Mountain, River, and Sky

The depth of the layout in this corner will be at the limits of my reach so I am starting work on some of the scenery in that area now so I won't mess up things in the front reaching in to do it later.   Starting with the sub structures that will be needed to support the scenery.

Peg board is being installed to support of mountains that will be blended into the already finished mountains on the adjoining section shown on the right in this photo.  I have also been continuing with the sky painting above the mountains.

The bed of the river will be made from tempered hard board and that will need to be supported.  Once the path was determined additional 2 inch wide strips were glued into place.  The welders clamps were purchased to hold the modules of the Asian layout together but also come in quite useful around the shop.

Once the supports were all in place the river itself was glued in place and held with clamps while drying.

When all these sub structures are in place then the land forms can be started.

The route through the canyon

With the basic bench work for the Palisade Canyon section of the layout in place I have been working on the track alignments.   Lots of experimenting here to get the optimal track grades, curve radius's and clearances in the area where the lines cross one another.  So far everything looks good with grade on the upper line staying under 1.4% and curve radius's on both lines at over 24".

With sub roadbed held temporarily in place with screws and the tracks and skewed bridge being held with clamps the tallest and longest cars are run through to check for clearances.

The back or upper track has been gaining elevation since Weso to get to the height where it could pass over the front track.  Ends up that it still came up about 1/8" short so some of the track on the Harney section is being pulled up and adjusted.

Creating a mock up of the upper line after is crosses over the lower line I could see that a solid earth right of way would block the view of the brass bridge.  The gray in this photo was photo shopped to simulate the fascia.

So what I am considering is having the area in front of the 200 ft brass bridge being a lower area and carrying the line across it with a viaduct bridge. To simulate this I again used photo shop.

It's bench work season

It seems that I tend to make bench work during this time of year.  In the afternoons the sun is now low enough behind the redwood trees to shade the front of the garage but it is still warm outside.  I pull my table saw out into the driveway and get to work.  This gives me the winter to work on the track, wiring, and scenery inside the train room.

For this next section of the layout I elected to go with a more conventional type of bench work instead of building modules.  The reasons for this are that it needed to span the window and with very simple wiring not much effort would be saved building it as a module.

In the panorama photo below the new section can be seen.  This is about 15 linear feet of new layout around the end of the room and extends all the way to the door just off scene to the left where a lift out section will be. 

I had already cut 2 inch wide strips from 1/2 inch plywood to build this bench work section.  The pieces were cut to the length needed in the garage and brought into the train room to be assembled.  The shorter left over pieces are being used as connecting plates.

So what happened to the test track / return loop that was in this location ?  It is being recycled again, this time as sub roadbed for this new section of the layout.

And with the first couple of sub roadbed sections held temporarily in place so I can verify that I am leaving enough straight track on both ends of the new brass bridge for longest rolling stock to get through OK.

The skewed bridge

The first bridge I want to create for this new extension of the layout will be the skewed bridge which carries the Western Pacific / Westbound line over the Southern Pacific / Eastbound line.

For a reference, I took some photos of a similar type bridge on the HO layout at the South Bay Historical Railroad Society.  This looks as if it could have been kit bashed from a Central Valley Model Works HO kit.

So this is my version kit bashed from a Central Valley N Scale kit.  I made my own solid headers, cross bracing, and end plates from styrene strip and the skew is the other way to fit in how this bridge will be used on my layout.

And this is my bridge after an airbrush spray of Floquil old silver.  I still need to order some bridge feet and give the whole thing another coat of paint then some weathering.

The bridges of Palisade Canyon

This next expansion of the layout will include one of the most interesting railroad sections of the Palisade Canyon where the Western Pacific constructed a bridge over the earlier built Southern Pacific line.  Both lines cross the river on one side of their approach to the crossing so it is one of those places that modelers like to build but are not so common on the prototype.

Here is a Google satellite image of the area where the skewed bridge is.  I plan to model the 3 bridges noted in blue but not the one noted in yellow.

Here is a closer view of the skewed bridge.   This span has 4 full sections.  My bridge will be somewhat shorter with 2 full sections.  I plan to modify a Central Valley Model Works kit to model this one.

Here is a close up of the third bridge I want have in the scene.  It appears to be a thru girder type bridge about 100ft long with open deck with wood trestles on the approaches.  A dirt road passes under one of the trestle parts.

And last here is a close up of the curved top thru truss bridge.  Looks like it has 5 full sections and is about 150ft long.  For this one I am going to use one of the BLMA 200ft long brass bridges and not model the additional shorter span.

Lighting the next layout expansion

Since last post the LED light bulbs have been installed under the new shelf and a valance put in along the edge of the shelf and painted.  This extends all the way around to the door.

The bulbs were spaced every 18 inches and connected to the existing circuit.  The brightness and color seem to match the existing just right.

I purchased enough bulbs and sockets to also light the area where Carlin will be in the future.

Completing the layout room storage

It's been awhile since I posted anything on this blog.  Most of my hobby time this summer has been spent working on my Japanese modules getting them ready for a layout at the 39th Narrow Gauge convention in Sacramento in early September.  Been doing a lot of posting about that on my Tokyo in N Scale blog.

With everything just about ready for that trip, I recently turned my attention back to the home layout and to completing the storage above the layout.  I needed to do this before I could further expand the layout past were it is now.  Up to now I have been using basic white cabinets from Ikea.  To finish off the area at the end of the layout room I am just building open shelves.
 

This view shows the shelves holding oversized but lighter weight items such as small modules.  The posts hanging down from the shelve will be for mounting LED light bulbs same as under the cabinets.  The bottom of the shelves will be painted white and tempered hard board lighting valance installed.

This photo shows how I used steel brackets on the top to keep the area where the layout will be open.  On the left by the door is where the Palisade tunnels will be with a lift out bridge crossing the doorway.

A computer for the layout room

A couple years ago I replaced my computer.  There was nothing wrong with the old one it just would not run some of the new software.   In the past at work I had on a number of occasions re-purposed older computers to use in situations where the program applications being run were limited so I thought why not do the same with this old computer.  The computer and monitor had been collecting dust in a corner of the train room while I was waiting to decide where to set it up.

The space under the DCC drawer was the perfect spot to set up the computer as it was right next to the work bench.

I made a shelf supported by a pair of steel brackets for the computer and monitor and added one of those pull out keyboard trays.



This train room computer will be primarily used for running JMRI Decoder Pro to program locomotive decoders and possibly experiment with some layout control in the future.   I will also use it to program Arduino micro controllers. Up to now I have been doing the Arduino programming in the house and then bringing the Arduino back to the train room to try it out.  This was rather inconvenient so this will be a big improvement.

Starting some car cards and waybills

Since having finished a few on line industries in Battle Mountain,  I have been looking into way of having a more structured operations scheme.   After looking at different operating schemes from many different sources on the Internet, I decided to go with a type of car card and waybill system.  I drew upon several things I saw and adapted them to my own needs.

I did my car cards and waybills on Microsoft Visio.  Here is a JPEG of my car card template.  The dashed line is where it is folded over to form the pocket for the waybill.   This is printed on a medium quality paper but I laminate it with clear packaging tape to make it sturdier.

My car cars have color coded dots corresponding to the 3 different eras on my layout.  Most of my cars overlap into 2 different eras so have 2 dots.

In the September 2017 post Trying to get organized I give an explanation of the 3 eras on my layout.

For the waybill, I use one side as the "loaded to be delivered" part and the other side is a "empty to be delivered" part.  This is printed out as one part then folded and glued back to back with stick glue.  Once this is folded over it is sturdy enough without lamination.

Micro-Mark offers some nice car card boxes which are widely used but because my bench work is thin they would stick up above the bench work so for now I am going to clip the card cars to the light valance right above the location of the car it represents.

At this point I have limited my car cards and waybills to the cars needed to support the 4 industries in Battle Mountain without regard to any through traffic.



After running a couple of test locals using this system I already get the sense of a "bigger" layout with the references to some of the far away locations suggested on the waybills.  Over the summer I hope to get a couple of my train buddies over for a sort of operating session so they can critique this system and make some suggestions for improvement.  This will be an on going process.