stocking this year.

The dust has settled...

2009-11-30T10:22:00.000-08:00

So it's time to reflect on the Princeton Train show from a distance.
It's safe to say that the experiences with Brandon and Jeremiah were the highlight. Compare their attitudes to the old man that watched me struggle for a moment with mating a pair of couplers. He said.
"That ain't workin' worth a shit" and turned and walk away. Ignorant twits like that the world can do without.
A couple of times I heard people say. "That's a proper model railroad." That made me feel pretty good too.
Several folks actually recognised the model as being Phillips recycling in Saint Cloud. The building must have been a pretty good representation then, considering it was built by guesstimation. So that's more to feel good about.
There was nothing to feel bad about to be honest. As this layout was my first experience using Kadee couplers and magnets I didn't know what to expect. Sure some of the couplers need adjusting but those that were set up worked perfectly. I'll carry on using them I think. The delayed action feature was a lot of fun to watch.
The only thing I can really complain about is not having a proper fiddle yard (staging area) it was very difficult to marshall a train for the operating sequence.
Still, all these good experiences don't stop me from wanting to improve things. There's a lot I'd like to incorporate on the next layout.
Next layout?
Yes. I saw things in this model that really inspired me. The curved layout front for example and the way the track followed it. A real change from watching rectangular slab baseboards. Several people remarked on this fact. It also made for interesting relationships between the building and the front of the layout. So often people cop out and have everything parallel and perpendicular to the front edge of a model. I won't do that again.
Another myth to dispell about exhibtion layouts is that little kids won't watch a shunting/switching layout. Many really young children delighted in watching the trackmobile scurry in and out of the building taking a boxcar in there and re-appearing without it. Also taking an empty gondola in there and re-appearing with it loaded went down well with everyone.
So lots to incorporate in the replacement layout then. But don't worry. That will be a while away. I plan to show this layout a few more times yet.
Of course if anyone wants to buy the layout. I'm open to offers.

Jeremiah and Brandons big day

2009-11-28T17:29:00.001-08:00

Todays post was going to be about the same steady performance of the layout at day two of the Princeton show and what tweaks I need to do to the layout before the next time I show it. Sure enough the layout performed as well as yesterday. But that's not important.

Today was one of the most rewarding days I have ever had exhibiting a model railway and it was all down to two small children. Jeremiah and Brandon.

First was Jeremiah. He stood at the layout for around 45 minutes studying the layout and its operation. He read the blurb attached to the model and knew what it was all about. He studied the details of the models and even noticed some details that I hadn't completed on some of the freight cars. He knew exactly what he was talking about. It was a pleasure to have someone like that to watch the layout at work. Jeremiah models in N gauge. I'm going to watch out for you because I'm sure that one day you will produce a truly excellent model railroad.

All through the two days of the show another small child had been making periodic visits to watch my layout from helping with his older brothers S scale trains. So at 2:30 half an hour before the show closed I said to him.

"Do you want a go?"

He looked at me rather disbelievingly and said.

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely" I replied and gestured for him to step behind the layout.

We found him a chair to stand on so he could see over the top and I familiarised him with the controls. Though as he'd spent two days watching the layout I don't think he needed much in the way of familiarisation. With that I guided him through the operating sequence and in no time at all he was aware of all the quirks and oddities of the layout and apart from me placing stock on the track he was operating the layout all by himself. Mom got a picture I'm happy to say.

I was amazed at how quickly he had picked everything up and he declared that he was going to go home and start on a similar sort of layout based on a mining scene.

Well Brandon, if you build that layout then you can show it at the Princeton train show next Thanksgiving. I bet it will be great.

In these days when the computerised "Playbox-X-three-sixt-wii" is the big thing It was great to see such young children taking an active interest in the hobby. These kids are the future of the hobby and if there are more Jeremaihs and Brandons about then the future of the hobby is pretty secure.

Thank you very much guys.

Princeton Train show Day 1

2009-11-27T16:26:00.000-08:00

While the crazy people were getting up and rushing off to the "Black Friday" sales. (Who in their right mind would go to a store at 3am to buy something no matter how cheap it is?) I was still sleeping soundly not worrying abut a thing because I had set The layout up at the depot the night before. "Set up" makes it sound more complicated than it is. The task took all of 1o minutes. So come the morning we got up, breakfasted and leisurely sipped on our coffee's at Coffee Corner before I made my way to the depot and finished off those last few bits that meant the layout was ready to go. The picture below shows how everything looked moments before the doors opened.

I've been attending model railway exhibitions for many, many years and it's safe to say that I love exhibiting. Not just for the "showing off" of my work. But I like meeting the people. Meeting old friends, making new ones, and there's always someone with an interesting story to tell. Like today I met a couple of people who used to work in scrap yards one of whom was involved in the scrapping of railroad cars! They informed me that it would not be out of place to feature an unfortunate fatal accident scene on the model. But I think I'll pass on that particular feature. You just never know who is looking at your layout and what information they might have to share.

After five hours on my feet by the time the doors closed at 3pm I was well and truly exhausted and headed home for a cup of tea to reflect on the days happenings. It has to be said that the layout operated pretty well considering. I still have some adjustments to do to the Kadee couplers but those that are set up right work excellently. A larger fiddle yard would be nice, even for the setting up of just a three car train. That was something I expected would be an issue. But I can't do that overnight so I'll have to wait for another exhibition to prepare that. All in all that was a good day. What will tomorrow bring? I don't know, but I expect it will be totally different to today.

Happy Thanksgiving

2009-11-25T08:34:00.000-08:00

As a Brit, I have to admit to being rather bemused at times by the concept of Thanksgiving. It's been a totally alien concept to me for the vast majority of my life. So when I moved here and people would ask me what I have to be thankful for I would inevitably come up with some kind of flippant reply concerning the previous weekends football games or similar. Thankful for two days off work was always a favourite.
But I was just thinking and I realise I do have something to be thankful for this year. You lot. More specifically you lot over there in that little box on the right. My followers.
When I started the layout and its blog back in September, the thought of people following it was not on my mind. Heck, I didn't even think folks would look at it. But there you are. There's seven of you. Seven more than I expected.
I'm gratified and thankful that you all feel that there's something here worth checking out regularly. You're all folks whom I'm unlikely to meet unless I get to a model train show near where you live. But our interest in Model Railroads and the marvel of the internet brings us all together.
So a heartfelt Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!

Almost there

2009-11-24T03:42:00.001-08:00

Last night was a test of the exhibition set up.
As I said in yesterdays post I was concerned about the stability of a long thin layout such as this being displayed at a height of around 48" off the floor. However, I just hapenned to find some remnants of a heavyweight plastic shelving unit hidden in the Model railway room (what haven't I got hidden away in there) I assembled the shelf and four legs, stuck it on the dining room table and plonked the layout on top. Everything seemed perfect. It was sturdy and level. I added the drape to hide the legs et voila...
One exhibition layout ready to go. Tonights' task will be to blacken the heads of the very visible fascia screws and pins holding the curtain in place. I am still also searching for a photograph of a building to fill that empty space on the backscene.
It should also be pointed out that I do NOT plan to take the dining room table down to the exhibition hall to stand the layout on. They already have plenty of tables there.

T minus 5 and counting

2009-11-23T10:37:00.000-08:00

Time draws on. Thanksgiving is on Thursday, that means the exhbition debut of the layout at the Princeton Train show is very close.
I've been pottering about doing bits and pieces. Making sure all the couplers work on the locos and rolling stock, adding a few details here and there, etc;
Most importantly I fixed the proscenium arch, or picture frame (call it what you like) to the front of the layout yesterday. It looks great. It really pulls everything together and serves to cut the layout off from its surroundings so that you can focus your attention on what is hapenning on the layout itself. Especially with a couple of spotlights in place to help illuminate things. I'm really pleased with the way everything looks. You'll have to wait a few days for a picture I'm afraid as I still have things to do.
Like devising a method to stand the layout at a good viewing height. With the proscenium arch in place it is imperative that the display height is correct. Otherwise it will just look stupid. I could write for ages about the correct height to display a layout. The higher the better in my opinion. I've displayed layouts at over 52" high before. At the moment the layout sits on a shelf at about 48" off the floor and that to me seems pretty good. We'll see what I can come up with. Though with such a narrow layout its would make for something of an unstable structure if I were to mount it too high.

I love my Railboxes!

2009-11-05T16:28:00.000-08:00

It's arrived! My Exactrail Trinity Railbox. If I thought the LBF Railbox was good then this is even better. I'm not a professional writer or reviewer so I'll steer well clear of the technical stuff. Exactrail say that their products are made to the highest standards of detailing and accuracy and that is good enough for me. I've looked at my own photos and the pictures on RailcarPhotos.com and it certainly captures the character and the looks of the real thing.

If you look at this picture below you'll see the high standard of detail on the model. All that small printing is perfectly legible. It's all very impressive.
One thing that really impresses me is the trucks (bogies) They are equalized (compensated). What?! This is a ready to run model for Pete's sake! I'm not used to this level of engineering on an R-T-R Model. I have actually sat there with my magnifier on just twisting the trucks watching them move. ( I know that sounds rather sad)

I only have one tiny little negative observation and that is that the trip pin on the coupling is too low. The coupler itself is spot on but the trip pin is very noticeably low. Now my uncoupler magnets are mounted below the track so that's not a problem for me not that such a spiffing model will ever got to a scrapyard. But I can see some folks having a little gripe about that. I'm sure its probably very easily corrected. But that really is the only blemish on an excellent model.

I love it. I'd have another one any day.

Trackmobile in the wild

2009-11-02T17:17:00.000-08:00

Despite having a model of one and enthused about it I'd never seen a trackmobile in the flesh before. Until yesterday, that is. I was out and about driving around the roads around the rail yards in Saint Paul and was just about to turn around as the road was a dead end. When what did I spy just beyond the gates of a small chemical works? A trackmobile! Not the same type as my model a smaller one. But a trackmobile none the less.

I hope to get down there some other time and maybe see it at work.

A Scrapyard Vista

2009-10-30T14:27:00.001-07:00

I did not plan on making three blog entries today but after looking down the layout after snapping a shot of the rusty wheels I thought to myself

"That view looks quite good". Here is that same view for you to see.

There is definitely a "scrapyard" feel to it. Don't you think? Piles of rusting metal, wagons waiting for the cutters torch. Yup, I think this little project is coming along quite nicely.

Rust in pieces

2009-10-30T13:48:00.000-07:00

Time to get on an do some more work on the layout. One thing that I noticed about the prototype scrapyard was the way the wheels were stacked in the yard. I knew that I had to recreate this feature on my model. It was not a problem getting hold of the first set s of wheels. I had after all cut up a couple of cheap Bachmann wagons for the layout. Not wanting to spend another $20 on a couple more wagons, being unable to find any second hand ones. I bought a 12 pack of Kadee non magnetic wheelsets. Here you see them piled up on the layout.

The rusting has still got a little ways to go yet. but it's definitely heading in the right direction I feel as this is the first time I've ever tried anything like this. They are painted with acrylics. On there so far is a base coat of "Sunrise Orange" which seemed to work better on the Bachy wheels than the Kadees. The second coat was a colour called "Asphaltum". I'm liking this Asphaltum colour. It seems to be a pretty good colour for rusting wheels when on top of this Sunrise orange and out of curiosity I also painted some onto a boxcar for weathering purposes, it makes a pretty good dirt colour too. But I digress. I need a third colour on there as well because as it stands the brighter rusting colour is too dominant. I need to bring that down a bit. But what I should use I don't know. Anyone got any suggestions?

Railboxes real and model

2009-10-30T12:51:00.001-07:00

I like Railboxes. There's no way to hide the fact. I don't know why I just do. I don't know if its the bright yellow colour or what it is. I've always liked them. In fact one of the first Athearn Blue Box models I bought was a Railbox. So I'm always on the look out for Railboxes in trains and model Railboxes in the hobby shops. I'd been looking around lately to see if there was an excess height model Railbox for sale because there are a lot of them about today on the railroads. They carry the TBOX reporting mark (T for tall perhaps?) I hadn't seen one so I was quite disappointed. Until last weekend that is when in Beckers model railroad supply in New Brighton, MN. There was a Hi Cube box car from LBF models. It was the last one on the shelf so I bought it just in case someone else had the same idea. It looked really nice even in the box it seemed to capture the spirit and the feel of the real things. Compare the photographs of the model and what I think is the same sort of prototype Railbox below.

Be honest that is a pretty good match isn't it?

Now I know nothing about LBF Model Trains. There appears to be no internet presence. But there are strange tales out there that I don't understand so I shan't report them here. Because it would detract from what I consider to be a very fine model indeed. All the correct details appear to be there. The underfloor pipes and rigging are nicely done and all separately applied, as are some hand rails and ladders on the ends. I popped my magnifier on to see if I could read all the details in the printing. I could. Superb. The doors are separately added unlike on my Athearn Genesis cars. Everything is there. About the only thing anyone would want to do (aside from weathering) would be to change out the plastic chain for a length of scale chain down from the brake handwheel on the end and if you're going to do that you probably model in P87 anyway and pop in some scale wheelsets as well.

It certainly won't appear on the scrapping line at Wingetts Recycling. It's too fine a model for that. I paid $21.71 for it and for that price it more than compares with Athearn Genesis.

What is even more exciting though is that I hear the Exactrail Trinity Hi Cube box car is available on Monday despite the website saying "Sold out". I'll be ordering one of them without a doubt. It will be interesting to compare the two of them.

(postscript: It would appear that FBT are no longer in business. That's quite sad I do like the model)

"I love deadlines...

2009-10-28T17:51:00.000-07:00

...I love the whooshing sound they make as they pass by"

So wrote the late Douglas Adams. Deadlines are great. They focus the mind on the task in hand. I have many happy memories of the nights before the Annual Mablethorpe and District Model Railway Club exhibition working until the early hours of the morning making sure that my layouts worked.

I even recall one evening where the first time that the layout "Drinkallby and Belchford Road" was assembled to its full 24' length was the night before an exhibition in my friend Steve Coopers garage. Now I remember more of the night I think it even extended out of his garage into his drive it was so long. Ah happy memories, but I digress...

Now the 7 day layout has a deadline. 27th November for the rum River Model Railroad Club train show. Really in all honesty I consider the layout in an exhibitable state right now. But the deadline can get me focussed on the other jobs I'd like to get done to improve the layout. Tasks like adding more rusting wheels to the pile there. Cutting up another wagon for scrap. Adding a rear fence, putting some buildings on the backscene, weathering some wagons, scratchbuilding a GE 23 ton Box cab switcher. Did I just say that last one?

I've got a lot to do better get busy.

Making an exhibition of myself

2009-10-27T05:06:00.000-07:00

The 7 day layout will be able to be seen at the Rum River Model Railroad Clubs Thanksgiving show in November 27th and 28th 2009 from 10am to 3pm at the Old Great Northern Depot in Princeton, MN.
It's worth coming just to see the magnificent depot building that is on the register of historic places.

p.s. By the way, do you like the new Blue coloured background? I do. So much better than that heavy old Black

Trackmobile is here!

2009-10-23T13:37:00.000-07:00

Here it is. Placed on the layout and in front of a ruler to give you an idea of the small size (no more than 2 inches long)

It looks great. When I opened the box and took it out I couldn't believe it. Crisp detail in the mouldings, detailed cab, superb finishing and to cap it all off it runs smoothly and slowly.

I have mixed feeling about the hauling capacity though. True this is a small loco and I shouldn't expect much and indeed I don't want much. Performance depends on the type of car you are switching. I conducted two sets of tests. Now it should also be remembered that these tests were conducted straight out of the box with no running in for the trackmobile.

The first test concerned some Athearn Genesis 60' excess height boxcars. It pushed and pulled one wagon with ease. It also shoved two without a problem but pulling the two was a different story. It wheelspan immediately. These it should be noted are some really weighty cars.

However when it came to my 50'cars. It was a different story it worked up to three of them and a caboose quite comfortably.

As with any short wheelbase loco running over pointwork will be an issue. Indeed the loco runs much better over the live frog point work of Oneota yard than it does over the dead frog point work of the 7 day layout.

So in short the loco does what I wanted it to do, runs as I expected it to and looks great. Which when it comes down to it you can't ask for much more. Can you?

My Christmas List...

2009-10-19T18:02:00.000-07:00

It's getting around to that time of year again. When that tubby, jolly red faced man pops down the chimney and leaves me lots of pressies under the Christmas tree (that's if he can find room around the Bachmann G scale train I have running there, that is).
So quite naturally I've been giving some thought to what I'd like him to bring me this year. I might just ask for one of those Walthers HO scale Ore dock kits and I really would like a set of DMIR Jennies if they are still in production. But that kinda sorta sets me up to build an HO scale ore dock layout doesn't it... Which leads me into a shameless plug for a new blog I've started. This one concerns my fascination for The Ore Docks of the great Lakes. I'm not saying I'm going to build a layout based around a Great lakes Ore Dock. It's more of an exploration of the subject of the Ore Dock and how one would go about modelling one. There are precious few (if any) websites concerning ore docks. So if I've started something all well and good more people need to know about these marvellous structures.

Bye-bye Blue

2009-10-16T04:28:00.000-07:00

Sad news from Athearn this morning. They are disccontinuing effective immediately their blue box line of basic kits.
I'm sure most US outline modellers around the world began with the Athearn blue box kits. Kits was a misnomer really. There was rarely any serious assembly to do like in the Intermountain TTX flat car kit I still have to make after 4 or 5 years in my posession. They were more of a dis-assembled R-T-R model. It was just a question of putting the body on the underframe screwing the bogies in place and adding couplers. Five to ten minutes work and Bingo! There you had it. One ready to run HO scale box car.
My first layout was totally operated with blue box freight stock and locomotives. I still have some today operating on this layout.
Times however have moved on and there are much much better quality kits and RTR models out there today. It will tak a long time for them to disappear but still the shelves of the local hobby shop won't be the same without that little blue box there.

"I'm not dead yet..."

2009-10-11T15:09:00.000-07:00

Much like the old man in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" This layout is not done for yet. To that end on Friday before I left for the Whistlestop Marathon a package arrived for me from Walthers that contained a couple of items that could find use on the layout.

The forst is the Walthers Cornerstone Dumpsters. A total of 8 superb injection mouldings of some very typical dumpster styles that when painted and weathered will look great in the yard somewhere.

The other item I bought out of curiosity and am very impressed with is the Shredded Scrap metal pile #2103 from Monroe Models. They produce a range of scrap metal piles for different uses. It comes as a ready painted resin casting. I was really impressed with the look of the pile and the quality of the detailing in the casting. I had some fun scrutinizing the pile seeing what I could recognize. Some nice lattice work, oil drums, ladders, corrugated iron and girders for example. A persons opinion of the "ready painted rust" can vary. But the pile has shadows and highlights worked in there. So overall it's a very reasonable representation of a pile of rusty metal. The detailers amongst us would likely work a few more colours in there and I think a coat "dullcote" to take the slight sheen off would be advantageous. But I really do like it and I would definitely consider Monroe Models again if they produced something that I was looking for on my next modelling project.

Cornered

2009-10-03T17:48:00.000-07:00

One of the most popular comments on RMWeb (and from my wife too) on how to improve things on the layout concerned the corner and the backscene. Everyone thought that the backscene:

a) needed clouds on it and;

b) the corner needed rounding off (see the picture below)

So, as I thought this was a pretty quick and easy job. I set at it. I removed the backscene, added a thin cardboard flap to one end that I could bend, and then repainted the whole thing and added some clouds. The end result (below) is a vast improvement
Always listen to the RMWebbers (and your wife...)

A bit of a cheat

2009-10-03T13:03:00.000-07:00

It would appear I have fooled some people. After posting the final set of pictures yesterday I received several comments about the tree at the l/h end and how did I manage to produce such a realistic model. See the picture below.

Well, I'll come clean it was nothing but a big cheat and some dumb luck as well. The tree is a few sprigs of Woodland scenics fine leaf foliage glued together with my hot glue gun and stuck in a hole in the baseboard. The big cheat is placing it in front of a photograph of a tree with similar foliage texture. The dumb luck comes from photographing it from such an angle that to some people the join between the two became somewhat "fuzzy". Making the model tree look a lot bigger and more realistic than it actually is.
This picture above reveals the truth of the situation. I haven't even finished painting the trunk of the tree yet.

I have to admit to feeling pretty good that I "duped" several people like that.

Day 5 - Mission accomplished!

2009-10-02T13:31:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to say finished for what model railway can truly said to be finished. There's always something you can do to any layout. But this afternoon I stood back. Looked at it and said to myself.

"I could take this layout to a show now." That means that to all intents and purposes the project is done. Yes there are still things to do. I've mentioned some of those before. But now, in this state, this layout is exhibitable. So to celebrate I ran trains in a typical operating sequence and photographed it.

1. The mainline diesel brings in a selection of cars to be scrapped
2. The works switcher emerges from the building to pick up a car for cutting up.
3. The switcher detatches one car from the train and takes it on its last journey
4. The car disappears inside never to be seen again.

Without a doubt, I'm very happy the way the project has turned out. Now the long tedious process of detailing begins. Twice maybe three times as may rusty wheels, the scrap pile needs to be bigger, the dumpsters need adding, the backscene detailing need fixing in place... and so it goes on. I'll keep posting more on the layout as I work on it.

But for now, as The Two Ronnies used to say.

"It's goodnight from me"

"And it's good night from him"

Day 5 - the last 20%

2009-10-02T05:24:00.000-07:00

That's the theory isn't it?

I believe I heard someone say that the first 80% of a job takes 20% of the time the last 20% of the job takes 80% of the time.

Well I reckon I'm at that stage now. Pretty much all the "heavy lifting" is out of the way. There's one significant part that I won't tackle just yet and that is the procscenium arch or "picture frame" for the front of the layout. That's something to bear in mind should I ever wish to take the layout to a show.

So today it will be a bit here a bit there, adding some details to the layout. I'm weathering 8 axles of freight car wheels to put on there at the moment. I need a lot more of them very clearly. The scrap pile needs adding to. I'm sure I can find plenty to do.

Day 4 - insert smug grin smiley here

2009-10-01T14:33:00.000-07:00

Oh yes. I'm feeling pretty darned pleased with myself today indeed. Take a look at the pictures below. Today everything just pulled together. This looks like a model railway layout. It operates as it should. Work needs to be done on the left hand side towards the fiddle yard exit. Some of that space will be taken up with the dumpsters I ordered this morning. But there is some blank space there that really does need filling. But for now time to sit back and enjoy the pictures

Above: the building fits in the corner perfectly
Above: an overall view showing that blank area towards the fiddle yard exit
Above: the scrap pile still has a long way to go but this view is so likeable.

A cautionary tale

2009-10-01T11:20:00.000-07:00

Whew!

I've just spent the last 45 minutes or so broggling around with one of the points trying to get it to work.

I just thought I'd better give the track a test run after all that spraying of glue that I did yesterday associated with the ballasting and such like.

I gave the track a pretty serious rubbing down with a track cleaner and hooked up the wires. It worked perfectly except for when the first turnout was set for the straight road. Now this was a puzzlement. Everything worked perfectly before I started spraying and I covered all the pertinent part of the turnouts to protect them from overspray.

Not being electrically minded, anytime something like this happens I get pretty fed up because I know that it will take me an age to sort it out.

Surely enough it did. It took me quite some time to find out that some glue and spray paint had caked up the pivot point between the straight switch rail and stock rail (or is that closure rail). Anyway once I'd found that and cleared everything out it ran perfectly again. Things are back on track excuse the pun. I think I should work on the backscene now.

(as good as) Done

2009-10-01T08:38:00.000-07:00

Here we are then just before it gets installed on the layout and bedded in. The main building. I'm pretty pleased with it so far. Once I get it in situ I'll then add a bit of light weathering to it.

To recap on the construction methods and materials used. The main building shell is 5mm foamcore board. The brick base came from some leftover parts of a Walthers low relief building kit The block walling was hand scribed styrene sheet. The doors are left overs from some other Walthers and Pikestuff kits. The Biffy is from BLMA. The Lean-to addition is a shell of 1.5mm card from the back of a desk top calendar faced with Metal roof and siding embossed styrene sheets.

Time for a coffee break I think.

Therapy!

2009-10-01T06:54:00.000-07:00

There's something very therapeutic about chopping a cheap freight car up for the scrap pile...

They were only $6 in the hobby shop, they were some really cheap Bachmann cars.

As soon as I took them out of their boxes the wheels fell out of the bogies so I figured that was a sign.

So I chopped the ends off to use like in the header photo and sliced the sides and roof up. The bits are drying after being sprayed all kinds of dirty rusty colours.

Bingo! The start of a scrap pile...

Day 4 dawns

2009-10-01T05:17:00.000-07:00

What joys does it have in store for me?

Projects today include the completion of the low relief building. Though I thought that was going to happen yesterday. But I do only have a door, guttering and bargeboards to put on to complete it.

Then I really have to turn my attention to the other blank areas on the layout. The scrap pile for one is something that absolutely has to be developed to call the layout finished at the end of 7 days. Looking round Phillips recycling yesterday I noticed there was a fair few dumpsters lying about. Walthers do a package. Now they are not anything that I have seen on any of the shelves of my local hobby shops so they will have to be ordered. I'm also cannibalising a few bits from Oneota Yard my previous HO scale layout to get a feel for things. Pehaps I'll even get around to adding those trees...

Day three nearly done

2009-09-30T14:58:00.000-07:00

5pm day three. Time to post some progress photos. Things are starting to pull together I feel. The ground is starting to look like ground. Though I don't think I'll ever get the colour of dried out earth exactly right. The buried track looks OK though.

The building seems to b a never ending job after I thought I had the bulk of it out of the way after yesterday. I decided to make a slight addition, as shown by the plain white section of wall there. I'm now happier with the shape of the building but it does mean scribing another section of styrene sheet.
So things are looking good. Technically I have until Saturday to finish things. But that might be difficult so I might have to be done by Friday. Will I get it finished?

More research pictures

2009-09-30T12:34:00.001-07:00

Here's a few other shots from my research trip this morning.

You've already see the WREX hoppers waiting on the cut up line in the previous post. Well here's how they'll leave the yard. In bits in a gondola car. Here three gons are being loaded up by a Caterpillar excavator fitted with a magnetic grab.

The trees are one of the more unusual sights on the property.
Scrapping generally takes place outdoors (unlike my model) These next two pictures show some hoppers halfway through being cut up. A nice detail to note for modelling reference is the reporting mark and running number are crossed out.
Below is one of the WREX hoppers "wrecked"...
Righty Ho back to work...

The joke's on them

2009-09-30T11:58:00.000-07:00

Just got back from an interesting research trip to Phillips Recycling in Saint Cloud. Plenty of good photo's. I wanted to share these with you as this is too funny to pass up. There was an line of about half a dozen grain hoppers waiting on the receiving line to be cut up and I don't know how many more were already in pieces. Nothing too amusing in that.

But just take a look at the railroad reporting mark though WREX (wrecks... get it.) It actually Stands for Western Railroad Equipment Company.
I had a laugh to myself when I saw that I can tell you.

There's a berm...

2009-09-30T08:44:00.001-07:00

Didn't Peter Sellers utter that phrase or similar in one of the Pink Panther movies?

Well there's a bomb scare in town. In little old Princeton, MN. There are three suspicious packages. One at the post office, one at the high school and one at the Utilities offices.

What the devil does this have to do with the 7 day layout?

Well I've just soaked the track in PVA glue to fix the ballast in place. So that means its coffee time and the coffee shop is in the area of town under lockdown due to the bomb scare.

So I might as well trek out to a Caribou coffee in St Cloud and take some more research photos of the scrapyard while I'm at it.

Brrr......

2009-09-30T05:23:00.000-07:00

It's the coldest morning since May here in Minnesota. 34F right here in town. The garage where I'm working on the layout is a tad chilly this morning. Luckily my first task involves some heat. I just realised I haven't fixed the point operating rods in place. So it's out with the hot glue gun.

If I can find the glues sticks. I know they are here somewhere...

Day 2 the story so far

2009-09-29T14:40:00.001-07:00

Right then, after a quick jaunt down to Hobbytown in Brooklyn Park I returned armed with supplies to hopefully see me though to the end of the project.

The first job was to complete my ground covering. Before heading down to the hobby shop I added a little more spackle as described in the previous post so as the layout looked like this. Like there had been a snowfall. It's at this stage of a layouts construction that I always consider recreating a snow scene. But my previous efforts have met with failure so luckily that idea quickly passes.

Upon my return the spackle had pretty much dried so I set to and gave a covering of earth undercoat to kill the white of the spackle. I think that after just one coat of Earth colour it starts to feel like a layout. So I left that to dry and did some more work on the structure.

Oh boy this is going to be a long job. I went to the hobby shop with the intent of getting some corrugated embossed evergreen styrene sheet. But they were out.But they did have something called "Metal Roofing" It's a sheet of styrene with precision milled grooves in it where you place strips of .25mm x 1mm styrene strip to represent the distinctive profile of the roof. I see this style all over so I thought to myself.

"Why not. All you have to do is place the strip into the groove and a dab or two of liquid poly will hold it in place."

That is pretty much it. But there is a technique to doing that and it took quite a while to find the speediest easiest way to do that. lets just say the first section of roofing took longer to do than the next two sections...

So that I could take a photograph for progress purposes I gave the shell of the lean to a coating of grey, so it wouldn't bleach out in the picture.
There you go that's progress for today so far. Not as earth shattering as yesterday. But the building starts to look like a building. Hopefully tomorrow it will get completed and I'll get the ballasting done as well.

A word about spackle

2009-09-29T05:43:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned my use of spackle as a ground covering and said that I've always used it right from my earliest layouts. But I don't think I've ever said how I use it.

I use a lightweight spackle. (For the Brits reading this It's kind of like polyfilla except pre-mixed.) I spread it out onto my ground surface much as I would when I'm icing our Christmas cake. It doesn't really matter how roughly you do it. Because lets face it unless your modelling a cricket wicket or something else thats dead flat you can have tiny little bumps and undulations in there. That perhaps later you can fill with puddles of water.

So there you are you have a baseboard that looks like a rough iced Christmas cake. Then you leave it for a while for the spackle to start setting. Mine is a quick setting spackle. So I've just about got time to write this post. Then I go and smooth it out by tapping down on it with my finger... back in a minute then

...

Right that's that done.

You have to wait for the spackle to start to set because otherwise it sticks to your finger and when even the tiniest bit sticks to your finger then it will pull more off the baseboard. Which is not what we're trying to do here. We're trying to smooth out what we have already done. Just tapping a small area down with your finger is really quite effective.

As I've been burying a couple of sidings in the spackle I've been taking great care to clean the rails off and running a wagon along the sidings to make sure everything still runs perfectly. Which it still seems to do.

Next task I think is a trip down to the hobby shop and get some more materials to clad the wall with. That will take a couple of hours. Plenty of time for the spackle to dry and then on my return I can paint it.

Ready for day 2 then?

2009-09-29T04:31:00.000-07:00

When it came to 9:30 last night I was exhausted. That was a lot of hard work yesterday.

I didn't exactly finish after yesterdays last posting. There was nothing on the telly that appealed to me and Top Gear on BBCAmerica was a repeat. So I decided to crack on and fill out some details on the scrapyard building. The basic shell is 1/4" foamcore board and some 1mm card that came from the back of a desktop calendar.

The building shell was "knocked up" very quickly and while the glue holding it to shape was setting I rootled in my spares box looking for suitable materials to clad the wall with. I found a sheet of evergreen metal siding embossed styrene that looked eminently suitable for the lean to addition and from a Walthers low relief building kit I discovered a brick base for the main walls. You can also see a door on the end wall that came from some Pikestuff left overs.

That is all my spares box would give me so I need to get some more siding for the roof of the lean to and something to clad the other wall with.

A trip to the hobby shop may well be in order today.

Stumps on day 1

2009-09-28T15:08:00.001-07:00

Right then. Pretty much the end of the first official day on the project and here is where it stands. As you know the track was down by lunchtime and working. The track and sleepers were sprayed with track colours to weather the plastic looking sleepers. After that I set out to block out the main structure to see how it would fit.

It looks OK but until I get some more detail on the structure it will be difficult to tell how it will sit in the scene. Don't forget that there will be a big pile of scrap in front of some of it obstructing your view of it.

Next task is to put down the spackle for the ground cover to bury the trackwork. That will be tomorrows task along with more work on the building...

Progress Photo

2009-09-28T10:49:00.000-07:00

So he were are then an update to prove the progress.

The track is down and was just about to be sprayed with a mix of cans I found lying around. Dark Earth, Rail Brown and something called "Instant weathering" which looked like some sort of Light Earth. You can see the honking big uncoupler magnet at the start of the curved road. I tested it and it functions perfectly. The curved road will comfortably take 3 cars, the sort middle road 2 and the rear one will also take 2 more. Though that length is intended to be undercover. The feed-in track at the left is intended to be set up for a cassette system like PECO loco lifts

Now I have a choice of things I could do. I could start to put down the lightweight spackle ground cover or I could work on the half relief building.

Decisions, decisions...

Lunch on Day One

2009-09-28T09:22:00.000-07:00

Make it sound like a cricket commentary doesn't it?

So my trip to Menards was uneventful the cork tile was in stock and I got a few other bits and bobs too.

Lightweight spackle for my ground cover. The trackwork will be pretty much buried and lightweight spackle is my favourite material for the job. It dries white and takes the colour from the woodland scenics earth undercoat very well.

I also needed some woodworking glue and you can never have enough Stanley knife blades and with a pack of 100 on sale for $5 that was too good an offer to miss out on.

With that it was off home and get on with it.

A couple of hours later and it's lunchtime. The cork is down, the track is laid and a locomotive has run to check the electrics. I even installed the Kadee under the track uncoupler and it works perfectly much to my joy.

So this afternoon I'll spray the track with some dark earth to kill the plastic look of the sleepers. That's a trick I picked up from Lou Sassi's book "A realistic HO Scale layout for beginners" published by Kalmbach. A book I bought several years ago and still refer to to this day.

I'll probably even start on the one low relief building on the layout too.

...and now the batsmen emerge from the pavilion ready to start the afternoons play...

Day 1 part 1

2009-09-28T04:28:00.000-07:00

6:30 am. I was thinking that as I'm on holiday from work I'd get a bit more of a lie in than this. But I suppose once your body is used to getting up at 5am during the week then it takes a lot to get out of that.

So what is the plan today?

The first thing is to get down to Menards and get some 1/4" cork tiles to lay the track on to. It has to be 1/4" because I've got one of those huge Kadee #308 under the track uncouplers that I'm going to use on the front siding and they're about 1/4" thick.

So by the end of the day the minimum I want to see done is track down and working with the uncouplers sited. Anything on top of that is a bonus.

Clean up in aisle 8...

2009-09-27T18:00:00.000-07:00

So the evening is here and it's time to sit back and reflect on what I've set myself in for.

How do we define "7 day model railroad"? Or more accurately, what do I expect to see at the end of the 7 days?

Lets say a substantially completed model railroad.

Track down, trains running, everything operating as outlined in the previous post.

Scenery wise, structures should be complete, ground cover should be down.

Back scene installed? Perhaps, though I have considered boxing the layout in with a proscenium arch for display purposes which might be stretching it a bit to get completed knowing my woodworking abilities.

Ultimately I'm the only one who will know if I've met the challenge. You're welcome to agree or disagree if you like...

Makin' it..

2009-09-27T15:32:00.000-07:00

So, with American football not interesting me all that much this afternoon I split my time between the Minnesota Vikings and the model railway baseboard.
The theme of the project is "winging it" and that's just what I did. No thought to it at all. Just braced the edges of the shape and that was it...

Honestly it was a real fluke. I was just going through my piles of lumber and finding pieces of wood that were the right length. It was a quite a while before the jigsaw had to be fired up to cut anything.
See that strip of ply that is curved to the front of the layout? It was already warped most of the way like that so it was no struggle to bend it to shape.
The carpentry is to my usual standard so doesn't bear close scrutiny. But it is flat.

So, with Brett Favre having just thrown the game winning touchdown pass. I went out and threw some track on the baseboard to get a feel for what I can do with it.
As you can see, not all that much...
But I can see some kind of operation forming...
A mainline diesel brings in a few wagons for scrapping to the front (curved) road and leaves them there.
The rearmost road on the baseboard will be undercover. From here a small switcher, perhaps even a trackmobile, would appear and take the wagons singly into the "breaking shop" never to be seen again. The middle road would contain a couple of Gondolas that would intermittently be switched into the breaking shop to be loaded with scrap metal and wheels etc:. When full these would be switched into the front road to be collected by the mainline diesel.
So does this count as Day 1? I only had a few hours on the project tops.

So tomorrow before I start work I need to slide down to Menards to get some cork sheet and some masonite to use for the backscene.

Spare us the Cutter...

2009-09-27T15:09:00.001-07:00

So, I had a piece of wood for a baseboard. But what should I model?

As I said the first things that jumped into my head were rivers and docksides, probably because of that nice flowing curve but strangely I went in a totally different direction.

A scrapyard.

Don't ask me why. Perhaps it's because the wife and I drove past one on our way to dinner on Friday night. More likely its because there is one sited across the track from the St Cloud, MN Amtrak depot. I have lots of photographs of this particular scrapyard. Here's a few for you.

This is a favourite shot of mine. These boxcar ends are being used to hold up a pile of scrap.
There are lots of wheels lying about
Some gondolas being loaded with scrap
A boxcar waits to be cut up
A big pile of scrap stands alongside an unlikely tree. Both would make good view breaks

So really it was too good an idea not to pass up. Rail served at both ends of the process. A perfect subject.

So on to making the baseboard proper.

How did I get here?

2009-09-27T15:02:00.000-07:00

The other week I saw this piece of wood in my garage. The shape intrigued me and I felt compelled to build a model railroad on it.

The offcut is some 5/16" ply 5' long by 12" deep at its deepest point. I had grand thoughts about rivers and docksides but in the end I went in a totally different direction of which more later.