UP SD40-2's NEW Layout

[UP SD40-2]

ED, Charlie & Tom, Thanks so much for the very kind words guys  .

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Well, I was going to make my "bridges", so I can continuously run trains again, but found out last night my wifes parents are coming over next weekend so I ended up cleaning off the whole top of the layout except for the "bridge" area to be worked on. 


I then picked up all the boxes off the floor, got rid of a bunch of trash that I acquired from all the projects I have been doing on the layout, and Vacuumed the floor. I never did get to my work bench in the middle of the layout, its shared buy model RRing and also serves as my gun cleaning table, hey, its my "man space" and those are my hobbies, LOL! After all that, and man, that was A LOT!   , I took a look at things, WOW, the layout is looking better with ground cover on everything, I thought. 
Then I realized 11'x18' really isnt all that big, well, not really thinking out things as good as I should have didnt help either, I really could have made better use of the real estate that I had, but its going to work. I seen a lot of layouts that are all packed into city settings, and I really wanted to make the layout based on more rural type settings, though it didnt provide for lots of switching, I tried to get some in to not make it boring. Probably my biggest regret was not doing the yard correctly, that would have made it more prototypical, but wouldnt have provided all the space for cars and engines that I now have, so I traded off for the latter  . 

Anyways, NOT REDUEING  ANYTHING, HA!, NO WAY, but was just thinking about things as I looked over the layout. I then started looking into the "bridge" problem at hand, the whole hinge Idea just wasnt going to work, and my wood that had the 3 tracks on it I was using for the "bridge" area had warped a bit, so I am trying to come up with new ideas for that area, perhaps 3 separate pieces of wood for the crossing? Cripes just not sure yet, something to put some more thought into for sure. 

A few pics I took today posted below....












I just love 3 window SD60M's


Till next time...

[tompm]

Do you have any rolling stock in that yard or is it all locomotives?

Gern is looking real good.

[cn nutbar]

Deano---thanks for the tour of your beautiful train room---you should be very proud 

[ezdays]

Your train room is amazing Deano. I'm sure we all wish we had that kind of room, and, without a doubt, your skills.

[UP SD40-2]

Tom, LOL!, I know right, seems like I have more engines then cars  . I have a lot of both, not to mention a bunch of passenger equipment thats not even on the layout. If I extended my layout about 12 more feet, and put 8 more tracks on it, I think I could realistically put everything I have on it   . Remember a few posts back when I said it had been a few years since I had bought an engine, then I went and bought that SD70ACE this year...

Well, I needed that engine like I needed a hole in my head  . 
I have 15 cars comfortably in my sidings without over crowding them, leaving me 5 rows of cars in my yard, would be 6 rows but I dedicated one row just for my BigBoy UP executive train  . 


Honestly I could fill a row and a half with modern era cars that I still have in boxes, two long rows of 40's-50's era box cars, still more engines in boxes and my display case, then all the passenger trains I have in boxes, besides the passenger stuff I have out....sheeeew, thats a lot of stuff  . Please, NOT BRAGGING at all, I have just acquired a TON of stuff though all the years of doing this hobby, much of the stuff I bought was to run on several of my Dads layouts. My Dad always made his layouts in the 40's to early 60's era, and I always liked the 80's and up stuff  the best, dont get me wrong, the older stuff is very cool! , but I just liked the latter stuff the best. 

WOW, sorry Tom, really went off the rails on that one  .

Thanks ED & Don, it is nice now down there. I have my laptop hooked up to a 32'' tv so I can watch train vids while I run trains too, I guess I am quite lucky  .

Till next time...

[Tyson Rayles]

Great train room! Just think of how much RR you could have had if you had gone with the Normal scale instead of the Horribly Oversized scale.

[UP SD40-2]

Mike, I did N scale for awhile, still have engines, cars, people, autos, ect. I give you N scale guys credit, way to small for me these days, cant see good anymore and these beat up hands cant work with N scale anymore.

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Well, not much got done this week, my wife's parents are here for the weekend so no trains this weekend, and only got the area I need to fix ready to try something, what exactly not 100% sure yet, but we'll see   .


A couple random shots...




Next week things will be back to normal so some progress will be done 

Till next time...

[UP SD40-2]

Well, my Friday post ended up being my Sunday morning update post  , had a lot going on but here I am none the less  .

I was determined to get my lift outs done so I could run trains this week, did not get the wiring done yet, but did get the track work pretty much done. I originally had one board going across the dunk under, as I have posted a few times in the past, well that board had warped so I ended up cutting it into three pieces and fitting them in separately. I decided to take thick styrene and hot glue to make each piece fit snugly in place so the track doesn't move when the trains go over them. 

After I made each pocket for the wood to fit in, I started putting the track in. This was a bit of a challenge as one side of my "U" shape layout ended up being 3/8''s higher then the other side, so if I just nailed the track to the wood, the spots where the rails would be cut for the lift out would have made the tracks not fit right. How I fixed this problem was to hot glue the track down, by doing this it gave me the space I needed so the tracks were able to "float" at the right spots to make the track work have a better fit. 


I have done this to all three pieces, have rolled boxcars across them and they all seem to be fine. Was this the best way to do this?, probably not  , but we'll see how it ends up working. I didnt use a tape to mark out the wood on my cuts, so it looks friggin horrendous, but that doesnt really matter to me at this time, the lift out at this point is a test really, just to see if it will work, and how long it will work, function is all I care about at this time, if it runs great, thats what counts. 
 



I have off this week, have a bunch of house projects to do, but am really looking forward to spending time working on the layout this week  . First I will wire the lift outs up and make sure I get it running good, after that, who knows, I really have so much to do, we'll see what happens. 

Till next time...

[UP SD40-2]

Well, I did the wiring on the lift outs today, though horrendous looking...  , they work ABSOLUTELY PERFECT!!!  

My UP executive train is really picky on track work, so I ran that on the outside track, and my WSOR engines with a mixed load of my very picky freight cars on the inside track, WOW, they BOTH ran around the layout WITHOUT FAIL!  
I should have taken pics of the event, but of coarse I didnt even think about it until I started running other stuff  , at least now I can run trains again, YEAH!   Now I can get back to my 1000 other projects the layout needs done. Not sure what I will start with, I have so many engines and cars that need couplers replaced, light bulbs replaced, hand rails fixed, sunshades put back on, ect. , OR, I might start building scenery stuff, like billboards, etc. , so much to do   . 

A couple pics from today...




Till next time....

[tompm]

Congratulations on being able to run trains again!

Nice pictures.

[BR60103]

Deano:
I made an electric safeguard on the liftout on my previous layout.
The North rail was powered on the east side of the lift out and was gapped on the west side.
The South rail was powered on the west side and gapped on the east side.
The gaps were far enough over that a locomotive could stop before falling into the open pit.
There can be problems if you back trains a lot; use 4 powered diesels on the front; have DMUs or such that are powered through a number of cars.

[cn nutbar]

I'm always amazed by the talents of so many members of Big Blue---thank you all for your inspiration and helpful hints to all the "wannabes" who are motivated by your contributions.

[tetters]

The layout looks great Deano! You have a nice space for it as well. Nice!!!

[UP SD40-2]

Thanks so much Tom, David, Ed & tetters! , you guys are to kind  . 

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Well, I have off this week so I have a mid week update    .

I was looking over the layout pondering what to do next, and seen my poor SD40-2's in need of several repairs. As you guys know, SD40-2's are my all time favorite engines, I have 5 of them that are UP(including a patched CNW) , 3 WSOR, and lets not forget the 4 SD40T-2's, but those are another story  . Two of them need very little work, #3401 just needs a sunshade put on it, this engine is a Kato DCC with sound, runs Fantastic and has a nice real life story to it. UP #3401 was a CNW repainted in UP's North Little Rocks shop on Oct. 25 1996, it was one of 266 units that had the "We will deliver" slogan on it. 
The other engine, #3288, is an Athearn and just needs the horn and rear railing straightened out, fairly easy fix. 
Those engines are weathered and are DONE after the easy fixes.


The next two engines are not weathered, and were in worse shape, many broken and missing parts on them, both are Athearns.
Engine #3503 was in the worst shape of all of them, the cab was sucked in a bit making a bad fit to the rest of the body, so thats the one I started on first. I took it apart and decided to put a thick sturdy piece of styrene in the cab putting it back to the width it once was at, WOW, that totally did the trick, the parts fit back up great. I took all the railings off the engine before the fix, as I admired the fit up I had the idea to make that engine a little more modern since the railings were off. Around 2005 the UP started putting yellow reflective tape on the bottoms of all their rebuilt/repainted engines, the yellow tape I used for the center lines of my roads is the exact perfect size to use for the reflective tape. Here is an example of a rebuilt and repainted engine I took a pic of in South Beloit around 2005...


My layout is loosely based on the years 1982-2015(I say till today usually though   ) , yes, its a long time span, but thats what it is so the modern reflective tape will work, THUS, my engines #3503 & 3344 will now be NEW...REBUILT UP engines! I have several new railings to make the repairs needed, really I have ALL the detail parts needed to fix them up. HONESTLY, #3503 is probably a lie, I have no proof that UP rebuilt any snoot nose engines, but they are my favorite of all the SD40-2's so I am going to do it anyways. Note, 3 of 5 of those SD40-2's are snoot nose, long front hood.

Heres a pic with the new reflective tape on #3503 and #3344 before I put the tape on it.... 
  

#3134 needs new couplers, one sunshade and some railings repaired....


Thats where I am at at this time tonight with the SD40-2's, I am very excited to get them back into shape.

As a side note, NOT related to the SD40-2's, but going back to the "We will deliver" slogan, I do have another engine that really exsited with that slogan, its an SD50, and it too was a CNW engine repainted on 11 Nov. 1996 in North Little Rock. This engine is a Proto 2000 DCC with sound, runs great!


Till next time...

[Rscott417]

Do you plan on making your crossing signals right next to your 3 lift out sections operational? If so, I'm curious how you would wire them.