Track Down...Feeders installed

Last week I was hit with being sick and had some remnants of that this weekend. Today I was feeling much better and decided to hit the train room. First up was some cleaning and organizing with a deep clean of the area rug that is in the room. After that I decided to organize some containers with my rolling stock. You never realize how much rolling stock you have until you go through it.

I then decided to break down and do my least favorite, but most important, part of model railroading. The wiring. I guess because my soldering iron skills aren't the best is why I shy away from it. But you only get better with practice. I practiced on a couple pieces of track a few years ago and the results weren't bad but nothing like the guys that have been doing this for years. So I decided to solder directly to the rail as opposed to soldering to the rail joiners. I saw in some places that this was frowned upon because you do not have the best electrical connectivity as you would going direct to the rail. Plus this method was mentioned in the book How to Build a Shelf Layout (http://www.amazon.com/Build-Switching-Layout-Lance-Mindheim/dp/1453811346/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1450061846&sr=8-3&keywords=lance+mindheim.)

Got a little too close with the soldering iron and melted some of the foam. 

I will fill it in with foam putty.

I also worked on another industry for the layout. Not sure what it will be. This is a City Classics kit. Its a pretty easy build and one of my favorites. I painted it using rattle can paints from Rustoelum and Valspar. The concrete color is tan camouflage paint and the brick is the brown primer. The door are a light olive type color from Valspar. I tested out the car entrance and I need to lift the building a bit to achieve rolling stock making entry.

Stay tuned. Hoping to have the wiring completed this week!

Moving Along!

Hey Gang! Sorry for not updating as usual. I got hit with sickness truck and was unable to get anything done. I am feeling better so it's back to the train room.

I clear coated the warehouse building of the paper company. I need to just install a roof section and paint it, clear coat the building and that will be ready for some details decals and some weathering. I also added a second story to the food processing/bakery plant. I also reconfigured the silos to go along with the track plan i had in a previous post. I mounted the background building to a piece of 1/2" thick foam board, then I glued some plastruct metal siding to the top to match the original structure . I still need to add some more details and weather the top. I am also working on an unloading area for grain and tank cars. Still in the planning stages with this not exactly sure what I want to do.

(I was taking the picture at a weird angle)

I also go to gluing down my track. I am now about 85% done. After that hoping to start installing feeder wires and have some trains running soon. The sickness put me back a few days.

A view from the paper plant side of the layout.

Mock-ups and paint

Today I took some time to paint the 1" foam pieces that I cut for the layout. I picked up a can of Latex paint at Lowe's. The color was Satin Java Brown. Went on no problem with a brush. Once it dried I added it to the layout. Because of the paint, the foam board slightly warped (nothing major). I still need to glue the foam board down and when I do I will just add weight on the top to ensure a level surface in the end. Some of the board had some divots in it from transport. This will be no issue as they will have scenery or road put over them. I also took the time to rough in some structures and track, and spotted some cars just to see what I am dealing with. It didn't turn out to bad and I think things will turn out great. I may touch up the sky prior to gluing down the foam so i can ensure that it will be blue sky's looking at me (my attempt a musical humor).

I still am going to add one more track in as a sorting/storage track for this industry.

The next addition for this industry will be a Rix Product storage tank I picked up off of eBay a few months ago. I took this tip from Lance Mindheim's book about shelf layouts. He built a food processing plant and had a tank there for vegetable oil. That is the game plan for this structure. As for other liquid ingredients, I am going to build a building next to it for those items. I'm not sure if it will be an addition off of the brick structure next to the silos or not. 

Work on this is a bit slow, but it is coming along. Stay tuned for more updates as I hope to have track down, and wired with in the coming weeks!

Update

Hello everyone! I apologize for the absence but work has been keeping me very busy and not helping with hobby time!

Since my last post I have installed some lighting and put down foam on the hollow core doors. I have been tooling around with track plans and it has been the most time consuming, an frustrating, thing. I have seeked help for at least two people for ideas and nothing seems to strike my fancy. My issue is that I want to have minimal amount of industries but maximize number of cars and car spots. HOWEVER, I do not have the space I really want for what I want to do. SO it as back to the drawing board.

I narrowed it down to about 2-3 industries. I wanted something unique but fun. First I drew up an idea for a paper plant. Things were looking great. I was doing research, Google Earth, Bing Maps and even some of the Trackside Industries books. IN the one book I found a plan for a paper plant. I was pumped, until I got the measuring tape out. I couldn't do it for the space I had. SO back to the drawing board.

A few weeks passed and I got the urge to try and get something figured out. So I started hunting again. This time I saw a cement plant. I had a number of cement hoppers and I started looking again. I figured the cement plant would be the center focus, with some smaller industries to keep it fun. Issue was that I couldn't achieve what I wanted. This time the space was too big for what I wanted to model.

This brings me to my other friend Google Search. I just started typing keywords for small HO switching layouts. I dug around and found some of Lance Mindheim's blogs. I have read them before but haven't really kept up to date. Well I poked around and did some reading and I found something that fit the mold. It was a simple "L" Shaped layout that had one siding and a major industry that took 3 different car types. (Boxcars, Grain hoppers and tank cars). I read the article some more and it made sense! Keep it short and simple. Easy track plan with Atlas track that can be upgraded to Micro Engineering (OR Hand-laid track). So I went and dug through the cache of rolling stock to see if I had the necessary items at hand, which I did. ( I had been building for a paper plant prior.) So next step was to start looking for a building kit. I knew I would either need to kitbash or scratchbuild. While looking through the collection of building kits, I found a Magic Pan Bakery Kit. With that I started thinking, maybe I need to make a low relief building of this and go from there.  So looks like a little more research will be in the works for me.

While looking at the picturs some more, I really wanted to have a cement and aggregate facility as well. (I just recently purchased some Blue Star Ready Mix tractor trailers for gravel hauling) SO I will be modifying the plan I saw, but who knows, I may just keep it short and simple.

 

Photo from Lance Mindheim's Blog

 

 

 

If anyone has feed back they wish to provide please let me know. I have been trying to have a functioning layout for over 3 years and I just keep getting frustrated over track work and a plan.