The Transcontinental PRR

[eric220]

DKS - That also fronts the more interesting side of the building.  It would certainly add some complication for the switcher.  Superior Paper could not be switched unless the siding in front of American Hardware Supply is clear. I'll play around with that a bit and see what I can come up with.

One of the Gandy Dancers swung by after work this afternoon.  We cut out the benchwork for the upper return loop and passenger yard.  Test-fitting quickly followed.



Here you can see the grade coming up from the upper staging yard.



The center section has been removed, and the grade is now ready to be tweaked into a nice, even 1%.  That will be a job for another night.

[eric220]

I took the plunge and ordered the track for Paradise. I got lucky, and my LHS gave me a really good deal on it!

[eric220]

After a hiatus for that ever-present interloper called life, I got some work done these past two days. Yesterday, I got shims under the upper return loop and made a tool to measure a 1% grade. Once I had that all nicely tweaked into position, I screwed it down and installed some cork roadbed. (That was actually the first cork roadbed installed on the entire layout. The rest was sheets of cork.) Today, after that dried, I went over to the LHS to pick up a few sticks of C55 flex to finish the return loop. Lo and behold, my order for a 100-pack and the switches for Paradise had just come in! That got rushed home, and the caulk is now drying under a brand new scale half-mile of track!



I got my order of electronics, and the Gandy Dancers are coming over next week, so there should be some more progress to report before too long.

[wm3798]

Ah, the sweet smell of cork roadbed...

[davefoxx]

Eric,

Are you going to do anything to disguise those window blinds?  They're seriously distracting when viewing the layout and really impact realism.  Maybe you could slip a sheet of Masonite over the window and behind the benchwork.  You wouldn't have to hide the entire window, perhaps just 12-15" above each level.

Just a thought,
DFF

[wm3798]

I have to agree with Dave.  Where mine crosses the window, I simply got a grey room darkening shade that gets pulled down.


In the above shot the shade is drawn behind the upper level track, but not the lower.  For photographing the bridge, I can pull it all the way down.



If you want you could install the plain shade in front of the venetian blinds since it looks like they recess into the window frame.

Also, for what it's worth, I think your blue is still too intense.

Lee

[eric220]

I have thought about the windows, and my thought was to make a removable section of sky board that I could put in for photos. The blinds are in the recess of the window, but they pretty much take it up, so I probably can't install anything else inside it. I do like the idea of the roll-down blind though. Might have to look into that.

Lee objects to the blue. Noted.

The original idea had been to have smooth walls painted to represent the sky. Well, unfortunately the drywall sub quoted textured walls. It would have been several hundred dollars to "upgrade". The revised plan is to do sky boards. I figured that I would paint the room a deeper blue, use the same color for the base color of the sky boards, then come back with white and fade to a much lighter blue to near white at the bottom. We'll see how things go when I get there.

[eric220]

I spent some quality time with the soldering iron today. A few burns, confounding shorts, mis-wiring of feeders, and a health dose of cursing later, a GG-1 lead a few brand new FVM wagontops up the grade to the end of the line.



Those beautiful FVM cars will roll all the way down the 1% grade on their own with just a little push! The Gandy Dancers are coming over tomorrow. The main order of the day will be to wire up the turnout controllers and occupancy detectors, but we might just get in some other projects too.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Nice progress!

[John]

what are you using for detectors .. BDL-168s?

also, if you plan on signaling, the SE8C will also drive 8 tortoises. ..

[Pomperaugrr]

I used removable sky board sections where my layout crosses three windows.  They work well and come out easily to access the window.  Here's an older shot showing where two windows are crossed.



Eric

[eric220]

John-

I used Digitrax components for Altoona. When I calculated out how much those components would cost to do the whole layout, it caused an acute pain in my wallet. That's when I started looking into RRCir-Kits a little more seriously. Their system can do detection, signaling, and turnout control just like Digitrax, but for less money. Also, they make a signal driver that is designed for PL signals! No more building diode trees. I also like the way that they implemented detection. It's current-sensing just like the BDL168, but the detector coil is a separate piece that you can put anywhere. I really disliked wiring 16 blocks back to a common point. I decided to give RRCir-Kits a try. The upper staging yard will be the first area to use those components.

[John]

John-

I used Digitrax components for Altoona. When I calculated out how much those components would cost to do the whole layout, it caused an acute pain in my wallet. That's when I started looking into RRCir-Kits a little more seriously. Their system can do detection, signaling, and turnout control just like Digitrax, but for less money. Also, they make a signal driver that is designed for PL signals! No more building diode trees. I also like the way that they implemented detection. It's current-sensing just like the BDL168, but the detector coil is a separate piece that you can put anywhere. I really disliked wiring 16 blocks back to a common point. I decided to give RRCir-Kits a try. The upper staging yard will be the first area to use those components.

That's a good choice ..  the system is very nice .. I've seen it in action at Timonium, and the developer is a super guy .. they also have great warranty service ..

I have 2 BDLs in place right now, and while you are correct that the wiring needs to come back to a central point, digitrax developed a remote detection connector, much like the coils, which keeps you from having to run the extra wire .. for my layout, that works pretty well .. on my upper level, I still have RR-CKTs BOD current detectors and will keep those there .. the surplus BODs will probably to to Eric's layout, unless he decides to go a different route ..

Either way, RRCkts is loconet compatible, so you can still run the layout from JMRI or other connection  .. which is very nice ..

[eric220]

The Gandy Dancers came over last night as planned.  We got the occupancy detectors wired up, and we got a start on the benchwork for what will be the grade railroad east of the upper staging yard.  While there's nothing really photo worthy, we did work up a design change.  Some of the guys became concerned about the clearance on this crossover at the end of the passenger terminal throat.



The suggestion came up to move the grade up from staging (the track closest to the wall) to the inside of the other tracks, eliminating the crossover.  Doing so meant redesigning the junction of the throat with the mains.



With the westbound main on the other side of the throat, the junction moved to between the mains.  I was actually able to swap out the #5's in the previous version for #10's.  This should work a lot better.

[eric220]

Hopefully the silence means that people liked the design change.  It's due to be committed to cut plywood tomorrow.

Happy Halloween!