Layout tear-down update

Thanks to all who have written individually or posted to the blog. I've been in the middle of a big project at work, and moving is well, all consuming, so I haven't been able to respond to all the notes, posts, comments, etc... Here's a quick rundown on where this project currently sits:
- The layout is still in place, but not for much longer. Thanks to my folks visiting last weekend and looking to help, the railroad is now devoid of trees ... most of the fall trees have been packed away for possible reuse. My dad proved to be quite the logger....

- Monday my folks helped me pack up my workshop - so the lathe, milling machine, scratchbuilding material etc... are all boxed up and ready to go into temporary storage. First, I have to haul all those (heavy) boxes upstairs!
- Over the course of the last couple of weeks of evenings I managed to pack up all the all the cars, locomotives, and structures, etc...
- All the salvageable track (ie. any track without ballast) has been removed from the layout. Any pieces of code 70 track longer than 2 feet have been bundled and packed away. All others bits and pieces of track, broken turnouts, etc...went to the curb. 
Next step will be the worst - removing the layout framework itself. That's on the docket for next couple of weekends...

NCE system up and running

Beer poster in lieu of photo of Gainesville DCC install crew. 

The Gainesville Mafia, headed by Don Pete LaGuardia, (a.k.a "The Electrician," a.k.a. "Wires", a.k.a. "Watts") stopped by last night to assist with the installation and checkout of my North Coast Engineering Wireless DCC system. 
Understandably, they don't like having their pictures taken so it worked out well that my phone battery was dead. So to have some sort of graphic with this post I've added a vintage beer poster. Enjoy....
We'd planned on a long evening in case of the need for troubleshooting. I'm happy to report the installation of the system, which includes three power districts, each with their own booster and a Tony's Train Exchange short circuit detector, went flawlessly and the system was up and running in record time. 
Thanks to Pete, Mat, Tom, and Brian for their assistance. It was much appreciated!

Work Session Report - April 9, 2016

Very productive work session last Saturday. Stic came over and we got an early start (and actually got right to work...). 
Honestly, I've been dragging a bit on the layout over the last few weeks. I have been busy though. I've gone through numerous boxes of stuff and gotten rid of everything from old household papers (the shredder got such a workout it literally started smoking!), various pieces of wood, old VHS tapes, magazines, and even some half-started projects that will now never see the light of day. Sometimes you need to completely clean house.  
Anyway, if it seems like I haven't been blogging about layout progress lately that's the reason. Entirely necessary but hardly interesting enough to blog about! 
Back to Saturday. First of all, I appreciate Stic coming by, if for no other reason than it helped get me rolling again. Besides, Beauregard and Molly like him....
Plan for the day was to finish some benchwork alterations that involve adding a turntable and small engine house to what had been the town of Randolph and will now be a town based (in spirit, if not details!) on Montpelier Junction. Montpelier Junction didn't have a turntable at the time I'm modeling. I don't have room for a wye but I do have a nicely completed Diamond Scale turntable. The turntable came off my SNE #1 layout (see MRP 2000) and is still sitting in the piece of 3?4" plywood sub roadbed for that layout. The turntable "unit" is about 18" square and almost 12" deep (to accommodate the New York Railway Supply drive unit) so 
fitting it in place required some benchwork alterations beyond simply cutting out a circle. In classic Tom Sawyer fashion I convinced Stic into doing all the kneeling, bending etc... (see photo below) under and between the benchwork joists. 

Q: Do I feel guilty about this? 
A: No, I don't feel guilty about it. 
Not even a little bit. 

By the end of the day we'd gotten the turntable planted in the layout and had worked out the track and structure arrangement that seems to work best. Can't wait to get the track laid in this area and finally get some scenery down. 

Work Session Report - November 11, 2014

First of all, to all my fellow veterans and to those who are still on active duty in the Armed Forces, thank you for you services and sacrifices. You're the reason we get to enjoy hobbies like model railroading. 

An overall view of the Richmond area as it looked after today's work session.

Progress on the layout had kind of sputtered out a little - I was finding it hard to get motivated to put the mainline back together and finish the track in the Richmond area. 
Stic and I had arranged a work session for today a couple of weeks ago - and knowing Stic was coming over shamed me into finishing up the track. I managed to finish all the track on Sunday. 
Since I was still left with a bunch of pink styrofoam pieces in the workshop it seemed to make the most sense to spend today's work session cutting the gluing the styrofoam landforms in place. 
We made pretty good progress - next step is to carve the foam to shape - which will be as task I'll tackle in short sessions after work in the evenings. 
Appreciate Stic spending his day off over here helping with the layout.

Beauregard and Molly are in charge of keeping up morale…. and wrestling!

You can't use an electronic magazine for this! Bound volumes and magazine holders filled with MRs, RMCs, and the like make perfect weights to hold the foam in place as the glue dries! The mockup is a rough approximation of the Richmond creamery. 

Work Session Report - 15 June 2014

Tom, John, and Ben stopped by a short work session this afternoon. 
About a year ago John made a yardmasters desk for White River Junction - he and Tom worked on installing it on the layout. John is an extremely talented modeler - his other hobby is making mandolins - so to say he went above and beyond the call with the YM's desk is an understatement!
But the finished desk looks great, and it's on drawer glides so it can be slid out of the way to keep the aisle clear when it's not needed. 

Tom and I spent some time discussing the station platforms and B&M track arrangements by White River Junction station. We have a plan for the area that will maximize the platform area around the station building and make the finished scene close to full size in HO. It's going to have to wait until after the operating sessions in the next two weeks. 

Ben worked on passenger car wheel sets. 
I did a couple of minor little tasks - adding another set of feeders near the creamery crossing and ballasting some of the mainline track. 
I also finished installing the phone system that Mat and Pete stopped by to help with on Tuesday night. The phone system deserves it's own post. 
Thanks to all for the help!
As for me, now I have to clean up the layout room and get things staged for the session next Saturday.

Work Session Report - May 17, 2014

Bernie stopped by after his golf lesson and round to patch the gap in the backdrop. While he was here he also tweaked some other sections on the backdrop between Randolph and Waterbury. One neat thing he did was blend a barn and farmhouse photo into the painted backdrop. 
Finally, we played around with some static grass before he left. Once he left I got out my static grass machine and worked a little on getting a pasture around the hay barn on the peninsula. All in all, a productive day. 
See the photos captions for more details. 

When we altered the peninsula last January we sliced right through the backdrop Bernie had painted. Here's what it looked like before the Masonite was installed. For several months this has been a sky blue patch in a backdrop painting.

Bernie got to work blending the new backdrop section into the one he'd previously painted. He didn't want to be photographed today - he was feeling shy….You can see the sky blue section on the bottom that denotes where the backdrop "splice" joined the old backdrop painting. This went pretty quickly. I think it took him longer to drive out to our place from the golf course than it took to paint the new backdrop! 

The finished section is seamless - Well done! There would be no way I could have matched his colors, or frankly his painting ability. A shallow-relief structure will be installed between the track and the backdrop.  

Closer to Randolph we added a barn and farmhouse from a photography to the painted backdrop. I think this is from a photo George Dutka sent me a while back. There was a pine tree in the photo obscuring the barn - so Bernie blended some additional painted pines to match the picture. We used Bernie's static grass machine for the grass in this section. 

Once Bernie headed for home, I got out my static grass machine and started to dress up the grass in the pasture and along the right-of-way just north of Waterbury. 

Christine dared me to put this on the blog….

Work Session Report - 20 January 2014

The 1x 2 shows the approximate alignment of the revised mainline through what will now be known as "Randolph."

 Had a good time today making some changes to the layout. Thanks to Tom, Stic, Ben, and John Paganoni for their help. 
I'll prepare a follow-on post detailing the "whys," but I made two rather significant changes to the layout today. 

First, I decided to replace the freelanced paper mill scene with another CV prototype scene. Inspired by the paper mill on Paul Dolko's former B&M layout, the paper mill was interesting, but after a couple of years of playing around with different track arrangements,  buildings, etc… it never really came together. Main issue was such a large complex really didn't seem to fit with the theme of the CV in the 1950s in northern Vermont. 
So, instead I'm going to add my version of Randolph, Vt, another favorite CV town. 
To add Randolph we need to have a longer town scene than was available, which meant the Williams Creek bridge scene had to be removed. It will be reinstalled in another location on the layout - here it is after Tom and Stic got done with it -
Ben and I removed the track from the paper mill scene and removed a fair amount of the foam board sub roadbed and framework from the section. Then Ben turned his attention to some of the passenger cars. An ongoing project is getting the Ambassador consist off the "bad order" shelf….
Stic and I got the risers and crosspieces level in preparation for reinstalling the sub roadbed. By the end of the day, Randolph was down to the bare grid benchwork, but rebuilding will commence shortly. 
I also decided to move the end of the peninsula over about 20" or so, mostly to create a little more room to get around the relatively tight aisle between the back of the peninsula and north end staging. To do this we simply cut the peninsula at it's base - I should say Tom cut the peninsula using a very fancy saw that made truly straight square cuts, and all of muscled the peninsula into it's new position. Tom, John, and I then filled in the gap in the layout frame and backdrop. 

All in all a good day - thanks to all for the help. Next time I promise the work session will be a LOT more low key and not involve quite so many power tools!

Work Session Today

A few of the regular gang are coming by today to work on the layout, taking advantage of the 
Federal holiday many of us have….Christine doesn't work for the Feds so she's at work today. The dogs are getting baths. 
Going to make some "tweaks" to the layout….

"Gentleman, crowbars at the ready….."

Details to follow…..

August 19, 2012 Work Session Report

Good work session on the railroad this afternoon meant an early start to the new "model railroad season." I'm hoping to get the railroad somewhat operational in the next couple of months - thanks to the good friends who are willing to help it just may happen. 
Paul Dolkos and John Paganoni were the first to arrive - after discussing the lighting situation over the main peninsula (long story short - a better lighting solution is now a top priority) Paul got work ballasting the track in Waterbury. This track is in place and "finished" - which means it's been tested so I feel confident it's ready for ballast. 

Stic Harris arrived next. After the obligatory tour of the railroad, Stic got to work gluing down some ties for the last two turnouts in Essex Junction - while waiting for the ties to dry he cut up some pulpwood piles for the woodyard to be located on the end of the peninsula. 

John got busy filing up some switch frogs and points, and also got some measurements for the White River yardmasters desk - he'll build that at his house in his wood shop. 
Ben Hom opened up the rip track and managed to give all the cars currently on the railroad the once over - checking car weights, coupler height and operation, wheelsets, etc . . . He really plowed through the car fleet - we'll have to have him over again  . . . 

Bernie arrived later than the others and showed my son Matt how to assemble the Alkem C&O Signal Bridge kit (Matt is doing some contract assembly work for Bernie) and then made some repairs and touch up painting to the WRJ coaling tower. That's great, since I need to get it installed on the layout!

Finally, I took the opportunity to review the plan for the industries in Everett (named after a college classmate who was upset when he learned I named the river crossing after another classmate . . .) Looks like we'll be adding a coal dealer and a team track to the scene in Everett. 

All in a great day. 

Thanks to all for the help!

Layout Work Sessions - Beneficial or Too much like, well, work?

I've had several local modelers volunteer to come over and help with various aspects of the layout. Several have indicated they would be willing to stop by and help next time I have a "work session." 
While I appreciate the gesture, and have certainly accepted help on the railroad from time to time from friends, I've been a little hesitant to declare "Every other Tuesday night" or whatever is a work session and invite a half dozen people over to work on the railroad. I seem to do okay with one or two folks at a time.  I also do okay when it's a group project - something like building benchwork comes to mind. Or it's something where I know the results will meet my vision (Bernie's backdrop painting, like that shown HERE, jumps to mind.)
My main hesitation stems from the fact that the few times I've had more than one person over to work on the layout I get really stressed out looking for tools, materials, and the like, answering the "is this what you wanted?" type questions, and all the rest. Frankly, it brings the hobby dangerously close to the kind of stuff I deal with all day at the office. And that doesn't sound like fun. 
But the whole process is fraught with peril of another sort. Someone might be the nicest guy in the world, but he's all thumbs when it comes to modeling - or certain aspects of modeling. Such things can easily lead to hurt feelings - "Gee, Bill, thanks for taking the time to make all those trees last work session. They looked like garbage . . . which is where you'll find them if you want them . . ." 
Hardly seems friendly. 
But I do know some modelers who manage to host what amounts to a private club in their homes - and they seem to get a fair amount accomplished. I'm not sure, but my guess is they know to play to each person's strength - and in some cases may find that honesty, even brutal honesty, is the best policy. And there's a clear understanding that "This is my layout, and if something doesn't meet my expectations I reserve the right to change it." 
Another key would be to have the "work assignments" in mind before everyone shows up at the door - and tell them what they will be working on and ask they bring their own tools. That would cut down a little on the need to spend an entire evening or afternoon rushing around the basement looking for all the tools and materials needed. 
Any thoughts for people who host, or attend work sessions? No need to mention specific names. 

More backdrops

On Bernie's last visit he'd been assigned the task of installing the turntable and track in the engine servicing area. Once Bernie finished cutting the hole for the turntable (and a fine hole it is . . .) he begged off laying the track.  Instead I put him to work finishing up some backdrop painting behind the Williams Creek bridge scene (where the river meets the backdrop).  
He also painted about 8 additional feet of backdrop before calling it quits.  The new section of backdrop shows more fall colors than the previous section since the foreground scenery will include trees with some foliage remaining.  Think of it as past peak colors, but before all the leaves are down, and representing a slightly lower elevation down in the valley where the wind hasn't knocked all the leaves off the trees. The tree in the foreground is one of my finished trees he was using to match colors. I think it came out pretty well. 

December 8 Work Session

Good work session this evening on the Central Vermont Winooski Sub.  Bernie braved the DC traffic to come out to Manassas for a Friday night session. I worked on roadbed in Essex Junction while he painted a late fall backdrop behind Waterbury.  I won't bore anyone with photos of roadbed - but the backdrop Bernie painted came out pretty sharp.

We did shoot a couple of short videos showing Bernie at work - I will post those later. 

We found some pictures in Morning Sun's Central Vermont Railway in Color for inspiration. One of the most recognizable items in the Vermont landscape is "Camel's Hump" - the second tallest peak in the state but one with a unique profile (hence the name). Bernie used a photo taken by my good friend Alan Irwin as a guide - Alan's picture is in the lower right in the open book. 
In the image below you can see the unique shape of Camel's Hump - but Bernie was careful to not make shape TOO distinctive since the backdrop would look odd when viewed from a different angle. Looks like there is already snow on the peak - it won't be long before Waterbury will be buried in the white stuff .  . . maybe we need to run a couple of ski trains?

Along the narrow "neck" of the peninsula, Bernie added some "foreground" tree detail to my already outstanding backdrop painting efforts! (Actually, I think he "tweaked" my trees more than a little). The Supertree in the center is there as a height reference. One thing that has become obvious is I need more light on this section of the railroad. We discussed some possibilities for that as well. 

I couldn't resist setting up a simple "test shot" in Waterbury. I want to finish up the work on the track in Essex Junction - but I also really, really, want to get to work on the "front door" Waterbury scene. 

Thanks for the help, Bernie!