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jbvb
Fireman
Premium Member
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Posted - 10/13/2010 : 10:57:39 AM
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Thanks Mike, Mike and Les - I've gotten a lot done for a handlaying, rivet-counting lone-wolf in the past few years. Encouragement from RR-Line people has helped. Business and vacation travel will prevent much more progress in October, but I hope to get more done in early November. Late November will be cleanup, organization and polishing, as I plan to invite locals to drop in before or after the Tour De Chooch (North of Boston layout tour Thanksgiving weekend, http://www.trainweb.org/cmrc/TdeC2010.pdf).
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jbvb
Fireman
Premium Member
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 Posted - 10/28/2010 : 10:43:39 PM
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Since I got back from my K&WV Ry. vacation, I've only gotten a little modeling done. It's been tracklaying on the last of the westbound main past River Works, but I've tried to make it photogenic:
When handlaying a crossover or anything else where turnouts are close together, particularly when points aren't all facing the same way, you've got a choice: If you build each turnout independently, you get extra rail joints and potential difficulty getting everything into smooth alignment. If you minimize rail joints, alignment is smooth but several individual rails will be parts of more than one turnout. What I do is spike on alternate sides, so I can wiggle the rail out of place, file it or clean weathering off, and put it back to check. This also lets me get one turnout right before starting on a frog or point notches at the other end of the same rail.
As shown above, I'm at the stage where I want to move the rails back and forth to adjust the location of the point of the frog relative to the stock rails installed earlier. It's just about right, so after I took the picture I spiked the rest and started on the closure rails.
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Edited by - jbvb on 10/29/2010 09:40:34 AM |
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Neil M
Fireman
Premium Member
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jbvb
Fireman
Premium Member
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Posted - 11/07/2010 : 5:40:58 PM
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I spent yesterday on unphotogenic track laying; all I did with the guard house was cut out the roof. Today started way too early because my wife forgot to cancel the alarm she set for Saturday. With company asleep I couldn't go tramp around in the attic, so I set to work upgrading my home FreeBSD computer. What does this have to do with model railroading? I got XTrkCAD running and I have a partial track schematic (semi-scale) to show you:
Newburyport and West Lynn are left and right of the chimney at the top. Rowley is below Newburyport. The three branches into the middle of the room (City RR and Pond St. spur at Newburyport, oil terminal spur at Lynn) aren't begun yet. Aside from them, I expect everything drawn will be operable by Thanksgiving.
The drawing to date has taken 4-5 hours of commuter train time. Bexley, at the lower right, isn't drawn yet - I hope to finish that in dead time during a business trip later this week.
It's a 'schematic' because it isn't based on an exact survey of what I built. In many cases, it was a lot easier to sketch with off-the-shelf parts than to tweak to achieve the exact turnout I wound up building. I expect it will be good enough to lay out roads, structures and signals. And if I ever need an exact drawing, I'll be a lot further up the learning curve.
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Red P
Fireman
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Posted - 11/08/2010 : 07:17:32 AM
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Your track work looks great. Good track work is the most important part of the layout building process.
P
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| https://www.flickr.com/photos/eightnotch/ |
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jbvb
Fireman
Premium Member
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Posted - 11/14/2010 : 10:18:17 PM
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Progress this past week has been mostly finishing turnouts, building a bookcase for my bound magazines and cleanup/organizing. The New Hampshire segment of Tour de Chooch is Saturday 27 November:
http://www.hubdiv.org/images/TourDeChoochFlyer.pdf
My home is not very far off the most direct route from Massachusetts points to Stratham/Greenland/Newington; I'm about 3.5 miles from exit 58 (Mass. 110 in Salisbury) and about the same from Amesbury's I-495 exits. I'm also fairly close to both routes from Stratham to Plaistow.
I'd be happy to show my layout to interested readers between 3-6PM on Saturday. Please PM me for directions. It's located in my attic, up two flights of stairs.
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MisterBill
Section Hand
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Posted - 11/25/2010 : 10:47:17 AM
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Hi James. Following your progress for quite some time now. Looks like you're hitting critical mass with operational track. very nice.
The Xtrack plan really helps tie your thread together. Don't see many medium sized layout plans represented with both rails.
Always look forward to your posts. Keep up the great work. -Bill
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jbvb
Fireman
Premium Member
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Posted - 11/27/2010 : 11:46:26 PM
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Thanks, Bill - I used XTrkCad's "Export to bitmap" function, then my daughter resized it in Photoshop. Of course, when I go to do it again now that the plan's completed, I can't recreate the settings. I'll try again tomorrow.
My 'sidebar' open house turned out well - ten visitors stopped by after Tour de Chooch. I ran a lot of my equipment and it only turned up two operating problems. And I may have found a round-robin group: it's old friends (+) but the nearest layout is an hour away (-). Afterward. lacking any photogenic progress to show, I tried a new angle on Rowley:
I like it, but I should re-shoot with headlight and more depth-of-field.
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LVRALPH
Fireman
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Posted - 11/28/2010 : 06:54:49 AM
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Love it!
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INRAIL
Crew Chief
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Posted - 11/28/2010 : 11:37:24 PM
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Checked your progress again. Looking fantastic!
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jbvb
Fireman
Premium Member
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Posted - 12/03/2010 : 10:55:09 PM
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We got our layout set up for the Hub (Marlborough MA) show this afternoon. Between this show, business travel next week and showing at the Museum of Our National Heritage (Lexington, MA) next weekend, I'm not expecting a lot of modeling time. But I did generate another image of my plan, and posting it here will save people scrolling when we move on to the next page.
Save As Bitmap from XTrkCad at 16 DPI, resized to 1600 pixels wide and saved at 50% JPEG quality with ShowFoto.
I did some more surveying and spent a while adjusting locations etc. relative to the original plan. This is pretty close to what's built, except the two peninsulas aren't begun yet. And of course I haven't got a layout of the GE River Works (right top, between the wye and the backdrop) I am willing to commit to yet.
I should add station and street names, and figure out how to display tunnels and overpass vs. underpass.
A note about the long mainline straights in the left end of the room: it's prototypic. The Eastern built so straight across the marshes that I can see an eastbound's headlight before it arrives at Rowley, 5 miles away.
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dnhman
Fireman
Premium Member
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Posted - 12/04/2010 : 1:24:08 PM
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Nice trackwork for sure. Intersting track plan also great operational possibilities,,,
Thanks for sharing,
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| Cheers!, Joe |
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| Posts: 1096 |
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jbvb
Fireman
Premium Member
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Posted - 12/04/2010 : 8:13:52 PM
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Thanks, Joe. The basic operational scheme starts out with the prototype's:
The 6 short staging tracks (top center) will begin with 1 through and 2 commuter consists in each direction.
The commuter consists will likely make more than one trip per session.
The middle track gets used for freight, most of which moved to and from Boston in 'haulers', jobs which often
made two round trips. These come on stage, work Lynn (top right) and turn in Bexley (bottom center/right). One
commuter train turns there too, but most work at the enginehouse is supplying engines for the Bexley and West
Lynn switch jobs. A pair of daily locals operate Bexley - Newburyport (left end) - East staging, with most spurs
being switched by whichever direction has them trailing point. GE has its own 44-tonner. Because Bexley freight
yard has no lead, it will mostly be used for block swapping. Traffic will include two perishable customers,
several team tracks and two freight houses, with high/wide loads coming out of GE's Gear Works.
During planning, I decided to extend the prototype for more interest: I plan to operate the two long staging tracks
(top center/right, Saugus branch on the prototype) as a connection to the New Haven in South Boston. The EB
(clockwise) State of Maine (overnight Pullman) goes on one, and the EB Maine Bullet (NYC - MEC fast freight) on the
other. I tentatively plan to run 12 timetable hours per session, with 4-6 operators, so I'd need to wye at least
the State of Maine between sessions.
Right now I'm at the stage of test-operating one freight or another to get a feel for timing and how it will interact
with the parade of passenger trains. I think I've got enough running tracks etc. so it will go smoothly, but there are
several options I may try out, depending on crew size/experience/interests.
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Waverly RR
New Hire
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Posted - 12/05/2010 : 9:32:47 PM
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I'm really looking forward to seeing scenery begin, just because of the quality we've already seen in the Rowley modules. Are you bringing them to Lexington this year? I'll hopefully be there Saturday if I can take off from work to play trains.
Alex
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Mike Hamer
Engineer
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