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Just about exactly a year ago I started work on a CMR turntable kit. No, it hasn't taken me that long to build! It actually is a very nice kit (made of laser cut acrylic) and goes together easily. Believe me, if I can get it together and have it square enough to operate well on the first try, just about anyone here can! But once I had it built to the point where it could be operated, I needed to install it and that required several other things to be done first. My turntable is mounted above the inside space of a helix, so I set up the 3/4" plywood base on sawhorses to mark locations and cut out the hole for the tt and the slots for the inspection pits in the roundhouse. Then the base was mounted in place and it was time to install an indexing system. So a control panel needed to be built and the motoor installed, etc. Once that was done, I had to bring in the lead tracks, which travel over a section that was to be removable for access to yard turnouts for maintenance if (when) needed. Then I realized that the lead tracks went under the coaling tower and sanding tower, and over an ash pit, and none of these structures had been started yet. So all these were built and installed along with the track at my workbench, then put in place on the layout. Which brings me pretty much to where things stand today, with work on the roundhouse about to start, followed by finishing the turntable bridge and detailing. some pics to follow.
Gary
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This first pic shows the end of the peninsula, where the helix is located. You can se the floor of the roundhouse, which is the Walthers 3 stall kit, two of them actually for 6 stalls. The 3 stalls on the right have been extended 3" and a cinder block addition will be added to the brick structure. To the left of the turntable is an old Magnuson model serving as a fill in for now, a scratchbuilt powerplant will go there, burning oil deliverd on the track alongside. To the right of the leadtracks you see a switcher sitting in front of a tower. The track that runs in front of the tower and to the right where you see the end of a passenger car, is the siding Eddie Willer's private car is spotted on. JGL corp. offices will be there.
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This aerial view of the yard from near the other end shows the track arraingment pretty well. The passenger cars are on the main, the next two tracks are the thru receiving and departure tracks, then the next three trcks are stub ended yard tracks. The next track is the yard runaround track. To the right of all these is the new trackage laid for the engine facility. They connect to runaround track about 3' below the bottom of the picture. The left hand track is for oubound locos while the next is for inbound. Both can get coal and sand and water. Only the inbound track has an ashpit. The ash conveyor was scratchbuilt as I found no reasonably priced kit of the prototype I wanted. The coaling tower and sandhouse/tower are Walthers kits. You see the service track behind the ash conveyor and coal tower. I modified the coaling tower so that the track needn't be elevated. I have to admit I did not find any pics of situations where the track was not elevated. I'm not sure why the track would need to be elevated, the elevator in the tower needs to lift the coal to the top anyway. Perhaps to avoid the neccesity of digging a pit to dump into? At any rate, elevating the track would have caused me problems, as I desired to use just one track to service all functions, ash, coal, sand and diesel fuel. The track furthest to the right, which splits into two tracks just behing the ash conveyor, are diesel ready tracks. The yard is primarily used for changing power on thru trains. Diesel only to the east, mostly stean to the west. Cuts of cars are exchanged for both a couple locals which run out of the yard and for interchange with other roads, coming in from hidden staging (down the helix). You see a piece of masonite sitting above the yard tracks just before they hit the helix. Trains will run out of sight from this point east. On the far side of the structure, which will be the corp. offices, there will be a parking lot ove the tracks, which you will not even know are there.
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I see the bottom of the photo was cut off when posted, I have resized and edited out the top in hopes you will now see the bottom of the photo.
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Well, you got more of it, but still not all. But enough to get the idea. Let's see what happens with this one. This is the view Eddie will have from his office over the tracks.
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Yikes! That's awful. Resized again and hope you get the bottom of the photo, but I believe it will suffer in clarity.
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Bummer. Oh well. This last shot was just for the sake of composing a nice shot showing as little unfinished are as possible. There will be a aservice road in front of the wall. Hope it shows up ok, it really is a nice shot.
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The bottom is cut off again, can someone tell me what I' doing wrong, or is it that my file is to big and the site just lopes off some? When I reduce to 640x480 the picture quality really suffers. 800x600 would be nice, the last photo(one post above) is at 720x540
Gary
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Wow Gary - that is looking great!! Sounds like a pretty complicated process too.
cheers
Val
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That is some nice work you have done there Gary!!
I can see the bottoms of the all the pics, for me, there is a scroll bar that i can move down for each picture in the posts, so i can see the full pictures.....
Josh Mader
Maders Trains
Offering everyday low prices for the Model Railroad World
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Gary, Mikey's aware of the problems with photos and is working on it. Hopefully this will get sorted out soon.
cheers
Val
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That's an awesome layout Gary. You could try posting photos on photobucket instead and just linking them here.
Here's one I took at the Scarborough Model Railroaders Open House last year.
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Quote:That's an awesome layout Gary.
Tetters, This is just a small part of Gary's layout, and the rest, that is finished, is just as awesome..........in some cases, more.
It has been too many years since a string of N&W hoppers, empty,was re-routed over JGL tracks, with a Y3 on the head end, and another at the tail end pushing. The layout is not only awesome to see, it's awesome to operate on.
We always learn far more from our own mistakes, than we will ever learn from another's advice.
The greatest place to live life, is on the sharp leading edge of a learning curve.
Lead me not into temptation.....I can find it myself!
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It's great to see you back at work on the layout, Gary, and sharing pictures of it with us, too. The first time that I saw photos of your layout, I was impressed with both the quality of the work and with the size of the layout, which appears almost more suited to a club. And now it just keeps getting better. I wish that I had that kind of room for my Mount Forest engine facility. :mrgreen:
By the way, sorry to hear about the job situation.
Wayne
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Trucklover Wrote:I can see the bottoms of the all the pics, for me, there is a scroll bar that i can move down for each picture in the posts, so i can see the full pictures
Duh! Yes I see what you are saying, I never noticed anything like that before. I also have found if you click on the picture it enlarges so you see the whole thing. That's very cool.
Sumpter250 Wrote:The layout is not only awesome to see, it's awesome to operate on.
Quote:That's an awesome layout Gary.
Tetters, This is just a small part of Gary's layout, and the rest, that is finished, is just as awesome..........in some cases, more.
It has been too many years since a string of N&W hoppers, empty,was re-routed over JGL tracks, with a Y3 on the head end, and another at the tail end pushing. The layout is not only awesome to see, it's awesome to operate on.
You are too kind Pete! Hey, I don't have to kick you out early to go to work now, come on back!
Thanks to all for the compliments. I'll post some roundhouse shots as I go along.
Gary
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