Busy Thanksgiving

Hope all my friends had a good Thanksgiving, I sure did. Turkey, stuffing and all the fixings spending time with Lisa's family and a couple of days with Dad, Cathy and her family. In between, I got a lot of work on the railroad.
First, I put all the fascia back up, this time permanently. I had thought of cutting new fascia since there were a lot of screw holes from the old but I decided it was OK. I did have to paint 3 pieces of lighting valances that I reused for fascia. With the front of the layout having two sides I needed more green masonite than previously and likewise, with the train against 3 walls, I needed less sky blue ones. I mounted all the throttle and waybill holders as well as the Digitrax UP5 and UR90 panels.
Most of this was done before we headed to PA to visit Dad. On the way, I was able to stop at T&K Hobby in Bridgeport OH with my shopping list. I did not get the fine ballast I was looking for but a few things I was not able to find at the train shows this fall - rubber tipped tweezers, a Zona saw and 2 soft handle XActo knives. I also stocked up on a few Polly S paints (including Aged Concrete) and the last rail stop for the supply track at the mine. It's heavy timbers in a pile of ballast. Will look great.
Finally, I was able to rough in the mountains around the tunnel portals in Manor and Herminie. With different portals - one concrete and one stone - it looks like 2 different tunnels. Things are coming along very nicely. I even have a plan for operations where the city will be E. McKeesport for west bound traffic from Irwin servicing two sidings and Jeannette for east bound traffic servicing one spur.

Tnnnel portal at Herminie

Manor tunnel portal passes behind Dailey's Coal & Fuel and Keystone Sand & Supply

Dad...how long did you spend on the last layout?

Adam recently asked me that question as I was showing him the progress I had made ballasting all the track. It was a fair question since most of his pre-teen years were spent watching the previous layout come to life and in less than a year, I have gone from benchwork to running trains.
Our last move was in 2000 and I had originally planned to build a train in the entire basement. Four kids and limited time to work on it meant that was impractical. Bruce and I had lost touch so I was on my own to create a trackplan which took about 3 years and ultimately was a pretty simple point-to-point with staging yards. Another year or two for benchwork, a few years for cork and track, etc. To some degree my interest (or availability) waxed and waned and I needed to invest in almost everything brand new, I had a couple of locomotives and a lot of rolling stock but had not taken the DCC plunge yet (I knew I wanted to do this layout in DCC). I had some track but had to piece a large number of switches so I broke the purchase over time. I remember thinking each stage as being difficult - benchwork (I am terrible at measure twice cut once), electrical, ballasting, etc. Every step I did some reading and research, figured out how I would do it (sky backdrops comes to mind), try it, get frustrated, walk away for a while and then try again.
I had my first in September 2011 - yes, eleven years after we had moved it. We had a few problems but it was the first time I really tried to "run trains" and use car cards and waybills. It was a blast! We had a few more operating sessions but I did not get much more done on the scenery. In about 6 months I was tearing out the layout in sections for the new house.
It took a little over a year to come up with a trackplan for the new space - Bruce was a huge help in cutting down the track planning time, since it's his design! I also dabbled with multi-deck options and staging yards in the main part of the garage before setting on the current loop layout. A couple of weeks in December 2013 of lighter-than-usual work allowed me to get the benchwork pretty much done. I had a lot of the track I needed so an order of some cork and a few flex track and I was on the way. I realized I had a lot of materials - wire, DCC, ballast, scenery, freight cars, engines - that I was making steady, and sometimes amazing - progress, Of course this kept me motivated.
I had not had an official operating session yet but I am close. Somewhere between 2 and 3 years in the new house and I will be running trains again. A whole lot faster that the 11 years at the last place!

PRR Irwin Branch Schematic

There are really only a few more jobs to do on the layout and I can seriously run some trains. There are two remote switches that need to be installed, a little more ballasting, trimming out the liftout, installing the last scene divider and completing the Loconet. Of course, I need to have SOME idea of how I want to run trains, so it was time to develop a schematic of the trackplan.
I dabbled with this once before a couple of months ago and I did not get very far. I had created the last layout schematic using Excel and this one was more complex than I realized as I tried to visualize how to make a double tracked loop plan into a linear schematic.
Finally, I got smart and in 10 minutes I had sketched 5 separate schematics which I then used Visio to create and cut and paste them into an overall master.
Too easy!

Irwin Yard

Manor (in previous posts I called this town Penn Hills)

Herminie

East McKeesport

Was was known as the bridge section, now Hannahstown

The entire layout in a linear schematic

Vic's Bait and Tackle now open

The first business on the PRR Irwin Branch is open and it's Vic's Bait and Tackle.
I could go on and on about Vic's and how it has been servicing the Lake Keystone fisherman since the 50s...but I would be making it all up! Vic is a coworker at IBM and we worked a project together a few years ago. It was one of the most successful projects I have been on and I made many great friends - Vic, Paul, Bhupendra, Alfredo and others. Vic lives in the Boston area and loves to fish so when I found this cardstock kit, I just had to name it after him.

If you look carefully, you will see a girl drinking a coke on the porch

Complete with outhouses for men and women!

Compare this scene to the one on the last layout here.

The lift out...lifts out!

One of the projects I've delayed is cutting the lift out so I can walk in and out of the layout area without ducking. Very useful when I am just working on the train...not so good when it's running.
There are 2 problems with a lift out. First, ensuring it fits well enough to stay in place and the trains run well across it. Second, the electrical connection. I fitted the liftout pretty well as I was building the benchwork and then ran the track across it. Now I only had to cut the track (I had cut the cork after the glue had dried) and I finally did that today.

The liftout removed so I don't have to duck while working on the layout

For the electrical connection, I had thought of something rather complicated - brass or copper plates under the liftout that would make the connection when in place. Instead, I found a stereo plug and wired the two tracks to a terminal strip, then the terminal strip to the plug. Had a bugger of a time trying to figure out how I added a short circuit. I removed all the wires, one by one and still had a short. Turns out, inside the plug the wires were touching!

All track has ballast between the rails

Another project I finished - or close to it - was the first part of ballasting the track. All the track on the layout, except for the 2 feet of the liftout, has ballast between the rails. Much of the layout also has the sides of the roadbed ballasted and I only have to finish the West Yard, mainline through Irwin and a few feet of the mainline past Irwin and entering E. McKeesport from the west.
Looking good! I have two simple projects to finish this weekend - mount the remaining scenery divider behind E. McKeesport and ... well, the other one is a surprise!

Full Disclosure ... the real look behind the scenes

I thought I should share how the train room typically looks as I am working on the layout. Many of the photos show the layout uncluttered, the room relatively neat and clean. Not true.

How the train room usually appears as I am working

You can see 3 projects I am working on in this view of E McKeesport and the peninsula. First, I completed the rough ballasting on all the tracks in Hermine so I am starting to add more scenery details starting with painting the green insulation board with a burnt umber. In the far background is my tray of ballast, glues and tools. Right in front of it is the scene divider that I need to place between E. McKeesport and the 2 hidden tracks that run along the wall. Behind the peninsula, under the Irwin Yard, you can see my work desk which is rather cluttered but actually pretty cleaned up for a change. Finally in the very foreground you can see some of the scene detailing I have completed for Vic's Bait and Tackle shop, I am hoping this will be my first complete scene and I might even finish it this weekend.
The next photo shows the Irwin Yard side of the layout. Here I am almost done ballasting the sides of the roadbed in Penn Hills and I am beginning to rough in the mountain and tunnel that will pass through the scene divider running down the peninsula. Only a little of the mainline in this section remains to be ballast. I have a pretty good idea how I want this section to look so it may be the next scenery I tackle after Vic's and the WCC Coal Mine in Herminie.

Work on the Irwin Yard part of the layout

I have all 4 yard tracks in the East Yard (farthest away in picture) center ballasted. One track and the cabin track closest to the edge already had side ballast and I finished the other 3 tracks shortly after I took this photo. The engine track is completed. I need to do both the center and sides of the mainline through the yard and the spur behind the yard. If you look in the top right corner, you can see the scene divider I mentioned above leaning against the layout.
What you don't see in these photos is the work I am also doing on the electrical. I am still trying to make 3 remaining Loconet cables but right now I am working on the plug wiring for the liftout bridge.
Many projects keeping me busy!

Ballasting Track

I follow the same basic steps as Cody Grivno has explained in the Jan 2007 issue of Model Railroader. The first step is to spread the ballast between the tracks. I use a plastic spoon to sprinkle a spur or 4 feet of mainline, then carefully spread it between the ties so very little is laying on the rail sides or top of the track.

Spreading ballast between ties

Next, I slide a pipette along the inside rails to wet the ballast with straight rubbing (isopropal) alcohol. Others recommend 70/30 diluted but other than the odor, I'm fine with full strength and you can get economical quart bottles at the drug store.

Apply alcohol as a wetting agent.

The alcohol acts as a wetting agent to help the glue, next step, seep into the ballast and firmly adhere it. Once I let this set for 5 minutes or so, I come back with another pipette and apply Woodland Scenes Scenic Cement.
After letting that dry overnight, I run a bead of white glue along the side of the track and use a small flat brush to evenly coat the side of the cork roadbed. I have tried 50/50 glue water mixture but I find the glue right out of the bottle works best for me. I come back with the plastic spoon and sprinkle the ballast along the glue line.

Spreading the glue to the side of the roadbed

I try to be a little sparing with the ballast here since anything that does not directly touch the glue will get sucked up in the shop vac. I go over this section with a 1" foam brush and tap along the top of the ties to push the loose ballast into the glue and then pull along the side to get the profile.

Pressing the ballast into the glue along the roadbed

Again, this dries overnight and the final picture below shows the result. The final step is to go back and dress up any gaps but I will complete this rough texturing first around the layout before I come back to that.

Basic ballast - I will eventually come back and fill in the gaps

Weekend Efforts

Well, I had a busy weekend and was not sure how much I could accomplish. First, there was the NMRA Div 3 Train Show in Dayton which Bruce and I managed to get to Saturday morning. I managed to find a couple of the progress-stopping items that I needed but as usual came home with about 1/2 of what I was hoping to find. I plan to scrub through my wish list and shopping list and maybe make 1 or 2 more mail order placements to get me through into next year.
Part of what I need to plan for is that fact that I am moving into the scenery phase of my layout. Over the last week or two I managed to lay ballast between ties on about 1/2 of the layout. This weekend I was able to ballast the sides of all the track in Penn Hills and Hermine. My next blog post will be describe the 3 step process in more detail.
The big thing I did this weekend was install the first - and the anchor - scenery divider which runs diagonally down the peninsula to separate Penn Hills (left) from Hermine (right). There will be another scene break hiding the mainline tracks along the back wall next to Penn Hills.

All track on peninsula ballasted and scenery divider installed