Photos of building boom in Denver

[Erik W]

I've reached a big milestone this week.  It's been exactly 3 years since I returned to the hobby, after a nearly 20 year hiatus.  Three years ago Tuesday, I recruited a friend of mine and his pickup truck to go to Home Depot with me to pick up some lumber.  At this point I have built nearly a complete freight car roster of 150 or so cars, all weathered, lowered and equipped with Z scale couplers.  I've been pretty busy lately building structures for the Denver side of my layout.  Here are some of the fruits of that labor.  Also, I extensively updated my railimages account last night so check it out to see more new photos.

http://s178.photobucket.com/albums/w243/drgw55/  

We're having a brutal winter here in Colorado.  It was -16 degrees this morning (40 degrees below our normal low) so it's been conducive to getting a lot done on the layout.


This is the roundhouse at Burnham Yard in Denver.  It was kit bashed from two Atlas 3-stall kits into a 6-stall roundhouse.  You can't see it in this photo but I've attached the boiler house and stack from the Walthers Machine Shop onto it as well.


This shot shows the downtown industrial area of Denver with 2 InterMountain F7s in the foreground. 


Another photo of the industrial area with the ubiquitous Details Associates backdrop glued onto the existing backdrop.


An overview of the city side of the layout.


Here we see the whole layout.  The lighting could be better but you get an idea of the progress so far.  I'm at the point where the mountain and the city legs of the layout are at a good starting point for final scenicing.  I wanted to get to this point before I finished any specific scene so visitors could get a real idea for how the whole thing will look.

Erik

[Ed Kapuscinski]

That's really looking to be a top shelf layout.

Awesome work man.

[SAH]

Really good looking stuff Erik.  All that in only 3 yrs?!  You're far more productive than I.

One question:  What drove the decision to use the above layout level slide switches for turnout control?  As opposed to a below layout level solution.

Steve

[up1950s]

Everything is so clean . Looks very nice .

[wm3798]

The equipment weathering is right up there with the best.  Can't wait to see the scenery develop.

Lee

[Mark5]

Damn, you're way ahead of me! I returned after being dormant for over 20 years, and all I have to show for it is benchwork (still trying to finalize the track plan).

[Erik W]

Steve,

I chose to mount the slide switches on top because I wanted to have manual, trouble free turnout throws.  They serve double duty as well since the turnout frogs are powered.  When compared to a Caboose Industries ground throw they are about 1/3 the size.  Once the track is ballasted and weathered they won't stick out as much.  They are just set in to a tight fitting hole so are designed to be easily removed if there is ever a problem.  I connected the switches to the turnouts with steel wire bent at a 90 degree angle.  This is very strong, slighly flexible and acts as a spring to keep the points firmly in place once the turnout is thrown.  I tried to make everything that has to be automated a manual design, including using a crank and gear mechanism for the turntable, to avoid the pain of failures in the future.

I used radio control airplane flexible control cables to control the turnouts in the hidden staging yard in the mountain.  Those are the yellow cables in the photo below.


This photo shows the knobs, bought from Hobby Lobby.  You can also see the lights on the fascia that are the infra red sensors mounted on an arm above the track hidden in the mountain to detect the trains location.  This works well.

[CNWlivesinme]

I was wondering when I would see your layout again. It is one of my personal favorites.

The attention to detail is awesome, the backdrop even has the street going off in the distance between the industries in photo 3. Amazing...

[Chris333]

That Details Associates backdrop, is it HO or did they do it in N as well?

Anyone know where I can order these?

[Erik W]

Thanks for the praise guys.  It means a lot coming from some of the talent on this board.  I'm at the point I'll start some finished scenery.  Its kind of funny though, with my approach to building the layout (building all of the bench work before moving on, laying all the track before moving on, wiring all the track before moving on, building all the mountains before moving on, building the structures, etc.), I have arrived at the scenery phase with not a single scenery item in my possession.  I have a feeling the wallet is going to hurt after I hit the hobby shop again. 

Since I've climbed a steep learning curve the last three years, (the last layout was torn down 20 years ago when I was 15, before I even had much track laid) there is some stuff I want to go back and touch up.  The turntable for example was built before I owned an airbrush or had used chalks in weathering so it’s only been weathered with washes.  I'll go back and dirty it up at some point.  Also, I finished the buildings deliberately leaving off signs, posters and such until I get some of the scenery in and details added so I can add stuff to give a cohesive, complete and whole scene.

Chris, I got the backdrop from the Walthers website.  It is N scale.  You could use HO but it wouldn't give the same sense of depth as the smaller one.

Erik

[NYC1956]

Erik, you are doing very nice work. I really like your layout. You captured bits of several distant locations and features and managed to compress and incorporate them very believably. I can learn a lot from studying what you have done.

A couple of questions about the loop around the roundhouse:
What is the approximate radius?
Are you able to access the area against the wall easily?

When our new house will be finished, I will have a room about the size of yours (maybe a tad smaller) in which to  build my layout. I considered an around-the-room shelf style with a peninsula. This would require a duck-under or swing-out section, neither of which excites me. As of now I have chosen a folded dog-bone which gives me what looks like double track mainline around the walls with the two loops in the corners adjacent to the centered entrance door. This is what prompted my questions above. Due to the planned 22” radius of the loops, access to these two corners becomes questionable. Liftouts in the center of the loops might be one possibility, but that complicates the scenery.

What would you do?
-Mike

[atsf_arizona]

Erik, you have a great layout.  I especially like seeing the overall shots, lets us all see how it would look if we were there in person.  Pls keep posting more pictures. 

[Glenn Poole]

......... Due to the planned 22” radius of the loops, access to these two corners becomes questionable. Liftouts in the center of the loops might be one possibility, but that complicates the scenery.

What would you do?
-Mike

Mike

I would put the loop in a mountain with only the front portion showing and the back portion in a tunnel.  Then I would build the mountain big enough so that you can crawl under the layout and standup in the mountain and service what is in the back.  I have done this, and am doing it on my current layout.  This works well.  It also hides the "return loop element".

[3rdrail]

Eric, hate to tell you, but it won't be long before that version of RailImages is taken down. RailImages was replaced last May with a new version and everyone was asked to convert their photos over at that time. The system you are still using retained both the full sized file and the reduced version that appears on the web. Since many people were posting 6 plus megabyte images, the files was getting completely unmanageable. The folks at Trainboard, who maintain RailImages, are not going to continue with two systems much longer.

The new URL should look like this: http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/showgallery.php/cat/500/ppuser/3148

[Erik W]

Eric, hate to tell you, but it won't be long before that version of RailImages is taken down.

Thanks.  I got the word from an administrator at Trainboard.  So . . .    http://www.trainboard.com/railimages/showgallery.php/cat/500/ppuser/3190

Is there any way for the owner of the photo page to sort the photos for viewing on the new version of railimages?  I tried to separate the rolling stock photos from the layout photos, as I had on the old web site, but couldn't figure out how.

Erik