Gary S Wrote:... I don't think it would be too farfetched to model a building in the large space in front of the tracks....

I thinks buildings like Kurt's Miami buildings would be a perfect match in the foreground. They are only one story high and would not really block the view or your hands coupling/uncoupling cars..

Wayne, after some thought, I will be adidng a building or two in front of Industrial Area 2 in the wide spot. Should be able to model the complete building there and not have to do the "reverse backdrop" building thing. Also, with the layout at 58" tall, it won't be hard to hide the trains. Even some large trees will help with the effect. Along Industrial area 3 where the road parallels the track, there will be lots of trees and bushes in between the track and the aisle.

faraway Wrote:I thinks buildings like Kurt's Miami buildings would be a perfect match in the foreground. They are only one story high and would not really block the view or your hands coupling/uncoupling cars..

I agree Reinhard, and that is most likely what I will do.

Sounds good, Gary, and I'm sure that you'll pull it off with your usual finesse. Now :hey: get back to work on that wiring!!

Wayne

Oh man! The wiring has been taking forever. But it is worth it... I am around 85 percent complete on the junction box wiring now. Need to finish the track in the remaining places so I can finish the wiring in those places. I still need to install and wire all the emag controls. The controls are all finished, so it is a matter of screwing the DIN rail under the layout, and connecting the wiring to the magnets, buttons, and bus wiring. Should make a big dent in that tomorrow.

Did a little more research on the LAJ... I happen to have the 1996 MR with an article about it.

The LAJ has three yards, "A", "B", and "C". After the class 1 drops off a cut of cars at the "A" or "C" yard, the LAJ does sort them onto the various yard tracks based on their destination within the LAJ. So, this does give me the possibility of doing the same. For example, cars could be sorted at the SF yard based on whether they are going to Ind Area 1, 2, or 3. Then a train could take them and switch that particualr area. This actually sounds pretty good.

My original thinking had been to pick up cars at the SF yard, and make a trip all the way to the other end of the layout, dropping cars at industries and picking up only cars headed for the SP. The trip would end at the SP yard, dropping off any outbound cars. Then we would pick up cars from SP and then reverse the trip, again dropping off cars at the industries amd picking up cars bound for the SF. The turn would end once we made our way back to the SF.

Either of the above seem to work good. If the workload was light, the second sceanrio would go, but if the workload was heavy, or if I had a couple more operators, the first scenarion may be the ticket.

Now, concerning the LAJ "B" yard. Seems they used the B yard to sort cars based on which class 1 they were going to. My layout doesn't seemingly fit that scheme, so the Middle Yard on my layout will be used for ATG and GERN car storage. If I can come up with a design for the Gulf branch, then we could use the middle yard for building that train.

Thanks to Big Blue for letting me throw these ideas around. And thanks to all for the advice and discussion.

Gary the discussion of the feasibility of modeling an industry in the front of the bench work reminded me of some buildings on modules built by the Fullerton Railway Plaza Association and often set up in the Orange County Module Railroaders layouts at shows. They have a set of modules that depict much of the industry in downtown Fullerton around the Santa Fe and UP train stations in Fullerton, Ca in 1951. The area directly in front of the mainline was citrus packing houses in 1951. They modeled a bunch of partial warehouses with the inside open like a cut away just behind the protective plastic so that a viewer can lean down and look through the packing houses to the train passing on the tracks just behind the packing houses. In the case of one packing house, someone found an old photograph of the inside of the packing house complete with people packing oranges. They made a copy of the photograph scaled to ho scale and glued it to the back of the front wall of the next to the mainline tracks. It is really quite effective, and very well done. The module set has museum quality models of both the Santa Fe station and the Union Pacific Station in addition to all of the industries from the area in the era that they are modeling that would fit in the space. They have since done a third module that doesn't need to be connected to the other two that features the old Fullerton Pacific Electric Station in Fullerton an a lumber yard that used to be located adjacent to the PE Station.

Now that is an interesting concept. Instead of closing up the sectioned building, leave it open and model the inside. That is more appetizing to me than just blanking it off. Let me give that some thought! Thanks for sharing, Russ.

I did take the time to run a train tonight. With all the wiring I've done, the train can run from the peninsula along the middle wall, to the west wall, then along the north wall, then on the east wall to the SP yard - almost 100 feet. If I can get the peninsula completed, and just a bit of track on the south wall, will be doing complete loops before long.

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That train looks really slick going by your industries...Your weathering on the rolling stock is fantastic..!! Can't wait to see it all "fleshed out"...!!

Just a thought...That brownish building between GERN and the other industry looks a bit out of place.....

Gary S Wrote:I did take the time to run a train tonight. ...

It is good to see you are not packing all the space full with tracks, buildings and action but use space to model space as it is, open. Even at this early stage the imagination works already.

ps. It is always a good choice to run a train with a CF-7!

Gary,
It is really starting to shape up. Great pictures too. Won't be too long until you can quit working on it and start enjoying it.
It seems like it takes forever to get the first train running, but after that it is fun to just build and detail things.
Charlie

I was going to ask about the SF locomotive on the pointy end of that freight, Gary, but Reinhard answered it for me ... it IS a CF7! See the old man isn't totally dead! I'm still able to pick up a few spotting points! I still have trouble with GP7 / GP9 and with most of the current ones I'm just totally lost, but then , the young guys don't know what the Whyte System is, or why a Wooten firebox was shapped the way it was, so maybe we're even.

Thanks for the great long shots of your GERN Facility ... it seems I can't see enough of that kind of thing right now! I''ve been scouring this forum looking for everyone's GERN Plant for insight into how others treated unloading, arrangement of processing/storage structures, loading and service tracks ... I've got my hands full trying to make decisions here and the old grey matter is in mental processing overload! hock:

Thanks Gary ... every additional view helps!

Steamtrains Wrote:That train looks really slick going by your industries...Your weathering on the rolling stock is fantastic..!! Can't wait to see it all "fleshed out"...!!

Just a thought...That brownish building between GERN and the other industry looks a bit out of place.....

Appreciate the compliments, Gus. The brownish building... the one circled in the photo below? If so, that is the bag warehouse for GERN Industries and is attached to the main structure. It was a building I had before the GERN Texas Division was built so I added it on similar to the warehouse on DocWayne's GERN. I have been debating whether to paint it to blend in with the rest of the structures, just haven't done it so far.

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faraway Wrote:It is good to see you are not packing all the space full with tracks, buildings and action but use space to model space as it is, open. Even at this early stage the imagination works already.

Thanks Reinhard. I have enough room so that I did not feel the pressure to cram tracks into every square inch available. I think that will add to the feel of a real railroad... especially down here in the South. Plenty of open space, even in the city. Our urban areas are not jammed full of buildings as they sometimes are in the Northeast United States.

faraway Wrote:It is always a good choice to run a train with a CF-7!

You got that right! That CF-7 is a good puller. I added extra lead in the body, and also put in a sound decoder. Great thing about a CF-7 is that the cab is big enough to put a 1" speaker in. The cab actually makes a great speaker box. I took a piece of plastic sheet, cut it to fit up in the cab horizontally, cut a hole in the plastic to fit the speaker, and glued the assembly into the cab. I used a digitrax sound decoder and downloaded the sound file into it off the net - they didn't have a CF-7 sound file, but they have several switchers and E8s and stuff to chose from. Now the bad news... the sound files are really not that good. I am planning on replacing the sound decoder with a different and better brand... something with an F7 sound file.