Vernon, CA 9"x48" test

[avel]

Got really tired of starting and not finishing layouts so I went outside, saw this piece of plywood, and used all three of my Atlas #7 switches to plan out a simple switching layout.

Scenery and industries are inspired by areas around Vernon, CA. I have another layout planned with code 40 track, but I have practically zero scenery experience. Maybe two hours of ballasting experience, and only 15 minutes of it in N scale. Also there is all the other stuff I should learn to get a layout to the point where it has scenery and buildings. So this layout was/is super simple. Oh and cheap. Backdrop is some door skin, that I cut off of a door. Yeah you can see the wood grain, but so what! It's a first for me. I have already learned a lot on what works and what doesn't, stuff I've never even thought of because I have never advanced to the ballasting and scenery stage.

But the real driving force behind this layout was something on Lance Mindheim's blog about how 99% of the time no one was bored with their layout, or something like that. But rather overwhelmed. Or, I mean, the reason behind not working on ones layout wasn't from boredom, but from being purely overwhelmed. Maybe not true for some, but that is exactly how I felt. So I have this one, its simple, no worries about messing up because like Ed Kapuscinski points out, if its cheap its easy to scrap and start over. Or something like that, I can't find that article at the moment.

So yeah and yeah.
ok 3/4"plywood, roughly 9"x48". 1/2" black foamcore glued on top with spray adhesive and white glue. Code 55 Atlas #7 turnouts, 3 pieces of sectional 16.26 22.5 degree pieces and the rest flextrack. Used rail joiners with feeders attached for power distribution.

Also had to solder wire on the turnouts so that the piece of rail between the points and the frog received power. It looks like Atlas has strips of copper underneath the turnout to carry the power but two of the turnouts had completely no continuity and one worked if the strip was pushed hard up against the rail. Anyone else have this issue? I bought these used, so no clue how old they were. Also out some Tacky glue on the pivot points underneath. What I didn't do was solder fine wire to the points, the points had trouble carrying current just from pressing up against the stock rail.

I cut out ditches in the foam to route the feeders to the back, and daisy chained them together back there. Also cut the foam and hot glued them inside. The frogs are wired but not connected to anything. I put small pieces of thinned styrene under the throwbars for a friction hold.  I sprayed the top of the track brown, and then masked the outside of the ties on the front of the layout and sprayed the track with black from the sides. I don't think the masking was that necessary. Oh, before painting the track I put drops of oil on a piece of wood and ran that over the rails. After painting I cleaned the track (yes I masked the points before painting), and found lots of paint between the stock rails and the point rails, cleaned that out. Then used metal polish to clean the rail tops.



got a piece of this corrugated plastic sheet and cut out for an industry/backdrop. Then realized I really wanted a realish backdrop and cut out some door skin (thin plywood?), painted blue. Blue was to gray, so sprayed it white. Meh, whatever. Meaning doesnt look great, but works. Screwed on the back. Oh before that masked and sprayed a tan (actually Krylon river rock) stripe across the building in the back. And thats where I am at.

https://picasaweb.google.com/108204472862807091548/9x48vernontest?authuser=0&feat=directlink
all pictures there.





Here's all I have done for the real Vernon, CA based layout. Well this and the two 1'x4' modules to build the layout on.

[avel]

Ok found it

http://conrail1285.com/news.asp?storyid=60

 Ed Kapuscinski's article

It's near the bottom, for some reason it seemed like the whole article was about that point. I guess that was the part that really hit home for me. I had to stop over thinking and just do it. Also I caught myself many times thinking "well just add a foot here, or maybe use a narrow closet door". Its like an addiction, planning is fun, I admit, but actually making something is very rewarding and shows you what methods you need to practice on.

[MVW]

Its like an addiction, planning is fun, I admit, but actually making something is very rewarding and shows you what methods you need to practice on.

Bingo.

I think the earlier comments that you echoed -- about people not becoming bored with their layouts, but becoming overwhelmed by them -- also rings true. I have dreams of building a 400-square-foot layout ... but right now I have precisely two HCDs in service and it's difficult to stay on top of things.

Glad to see you building. Good luck, and have fun!

Jim

[avel]

Hayes track bumper. Code 40 rail for the H beams and some flattened wire for the strap. Used a PC board piece for the buffer.

[Bremner]

wow that sounds like fun, you will need 1-4 of Randgust's CF7's

[Bremner]

any updates on this? I would REALLY love to see them

[LIRR]

you need to start somewhere, anything that gets trains rolling is good - 9"x48" or 9 feet x 48 feet. i had a similar problem with the Atlas switches where the buried contacts failed. i've soldered jumpers between all rails on my switches and eliminated dead spots. havent had a noticeable problem with no power to the point rails yet...altho all of my trains run with 2 or 3 units, including yard switchers

[avel]

Well I am glad I wasn't the only one with that problem. Makes me paranoid about other problems.

Haven't really worked on it, life and stuff (lazy really).

Ballasting today, will post pictures and stuff.

Also the look I am going for is the Vernon, CA area, but for the railroad and such I will use whatever engine/railroad interests me at the time.

[avel]

Ok, well never going to use lightweight spackling for roads. I should of used styrene. The "concrete" pad for the tankcar facility was made up out of one of those foam sheets. I think its craft foam or something. Then on top I used some styrene for a surface that would be flush with the rail head. The styrene fitment took awhile. Lots of filing. I tried using styrene between the rails but it wasn't working for me, so I used some of the spackle, and that worked great. Going to sand and/or put another coat on tomorrow.

Same thing with the road. I will either sand the road down even with the wooden formers on the side, or put another coat on. I started ballasting with sifted play sand. To tone down the colors I mixed in some Apple Barrel brand acrylic paint. I used Antique white. One of the cons of using foamboard is that the paper covering sucked out the rubbing alcohol really fast. The pro was that the ballast would dry in about 30 minutes, so as long as I kept misting with rubbing alcohol, I didn't have any problems while applying the glue/water/paint/rubbing alcohol mix.

[avel]

I solved my dead frog problems! I installed a Digitrax DN135 decoder and attached 900uf of capacitance so that the dead frogs do not matter anymore. The caps I have are rated at 150uF each, and I have room for 5 more if I cut the other side of the shell.
Also I didn't use a resistor with the caps because the the amount of current drawn at start up is negligible. Maybe if I had 10 engines like this on the layout it would cause problems. Anyway, thought it was cool and wanted to show it off.

Oh also last night the engine (Walthers GP60 2012 run) chattered and made horrible noise in reverse, turns out one of the brushes broke into pieces. After I took them out the motor still caught sometimes when being spun, so I opened (destroyed) it. I had about 20 hours on this engine, mostly ran it to break it in and in the background while working on things. Good thing I had another one.

[avel]

Two more detailed pictures and added one more cap.

[avel]

Another GP60 engine almost ruined. Opened it up and found a piece of the magnet stuck on the side. Put some CA around the rest of the magnet because the adhesive used from the factory was really soft and gooey, I think because of my over use of conductive lubricant. Put it back together and noticed a slight roughness when crawling, less than 1 smph. 





Still trying to figure out what colors to use for the asphalt road and concrete area for the tank car transfer facility. So far I have some Applebarrel acrylic Medium Gray on the road, and a wash of that plus various powders for the concrete pad. Not happy with it, but trying out different things.





https://picasaweb.google.com/108204472862807091548/9x48vernontest?authuser=0&feat=directlink

[avel]

Ok read up some more on modeling roads.

For the concrete pad I mixed up a tan color and applied. After the first coat I added water to it and it was more of a wash, which I applied a couple more times. Then I scribed some lines approx. every 14' or an inch in 1:1. After, I used an indian ink wash. I am trying to keep one part darker to show that it is older. I got the idea from looking at the location with Google Earth and seeing that they added on some tracks. Looking better and better to me.

[alcors110]

that looks real good!

[avel]

Yeah I like it too, just wish I had used black styrene.

I need to decide on how I am going to do the rearmost track and how the loading doors are going to look. Drawing a blank so far.