Sunday Funday

Today I took some time to work on some of the structures for the layout.

First up was the bakery/food processing plant. I put on the painted sections for the warehouse portion and glued them in place. I need to prime and paint the masonry that goes at the bottom.

 I then installed the base for the silos and the building next to them. Once the glue dries, I will install the tops of the silos and then add the detail parts (rails, ladders etc.)

Some other plans I have for the plant and some unloading rack/area for the vegetable oil, corn syrup and liquid sugar. And a place for grain and flour unloading. This will be a nice build and I will be kitbashing and scratch building some of the structures. Can't wait to detail and weather them. I need to purchase some industrial tanks and the food processing plant should be good to go.

Stay tuned!

Progress

Well layout progress has been a little slow lately since I was at training for work the past few days, and with being away from work leaves the issue of having to come back to things that were put on hold.


The bench-work was completed, and I added the background today. The background is Masonite (1/8") cut into two 4' lengths. I have one small 2' section that needs to be cut. The Masonite was secured with 3/4" lath screws. I then painted the Masonite with primer and followed it up with sky blue spray paint when the primer dried. I wasn't sure if I was going to like the results but when I hit it was the sky blue it came to shape nicely. But i saw I was missing spots, but this gave me a nice effect of light, thin gray clouds. To me it seems to give it a little depth.

( The picture looks a bit dark. I will try to get better ones)

I also cut some 1' foam today to fit the layout. I tired using a utility knife, but could never achieve a nice clean cut. I did a little research on YouTube and found that there were some blades out there used to cut foam. I took a trip to my local hardware stores with no luck. So I checked out Amazon, as one of the videos suggested. I picked up Festool blade, model S155/W. This blade is specific for soft materials (cardboard, foam, etc.) This fits most model jig saws. It worked out great, I got a nice clean, smooth edge. I cut four 18" x 4' pieces for the layout. Tomorrow I will paint the bases brown and glue them into place.

I also did some work for my main industry on this layout, a food processing/bakery industry. I am basing it off some photos and overhead shots of these types of industries in my area. The facility will be a kitbash between the Magic Pan Bakery and Buds Trucking Company. Both are Walther's kits. I paints the metal part of the warehouse area today. The colors for this are Almond for the bakery and ingredient unloading building. Silos will be painted white.

Once the foam is secured down, I will then make the decision whether to go with Atlas track, or make the leap and put in hand laid track, but I still may put in a mix of Atlas and some Micro-Engineering. Turnouts for this will be Peco.

Renovation

Well today I made a trip to Lowes and purchased some lumber and a sheet of plywood. While at Lowes, I took advantage of having the plywood cut into two (2) 18" x 8' lengths. I also purchased some 1"x 2" x 8' pieces of lumber. I used the lumber and made a box and girder type bench work is a piece of 1/4" project pine board on the top.

The bench work was 8 feet long and 18 inches wide. This replaced my 80 inch by 24 inch hollow core door bench work that was on shelving brackets. I kept the brackets up and blacked the box/girder bench work on top. It's amazing with what 6 inches of width will do! With the 24 inch hollow core doors, it felt like there was too much space. I contemplated taking it down to 16 inches but felt 18 would be enough for some of the industries I had in mind. I also gained 2 feet on each end so now things do not look so cramped.

I also picked up an eBay score, an Intermountain BN P-S 5277 Cu. Ft Box car. I plan on weathering it in the coming weeks after the layout is all set up. This from Intermountain's Pinnacle Series. Very nice car.

Next weekend I hopefully can get a foam cutting blade for a jig saw so I can have nice crisp edges for the foam that I'd like to install. After that I hope to paint the foam and get everything ready for track installation and wiring.

Track planning is coming along and I am hoping to get that mapped out this evening so that way when its time to install on the foam, it will go smoothly.

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. 

Reference Photos Part 2

I wanted this blog not only to include my construction of my layout, but I wanted to include some photos to help modelers build industries on their layouts.

Below are some photos that I took at a rail served industry. The company makes wood trusses that are shipped out by truck. They receive center-beam flats of lumber via the Norfolk Southern Local that services the area from the Reading Yard.

 

Loading/unloading dock area. This could be achieved using the Pikestuff Kit.

 

Team track area w/ cement pad.

 

The small grade crossing is made of wood. To replicate this you could use the Woodland Scenics kit or I think Blair Line makes a laser kit you could install and stain.

 

Picture of the switch with the derail.

 

This is a picture of the area used to fill trailers with woodchips/saw dust from the manufacturing process. This has a spot for 2 trailers.

 

Shot of the sawdust/woodchip bin.

Tech Tip. Tuesday

Hello Modelers!

I am going to begin a series of posts on Tuesday of hopefully every week showing something I use to help with model railroading.

This week is something I just picked up for helping with painting. I picked up an inexpensive "Lazy Susan" at my local Bed Bath and Beyond.

I think this was $7.99. It has a rubber area and it spins pretty nice. Would be a great addition to you spray booth.

Mail Call Monday



Here is a few items I received in the mail from various sources. Most of the items were from eBay but one items is from Modeltrainstuff.com and the other was a sale off Facebook.

(SORRY FOR THE SIDEWAY PIC. IT WOULD NOT LET ME EDIT IT)

 

I picked this beauty up from Shaun Toman's Custom Weathering. Model is a Tangent PS4750 Covered Hopper. Pictures do not do it justice but this will look great at my trans-loading area on the layout.

Picked this up off of eBay. Custom weathered Liquid Sugars tank car

This was another eBay purchase. I think I have a covered hopper in my collection from the same company Specialty Minerals.

 

Yet another eBay purchase. I actually bought 3 of these. In the picture are the two I got in one auction.

The item I bought from Modeltrainstuff.com was the Walther's Cornerstone Series Medusa Cement.

 

 

 

I also picked up a clay slurry tank car which I cant find a decent picture of at the moment. Things are coming along but I think I will need to start inventorying and cataloging my cars so I know exactly what I have.

 

Thanks for keep up with the updates. Stay tuned for more, and maybe even a YouTube video in the future!