Canadian Rocky Mountains

[Herc Driver]

I am tremendously sorry for you and your wife's loss. (I've been there too.)

Here's hoping you can restart the layout process and put up some pictures!

[Wiredup]

Time for some photos!!!















As you can see, I have all the plaster cloth laid out and ready for some liquid plaster and some paint. Some areas have already been given paint!

I got one section, which is the town, to sand down and get ready too. I've been using it as my work space for making the plaster rocks and such in the mean time.

[Wiredup]

I've been making some progress this weekend, currently taking a small break.

So the photos posted above are from Friday night. This is pretty much where I left off before my wife and I we're on our way to parenthood. I had boxes full of car stuff and other misc junk sitting on top of the layout, which did squish a few areas, but overall didn't do as much damage as I thought it was going too. Only 5 minutes to fix up what I could see was damaged.

So I spent what little time I had yesterday and a few hours today on some land scaping.

I put down a spray coat of "Model Master Light Earth" over the mountain area/river area to the North on the original track plan. I then went over certain sections in Baher brown (can't remember the exact paint code, but its interior wall paint) over the area right in front of the south west terminal area between the two streams. I also applied some paint over on the embankment on the southernmost track on the northern section. I then sprinkled on some fine green ground stuff from woodland scenics and then sprayed down the areas with a spray bottle filled with a diluted glue mix.

I decided yesterday I'm gonna try using a grass mat for the main flat land sections instead of painting and laying more of that shaker can ground stuff. So I applied a small patch of it by the river that runs by the terminal. I'll probably be finishing that area off a little later on tonight.

I also started doing some touch up painting to my rock faces along the northern river, and also painted the waterfall area. Surpassingly, Volkswagen OEM spray can of "Deep Blue Metallic" works if "misted" onto the rocks to put the blues into the rock face. I then went over with a slate gray, granite, gray, and burnt umber with my airbrush. Then took a diluted mix of the slate grey with a sponge brush and just dry brushed the highlights. So far I'm pleased with the results.

It feels good to see some color other than white and pink on this layout.

[nachoman]

It feels good to see some color other than white and pink on this layout.

I know the feeling. Just covering my layout with tan latex paint was enough to re-motivate me and make it seem like I was getting somewhere. I hadn't worked on my layout for months, and since I painted it, I have accomplished much.

[Wiredup]

Nachoman, yea it really does revitalize the energy to work on the layout. And now that most of the "dirty work" of cutting and sanding is done, its a lot easier to keep the room clean for the time being too! P.S. I really like your narrow gauge layout. Its coming together well.


Well, I'm in need of some plaster. Not plaster cloth... so I'm about as far as I can get for now. I also need to get the reaming structures that I need for the yard before I can finish off there too. (Modern Roundhouse add-on stalls x2, and a 3 bay Car workshop)

Here's some photos of the weekends endevours.











just realized I forgot to upload the close ups of the rock face. :p

[Wiredup]

and heres the rock faces


out of focus mind you

[Wiredup]

New pictures in the album on photobucket. Can't see it at work, so I'll link them up when I get home.

Spent quite a bit of time in the room yesterday due to the stormy nature of our city this month. So I got quite a bit acomplished.

I layed down the last bit of plaster cloth over the incline to the west of the layout, painted it, and let it sit. I also finished laying down the grass mats at the terminal. Paint is completed everywhere but the small town to the East. Which will just be a grass mat when I have to go get another one. Then the foundation for the scenery is pretty much complete and it turns into detail working.

I started laying the mainline again and realizing I forgot to write down my adjustments or make the mods to the winrail file... oops. But its coming together quite nicely already.

One thing I was running into before I tore all the track up was power blocks and reversing blocks. But that will be another post.

[Wiredup]

Here are the photos to reference the above post

[Wiredup]

So I completed re laying the track for the upper loop and will start making my way through the valley to the town over the next week before I take off on vacation. Shouldn't take me too long...

This gives me a full loop to run trains again. Which was exciting! I pulled out the Challenger, my FP9A, and a RS10 and started playing around. Noticed a few things...

First off, control is messed up. I keep loosing the ability to control speed, but I can still trigger sounds and lights. Its very strange. I try doing a soft reset, but it does not change anything. I gotta actually unplug the power to regain control. I've never seen this before. At first I thought it was because I was only using one power lead for a good 20ft of track. So I tried it with only two feet of track and ran into the same issue using only one locomotive. So I'm sure its the system itself.

Second, my turnouts are in bad shape. They always have been, but I really don't wanna deal with the frustration. I keep getting derailments all the #4's I've laid so far (3), so I pulled the turnouts and sat down with a couple of cars, a few straight pieces of track, and my NMRA gauge. I find that on these Kato turnouts the cars are not picking the points, but its actually hitting the fixed rail after the moving part of the point (make sense? I don't know the technical term)

this is interesting because the fixed rails are much thicker than the movable rails. But they are also taller. Filing the rail shorter seems to help the main route, but the diverging route is much trickier because of the difference in thickness of the rail. I tried filing them to be skinnier, but I destroyed the turnout in the process....

so I'm trying to figure out other ways to improve the turnout operation...

turnouts are Kato Unitrack.