The Southern Railway Memphis division circa 1975

[Specter3]

So I decided on very short notice to change jobs. Not significantly, but I moved to a different building. I am now teaching high school history. American this semester with a self created history of Native Americans next semester. I also was asked to coach our JV mens soccer team and assist on the Varsity team. New building, new principal, new sunject(but my favorite of all) and a coaching gig to boot. Time has all but evaporated. And with 1 kid now in college I am refereeing soccer on the weekends for xtra cash. Needless to say I am having a great time with my new gig. What is really cool is that my admin is letting me do a whole lot of out of classroom stuff. We have re-enacted Lexington and Concord using ping pong balls for ammo. We did Bunker Hill. We just did a live version of the old Oregon Trail game on the cross country course. Jane has died of Dysentery. So far the kids are into it as it is not the same old same old thing. We are going to try the last stand at the Alamo next week. [ Guests cannot view attachments ]

[signalmaintainer]

So I decided on very short notice to change jobs. Not significantly, but I moved to a different building. I am now teaching high school history. American this semester with a self created history of Native Americans next semester. I also was asked to coach our JV mens soccer team and assist on the Varsity team. New building, new principal, new sunject(but my favorite of all) and a coaching gig to boot. Time has all but evaporated. And with 1 kid now in college I am refereeing soccer on the weekends for xtra cash. Needless to say I am having a great time with my new gig. What is really cool is that my admin is letting me do a whole lot of out of classroom stuff. We have re-enacted Lexington and Concord using ping pong balls for ammo. We did Bunker Hill. We just did a live version of the old Oregon Trail game on the cross country course. Jane has died of Dysentery. So far the kids are into it as it is not the same old same old thing. We are going to try the last stand at the Alamo next week. (Attachment Link)

I hope Jane isn't your teaching assistant. ...

[Specter3]

Lol

[Specter3]

Yeah, so I have not updated this in a long while. Layout is still up and I have actually gotten to do some things on it now that summer break has started. The school year was really nice. In addition to learning a new curriculum, I coached three seasons. JV men's soccer in the fall Varsity men's and women's swimming in the winter, and then Varsity women's soccer in the spring. Read that as no spare time for anything. I really enjoy high school as compared to elementary and middle school. I really enjoy coaching and the positives it has in the athlete's lives. But man, I am giving up a lot to do it. I know it is a choice but man do I miss some train time.

In a lot of threads many people argue the pros and cons of planning versus laying something out in 1 to 1 that looks good. I started with a plan based on reality in the mid 70s. I used enough Micro Engineering track to be able to lay out my plan and run it a bunch. At least the top deck. After running a bit I realized that if I stuck to reality the operations would be tedious in some places and dang near impossible given compression and selection in others. So I put in some elements that do not exist(double x over in Sheffield) and moved some others to make operations make more sense in model land. Then I hit the realization that I would never get two decks built in any kind of reasonable timeframe. So I eliminated the middle deck. I added a live interchange with the L&N and TVA reservation in Sheffield that I think will be a neat driver of some traffic. I built a 5 track staging yard on a shoe-fly over the helix area and have been doing a bunch of JFRTM. I am getting locos out that have never been run. In the last few days I have finally glued down the foam on the benchwork over most of the top deck. I painted it with some nasty olives looking house paint I got from the oops rack for $5. I am in the process of re-aligning the tracks from Sheffield station into downtown to take out an s curve and get away from the parallel to the bench look. I have finally put down cork for real and put in the grade west of Tuscumbia. Immediately west of Tuscumbia is a nasty uphill grade westbound. I can remember many times chasing trains with my grandfather and catching them in a cut in the back of the neighborhood. On the top of the embankment you were just at the roofline of the SDs and GPs crawling by in run 8. The noise was incredible and at 10-15 mph it was enjoyed for extended moments. That first steep grade crested at the crossing just a little further west. If you mis-timed it and the majority of the train got over the crest you would be chasing "all the way to Cherokee" as my grandfather put it, to get back to the head end. I will rewire the new track and get trains running again and test the grade and see if it causes issues. I have thought about it a lot and did consider just acting like it was a steep grade but I figured, I can try it and see.

[Specter3]

I have talked throughout the thread of my time visiting my grandparents having such an effect on my love of trains and The Southern Railway specifically. Here is a pic I found recently. My grandmother must have been with us as she obviously took the picture. Though she did not normally come along on our chases. It is dated 1979. The truck is on the east side of Sheffield station. It is out of use and boarded up. It lasted many years through a couple of attempts to do something else with it but it was just too far away from anything else for anything to be successful. They finally tore it down about 10 years ago. Over the years as a kid someone had bought a steam engine and every time I visited it was in various states of disassembly on the team track that ran up to the station. Then one year it was gone and they pulled up the team track. Since in my world there is still passenger service here the team track will be active. In the background of the picture is a Southern boxcar. Late 70s was a poor time economically. There were many boxcars stored around the town and in this particular place I believe was 86 ft auto parts cars. I have some sitting there on my layout.

[ Guests cannot view attachments ] [ Guests cannot view attachments ]

[Specter3]

My next major revision has occurred. The original plan had this:
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

It got layed out that way and I changed it pretty quickly. Went to
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

Looked at it for a bit and said nahh. Went to this
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

Ran it a bit. Nope just doesnt feel right. Changed to this
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

Ran this for the longest time.
Pros- keeps the spur to Flexco on correct side and keeps it longer like in real life.
Cons- tight as heck mainline curve. And in running longer equipment lately, this is a real issue.

So in pulling everything up to paint and get some of the concrete stuff secured I have changed it again. Back to what is nearly the original plan. Since I eliminated the middle sceniced deck I added a bit of extra around the edge to get a nice radius curve.
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

Pros- nice radius.  allows modelling of abandoned L&N line to Tuscumbia.
Cons- industry on “wrong” side of railroad. Compressed spur.

But after running this briefly I like it and think it is the call. I will run it some more and actually work the spurs to be sure but I think this is how it will end up. Yeah, it is more track being at the edge if the benchwork but for the radius I want, it is the only way.

 

[Specter3]

Just some shots from JFRTM
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

The white buildings are cotton warehouses in Tuscumbia. They were just torn down over the last few years.
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
In the second pic you can see the two tracks branching into the backdrop. That was where the L&N went to Tuscumbia. Right there is also the south end of the old Sheffield yard. In the mid 70s The Southern had just opened the new hump yard at the current Sheffield yard location. They ripped up the old yard tracks here pretty quickly.
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]
[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

[Specter3]

Cut new foam to allow for the increased radius.

[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

Then just ran some trains.

/>
This is more than double the design length for the layout, but man it looks good rolling through.

[Specter3]

Here is a video outlining my thoughts on the Flexco industry siting. Then to goes into a general overview of the layout as it sits.

[Specter3]

Well it is back to school time. I have had kids for 7 days. We are three games into the soccer season and are 3-0. Our striker just signed with UNC. Our best midfielder has a tryout with Charlotte FC. If we can stay well through the conference games we should do well. Those are the things going well. On the other side of the coin our washer had some sort of anomaly and flooded the house. I say anomaly because I took it apart and could not find anytging wrong. Took it out back and ran it on the patio and it did not leak. Totally weird. That was 10 days ago. Most of the flooring is gone from tge front rooms of the house. We have a sheetrock guy coming to orrow for a quote. We will start ripping hardwoods up on the main floor next weekend. Joy….

[MVW]

Damn! Who needs that with the school year starting? Good luck!

Jim

[Specter3]

It is nearing the end of October. We have been working ourselves to exhaustion trying to get the house fixed. Contractors have not worked out well. Except for the HVAC guy. We have a 2 story house with a basement. Tye laundry room is in n second floor. As it so happens the main vertical runs for the HVAC were in the wall right behind the washer. The water ran down the outside of the return tube all the way to the basement. Made stops on the 1st floor on the way as well. Trashed the laminate floor on the second floor. Trashed 700sq ft of hardwoods on first floor. Ran into garage and trashed 1/4 of the sheetrock in garage. They brought in dehumidifiers. In trying to keep the air cool with all of the dehumidifiers going we stumbled into another issue. The builder(Ryan Homes) did not insulate the metal ductwork in the finished portion of the house. It had been sweating the whole time, but this continuous running caused it to sweat so much it caused a wet spot in the drywall over our tv in the den. This is an area that was not affected by the flood. I poked around and found the ducting was rusting badly from the condensation. Had to pull entire HVAC duct run on 1st floor of house out and have it replaced. We are second owners of house so Ryan homes told us to go away. Insurance company said it was not their problem leaving us to fix that on our own. HVAC guy said no problem except for by his calcularions the original duct was significantly undersized. So new larger and insulated duct installed. Which meant that the duct run was now larger and had to be reconstructed to be covered by sheetrock. This is where we found the sheetrock contractor we hired was not as capable as he sold himself to be. I had to do the finish work myself to make it somewhere close to paint ready. Painters around here want $100 an hour. Is that normal? Insurance was set to pay about half that. Multiple quotes all came in about the same. So I had to paint everything myself. Hired a couple of guys that my neighbor used to do random work for $20 an hour and we painted everything. All the dust and crap in the air has set everyone’s asthma off and has caused a flare in my wife’s auto immune issue. She is pretty sick at the moment with psoriasis looking skin irritation on her hips elbows and knees. Never seen that before. We all continue to work and are doing the best we can. All the flooring is back in. (We picked the most expensive floor guy out of 4. Great references, beautiful work in his portfolio. His guys worked hard, but left some huge gaps and used some pieces that were damaged. Thankfully they are where the rug covers them mostly. I did way better work installing them the first time. With all of our health issues all cutting has to be done outside. Makes doing the moldings areal pain. To be cont.

[Specter3]

It is December. It still is not finished. We finally found a drywall/painter guy who did what he said he would do at a high quality level. Contractors are done. Im still doing the finish work in all my spare time. Train room is still half full of stored stuff from other places in the house. The POD in the driveway is now relinquishing its contents. We should be done by New Years. I. Can’t. Wait.

[Specter3]

We have made the yearly dash to my moms in NY for Christmas. Great seeing her and my brother and his family. But missing out on the work I could be doing either to the house or the layout is slightly frustrating.

In the slow times up here I have been poking around youtube watching layout videos. Is it me or is it hard to find simple overall layout videos of n scale layouts? I see the same layouts a lot, other scale layouts, and project or demo vids. Kind of frustrating, but first world problem, eh?

I have checked in with my preorders that I remember having. I wonder about any I have forgotten. I really need to keep better notes about those things.

Some more direct layout issues that I have been contemplating are the dearth of simple black tank cars. I have enough boxcars to run the layout like I want. I have enough open hoppers. I have enough covered hoppers. I have enough foreign road cars. But I need some more tank cars. My memory, which drives nearly all of my modeling, says black tank cars with UTLX or GATX reporting marks. What is hard to find? Black tank cars. What sells the fastest of any new tank car release? The black ones.


In all of the work being done on the house, numerous contractors have needed access to the HVAC unit behind the layout. It is always interesting to see the reactions of outside the hobby people to the layout. Even in its current state of completion and the tons of stuff jammed in the open spaces, people are really amazed at it. 4 different contractors requested to be able to come back when everything was back to normal and watch it run. I still think the old adage is correct. Everybody loves trains. Most just don’t have any exposure to the ability to explore their interest.

Back to the relatives.


Ryan

[Specter3]

Finally running trains again.

/>