In 2010 I had to dismantle my large under-construction layout in New Jersey, due to a job move to South Carolina. I thought I would be getting my new CB&Q in Wyoming started last May, shortly after we moved into our new house in Allendale, SC, but work we had to have done to the new digs delayed that for a few months, and we found out that the area designated for the new layout turned out to be unsuitable. But the location question has finally been resolved, and a new layout design is about 3/4 finished - enough to start basic benchwork.The new layout will be smaller than the last in that only the Cody branch will be on the upper deck, and there will be no helix. About half of the locations on the plans for the original double-deck layout have been omitted. Leaving out certain things was a bit painful, but I just didn't want to undertake something so big again. With the new plan, I may actually be able to "finish" the layout before I drop dead! One rather ambitious goal is to begin limited operations in about two years.Photos and track plan will follow. Meanwhile, I've been updating my blog (see below). It has the first elements of the track plan and more info on where I'm going with this layout.
Stay tuned and see what happens!
Mark P.
Website: http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.comVideos: https://www.youtube.com/user/mabrunton
Mark,
I'd say you still have quite a project on your hands. Looking forward to seeing things develop. If I was going to be in Wyoming, I'd prefer it to be on the CB&Q.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
Here's the track plan for new layout. Only the NP trackage, which is primarily staging with only Laurel, MT being "on stage," has the track arrangement detailed out as yet. The rest of the plan is a general arrangement only for now.The grid is 1' squares.
Note the broken pinkish lines. They delineate "do not violate" benchwork / aisleway extents. The entry door is at the top, between Shobon and Powder River. The tracks across will be on a multi-level swinging arrangement. The aisles are rather generous, with only a few places narrowing down to about 36 inches. The Laurel and Casper yards, both of which will see quite a bit of action as focal points for the trains, are on opposite sides of an aisle. To facilitate people moving around in that area, the aisle is a nominal six feet wide, tapering to 36 inches towards the end of the Laurel peninsula.
The Laurel peninsula will be the first area to be built, and in fact construction began in earnest yesterday. Hopefully I'll be able to download some photos from my camera (it's been problematic lately for some reason) and post them later today.
Construction has finally begun in earnest!
Here's the room where the main part of the layout will be. As you can see, this is a pretty nicely finished room, which means I'll have to be very careful to protect the floor from finish-damaging debris, glue drip and what-not:
I had a work session yesterday (Saturday the 23rd). Five of my model railroading friends from Charleston spent two hours on the road (each way!) to come out and help get the construction ball rolling.
By the end of this first session, we had the Laurel benchwork framing complete and risers installed. We also laid in the first two sheets of plywood at the far end (the wide end) of the peninsula, but I took these photos before we did that.
This is just a shot sighting down the risers to see if the tops line up reasonably well. I think they do:
And here's my construction crew. Left to right is Allen, Phil, Jim, John and Jimmy. I hope I can convince them to come back again - in four hours we did what would otherwise have taken me weeks to accomplish! They all said they'd be back, but that's as they were all running for their cars before the two hour trip home!
Thanks, guys!
Progress is continuing - slowly.
Some of the Laurel plywood is down, and about twelve feet of roadbed is now in place:
The drywall square is sitting where the turntable and roundhouse will be. The roadbed is home-made. I grew the cork trees and shave off the bark yearly...(uh, not really). I cut my own from cork floor underlayment rolls I bought years ago. The strips are 4 feet long by 5/8 inches wide by 1/4 inch thick. They are laid side-by-side in a staggered fashion, just like commercial cork strips. The big difference is that by taking the extra three minutes to cut my own, my total cost per strip is somewhat under five cents. I also don't have the sloped shoulders, but they will be added using sand or some other filler material when I ballast the track.
Here's a closer look at the roadbed:
Great layout room Mark, it didn't take long for you to find fellow MRR friends to help you, did you join a club when you arrived in SC or is this a round robin group ?
"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."-Albert Einstein
http://gearedsteam.blogspot.com/
Thanks, Geared Steam!
It's a combination of some club members and a round robin group. Several of us are members of the Charleston Area Model Railroad Club (in fact, Allen is the current president). But not everyone is. We all get together and run trains, but there's no regular schedule. When someone is up to hosting an operating session (or a work session), they send out an e-mail and whoever can make it shows up. Once or twice a month on average someone has something going on. Very informal, and lots of fun!
Brunton One rather ambitious goal is to begin limited operations in about two years.
Alton Junction
Hey Mark
I should have checked your blog out before asking questions,
I will be watching for updates, (I will link to your blog) I assume you're modeling the transition?
Hi Rich,
With any luck, I'll have a train (or at least a loco) running (on about 10' of track) in a week or so. The two years is for limited operation sessions.
The layout probably looks more ambitious than it really is (at least I hope it isn't as ambitious as it appears!). As I develop the detailed track plans for the various locations, the intent is to model space and somewhat compressed industries, not just lots of compacted industries. While a bit of "caboose-leaving-one-town-and locomotive-in-another" is probably unavoidable, this layout will hopefully not be a spaghetti mill. Tell me how I'm doing in that regard, as time goes on.
Geared,
i'm modeling just before and slightly into the transition era - 1930 to about 1945. Doodlebugs about about the only non-steam that will appear regularly on the railroad. For my few diesels, I have the cflub to run on!
Excellent progress! I look forward to following this thread. Best of luck!
Regards, Don
"Ladies and gentlemen, I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that both engines have failed, and we will be stuck here for some time. The good news is that you decided to take the train and not fly."
Brunton Here's the room where the main part of the layout will be. As you can see, this is a pretty nicely finished room, which means I'll have to be very careful to protect the floor from finish-damaging debris, glue drip and what-not:
An entirely different standard from what the LION is wont to build:
And the floor! The asphalt tiles on the floor are crumbling under foot.
Oh well, good luck with your railroad.
ROAR
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
BroadwayLion And the floor! The asphalt tiles on the floor are crumbling under foot. Oh well, good luck with your railroad.
Given the age of your Abbey LION, the tiles are probably Asbestos
Dennis
CDN Dennis
Modeling the HO scale something or other RR in the shadow of the Canadian Rockies Alberta, Canada
that is a great looking layout room!
Work continues - tracklaying has commenced!
A couple weeks ago I started laying code 83 track on the NP mainline on the side of the peninsula opposite the Laurel yard. About 15 feet of track is down, including some superelevated track around the curve that will skirt the roundhouse. Here's how things looked yesterday afternoon:
I hooked up track power via two alligator clips and ran a couple of locomotives back and forth - everything seemed smooth so far.
Here's a closeup of the far loco on the superelevated curve. Note the inwards lean:
My next order of business is to build the first of the mainline turnouts that will go into Laurel yard. I'll need one before I can progress much farther with tracklaying.
Were you able to salvage your giant helix? That was such a triumph of engineering that I would hate to think it ended up in a dumpster somewhere. Perhaps now, with so much space available, you don't need to resort to a helix anymore.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Hi Mark,
It feels good to be running trains again doesn't it.
Keep updating us with pics.
Looking good so far, Derek
Thanks for the encouragement, guys!
MisterBeasley,
I saved everything but the roadbed and subroadbed. Those went into the dumpster. The track, terminal strips and all that will be reused on the new layout, but I have no plans for a helix this time. Of course, plans change...
Well, it's been eight months and a smidgeon since I updated this thread, so I thought it was time to fill everyone in on what I've been doing.
In early May I laid out the end of Laurel yard near the turnback curve, using a couple of #8 switch templates.
I had a work session in mid-June, and three of the guys from the first work crew were able to return to help out again. I guess that long drive from Charleston to Allendale didn't put them off visiting again! From left to right are Jim, Jimmy and Phil. Jimmy and Phil worked on setting up additional benchwork for the base end of the Laurel peninsula...
...And Jim did a bunch of under-the-yard wiring set-up, including attaching a bunch of terminal strips from which track feeders will tie back in to the main Laurel buss wires. Here Jim is installing a shelf for my NCE DCC system.
Over several months I built all the switches for the "near end" (the turnback curve end) of Laural Yard, and laid those and most of the yard. I don't have any photos of that work in progress. A couple weeks before Thanksgiving I had another work session, and Phil and Jim both came out. Others from earlier sessions were unable to make it because Thanksgiving was looming, and most folks were busy gearing up for the holidays. But Jim, Phil and I did get some benchwork built that will go on the wall behind Laurel, where the NP mainline will run to staging behind Casper Yard. You'll see that in a photo below.
I took a week off from everything in July, attending the NMRA national convention in Atlanta. I gave my Helix construction clinic for probably the last time, attended a ton of other clinics, went on a layout tour and attended the National Train Show, plus loads of other stuff. What a great time!
As Thanksgiving approached, I began to notice that there was plenty of room to expand the yard from the rather minimalist three body tracks to five. I'd begun thinking that the three tracks I planned would be inadequate to support the operating scheme I've planned out, so I gleefully decided to use the extra space and add the two additional body tracks.
Over the long Thanksgiving weekend I built the four #6 left-hand switches for the far end of Laurel yard, and between Thansgiving and Christmas got them installed.
Here are a few shots of the layout as it stood on December 28th:
This is the "far end" yard throat. The two near switches are #8's, and the four body track switches are #6's, which explains the slight angle difference between the yard ladder and the #8's.
I also spent some time layout out the location of the turntable and roundhouse. Laurel will sport a 130' turntable. The roundhouse is comprised of four Walthers Modern Roundhouse kits (basic kits and add-on stall kits), resulting in a 12 stall facility. The level in the shot above is right about where one of the two leads will go. You can see a black dot just past the near end of level and just to the right ofit - this is the turntable center point. Once the leads are laid out, I'll cut out the hole for the turntable pit.
And finally, in the right-hand portion of this shot you can see the benchwork (or at least all the stuff piled on it) that Phil, Jim and I built in mid-November. You can see that we even managed to attach a bit of sky backdrop! That was salvaged from my old layout in New Jersey.
And that's about it! I'm currently building the switches to tie the two new yard tracks in to the "near end" (the turntable end) throat, plus the additional switches that are needed for the engine survicing tracks. Over the next month or two those will be installed and wired, and Laurel will be more-or-less complete for trackage.
Comments, criticisms, suggestions?
Things are coming along well. Good call on the extra two tracks in Laurel Yard. You'd just have to go back later and do it anyway. BTDT
Looks like adequate construction light, but I'm wondering something more may be needed to really show the layout once scenery, etc start coming along. What's your take on that so far?
mlehmanLooks like adequate construction light, but I'm wondering something more may be needed to really show the layout once scenery, etc start coming along. What's your take on that so far?
Hi Mike,
You're right about the lighting. Adequate for construction only. I'll be addining some non-permanent room dividers, and may be able to mount additional lighting on those. The benchwork against walls won't be a problem, because I can attach lighting to the top of the backdrops. The free standing peninsulas, though, will require more thought.
I've completed the expansion of the Laurel yard with installation and wiring of the engine terminal end yard throat:
To the left of the ladder the caboose track is still to be installed, and all of the service tracks are yet to be installed.
Mark, I am embarrassed to confess that this is the first time I have noticed your thread. I can't believe it, but....what can I say?
...except for WOW!! You do things in a big way. First that iconic helix years ago, and now all this. And what a space. The last image indicates that you have not lost your ability laying track that looks properly laid out. And I see what I think must be Fast Tracks turnouts. If you haven't used them previously, I think you'll soon be an ardent fan.
I'll keep watching, but I have to march myself to the guardhouse and turn myself in for the night.
-Crandell
Mark
Glad to see you chugging along, I'm still jealous of that layout room, but I like that yard ladder in Laurel. Great shot with the tankers.
Time for a little update, I guess...
I've been spending most of the last few months on the Laurel engine terminal. The 130' turntable is in, along with the roundhouse floor (12 stall roundhouse) and most of the tracks. I still have two of the three leads to install, but all the radial tracks are in. Here's a shot of the roundhouse area as I was installing tracks:
In this somewhat more recent overall photo, all the roundhouse tracks are in place:
I had a work session a few weeks ago. A couple of the guys helped finish wiring the roundhouse tracks. We also installed some 120V outlets around the layout edge, and finished this connecting benchwork from the Laurel peninsula (far end from the engine terminal) to the benchwork along the wall:
That connector is temporary, as it will be replaced with a lift-out when I get the wall and door installed. That's slated for sometime in the future - I have no idea when.
Meanwhile, I've (barely) started building the roundhouse for Laurel, and am pushing subroadbed and, shortly, track out of Laurel yard and across the connector.
I will be interested to see your lift-out bridge, Mark. Meanwhile, what you show appears to be good solid workmanship. I'm still envios of the space, too, even the space around your large turntable and roundhouse.