Common items

[doctorwayne]

My layout is covered in Atlas stuff, with two of the through girder bridges used as part of the Maitland River crossing, although I cut them apart and converted them into deck-style bridges. One's at the west end of the through truss span:




...and the other at the east end:




I used parts from two more to build my turntable bridge:




...and another, also re-built as a deck-type bridge, as the west span of the Speed River bridge:




That same bridge also uses two Atlas deck truss bridges:




...as does an as-yet-unnamed bridge on the approach to the second level of the layout:




...and two more in the bridge over Chippawa Creek:




There's an Atlas water tower in Elfrida, although I did modify it with a Grandt Line spout:




...and likewise for the one at Lowbanks:




Atlas also got some more of my money for their ubiquitous station, with one in South Cayuga:




...and another in Elfrida:




I have another two, already assembled and painted, but will probably use only one of them for the first town on the upper level. The other town will get a much larger Walthers staion.


Another popular "see 'em on layouts everywhere" structure was AHM's Rico Station. I flipped the walls on mine to better-suit the locale, and modified it slightly, but even painting it in "company colours" does little to disguise its heritage:




AHM got a lot of mileage out of their small interlocking tower. This one controlled the interchange wye at Airline Junction, but when most of the line was abandonned, it became surplus. The second floor is now the home office for the Dunnville Industrial District's Yardmaster, while the ground floor is used by train crews:




There's another one at Cayuga Junction, and it's used as a Control Point for the north/south traffic through South Cayuga on the Grand Valley and the interchange with the Erie Northshore. Eventually, I want to add order boards here and at Elfrida to control the interchange traffic, and I may make this into an interlocking controlling all of the turnouts in South Cayuga:




AHM's large interlocking tower was another popular one, although mine in Port Maitland uses the upper floor as the Yardmaster's office, while the ground floor is for train crews, as this is an interchange point with the TH&B:




Most of the rest of my structures are kitbashed ones from Walthers or ones that are scratchbuilt, but I'm currently working on 20-or-so DPM kits. Some are kits, some built-up used kits, and some merely walls and parts of walls picked-up from the "used" tables at several hobbyshops. There are several duplicates, some of which I've modified to disguise the similarities. However, most will be used as low-relief background structures in Elfrida and South Cayuga (both, especially the latter, are very shallow areas). The rest will be built as foreshortened structures, for use in the next line out from the backdrop. This is work currently in-progress, so not much to see at the moment. Here's an aerial view (courtesy of Secord Air Services) showing a tentative arrangement:




I'm quite satisfied with the Atlas bridges and have no intention or replacing them. Likewise for the stations and water towers - while scratchbuilt ones would be more unique, there's simply not enough time available to go back and redo them.
While going through my inventory of unbuilt structures, I realised that I have more than enough needed to complete the partial second level of the layout, including a small town, a fair-size city, and a fairly large locomotive facility. I just need to learn how to work faster.

Wayne