Burlington Northern's Scenic Subdivision

[Kevin C]

When I decided to make the changes to my layout by swopping the level 3 and 4 benchwork, I thought it would be a quick and easy task. It however turned into a rather mammoth job.

I am pleased to report that most of the work on the new benchwork is nearly complete and later today I will get the pieces into position and start connecting all the modules. I have a good friend and avid N Scale modeller, whom I have not seen in a long time paying me a visit in September so I would like to get some basic trackwork down and connected before he gets here so we can have some trains running.

Firstly, I modified the legs to accomodate the new benchwork.



I then added the new " Level 3 " corner.



I recycled what was the old level 3 yard to fit into it's new position. I have been working outside on the patio as there is more space to work.



And finally I made brackets to fasten the " Level 4 " corner onto the legs. The level 3 & 4 corners are now joined to the common legs.



I will now move the parts back into postition, paint the facias, and start marking the position of the new trackwork.

[GaryHinshaw]

Beautiful work, and a beautiful spot for working.

[Kevin C]

Thank you Gary. The best part about taking the benchwork outside, apart from all the dust while cutting, is that the days are presently clear and sunny. My train room on the other hand can sometimes feel like an icebox.

[Kevin C]

I spent today adjusting module sizes to connect between the new corner assembly and " Helix 3 ". I then started laying the cork roadbed and track on level 3.

The level 3 corner and straight module will now be the position off the Interbay, Diesel Servicing Facility, greatly reduced in size and compressed to fit, as this is an enormous complex. Details of this build will follow in a later post.

   

[Kevin C]

Work on the layout has been slow going lately but I am making steady progress on my visible staging yard located on level 4. The following two photos show the yard taking shape.

[Kevin C]

The track laying in the staging yard is now complete. The yard consists of four northbound and four southbound tracks. I still have to install the bus wiring and connect the feeder wires to the bus.

[auburnrails]

Looking good!

-Dave

[Kevin C]

Thank You for your kind words Dave.

I am currently enjoying my Christmas / New Year vacation which has given my some time to relax from the stresses of work. My wife and myself went into the country for a few days of solitude and returned home before Christmas day. I am still taking it easy at home but also getting a few jobs done on the layout.

Most of the work done so far is not visible. These include bolting the benchwork together permanently so I could remove the G Clamps from their temporary positions. I also installed the Digitrax bus wiring permanently on the 4th level ( staging ). I can now install the feeder wires and get all the trackwork in the staging yard powered up. I am going to install temporary " manual " switches to power the  frogs of the turnouts. I am also busy designing a bracket assembly to hold the servo motors and micro switches that will work together with the Tam Valley servo drivers I will install sometime in the future.

My goal that I want to achieve before I return to work is to complete the installation of the Level 1 backdrop. I am almost there. The backdrop behind Helix 1 is now complete. I also cut a disc to fit above the Helix. This will be the location of the small town of "Peshastin" - ( Details about this in a future post ). This small town is now starting to take shape. I also cut and installed the facia around the top level of the helix. I am now busy getting the cardboard strips in place for the scenery that will blend the helix surface to the facia.

Below are two photos showing the before and after views of the helix.

[nkalanaga]

That last photo from August 16 looks like the Tri-Cities, southeast Washington, where I grew up, along the NP/BN.  The edges of Pasco and Kennewick look a lot like that in the summer, with green trees in the older parts of town, and dry grass and weeds around the newer houses.  Specifically, that looks like parts of the Kennewick Highlands, as Pasco is generally flatter.  Even the architecture looks similar to many of the newer homes.

[Kevin C]

Nkalanaga. I find it interesting that the photo you refer to reminds you of a part of the USA where you grew up. When taking the photo, I was unaware that I was including so much of the background.

What you are seeing is part of the housing estate where I live. It is situated in one of the suburbs of Johannesburg, South Africa. The whole estate is built around a dam and includes an 18 hole golf course, however ( I prefer my Model Trains to playing golf ). The houses in the distance were still being built when this photo was taken, hense no trees, etc. Each house built here is constructed according to the individual home owners specifications, so there are many different styles, Tuscan, Modern Contemporary, etc.

We have a summer rainfall pattern here which occurs over the months at the end of the year. Therefore in August when the photo was taken, the bush and grasses in the common areas were all still dry.

Thank you for sharing the information.
Kevin

[GaryHinshaw]

Interesting.  You may have mentioned this upstream, but why Seattle for a layout locale?

Most of the work done so far is not visible.

...but takes the lion's share of the time...  The fascia really makes a visual difference though.  Nice to see the update!

[Kevin C]

The fascia really makes a visual difference though.  Nice to see the update!

Thank You Gary.

Why Seattle for a layout locale?

It is a long story but I will try and make it as short as possible.

In 1993 when I got involved in the hobby after finishing my studies at college, the first starter train set I went out and bought was an N scale German set from Fleishman. After seeing my trains running, my brothers interest was re-kindled as he had previously owned a train set in his early teens.
He took more time than I did investigating the subject and after reading a number of Model Railroader magazines decided on the American Railroads.

Once I saw what he had, it was clear that there was a wider scope of products and interest in the American Railroad Systems for me to. I therefore sold the Fleishman trains I had and bought my first two American Locomotives, ( still my favorites ). These are two Burlington Northern SD45's from Kato ( The only two ever produced thus far from Kato).

At that time articles were starting to appear in magazines about the " Montana Rail Link " and its interaction with the Burlington Northern in Montana which got me interested in the MRL. When I started looking for more MRL model trains in N Scale, I found that there was not much available in the hobby shops. To date, the only MRL locos I have purchased direct from the manufacturer are 5 units from Atlas. Kato has not produced any MRL trains to date.
I have three custom painted units in my collection from different suppliers but am not happy as the colors and details are not consistent. The SD40-2 I have ( MRL only had one at the time ) is exceptionally well done and can be seen in a BN consist on my layout in earlier photo's.

This made up my mind to concentrate on the Burlington Northern.

When I started considering the design of my first layout, ( which started long ago ) ,I made a list of givens that I had read about in countless magazines and wanted to include on any future layout.These included a Port scene handling containers, a shore to ship grain facility, a large diesel servicing facility (Interbay) and a section of layout with a long single track mainline where long trains can be seen winding through the country. All of this is available in the Seattle - Stevens Pass (Over the Cascade Mountains) and Spokane areas. As the Montana Rail Link got me heading in the North West direction, the operations of the BN in that area sealed the deal.

When my wife and I built this house in 2012, I got back to the layout design drawing board and thought how am I going to fit all off the above in the smaller space available to me, the answer was easy, go four levels.

As they say, the rest is history. Thank you for looking.
Kevin
 

[nkalanaga]

Kevin:  Ah, August, winter in your hemisphere.  Unirrigated, that's the natural color of central Washington in the summer.  Pasco is at the south end of the Columbia Basin Project, and at the confluence of the Columbia, Yakima, and Snake Rivers, so instead of the natural desert, much of the area is green in the summer.  In the 60s and 70s, when I lived there, irrigation was more limited right around Pasco, and the Tri-Cities area had a much smaller population, so there was still a lot of the native shrub-steppe vegetation.  Much of that is now under irrigated subdivisions, and the area looks much different than 40 years ago.

Your area looks like a subdivision under construction, and like much of then-open area looked when I lived there.  One of the sites I keep an eye on is the Degree Confluence Project, and I've found that there are places all over the world that look like areas I've seen in the US.  Much of Ukraine and neighboring countries look like the Palouse region east of Pasco. and the northern Columbia Basin, rolling sand hills covered with wheat and other grains, which could be why so many "Russian" immigrants settled there. 

Pasco, according to the most popular theory, was named by a railroad construction engineer in  the late 1800s, who had worked at Cerro de Pasco, Peru.  He found the hot, dry, windy weather, and frequent sandstorms, very familiar.  Thanks to irrigation, the sandstorms are rare today, and the humidity is much higher than when I lived there, so now they have summer thunderstorms instead!

Since you mentioned Stevens Pass, Mom was born and raised in Wenatchee, on the east side of the pass, and her father worked in the GN's electric shop for a while in the 40s, as a machinist.

[Kevin C]

Nkalanaga: I took a tour around Pasco last night, care of Google Maps and street view ( amazing app ) - " See the world in one day " . I now realise what you were explaining the other day with the dry grasses and vegetation found in that area, it is also very flat. The satelite view shows lots of farming that is taking place.
It must be a nice place to railfan as Pasco has a big yard, and what seems like a hump yard located adjacent to the Tri-Cities airport.

A distant thought for me at the moment is to travel to the US at the end of the year for what may be a once in a lifetime vacation. If I do, Seattle will be a definate destination, and if time permits, I would like to do a "Rail Fanning" road trip along the Stevens Pass highway. This area looks very similar to the Western Cape ( around Cape Town ) with its high mountains. December and January I am sure is not the best time to visit the area, but is the only option open right now.

[nkalanaga]

Stevens Pass, US 2, is kept open year round, as there are ski areas on the summit, and it's a major auto and truck route.  Snoqualmie Pass, I-90, to the south, is closed more often.  Winter wouldn't be the best time to get off the road and into the woods, but for railfanning, it would work.  Most of the easily accessible locations are in the small towns, so snow shouldn't be a problem. 

Yes, the hump yard, built in the 1950s, is where my father worked while I was growing up.  Retarder operator, second floor down in the tower, the top floor was the yardmaster's office.  The yard is very easy to photograph, as 4th Street runs up the west side, between the airport and the yard, and Old Oregon Street up the east side.  Originally, before the "Bypass" was built in the 60s, 4th St was the Pasco-Spokane highway, with on overpass at the north end of the yard, where the road now curves away from the railroad.  The pavement is still reverse banked on that curve, where it used to turn east for an overpass over the hump leads.  It then met Oregon St, the truck route, and ran up the east side of the hump leads, through Glade Crossing.  One can still drive that, coming into the current highway north of Glade.  We lived in a trailer court on 4th St, a block north of Court St, so could see the railroad, although it was too far away to see much detail.  The trailer court is still there, but looks nothing like it did then.  It was originally built as housing for Hanford workers, and was laid out with 20 by 40 foot lots, for trailers no more than 36 ft long.  We lived in one until 1969, and the owners had to do a lot of rearranging when people started buying modern trailers.  Today most of the trees are gone, and it's mostly migrant farm worker housing.

Oregon St now goes to the east, through an interchange with "The Bypass", US 12/US 395/I-182, and becomes US 395 going to Spokane.  Old Oregon Street is basically a railroad/industrial access road, and is cut by the fills for the Bypass overpasses. 

The current hump leads were a BN improvement, with the originals being shorter, and if I remember right, only two leads.  4th St becomes Glade North Road, which originally started at Glade Crossing, coming off Oregon Street/US 395, and that road is still there today

The water visible at Glade is irrigation runoff, and is pumped out, into a drainage canal, and sent to the Columbia River.  Before they put the pumps in, next to Glade North Road, the water ran all the way to the airport, and the old channel can still be seen, if one knows what it is, through the fields between Glade North Road and the subdivisions to its west.  It was prime duck habitat, as it often stayed unfrozen through the winter.  But even that isn't the entire story, geologically.

The airport was built as a Naval Air Station, and training base, in WW II.  When building the runways, they struck water only a few feet down, and had to build up the runway to keep it dry.  In the 70s, long after it became a civilian airport in the 50s, they lengthened the runways, and hit the same water.  That's when they put the pumps in, to try to dry it out.  It helped a little, but didn't really do much. 

If one looks at a map of Washington, go up the railroad to Connell, then east to Kahlotus, and Washtucna, one comes to the Palouse River, This is a wide valley, the Washtucna Coulee, with no stream in it.  The river makes a sharp turn, straight through the hills, between Hooper and Washtucna, over Palouse Falls, and into the Snake River.  Very odd.  "Railfan and Railroad" had an article on railfanning the Palouse Falls area in the November 2015 issue.

During the last Ice Age, the Lake Missoula Floods rearranged the scenery in eastern Washington, and part of that was the new route for the Palouse River.  It used to continue west to Connell, then south to Pasco, and a lot of water still goes that way, in gravel and sand layers, not far underground.  It turns west at the north end of the airport and drains into the Columbia near the I-182 bridges to Richland.  The outlet was visible berfore McNary Dam was built, but is now underwater.  The NP has numerous concrete bridges between Connell and Pasco, over an almost always dry stream bed, because in very wet years, before framers pumped a lot of the water out for irrigation, the old river sometimes resurfaced!