Weekend Update 10/20/19

[delamaize]

Oh Dear god yes.....

Working on the Milwaukee Road E35.

[hegstad1]

Wow! What are you using for the power?

Micro-Ace ED17

[Roger Holmes]

Andrew Hegstad I am speechless except to say WOW!

I finally have a little layout progress to show.  About 20 years ago I built a peninsula on my layout. I populated part of it with a Walthers blast furnace when those first were released and planned a loop around the whole peninsula to reach the main lines.  That was all of the progress until recently. In the meantime I did have more basement dug and added a second layout room connected to the original layout room.

The blast furnace loop concept was causing a design block for me until I came to peace that the blast furnace and related trackwork would just be a scenery element unconnected to the rest of the layout.  That will allow me to create a track plan for the dozen or so industrial buildings that I have built in the interim.

Here's the Thoush-Alknot Steel Blast Furnace as now configured.



Here's the blank canvas. A couple of operations minded friends have offered to help design the new densely populated big city industrial area trackwork.  My two goals are to fit in all of the new factory and industrial ancillary buildings that I have built and to finish the peninsula before another 20 years (or I) pass.

[Point353]

Nothing to prevent opening a similar thread (if there isn't one already) in the "HO and Larger Scales" or even "Crew Lounge". 
We could open one in "Prototype Railroads" where Warren Buffet and other folks who own full sized railroads could talk about what they did over the weekend....

Mr. Buffet could also post to the "HO and Larger Scales" section:

[Cajonpassfan]

Working on the Milwaukee Road E35.

Dang!🙀
Lovely...
Otto

[nkalanaga]

Hegstad1:  I'd love to have a pair of those, but KNOW I don't have the skill to build it.  I'm a little surprised that, with brass Little Joes and Bipolars available, as well as who-knows how many GG-1s, nobody has made a Boxcab to go with them. 

Point353:  I'd love to hear from some of the prototype owners/managers about how their industry works, or in some cases, doesn't work.  There's a lot more to a railroad than track, locomotives, and rolling stock.

[Caddy58]

Working on the Milwaukee Road E35.

Andrew,

That looks amazing!! Based on the white metal roof details and frame I assume that that there are GHQ parts involved?

The Boxcab is the one elusive Milwaukee electric motor that is not commercially available.
It would be really great to be able to purchase the cast metal parts (or even the full kit) from GHQ to aid us Milwaukee Road Modelers.

Cheers
Dirk

[hegstad1]

Andrew,

That looks amazing!! Based on the white metal roof details and frame I assume that that there are GHQ parts involved?

The Boxcab is the one elusive Milwaukee electric motor that is not commercially available.
It would be really great to be able to purchase the cast metal parts (or even the full kit) from GHQ to aid us Milwaukee Road Modelers.

Cheers
Dirk

Dirk,

This IS a Gregg Scott (GHQ) project.  He did this as a personal project that a few of us very lucky friends have been able to benefit from.  When he does these smaller projects, the cast parts are not done in commercial, spin cast production molds, but in smaller hand cast types.  It takes forever to cast the parts for even a few units.  His design is ingenious, though, and makes for a fairly straight forward conversion that anybody could do.  The other problem with the Boxcabs is the MicroAce ED17 has long been out of production and is very difficult to find.  If we could convince MicroAce to re-release this model, it would make a commercial venture a bit more tempting.

[diezmon]

I had a little time to add some front-end pilot details, in between working on a new room at my girlfriend's place

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[Ed Kapuscinski]

It was a busy weekend!

My wife was out of town, as demonstrated by the pile of Hamburger Helper consumed on Friday (she won't touch the stuff, I love it).

http://conrail1285.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/2019-10-18-20.39.22-2.jpg

Then it was on to a few minutes of laying out the beginning of the track plan in West Cressona.



But I had to get to bed relatively early so I could make it to Jeff Mutter's EL in time on Saturday. His layout is the EL in 1975, but I got to start my day out on the Reading.



I worked the "Reading Local" that does some odd jobs of dealing with the interchange work in Rupert.



My next run was working with the legendary Steve King with some F Units on the Bloom.



We actually spent most of the time blocking our train before we even got onto the branch.

Dispatching for the day was performed by a face I'm sure many of you may recognize.



After the Ops Session it was back home and off to the symphony with my parents.

On Sunday my dad and I built one of the two workbenches that's going to occupy the back 4' of my garage, provide me a place to work on projects, and a place to get MORE of the crap under the layout (and scattered throughout the house) organized. Here's the fruit of our labor, a workbench that's the OPPOSITE of my benchwork. You could throw an orgy for hippopotami on it with no problem. I'm particularly proud of the leg design that uses notched 2x4s to support the 2x6 runners and that have small lengths of PCV trim board on their bottoms as feet that keep them dry from the occasional water run off that's present.



The bench is 2x4 and I've got the parts cut to do a second one to go next to it, but we were running out of time. That's a project for this Sunday.

[wm3798]

As reported elsewhere in these pages:  NASA has confirmed that the strange pale blue planet may in fact support life, as some portions of it appear to have soils of some sort.


And last night I confess, I got pretty plastered.



As a result, this morning's modeling efforts have been a little rocky.

[DKS]

...as demonstrated by the pile of Hamburger Helper consumed on Friday (she won't touch the stuff, I love it)....

Says a lot right there...

And last night I confess, I got pretty plastered.

About to do it again, eh?