OK, just because I haven't posted an update since JULY doesn't mean I haven't been doing anything. Having three young children and being involved in all of their activities means layout progress is slooooooow but things have been happening. Here's an update:
1. Building the Bad River through truss bridge
This is a minor kitbash of a Plastruct kit. The directions call for a 123' brige - I don't have room for one that long, so mine will be 100', which is about the minimum span you would see for a through truss. So instead of the bridge having 5 panels, mine will have 4 with the diagonal braces in the center being crossed. Here are some Saginaw Valley prototype examples this freelance is supposed to lresemble:
Pere Marquette bridge in Sanford, MI
GTW bridge near Bridgeport, MI
The Plastruct kit lends itself well for this kind of modification, since all you are supplied with are long lengths of plastic girders and flat "plate" stock. All members must be cut to length and every rivet plate cut from the stock (something I found to be very tedious).
One handy side effect of this kit is that I have lots of lovely scrap - look for it in a gondola load in the future!
I'm currently down to the detail work. Here's a shot with some of my old brass track laid on it for testing purposes:
Not a 100% prototype match with either of the above (especially with the oversize bottom rivet plates - ooops), but good enough for me.
I plan to have this guy finished for painting in the spring.
2. Lakefield benchwork back on the walls, foam glued down
I took the benchwork down for some re-work last summer, namely re-painting my backdrop sky and placing 1/4" lauan under the foam on the Lakefield side of the layout. The benchwork is now back up, the lauan in place, and the foam glued to the top of it with latex caulk.
Here's a view of the future home of Lakefield.
And a view down Lakefield to the future engine service area at Carson City yard, along with the stub benchwork that will eventually support the Carson City yard throat.
3. Lakefield & Carson City Yard Lead trackplan transferred
My track plan was drawn in 3rd PlanIt. The package's print feature allows you to print out your track plan at 1:1 scale for transferring it to the real world. Some folks have printed theirs out on large sheets of paper at copy places like Kinkos, or on plotters if they are lucky enough to have access. That can be pretty expensive, so I decided to save some money and go the many-many-many 8.5" X 11" sheet route. In this mode, the individual sheets of paper have little registration marks which make up the corner of a square.
Each sheet has a row,column number that identifies where it goes on the plan. So, if you carefully line up the registration marks in each corner of the correct row,column sheets and tape them, you're good to go.
In practice, this was a pain in the rear, and I kinda wish I would have spent the money on larger single sheets. But using T-pins and being very patient, I got pretty good results. I was only off by 1/4" in some areas. Luckily my track plan has plenty of wiggle room built in to account for errors like this. So far, so good.
Next up was tracing the track lines with a pounce wheel, a handy tool with a serrated wheel on one end. I got mine at WalMart for $1.
You run the wheel along the lines of the track plan, pushing down a little bit. The points of the wheel punch through the paper and leave an impression in the foam.
When you take the paper off, you can run a sharpie marker along the dots, and the track plan is drawn!
One of the concerns I had was my Peco #7 curved turnout, which did not have a standard model in my version of 3rdPlanIt. The package allows you to define your own turnouts if you know the critical dimensions. Looks like I got a pretty good fit:
That's it for now. I'm currently working on contouring the foam around the hole where the Bad River will go. Once I have the river area roughed in, I'll proabably move on to tracklaying (at last!)