Drawerzilla and other projects

I finally completed the freight car drawers or as I call it Drawerzilla.  This was a major undertaking as it turned out bigger than  I planned.  I finally put the finishing touches on it Saturday and brought it in the house.  Between wood and redoing my deck last week, I bet I went to my local Home Depot everyday last week.  I still need to paint it and get another drawer liner and dividers for the last drawer.  I decided to put wheels on it to be able to move this behemoth.

Here is my 6 drawers of freight cars.

Holds 3 50' cars across, with space to spare.

The dividers are wood.  Not Ideal but made installation easy.

Tank car storage.  These were the hardest to store in my opinion.  Too many fragile pieces compared to a boxcar.

The last drawer need to be completed

The drawer liner keeps cars from rolling and moving.

Finally got the chevron stripes on the VC #107 now to add the grabs and weather.

Did a custom Southern woodchip hopper based on a prototype.

In between working on Drawerzilla, I worked on these two locos.  I wasn't going to add the VM logo to the C430, but man does it look great!  RS11 #204 is a Norfolk, Franklin and Danville prototype loco.

And my birthday present to myself, a SD40F "Red Barn"  I'm currently working on Econami Sound install.

And for something different to benefit the layout

As you know, I do a few videos on You Tube and I also have several channels I check out.  Not only do I look for what's on the layout, but what's off or around the layout.  I was watching a video just last week and noticed shelved drawers under the layout.  These would have to be for freight car storage and I was correct.  Eric Miller of SPSF fame SPSF Railway  (make sure you check out his website!) has a very nice layout.  I contacted him and he send me some pictures of the shelving units.

Here is a picture of Eric's drawers (Eric Miller photo)

  So I began to ponder and figure out how I can build one of these.  I only need one for my small layout.  It was nice to have a bunch of excess wood in my shed I could build the drawers with.  Had to go to my local Home Depot to get the 3/4" cabinet wood sides and the drawer hardware.

The first of many drawers

Lining up the sliding parts and leaving enough space between was tough but it worked out.

Wow!  I have some major space to put cars in these seven drawers.  Now to figure out what to use/how to divide up the drawers. 

My stopping point today.  Tomorrow I hope to complete this project and it will require a trip back to Home Depot!

I also finally finished my track laying of staging track by my helix last week.  I have 2 good sized tracks to hold entire trains to run east across the layout.

Here's the end of the 2 staging tracks.  The one starts to run back up the helix.  My helix is made for 2 tracks.

This is what I added to complete it.

The mainline and the Parker passing siding is on the left and the 2 staging tracks are in the middle of the picture.  Still need to power the turnout.