Somewhere North Jersey

[dem34]

Got around to tackling my least favorite step in the process. I did something completely different for this side compared to the other, (good thing In my head both sides represent different railroads) Instead of screwing around with dabbing a wash on the ballast I simply tumbled the weather powder on a light WS ballast.





And with that ordeal out of the way I went back to my scatterbrain off the cuff scenery planning. Plans originally was for the scenery tracks to go along the length of the layouts backdrop but I figured I could kill two birds with one stone by making it the disappearing point for trains going around the curve on this end.


And with some foam work here are the tunnels. This is supposed to be the city scene, like Newark or Hoboken or some other, I just kinda blanked out on the whole concept of leaving spaces for buildings so this platform here should remedy that. I'm going to use double track portals to avoid any issues with clearance, Chooch's portals look the part of just slightly wider singles luckily. Probably going to have to see if I'm using thin styrene or some other bendy material for the tunnel walls before I go any further with foam. And fix my miscalculation of how far I needed to put filler ties. 




Using a slight variation of the same color ballast means the transition isn't that jarring and came out pretty good compared to the other side. Also tempermental bastard on its unofficial work bench.



And the bridge, in my head this is the Lackawanna Cutoff flying over through wherever city this is and the rural/ mountain part is...... idk I can justify it later. making finding a plate girder kit and making half the bridge less shiny is of greater concern.

[dem34]

Oh boy, That first one was something, and, to say the least the second was not really worth a thread. Not visible to those just looking at shots from a crappy phone is the track conditions. Between the Atlas #5s I was using that kept having the frog rails pop their clips, and my general inexperience with Flex track I was having a bear of a time actually running anything. And the second one.... I ignored my own rule on grades and rushed the wiring. Not a great result there either, but I did get to badger Ed K into giving a step by step on winter scenery over FB and got a pretty corner out of the ordeal.

So of course the logical choice was to hand lay the important bits on the next iteration. But luckily nobody can see the graveyard of failed turnouts and spurs that adorn my desk and I can pretend I got some of the smoothest track work I've ever put down on the first try.



Current layout will hopefully be the last small "home" layout at least for more than the usual month or two. Ideally it should feel like areas around Philipsburg mashed with areas like Summit.

This shot captures the gist of the trackwork. Areas up close to viewing are hand laid on PC board ties along with Turnouts and placed on .20 styrene sheet "roadbed". Filler ties are just 040x060 Styrene strips cut to length. All "non important" areas are just standard ME Code 55 flex.


The big industry of the layout is a Furniture company that is two old Cornerstone kits hacked up to meet together smoothly. In the future I'm thinking of maybe animating the doors in some way.



The other industry is just a run of the mill builders supply drop off, which  is was a surprisingly common rail served industry in the Garden State. The main siding that makes up the switchback is implied to be an abandoned branch which now only goes a couple hundred feet beyond the main to serve the last industry on the line. Back right corner is the main town of the layout. As opposed to the cliche tunnel serving as the imagination enhancer of the layout it will instead be a cut that will feature a few road bridges over the walled in track. Slightly less cliche



And apologies are to be dolled out to whoever had the misfortune of viewing the pages proceeding, the potato used to record progress has been sidelined in exchange for an Apple so you should now be able to actually see what I post here.

[Chris333]

Keep going, you'll get the hang of it!   

[dem34]

Keep going, you'll get the hand of it!   

Eventually, hopefully. Just want to finish one up for once.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Happy to be a part of the process!

And also looking forward to watching more of it.

I tried doing urban winter stuff in York. It turned out ok but I'll be looking forward to seeing more of it.

[dem34]

At a crossroads again and in keeping with trying everything before committing to something big I wanted to try out Peco's Streamline... well, line of track in practice to see how it compares to hand laid equivalents. So to avoid cluttering up anywhere else I've necroed this thread again to ask the peanut gallery for their input on a roundy round. Focus is to make something that has the feel of a Short line or even lines splitting off the far end of a commuter line.



The main thing I want input for is how worth it would the semi hidden staging at the back be? The extent that I'm planning for  is for it to really only be a zone to park a switcher with 2 50ft cars but is that being overly optimistic with the short turnouts and limited space?