Slow going

     It's been a long time, well almost four weeks.

     It's been very slow moving as real life took over, you know, spring cleaning, outside work, etc etc. I still managed to do a bit of work here and there on the layout, such as wiring and ballasting, but I did realize a huge mistake.... ok not so huge, but pain staking work.

      When I designed my layout, I had measured a 30" reach from both side of the layout making it 60" wide total and I was ok with it. But now I realize that it's NOT ok. I need to do some cliff, mountain work and will have a hard time reaching it because on one side of the layout, I have two different levels with a total height of 10" as you can see from the pictures.

  

     So, I will be doing the mountains away from the layout and then inserting them when done (painting included).

     I've build the frame work on the layout and then brought them in my workshop. I then added plaster cloth to solidify them in one piece and now I'm working on making little rock formation to be installed on my major piece.

     The picture you see in the background is the look I'm going for

Hawkes HO Layout preview video

     It's been 6 months since I've started this new hobby and I love it

     I finally made the first video of my Phase I layout. I had to delete the sound because I had music in the background and YouTube doesn't seem to like copyright songs even though I was narrating the layout and the music was the radio.

     I took out 9 of my 13 locomotives which were all build between 1947 and 1957 (except the steam) and 1 of each rolling stock I have (except for the ones that will be in Phase II and III). I've reach the 100 rolling stock (locomotives included)

     I'll be very vague and explain the layout. The section you seen at the beginning will be connected to Phase II. On the left is my container yard, sorry for the blur as the video was taken with my Canon T5i camera. The main line will continue through the tunnel and re-appear in the back of my box car yard. The top road is for the container yard, while the bottom road leads to the box car warehouse and office.

     As you can see from the box car yard, the warehouse was scratch build and has 3 platforms and on the right there will be a 2 story office.

     As we come out of the tunnel, we have the entrance to the container yard and will connect to Phase II.

     The two top level are for passenger trains. At the far end you can see some old passenger cars and a steam locomotive. They will replace the other passenger train on special occasion. The steam locomotive is the only locomotive out of 13 that is not a Canadian Pacific, because there is none to be found, so we'll assume that Canadian Pacific bought a steam locomotive from NY.

     On the left of the staging will be the train station. The passenger train will go through the tunnel and appear by the small winter town and work it's way around the town to be seen. Here you see the entire town, a gas station will be on the other side of the track, opposite of the church. The run will then connect again to Phase II.

     Now we conclude with an overview of Phase I of the layout. I still have lots of work on my plate. Hope you enjoyed.

Thanks for watching

Utility poles and some scenery

     Been a while since my last post. I've been researching utility poles and with all the information I gathered, I was able to scratch build poles with hydro and bell with guy wires.

     I've also did a bit of scenery. Took a container and rip it open and added a few growth. Since this shack is on the container yard, I thought it would be a nice fit. I also installed a light inside the shack.

     This is an overview of my shack and my poles. Still have to finish the poles, such as adding power lines, the bell line and the drops going to the buildings.

Progress on the container yard

     This week, I've been working on a commercial link fence and at the same time taking pictures of the progress so that I could make a video of "How to". Here's the final result of my first try at making a video.

     I've done some scenery such as drain pipe leaking water, junk in the ditch, ivy growing along the fence and I still need little final touches here and there.

     The container yard office as been weathered and I had my first try at making an autumn tree. It's starting to look like a train layout.

A bit of everything this week

     This week was a bit of everything.  I worked on a guard rail from a kit, worked on an 8' industrial link fence from scratch, added rock formations to my winter village, looked at what I could do with Spiraea Japonica as winter trees and finally got around at taking my first attempt at ground cover.

     The industrial link fence is made of styrene, steel mesh and thread. This was a test, now I need to build 36" of it. The fence will protect the container area. The guard rail is also 36" long.

     This is a view of the entrance to the container area and the road leading to the box car area. The check in office building was equipped with 2 lights on the outside and one inside and the security gate was scratch build.