Progress (Is Our Most Important Product) continues.
Ten car trains are running relatively reliably (if I could just keep the Bowser N5c cabins attached to the train ends). We will work our way up to the 25+ coal drags.
The Brooklawn/Timber Creek area received its second pass scenery. I still need to put in power house and Buzby Bros. parking areas. The creek needs to be refinished and work along the banks improved and then the people (figures) need to return.
Westville is back to normal along with part of North Woodbury. South Woodbury is in good shape but Woodbury proper needs a lot of work and the peninsula end needs to be started.
The Glassboro/Thorofare area has parking and trees.
This is a milestone for my Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines layout. (So, I’m excited!) After almost exactly one year, trains are once again running!
I tore apart (and reordered 75% of) the layout in order to get room for 9 tracks of staging - 4 from the Philadelphia side and 5 to serve as the turnaround points for the 3 southbound branches that terminate “at ocean’s edge”. This will enable my operating group to run the complete schedule of trains that the PRSL ran in the early 1950s.
Most of the layout still looks like a combination tornado/earthquake/hurricane hit it but at least the trains are running again.
0:00 We pick up a southbound local in Camden
0:22 Ignore the fact that Philadelphia’s 30th Street station is in the background (out of place but no switching)
0:35 Also ignore the Manayunk bridges
0:50 Back to reality: Timber creek bridge (Brooklawn to Westville)
0:55 Westville
1:00 Texaco refinery in Westville
1:15 North Woodbury
1:25 Meeting the northbound local in the unfinished end piece
1:35 Woodbury
1:50 South Woodbury marshalling yard
1:55 Glassboro (/Thorofare) junction (with lead to South Staging)
2:05 Loop to get up to high line (the North Staging enters at the top)
2:25 The 9 tracks of staging that caused all this trouble
3:00 Meeting the northbound local (behind Camden)
3:20 Back to the Camden Pavonia yard
After fighting with the electrical for more than 8 weeks I can finally get engines around the entire layout! PTL! As basically a lone wolf during construction, it was brutal hopping between under the layout and above the layout to test continuity.
After re-positioning the order of the modules, I had to switch the common side on 2 of the 4 "legs" to mate the 2 operational (and electrical) towers to "play nice". (This is a DC layout utilizing a "common rail".)
All the track is now in place but there are multiple physical locations that need significant "tuning" work. (Not to mention the 63 turnouts.) And the summer heat in the loft has not done us any favors.
I am currently returning buildings to the layout and working on scenery repair. I am also installing some plexiglass shields to cover some details that are now exposed to damage from family members coming upstairs to use the computer.
Wow, long road! Fourteen months since I "foolishly" decided to improve operations! At least there is light at the end of the tunnel. Operations in the fall? 😀
All the track is now in and you would think I would be able to run again.
Wrong! Somewhere along the line I have screwed up the electrical (happens when you connect different sections together in different orders: A to B to C to A became A-C-B-D-A).
I think I even blew a power pack.
I'll have to wait until I can get a second electrically minded person on site to begin testing and analyzing connections.
Electrical: 2 steps forward and 3 steps backward.
Layout progress overview:
Woodbury on left; Glassboro/Thorofare Junction ahead; new staging yards on right
Loop to gain altitude
Adding roads (1st pass):
Woodbury realignment due to peninsula
Timber Creek:
Buzby Bros. Cement spur relocated; PRSL power plant spur extended; Brooklawn circle added
Making Westville and Woodbury (see above) legs a peninsula costs about 18" of straight-away.
I know it's a tired old argument with everybody having their favorite method but the (free) Model Railroad Hobbyist on-line magazine contained an article (under "Publisher's Musings") that dealt with the topic and gave a scientific explanation for the dirty track we all fight with.
They also rated 34 products on their effectiveness in controlling the cause of dirty track. Here are the results.
I am sure the "my favorite product" arguments will never fully go away but I hope this at least minimizes their frequency.
I have used Wahl's Clipper Oil for about 20 years, over multiple layouts, and can vouch that I can go without cleaning track (during non-construction periods) for more than 5 years at a time. (The exception being my 63 sets of switch points).
There are two "periods" when I am thrilled feeling the artistic "soaring possibilities" in model railroading construction:
1) When you first lay track on a wooden benchwork (I get delirious at the smell of freshly cut and recently drilled wood). You can envision the beautiful possibilities laying just down the road and around the construction bend.
2) After you have covered the cardboard webbing of the first scenery mock-ups.
Final scenery, although satisfying, never quite measures up to the unlimited possibilities immediately after the above steps.
Anyway after coming down from my Pepsi high, I should get to see this week if my Sculptamold stash is still usable and get in the first pass ground covering. Wish me luck!
I still have to decide whether to permanently cover 2/3 of the access hatch.
Glassboro Junction
Woodbury to Glassboro
The last 3' of track to complete the mainline. Bridge will go in after the Sculptamold.
I got to visit the Atlantic County 4H Train Meet on Saturday April 29th. We went to the back door by mistake and immediately ran into 3 folks I was acquainted with from the Railwire forum, It was great to see the faces of people I had only known via the internet.
Cody, Chris, and Ed
They were there selling off David K Smith's vast stock of old N gauge equipment and buildings at fantastic prices. If I hadn't been chatting with them I would have gotten a Minitrix K4 for $15 but a few people ahead of me bought them in multiple quantities and wiped out the stock before I had a chance.
I had hoped to get to meet DKS so I could personally thank him for doing a track plan illustration for an N Scale Magazine article I published years ago but alas he was not in attendance. I did get to see some of his handiwork. Cody now has possession of his Trenton Transportation Company masterpiece:
DKS' Trenton Transportation Company layout
This is a sight you do not usually get to see: a freight train volcanic disaster:
As usual my modeling work during the tax prep season (38 days to go!) comes to a very slow crawl.
I have managed to complete and wire the staging yards, add a shelf over the staging yard with under-shelf LED lighting, complete the Glassboro junction trackwork and loop, and start the Brooklawn bridges. The bridges are in the last section necessary to restore the layout to running order.
Lionel TT gauge (1:120) display models
Glassboro Loop
Glassboro Junction
Brooklawn Bridges
I have begun returning buildings to the layout and testing arrangements.
A scenic divider was adding to separate Westville and Woodbury (they are at different elevations). I am still trying to decide if I like it.
