Tree making and West end scenery

I have worked on the scenery for my west end of the layout because simply that part of the layout has no scenery whatsoever.  I put in the ballast last week and that helped but it needed alot more.  This area is only about 12" inches wide and 4 feet long but I want it to be more rural than my industrial switching area.  This area also has the "hole in the wall" that leads to hidden staging.  So its not easily done.  I wanted to hide the hole in the wall so it will not be visible.  I also have an overpass in this same general area.  I had two overpasses but settled on one so that I could put some trees in to hide the rest of the area.  My sub-road bed is plywood so planting trees would be challenging.  I used some 1/2" blue foam board to give the area some height and to also plant trees in.  Here's my progress:

Background trees have been painted and foam shaped, painted and installed.

Another view of the area.

Initial coat of scenery.  Background trees have been touched up with more paint.

This area with have the bridge span and foundation.  Need to paint the stud in the wall a dark color!

Tree planting is off to a good start.  Since  The little ridge is only a few inches from the track, I had to choose tall skinny trees.  I push in the foam with a Philips screwdriver and insert the tree. 

From a distance.  I have plenty of holes to fill and bushes to add.  Use the smaller trees and plant them in the empty spaces at the top.  Gives you lots of variety and the look of trees behind the foreground trees.

Almost done shot.  The glue bottle is holding bushes against an area near the "hole in the wall".

A track view. The white paper towels protect my ballast from paint, glue and scenery.

VC #3 poses for a shot near the woods.  In my hasty work, I forgot that I was going to send a wood chip tube across the tracks.  Might have to send it the other way now. 

Scenery tidbits at Battlefield Yard and a new industry?

Did a little scenery to Battlefield yard towards the end of the week.  I did a Scenic Express order earlier in the week and wanted to try some of their grass mats.  It seems a lot of modelers are using them on their layouts and are getting decent looking results.  I also used some of their scenic dirt and used that in the parking lot/roadway.  It looks good but I need to go back and pick out the bigger pieces.

A new industry I want to put on the layout is a wood chip loader.  I've always wanted one but could never find the right spot.  I even did some research and thanks to some guys on Trainorders.com, I was shown pictures of a small loader in the northwest.  The facility is hundreds of yards away but the loader is across the road.  Mine will be across the tracks.

C424 #292 stops on track #5 beside the grassy meadow.  I will tone this down a little with bushes and darker grass materials.

BB #3002 waits for it's next move. 

The conductor prepares to climb down off of #292 for a little break.

Looking for that dirt/ballast/sandy parking area.  I believe I have found it.

This loader is pretty close to what Walthers has.  I already have it built!

Talk about the facility been away from the tracks.  

I would send the loader pipe across the tracks to the left at and angle.  The perpendicular angle does look right.  I've been struggling with the bridge scene in the background.  That's also perpendicular and harder to fix. 

Scenery rush and another dilemma

Spent the last week working on some scenery items on the layout.  In my last update, I replaced 2 turnouts that would help out the layout.  I finally got the Old Dominion Foods turnout installed and it looks great and more importantly it works great.  So after I got the turnouts in and wired, I was ready for some ballast.  I had a whole bag left and a little in another to work with.  I use real rock ballast and it looks great.  A lot better than the walnut shells Woodland Scenics has.  I used the little bag first and then opened the second bag.  It was not the ballast I needed.  It was super fine!  This ballast was bought from a vendor at local shows.  The vendor, Brazos & Pecos owned by Gene Browning, died earlier in the year.  I thought I had enough to finish the layout, but I did not since I bought the wrong bag last year at a show.   So I was at a stopping point.  I ordered some Highball ballast online last week and it arrived on Friday.  It was the wrong color and was not even close.  Hard to order ballast online especially when your trying to match what is down already!  So, on Saturday I was a vendor at the Lynchburg Railday train show.  I always do this show.  It's a great small show in the area.  Last time I was there, I bought the ballast from B&P.  After looking around the show, I found a vendor who's been clearing out in the last 2 shows there.  There and behold, I found not one bag, but 2 bags of the ballast I needed.  I got the 2 bags, 4 coal loads and a bag of granite loads for $9.  I was very thrilled!

Last night I finished ballasting all the mainlines on the VM.  I just glued it down a few hours ago.  It feels good to finally seeing this layout getting finished.  At least for the ballast!  I also put in an order to Scenic Express for a some grass mats and other items.  The only ballast I have left is two spurs that have no industries on them.

Add all my switch timbers last week while waiting on the wrong ballast.

The turnout at Old Dominion Foods works great.

Virginia Central trackage is drying.  Real stone ballast will always be darker when glued down.

The VM mainline is complete with ballast.  The spur to the right will be a pulpwood loading area on the VC.

Another view from the Battlefield Yard area.

I also did some work on the Battlefield yard crew house.  I used Monster Model Works concrete sheets for the parking lot,  Cannot wait to add the rest of the details.

Turnout replacement & track realignment

Ever since my last operational session, I wanted to replace the turnout into Old Dominion Foods and realign the Virginia Central trackage.  Well I got that going last week sort of.  The taking out of the turnouts was easy.  Both areas were ballasted in.  Warm water with some Dawn dish detergent dripped on the ballast lets the glue loose it's grip.  Then it is simply taking out the track.  I had to cut the track for the turnout into OD Foods using my Demel tool.  If you do not have one of these rotary tools, you have to get one.  Mine is a generic one I got from BJ's for $20 and came with a thousand attachments.  It's a must in track laying, or in my case track removal.

  Lets start with the VC alignment first.  This required taking out a lot more track.  I wanted this area to be more smooth to operate and a little more room in the spur trackage.  I also want to remove a turnout that was tight.  I used a Peco curved turnout to give me the most room.  I'm not total sold on it but it may look better when ballasted.

 The OD Foods turnout was a different story.  I also replaced this #4 turnout with a medium radius Peco turnout.  This spur gets mainly long mechanical reefers and they were ugly going through this turnout.  I wanted a bigger turnout to have these reefers flow into OD Foods.  It worked perfectly but I had a problem, the turnout was not DCC friendly.  So I worked on it, cut on it, and almost re-built it. I thought I had it but i did not.  I added some plastic shims to protect the frog from shorts.  I finally came to the point that I would have to put styrene in the top of the rail in the frog.  That when I said, OK I'm getting a PECO turnout that's DCC friendly.  Being totally flustered for 2 days in a row, a guy on HO- Interchange yahoo group was selling PECO DCC friendly turnouts.  A bunch of them.  He had what I needed and it's on it's way now.  The offending turnout is still in my trackage, waiting to be "ripped" out.  I got to the point where the turnout only short out when going straight through the switch.

Before shot.  Wanted to extend the spur and get rid of the turnout in the middle.

A shot from the other end.

 

New trackage in.  The curved Peco turnout gives me more options in this area.  The spur leads on the left leads to an unknown industry.  It maybe a wood chip loader.

View of the VC trackage on the other end.

The old turnout has been removed.  I believe I used a Atlas #4 turnout because it was the only one that would fit.  I mainly use #6's.

The hole is for the under the table switch machine.  I use the Atlas ones with push buttons and they work pretty good.  The Peco switch has automatic locking switch, so the switch machine will not be needed.  I covered the hole with a very thin piece of styrene.

The +$#*!@# pain in my butt turnout.  It looks good and provides smoother trackage into Old Dominion Foods.

Operational Session with Norm Wolf

Yesterday I had a planned operational session with Norm Wolf on the layout.  He's been wanting to come over for a while now and yesterday our schedules worked out.  He ran the V100 which runs out of Battlefield Yard (BY) to the Fredericksburg Flats industries.  He took 8 cars with him and returned with 8 cars.  Not an easy task but Norm did well.  The flats have 3 trailing industries and 3 that require you to run around your train.  The layout acted up a little but 80% was operator error (running through switches).   You can guarantee that your layout will have some shorts, a derail & a pull apart when you want to show your layout to someone.  It's Murphy's law! This stuff never happens when it's just me.   I ran the other trains that came out of staging to BY and did the switching in BY.  We ran a total of 3 trains on the layout.  The V100, a G200 grain train from Orange and the F&NN local. Here are the pics:

RF&P #124 brings in the rest of V100 train.  Norm had to wait on their arrival before he could head to Fredericksburg Flats.

F&NN power brings their small train (3 cars) into the Battlefield yard.

VMID # 292 is the yard switcher today.  He's making the RF&P's train up and just complete the F&NN train.  The F&NN train is at the top waiting to head east.  The Virginia Central cars sit on track #4.  The Virginia Central was not operated today.

Norm catches up on paper work while the F&NN train passes.  He had to clear up for the train heading east.

The G200 grain train comes into Battlefield yard.  This train came from Orange and power had to run around it's train to get into Battlefield Yard.  Older power leads this train with VMID #256 "the Red Baron".

RF&P #124 has it's train assembled behind him.  The G200 power waits in BY for it's next assignment.  A H/W load sits on the engine track.

Norm finishes up his switching since he has no other trains coming through his switching.

RF&P #124 gets an approach signal to leave Battlefield yard. 

Some of Norm's pics:

It's me switching in BY.

A B&O sand hopper bound for the VC.

The G200 grains train prepares to run around it's train.  The VC depot is in the foreground.  Norm's engine #281 sits in the upper left corner and in the clear of G200.

The BY engine track has a high & wide waiting on it's assignment.

West end signals are installed and working/ other projects

Finished up the last signals on the layout over the weekend.  All my signals are controlled by toggle switches on the fascia.  Since op session only consist of 2 people, I'm the one who will throw them.  I installed 2 Tomar regular 3 light signals and one BMLA searchlight signal.  The 2 Tomar signals are going into Battlefield Yard and the other is right across the track going west to Orange (hidden staging).  The searchlight signal is different and controls trains coming off of the Virginia Central branch line.

The other pictures are other things I'm working on this week:

The two Tomar signals.  There will be another bridge between the signals and the other overpass.

 

 

These BMLA signals are very detailed.  Definitely different on the layout.

Got another Alco, this time a RS1.  She will work for the F&NN and will be patched.  Really liked the black and yellow!  It has a Tsunami in it and was the most challenging one I have ever had the pleasure to put in.

A high and wide load.  Gotta have a interesting load during some op sessions.  Finally got the brass wire I need for tie downs.

A side dump for a MOW train.  Gotta get some VMID lettering on it.

No this is not HO but an On30 Forney getting a new tender.  One more good days work and she will be complete.  Maybe 2 with the paint!

New operating session partner

Spent a little time in the layout room this evening with my "new" engineer in training.  My oldest son Cameron (7) decided he wanted to run some trains tonight.  My middle son (age 5) got bored really quickly with a switching layout earlier in the week.  Cameron on the other hand picked it up pretty quickly and seemed to get use to slower pace.  I use NCE DCC and the power cab is really easy to use once you get used to it.  Cam picked it up (he's used it a few times before) quite well.

I decided not to use a switching list and we only switched out 5 cars and brought 4 empties back to Battlefield yard.  I just installed a TCS stay alive capacitor in my SD20-2 (SD35 frame) and it runs perfect.  Before it ran like crap even for a 6 axle engine.  I recommend them with Tsunamis!

Cameron blows the horn and slows while backing out some cars

Running a boxcar back to Mid-Atlantic Feeds after the empties have been pulled.

Cameron did not want to block Industrial Drive but he didn't have another option to set the empties for a bit. 

Also completed 2 locos for a customer this week.  MCIS SD22ECO #2290

MCIS SD22ECO #2291