Starting to Look Like Something

I purchased a set of Woodland Scenics earth-tone washes, in addition to a slightly larger bottle of earth ground cover.  Although my layout is pretty small in the grand scheme of things, I still wasn't sure if the bottle of ground cover would be enough to cover the whole set.  As it turns out, watering it down 1:1 with water produced the look I am quite happy with, and ended up only using slightly more than half the bottle of ground cover.

The set of earth-tone washes has also come in handy.  I've used quite a bit of the cement color under the bridge and around the round table, and black for some clean-up around the track and inside the tunnel (obviously).  So, what's left for the white plaster you can still see is going to be either rock, or rock wall.  I plan on using the light umber colors to give the rocks a yellow-white-ish color... I think thats what I'm going to go for - a raw gypsum look.

An New Mine Spur

I decided that the layout that I came up with wasn't really exciting enough and not very prototypical.  Yes, the layout is freelanced (that is, not based on a real-life place or railroad), but running the train around the table for a little while now I realized I didn't really have a lot of places to put rail cars - and by that, I mean only one spot.  So, I made a second!

With the help of yet another Peco curved turn-out (I think these things are great, by the way) I was able to insert another switch track into the cross-over that leads from the main line to the mine spur to create a second, parallel mine spur.  Breaking into an existing track line wasn't as hard as I thought, however I was very glad that I hadn't glued the track down like I was planning... I may or may not yet do that.

You can also see that I've started building the round house (i.e. putting the track in place for it), and continuing to plaster so that I eventually become happy with the ground elevations. As you can see, the new spur turned out pretty good.

First Run!

Figured I would post this. This is the first run of the train around the layout. As you can see, this is from before I got the control panel wired into the table. I'm actually pretty pleased that it worked so well the first time, with very little modification.

5 Hours of Soldering and a Sore Neck...

It took a couple of weekends, but its finally done. All the wiring under the table and above the table (i.e. the control panel) is complete. Feeders wired into the bus (the red and black 12-gauge wire seen on the left), wiring to the switch motors and spur blocks (Cat5 wire). You'll also recognize the power supply that I made several posts ago feeding +5V and -5V to the control panel, and I decided to put the main AC switch (bottom of the picture) on the skirt of the table rather than in the control panel. This made me a lot more comfortable, not only by not having "high" AC voltage in with the low voltage control panel, but also made more sense from a cable routing standpoint.

The control panel was also fun to wire up. 6 dual-pole switches for each spur block, a single pole momentary switch for the turntable motor (but I don't have that yet), 7 LED's each with a current limiting resistor (that's what most of the heat-shrink tubing is for that you see), and four momentary buttons for the switch motors. All in all, it went together pretty well according to plan. I only wired in one LED backwards and mixed up two buttons -- fairly easy fixes.

But the biggest payoff for all of this work is the ability now to have a train run around the layout! Which of course I have done a few times now...

42ft of Track Later

Well I finally got around to laying all of the cork-bed and track. I'm actually pretty pleased with how it went. I ended up using a lot of pre-formed "snap track" for the curves and flex track for the straighter sections. This made my curves a lot more predictable, but I'm kind of wishing now that I used flex track more, as using the snap track everywhere means a lot of joints in the loop.

You'll notice there are some spurs off of the turn table that are missing, but these are to go inside the round-house which I have yet to get. Once the round-house is in place, then the track can be laid inside it.

I've also got all of the switch motors and wires in place, its just a matter of connecting up all the wires to something useful. I've got about 6 feeds from the track to underneath the table where I'll run around a 14- or 12- gauge wire for track bus. Copper wire makes a much better conductor than coated nickel track, so feeding the in multiple places from a copper bus should make the power distribution on the layout much more even.

Anyway, lots of wiring and soldering to do, especially on the control panel...

Now to drive the spikes...

Finally got all of the plastering done. (Thanks Danielle!) Unfortunately we didn't quite have enough to finish the lift out mountain piece - less than one square foot remains uncovered. I was a little disappointed with running out of plaster cloth with such a small area left to cover. I intend to simply cover it with plaster putty and see how that works out.

As you can see I have already started to lay some track. We did this while the table was out away from the wall and the back of the table was more accessible. Very difficult to lean over the table with how wide it is. Putting the table back into place was much easier than moving it away from the wall.

Although it was a little bit inconvenient I am glad that I put down the turntable before plastering that section because the Atlas turntable that I purchased accept 1/4 inch roadbed leading up to it. The cork-bed I am using is only 3/16 of an inch and so the plaster conveniently makes up the missing 1/16 of an inch.

I did have some debate as to whether or not use cork for roadbed as opposed to vinyl or foam rubber. I settled on cork because it was a known quantity -- the rail layouts I've made before I've used cork, and many people report that cork is just easier to work with than the other two popular choices. The deciding factor for me though was looking in the hobby store at Woodland Scenic's foam rubber roadbed product -- it just didn't look very prototypical in my opinion, at least not like the cork looks.

As far as attaching the cork to the table/plaster, I was thinking that a highly adhesive glue would be required, like PL Premium, but a lot of people recommended simple white or yellow carpenters glue. Although I had my doubts, I had to correct a section of cork that I laid with the white glue, and a somewhat significant portion of plaster came out with the cork which I ruined and ended up having to lay completely new cork.

Time to get our hands dirty

Well, at least Danielle's hands got dirty. I tried to stay out of the mess because Danielle had used the plaster cloth for crafts before. I was actually a little disappointed with how little two packages of the plaster cloth covered. Hopefully we will only need two more packages as the cloth is a little pricey.

You might notice that the table has been pulled out from the wall in order to better reach the backside. For those who remember putting the table in and the mishap with the window frame, it was quite "fun" getting it out of the corner. Despite this ordeal it really was for the best because it would have been rather difficult to make smooth edges otherwise or even to reach inside the tunnel to cover the track base. Suffice to say I think the window casing might have to come off to put the table back in place, or perhaps another set of hands.

As you can see above the two rolls of plaster cloth were able to cover most of the 3D features on the layout. We were also able to cover the back portion of the ground and around the bridge. The plaster cloth is fairly simple to work with if you have patience and a little finesse. The best technique was to wet the cloth and then add additional water once it was in place to spread the plaster. I recommend using latex gloves simply because it is difficult to spread the plaster when it dries on your fingers quickly. Plus you won't have to spend an hour washing it off your skin and nails.

Overall it has created a nice texture to cover later and we will eventually have a nice white canvas to start playing with. Thanks to the table height I'll certainly be nursing some back pain in the morning!

Goes on pink, dries white

So more DryDex. Its pretty good stuff to work with, other than its a little heavy, and in this type of application it doesn't seem to go very far. It took nearly two whole tubs to cover all seams on the layout. I'll probably need one more tub to finish up details (around tunnel portals, around the turntable, etc.).

In case its not obvious, the top of the "mountain" in the back corner is actually removable. It was essentially constructed from a 24x30" peice of foam, and then built on top of that. As the "base" piece of the mountain isn't actually glued or attached to the rest of the set, it lifts up fairly easily. That said, we'll see how easy it is once grass and trees make its way on to the mountain.

Now the fun begins...

Playing with plaster to make the hills look more like hills than cut up 1/2" foam! Just doing that section you see covered there used about half of the tub of DryDex, so I have a feeling I might need some more...

That said, Danielle has convinced me to use plaster cast (in the form of Woodland Scenics Plaster Cloth) for the track incline cover, so that should be fun too...

A tunnel under a mountain (how original)

So I started the mountain / tunnel. As you can see its all just pinned together as I see how its all going to fit together. Also, the tunnel is a lot bigger than I thought it would be. I guess the top down view in AutoCAD didn't do it justice. Oh well... the landscape is starting to look a lot more like its final contour.

As with the entire process all along, I've been doing track testing to make sure that the landscape I've been building up doesn't interfere with how the track has to go... and/or the track still fits around the landscape like it should.

Still debating on how much to use flex track, or how much to use pre-formed curve sections (a-la Atlas snap-track). I think mostly because I don't trust myself to make a perfect 22" radius or 18" radius curve, I'll go with mostly snap-track, with flex for the funny curves and straight-ish sections...

Playing Electrician

My order of electronics came in from DigiKey, so naturally it was time to play with the electricals. I purchased the required parts to build a simple linear power supply for the layout's control panel, indicator lights and accessories (turn out motors, etc.), as well as the actual switches and indicator lights that will make up the components of the control panel itself.

I spent a couple of hours tonight building and testing the simple linear power supply -- it supplies +5VDC, -5VDC, 10VDC and 16VAC, all of which will be used in various capacities for the control panel and layout. The picture is of the first successful test of the power supply, as well as testing the dual-color LEDs for the control panel (you can see one is green and the other red, both sharing a common 0V. The black things around the terminals of the transformer, if you are wondering, are simply yet-to-be-shrunken heat shrink tubing -- I always think heatshrink tubing makes a project have a nicer finish.

Terrain Architecture

So a quick trip to Home Depot solved the problem of running out of glue, and a trip to the Hobby Shop solved the problem of running out of foam incline sets.

All of the foam track bed is now laid, and as you can see, I have been testing the layout by temporarily pinning some track in place around questionable curves.

Now, on to landscaping (which you can see had already significantly started) and the plastering...

That's it for today

So I ran out of glue, so I guess that's it for today. I would have liked to finish the north side incline, but oh well. A trip to Home Depot for some more PL will solve that.

I guess the next step is to get some cork bed and start laying that on with some track, and/or actually start carving some scenery. The recommended way that I keep reading (at least in Model Railroader) to cover the "mountains" is with some sort of plaster infused cheesecloth material. I'll have to check out Michael's or some place like that to see if they might have something.

Adheres to wood, metal, ceramic, foam...

I was pretty pleased with my mock up yesterday (and after spending a few hours cutting and placing foam) so today I started the gluing process. You may notice in the picture from yesterday pretty much everything was simply pinned together with some T-pins. For this step I'm using Liquid nails -- PL Premium is your friend -- it sticks anything to anything.

If you look closely there is actually two sheets glued on top of each other -- this is because in the design most of the layout and scenery is 1/2" above grade, with some track dipping down to just one thickness of 1/2" foam -- no track will go on the bare plywood table.

I guess having old extra year books lying around has come in handy. Anyway, this puts together the base for the layout... tomorrow I'll probably start tackling the foam for the inclines...

Mock Up

Having access to AutoCAD has aided greatly in planning this railroad. Its detailed ability to measure and place real-world dimensions has allowed me to plan, draw out and calculate exactly how to bring the vision for the track design into the real world. So, naturally, now that the table is up and sitting, I figured I would try my hand at actually bringing the design into the real world and mock up what it was that I had designed on the computer. As you can see, it seems to have worked out quite well.

The inclines that you're seeing there is actually a very cool and highly recommended product by Woodland Scenics (the defacto name in model railroading scenery) which are foam incline sets -- in this case 3% grade inclines. I chose 3% (Woodland Scenics also makes 2% and 4% grade kits) because it allows me to achieve the height that I need for the overpass in the layout without me having to worry about overtaxing the engine(s) that I have. Many people recommend 2-3% inclines for HO railways.

The track that came with the starter set that Danielle got me was quite useful in this mockup stage. Although because of the plastic base the track is welded on will exclude its use in the final layout, its use is hugely beneficial for seeing how the final track will interact with the incline sets and overpass. Unfortunately because of the unusually long wheel-base of the particular engine in the starter set I have, I am "stuck" with a minimum of 18" radius curves, so handily, the plastic track is also the correct radius for the final layout as well.