Added new page, real trains to visit in Western North America. This nex week I will fill in details of the ones I have visited and my recomendations.

Moving forward again, the N scale has been disassembled, the HO is in pieces and due to other circumstances the Garden rail never got running in 2009.

Going forward from here; I need a large volume of fill for the garden even though I did not get any running in last year I did get several tests done for ballasting, shortly I will upload before and after pictures of various mixes for you all to see.

The water system is operational I have built it out as a two stage system there is a small pump for circulation, but there is also a full size pumping system for those days when I plan on visitors.  

I will schedule my self to take a photo every Saturday (weather permitting)

In side the HO will be built as several different sets, one a large yard for operations and train movement, the other pieces will be built as dioramas, for I find I am more interested in fine detail modeling, than running a large empire.

Step one is bench work, as of this date plans are roughed out but material still need to be purchased.

I will probably take photos each Saturday on that as well.

 Not quite a blog but I am going to actively add more updates.

August 5, 2009

HO

The deconstruction has started and it so far looks as good as I had hoped. I cut the surface of the scenery then force apart the individual pieces I wish to keep. Some of that plaster was really thick but cutting one section at a time it will come. The key is to go into the project knowing you must sacrifice some parts of the layout to be able to save some others.

The ultimate goal here is to save the best parts of the layout for reuse either in a new layout or as an individual diorama.

When doing this we knew from the start that the control panel and the wiring sub boards were of no use, so after Liam, Amanda and I cleared all the moveable pieces, and stored them Mike disassembled the wiring, with the goal of maximizing lead length to the individual switches. You may be thinking why not leave the sub boards, but one of the details that prompted this exercise it the fact that the yard is too big, at 38 inches by 72 it is just too big for any one to handle or use. As it stands the yard has a main passenger station (four track), large engine facility (4 track), three small businesses and eight more storage tracks. The plan is to cut it into 5 pieces; the storage tracks will be split between the engine facility and one of the industries, the other two industries and the passenger facilities will stand-alone.

 In the mountain area there are four pieces to be saved, the sawmill, the lake, the mountaintop and the canyon. Fortunately the mountaintop with its forest and the lake are pop-outs for access so they care saved easily, last trip over I cut off the canyon ready to remove the supports.

Sorry about not keeping the WEB site up to date, but I have been taking picture of the work as I go along and over the next short time I will add entries.

As things have evolved I decided to experiment with various problems in Model railroading to document the experiments and show you the results over time.

Projects on the go,

• Roadbed mix to be simple yet long lasting I have several mixtures installed, and as soon as we get some weathering and settling in I will show you the different results.
• Water feature, I will be testing several methods of creating and lining a streambed.
• De-construction of an empire, Mother sold the house and the HO railroad has to move,  while I designed a layout that could be disassembled the pieces are too big they are room specific, so I hope to surgically break it down into several pieces, each that can be handled by one person. Then the next project will be re use of the pieces. My sons have indicated that while they cannot put up a layout yet, they would appreciate a diorama made up from parts of the empire, so that when they have families they could start Grandpa’s trains all over again.

Since this is a limited size WEB site, I will at soon have to start removing old history, If anyone is interested I will package a complete history of the Garden rail and the HO empire on CD. 

Aug 2008

Sometimes you just have to say bucket and get the shovel out.

In line with some new work I want to start, I realized the open space was not in the right place.

So I tore out 25 feet of track, dug up 4 cubic yards of mountain and moved it 5 feet back.

Those of you who have layouts know it was not that simple because the mountain is built up from the bottom.

I had to dissasemble the moutain, large rock and rubble dug out ot the existing mountain, placed in new position then all the fill moved.

New Balast has to be placed, but at least I now have space for several building projects I have planned

You can contact me at richmond-rail@shaw.ca