Howdy, Joe. I'll have a Strumpet - I'm feeling adventurous.
Sue, that is one fine looking trestle. Rather reminds me of photos I've seen of the West Side Lumber Company's more serious bridges.
(Just to show how different Japan was, on the Kiso Forest Railway a bridge that size would have been a steel viaduct. Wood trestles would have been much lower, and built out of whatever slash wasn't worth sending down the line to the mill...)
Mister Beasley, when it comes to open-air staging, didn't Dave Barrow have such a yard? I seem to recall that he had a tower at one end labeled West Mesa. The one at the other end was East Hill. According to the employee timetable those two names were on opposite ends of the division...
After a long period of virtual inactivity, wheels are once again rolling in the netherworld. I still can't stand up very long, but at least the temperature in the garage is down from its summertime high. Next on the priority list is to finish the benchwork to the approximate center of the garage door and get enough of the netherworld built in that area that I'll be able to finally surface at the Nichigeki Tunnels, just down from the crossing of the Harukawa. (Very, "Just down from" - the bridge abutments are about two scale meters out from the tunnel portals.)
Time to take care of some business. See ya,
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
gear-jammerMrB, I am studying your layout plans. Do you still plan to use it for staging? Or will it be a working yard. It is always fun to place industries.
Right now, it will be staging, but I could see how it might evolve into a working yard. My current layout is primarily a simple loop with 1 passing siding, as far as "mainline" trackage goes. This lets me run one train around while doing some switching. If I want to add a second train and keep the other on the siding, I can do that, but it blocks some of the industries. With a second passing siding, I will be able to use the parallel tracks as either staging or a yard, I suppose. I don't plan to hide the tracks, and the area will have scenery, so I guess I can decide when I get up each morning whether it will be staging or yard.
Well, off to hockey for me. Hopefully, we'll get a better turnout now that the Red Sox have settled down for their long winter's nap.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
No problem!
Looks like this when harvested. It oughta be ready up there about now.
Trim it into a tree shape:
Load it with green paint of your choice and roll/sprinkle on ground foam.I use a mix of foam and dyed sawdust.
There ya go!
Terry
Terry in NW Wisconsin
Queenbogey715 is my Youtube channel
It’s been a LONG while….
I have been way busy and then to top off matters with frustration: For what ever reason, I have again had trouble logging on!
Larry & Sue: Nice work!!
Mr. B: The plan looks like it will be a nice addition.
I have been doing nothing in the Trainroom, but have been REAL busy harvesting (cleaning up after the logging operation) fire wood, improving and building new trails.
But…Today is WAY wet, tomorrow is forecast for snow…And I’m heading for the RR for a bit today before work.
Terry: I have Golden Rod growing here too! Haven’t tried making trees out of it though. What is your method and how do they turn out?
I am still at the top of page, so I buy, Joe. That is if anyone comes it join me. An Irish coffee sounds like a great nightcap.
Terry, We had a great fall for harvesting tree material until 3 weeks ago. When the rain starts, everything turns to mush.
MrB, I am studying your layout plans. Do you still plan to use it for staging? Or will it be a working yard. It is always fun to place industries. All the more reason for an operating session. You will like code 83.
Sue
Anything is possible if you do not know what you are talking about.
Sue and Larry, what a fine trestle. It looks like raw lumber. I can almost smell the sap running out of the long poles.
Terry, is that goldenrod? Makes my eyes red just thinkin' about it.
Here is the track plan for the extension. The new part is at the top, the long, thin section. It will be 19 feet long by 30 inches wide, with a balloon out to 54 inches wide at the left end. At the far right, there will be a car float. I haven't got all the tracks connected, obviously, but they will be on the layout. The existing layout is only partially filled in, just enough to show the connecting tracks and get them positioned properly.
It started out as staging, and that's still there in the 4 long parallel tracks. Then I added the loop to give me a much longer continuous run, and the passing siding. I spaced it so that it is "opposite" the passing siding on the existing layout, so I can run a pair of trains in opposite directions and have meets on every loop. I put in a crossover, too, to give me another reverse loop. It's also opposite the loop on the existing layout, so I can always reverse a train at one or the other, depending on which direction it's headed, without having to back through the loop.
The car float will provide a lot of switching. I plan a few industries, too, but I'll probably wait until I start laying track before making the final call on where the sidings will go.
I'm going to do this section in Code 83, vs. the Code 100 on my present layout.
Any criticisms or suggestions would be welcome.
WOW! Very cool bridge, Sue!!
I'm harvesting goldenrod blossums for more trees. Looks like a bumper crop this year!
Finally, progress photos.
With some forced perspective.
Good morning, Joe. Coffee, please.
Congrats on 9000, MrB. We went with code 83 on our layout. Sounds like you have been doing some serious planning. Are you using track planning software?
I have been under the weather since Labor Day, and I am just feeling a little human again. Mostly thinking about the layout. I have been too lazy to pick up the camera to do posts.
Chuck, That does sound like perfect weather. It was wild that we had a stretch of 100+ degree weather. I did not know that only 30% of the people in the Pacific Northwest have air conditioning. I suspect that might go up some.
Later, Sue
IT"S ALIVE!!!
Joe, I sure hope the mundanes have been keeping your till full! Seems that all the regulars haven't been...
Mister Beasley, we all get a little more prototypical as we go along - until the day when wild imagineering takes over. When are you going to equip that moose with a harness, drawbar and coupler???
Thanks to my bum hip, activity on the layout has been confined to test-running newly activated rolling stock. I can do what's necessary to activate it while sitting at my all-purpose work surface, and don't have to execute any fancy contortions or dance steps while adding it to the expanding collection stored in cassettes. My DD13s (B-B diesel hydraulics) have enjoyed the workout.
The temperature here has actually dropped into a range suitable for human activity - low 60s to high 80s (F) instead of low 80s to preposterous. Easy enough to see the difference. My rail gaps are wider...
I specified (F) because, in Celsius, 34 is bikini temperature. I know you actually meant 1 degree C...
And on that note I'll slowly fade away...
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - eventually)
I just noticed that I had 8,999 posts, so I thought I'd drop by here for #9000. Strumpet IPAs all around in celebration, Joe.
Now that there's a chill in the air (34 on the way to work this morning) it's time to think aobut the railroad and what will happen next. I've got to pick up some lumber for Benchwork, Phase 2. This will be a 19-foot along-the-wall section, with a balloon loop at one end. The existing layout will join the addition near the other end, but there will be a bit of space where the car float terminal will go, according to the present design. I'm going to finally have staging/storage tracks, so I can run trains without having to watch the same one loop the loop all the time. I'm even planning staging tracks for the subways to make that a bit more interesting.
I plan to switch to Code 83 for this part of the railroad. I just think it looks nicer, and I guess I'm getting more "prototypie" as I get older.
MrB,
We will have strumpets while we watch the Subway Video.
It looks like you had great fun composing your video. We enjoyed the inside view. I am always awed by your detail. It makes me think about where I should be working harder. I loved the cruise past Penny Lane.
Later, Sue & Larry
Hi - Strumpets all around!
It's brutally hot in New England today. The girls are out of town, so I took the opportunity to take on a project I've been putting off for too long - the re-make of my subway video. The original was done with only the Saint Anne Street station complete, and a lot of open-air subway tracks. I finished the subway scenery quite a while ago, but never got around to re-doing the video.
I scrounged around for desk lamps, and added some extra lighting to the stations from the outside. From earlier experience, I knew that I needed more light to show off the details. The surprise I didn't expect was poor running from my trains. Wouldn't you know it, the tracks picked Day 1 of shooting to decide they needed to be cleaned. Well, that's what a CMX machine is for, huh?
I tried a lot of different scenes, and made sure I shot with the camera car moving in both directions. I did some passes with the extra lights, and some without. All in all, I took about 20 minutes of raw footage. I added Duke Ellington's "Take the A Train" as a soundtrack, and everything came together pretty well in a 3-minute finished project:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ5OvZtI-QU
Not sure about using the music on You Tube, of course. It's very old, and the original copyrights are long expired, though. So, here's hoping it stays there.
Bump.
I keep trying to revive the Beer Barn.
Is anyone doing layout work. I am still working on the streambed. Larry has been bugging me to get moving. I need to be out of the way of his trestle.
Hey, guys, let's have a cold Strumpet on tap. I feel like I have been neglecting my friends here at Joe's.
We too have been consumed with the back 40. I think that we have enough firewood cut and split, but we stacked it under the trees where we cut it. Now we just have to haul it up to the house. What we cut and split from here out will be for next year. We have changed our mode of operation. We used to fall a bunch, but now we drop 3 or 4 trees; cut and split; and chip the branches. I found that I was not very good at getting back to the chipping.
This has been one of the best summers. I now have almost 800 miles on my scooter. It is more relaxing everyday.
We operate the locos and clean a little track, but the most that gets done on the layout is discussing what we should be doing.
We are both working too much, however, with the economy like it is, we feel the need to push forward.
Sorry it has been so long.
Whoa, it's been two months since anyone was in here. I had to use Search to find it.
I'll have a Strumpet IPA, Joe. Thanks. One of my recent projects was a Jordan truck, and I picked up some unpainted Preiser "Truckers" on sale from Walthers at the same time. I found a good driver for the truck, but also a number of guys in work clothes doing "truck things." I painted up a pair of them to help unload my earlier Strumpet beer truck. I even decalled the back of their jackets with the Strumpet logo.
I finished my ballasting a little while ago. No big deal. Actually, it was about a foot and a half of track on the yard ladder. It's right in the middle of the 5-foot-wide layout, so it's awkward to reach, and it's hidden behind a couple of structures, so I never see it anyhow. But, now it's done. There is no unballasted track on my layout, no pink foam, nothing unfinished to the untrained eye.
I'm debating what to do next. Over the last few weeks I've been doing one vehicle after another - a Jordan truck, the General Lee and a Jordan school bus. I put a Soundbug into an F7, and used my newly-acquired truck tuner on my squeaky Rivarossi coaches. Happy to say, the F7 is louder and the coaches are quieter, the way it should be.
The extension is a couple of months away, at least. I've got the track plan, more or less, but I need to think about structures and scenery.
Then serve me up a large mug of extra dark stout!!!!!!!!
trainman6446 This Strumpets Lager sounds mighty tastey. Is ot a dark or pale beer?
This Strumpets Lager sounds mighty tastey. Is ot a dark or pale beer?
I would love to see Walthers carry it!!!
The real "beer line"!!!!
Well, thanks for the heads-up, Trainman. Believe I'll try one, virtually, of course, but here at the Beer Barn everything is possible.
http://www.hubcitybrewingcompany.com/about.php
(Seriously, I'm disappointed that I can't have a glass for real. It seems to be confined to Iowa, at the moment, but maybe they'll expand. Do you suppose Walthers would distribute it for them?)
This has been an odd couple of weeks. My layout is basically done. All the track is down, and, with the exception of a couple of spots I missed originally, it's all ballasted. There's no pink foam showing, and all the scenery is complete. I've got one more structure I want to add, and another one which will be a swap-out for a more modern theater when I go back to the 1930's, but that's about it. I've got some kits for rolling stock to complete, and some vehicles, too, but there won't be any more substantial changes.
Well, not until the extension starts. It's planned so that it will cause minimal disruption to the existing trackwork and scenery, so that I can continue to run the current layout while the new section is under construction.
Hello everybody. I am new to the beer barn. Just had to tell you about a real railroad themed beer. Search "hub city brewing company". History on the website. Yes, they have train pictures on the bottles!!!!!! Very good beer!! Found it at my local grocery store.
tomikawaTT Have you considered using cassetes to move rolling stock onto and off your layout? I use mine as 'extended removable staging.' Having track to put them on is a big incentive to rehabilitating semi-retired units of my freight car roster - and I'll never have enough track to have everything on active rails.
Have you considered using cassetes to move rolling stock onto and off your layout? I use mine as 'extended removable staging.' Having track to put them on is a big incentive to rehabilitating semi-retired units of my freight car roster - and I'll never have enough track to have everything on active rails.
Ah, proof that great minds think alike.
When Walthers re-issued the car float kit, I started re-planning the layout extension to include it. To me, using a car float as a casette is the best of all possible worlds. It's a scenic element and an operational puzzle, too, a lot more than simply a staging mechanism.
Another thought that came to me is using the car float as a "boat-lix." Like a helix or "nolix" that connects different levels of a layout, a "boat-lix" could connect spatially separate sections of a layout. Cars taken off the layout could be carried to another room, where they would be unloaded "across the water" and they could continue their journey.
Good Morning!---
I'll have a bottle of The Hobgoblin----I NEED something that has zing to it this morning--
Nice pplace you guys have here!
As to not getting stuff done in the trainroom---I've just started to sneak around the house so's I could find myself in the trainroom without some one going ---"Oh we need to-----" Mind, Audrey isn't as bad off as some apparently are----
Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry
I just started my blog site...more stuff to come...
http://modeltrainswithmusic.blogspot.ca/
I’m with Chuck!! Buy that gentleman a beer…or two!
I have gotten NOTHING done in the Trainroom! It has been one demand after an other for weeks, seemingly months.
I’m still trying to get the off pike staging finished, let alone work on any number of projects that I have started!
I may need to implement a “12 step program” for my railroading. Demanding time for the Trainroom as opposed to demands away from the Trainroom!
Wow, Mister B! Joe, give that man a refill - and I'll have one, too.
What I remember from my days of riding the IRT wasn't break squeal. It was the scream of tortured flanges on the streetcorner curves.
Here's hoping a few other folks will stop around. See ya...
Milestone reached. Joe, set 'em up. A Strumpet IPA for me, if you please.
Well, the scenery is "done." Of course, it's never really done, and there are still a number of small problems that need to be corrected, but to the casual observer, there are no unfinished spots on my layout.
The far back corner where the old operating Vollmer coal loader has sat on pink foam for the last 4 years is done now. I put some "water" into a trackside ditch and "planted" some tall grass along it. It was surprisingly easy to get the coal chutes running again. Machining a new core for one of the solenoids wasn't much work, and I fabricated a new hinge for one chute door out of brass tubing. I wired it up, and both chutes opened and closed on cue. One of these days, I'll make a video.
Still some work, of course. I've been looking over parts of the layout, and found a few spots that never got ballasted. A few of the scenic covers for those Atlas switch machines are not up to my current standards, and I've still got some signals to install. Still lots of cars with horn-hooks sitting in boxes, too.
I'll be starting the new section of the layout in the fall. Until then, maybe I'll try my hand at a flashing crossing signal, or the brake squeal sound unit for the subway stations. Never a dull moment, anyway.
Hello...
Good to see "the Barn" is active!
Bergie... I posted in the big thread on your new job, but again I wish you the best. Feel free to supply some "Strumpets" from time to time. If you like KY country ham, I can reciprocate with that from time to time. Folk in "the Diner" like it.
Glad Chuck had a nice trip to TN!
Cheers!
GARRY
HEARTLAND DIVISION, CB&Q RR
EVERYWHERE LOST; WE HUSTLE OUR CABOOSE FOR YOU
Joe, I just stopped in for a Long Island Iced Tea. Looks like everyone is doing serious work on their layouts.