The Glade 4.0

Sounds cool, but a little on the hazardous side, especially with the plastic bridges already there.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I did a little reading on the water techniques and I think I will try the resin rather than the hot plastic route. Since according to the scenery books, that will be one of the last steps of the major scenery items. I am a long way off from that point.

Last of the plaster (finally) on the mountain tunnel. Tomorrow, I'll start smoothing the obvious edges and filling gaps with mud; then I can start decorating it some and think about the river.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Here is a shot of the town area. I still have to get some more houses and a couple of other buildings.

Finally making some progress on the yard.

What are you using for the hills by the town? Is that just styrofoam sheets? I'm going to be making some small hills once I finalize my layout but I don't know what I should use yet.

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"Woven with Era, we belong to the Ages..."
[Trashcan Sinatras]

The small hills are Styrofoam sheets and the mountain is hollow with a layer of Styrofoam peanuts and plaster clothe skin.

Started applying spraypaint. Not quite sure how I feel about it so far; I think the grey I used may be a tad too dark. Oh well, this is all a learning experience.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Everyone needs a PC Case that looks like a train, don't they?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pc- ... ,3414.html

Mountain is painted all over now, although it needs some darkening up on the first part I did.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Looks great!

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When he's underwater does he get wet? Or does the water get him instead?

I added a portable CTC console. It worked out great. http://www.modeltrainforum.com/showthre ... 52&page=15

About a month ago, I started experiencing intermittent track problems - again - hence the lack of pictures while I sorted them out. Intermittent problems are much harder to diagnose than those that occur on every pass. I can chalk them up to a combination of 2 things:

1) Mistakes due to my own inexperience in initially laying the track; the most serious being failure to use a roadbed and
2) The fact that this layout is really too small for the size the plan calls for. The basic idea of the plan is good, but it should be significantly larger. Jerry's 6'x11' is a much better idea, and if I redid the layout I'd try to make it even larger than that. At 5'x9' the curves and grades are really just too severe.

Anyhow, I got back to work on the scenery. I started on the front left of the layout due to needing to get away from the layout.



The real pain here is the part directly under the bridge where it meets the plywood again. That's going to take some doing to completely cover. It's at a very awkward angle. Here it is from the other side:



Here's some work done around the tunnel entrances with the drywall mud compound. Trying to cover up the cardboard spacers under the track:



I am going to stay away from the spraypaint in the future. Aside from stinking up the entire house and requiring a lot of fan running and window opening to clear (not a good idea since the temperature during the day here is now exceeding 100 degrees) it seems to leave a film on the track that makes the engines have fits and starts for a few runs. Too much of that and I worry about them getting gummed up. So, it's going to be hand painting from now on. thankfully, the mountain is base painted.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

What kind of paint are you using? I use water based acrylics and they don't have much smell. Regarding the track issues, I do regular track cleaning and I soldered all of the joints except the insulated ones. Abrupt rail transitions cause most derailments. The depth of the wheel flanges can be an issue with guide rail areas. Some guides are not deep enough.

I had to trim some of the tabs inside the grade crossings because of the wheel flanges for precisely that reason. Getting rid of all the old plastic wheels in favor of metal ones seemed to help a lot with that problem in general, however. The flanges are not nearly as deep.

For the spraypaint I was using something called Blue Hawk. For the hand paint, it's called Rustoleum protective enamel. I'm going to drybrush the mountain with brown over the grey to look like dirt, then some green for foliage, and then I'll see about starting to emplace trees.

On the next layout, I will probably solder the joints, partly because I plan to use a lot more flextrack. You're absolutely right about the joints. I've corrected a lot of those. The NYC GP& loco was invaluable in finding them because its fenders (?) have very little clearance over the track and will catch all but the most miniscule of irregularities. I should give the tracks a good cleaning, too. The room is rather dusty from the drywall compound and plaster, and the general dustiness of the house.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yeah, enamels have solvents that'll create the fumes, acrylics don't.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Some more work, adding mud compound around the tracks where spacers are, then painting it. There's a lot of areas that need this done, so it will be ongoing for a while. Also, the frame of another hill is up. In these photos the train in the back was under way, which is why it isn't in the same place all the time.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I have added a little as well. Here is an overall of where I am at. Mostly scenery from here on out.

Now that's just mean, JerryH ...

What kind of self-respecting hobbyist covers up a machine lathe with a train set?

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The new hill on the left was covered, using the plaster-covered cloth strip method. Ho-lee-crap. That was about 100x easier and less messy than mixing plaster and using paper towel squares. Slightly more expensive, but definitely worth it. I had the frame covered and drying in less than 10 minutes. The only drawback I noticed was that on vertical surfaces the wet cloth does not "grab" the cardboard frame as easily as the paper towel did. There's some gaps to be filled around the bottom, but overall I thik it's a nice addition that breaks the scene up still more.



Here's a closer look.



It occurred to me that, while masking tape is exactly the right size to cover the tracks for this work, it also may be leaving a residue behind. I need to clean the tracks thoroughly.

Also, I got $50 for father's day. Going to order some more freight cars soon. I really would love to have a passenger consist, but most passenger cars are just too long for a layout this small. Model Railroader Magazine this month has an ad for an absolutely exquisite set of CPRail passenger cars and locomotives; about 10-12 cars and 3 locomotives I believe. Unfortunately I'm not doing a Canadian layout.. and the set was $1500. I guess I shouldn't be surprised; I've seen Big Boys and 2-8-8-4 locomotives for upwards of $1000, but still..

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I agree, this layout does not lend itself to long cars or locos. They just don't look right on anything less than 30 inch radius curves. Prototype curves would be closer to 100 inch radii in HO. One would need a very large space for that.

Even if I could get up to 26 inch radius, that would be a vast improvement. I have seen a layout of the tehachapi loop that was pretty close to accurate curvature, but it was enormous, and was nothing but the loop. All the train could really do was go around the loop over and over.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The Decapod arrived safe and sound:



Here is a size comparison with the Allegheny, the Consolidation and the GP-7 diesel. As you can see, the decapod is only a little bigger than the Consolidation. The tender, however, is enormous. Holy crap. I had a choice of short or long tender, and went with long since they were the same size; I had no idea it was going to be that big. I think it's the same tender the 2-10-4 PRR loco would have had, and it's actually bigger than the locomotive, or the tender for the monster. This isn't really a problem, just a surprise.



This locomotive has "blind" drivers on the 3rd driving axle - they don't have flanges in order to increase curve tolerance. This was a feature on real locomotives with long wheelbases, although I don't know for sure if this particular locomotive had blind drivers, or if it did, which axle(s) had them. Nevertheless, that explains the ability to take 18" radius curves. They may be hard to see in this image though.



So.. the first running indicates (once again) that this entire layout basically needs to be rebuilt. This locomotive is very finely made, and has small flanges and a long wheelbase. While it can tolerate 18" radius curves, sudden changes in grade up and down and places where one rail is not exactly level with the other are very hard for it to negotiate - as in, nearly impossible. It simply needs better track laying.

Part of the problem is my crappy track laying, but part of it is the difficulty of making a layout this complex fit in a 5'x9' area. As I've said before, it's really tight. It needs to be spread out considerably. I am not sure if I will enlarge this track plan or do something entirely new when we move, but what I won't do is repeat something with an 18" minimum radius interspersed with 22". 24" is pretty much bare minimum for the main line run on anything new I build. Ideally, at least 27", maybe even 30" for long passenger cars. Just the ability to not have transitions farther apart should smooth things out immensely.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Oh, almost forgot - the sound is AWESOME! It makes a chug chug sound that varies with speed and all kinds of other, very authentic-sounding noises as well.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Saw this on the Science Channel tonight. I thought of this thread...