nice work, and a LOT of cutting to make the banding on those silos! The progress is moving right along. Soon we will be seeing videos of ops!
My goal is to have the layout operational by spring of 2024. This means the following:
- All track laid
- All rolling stock converted to Kadee couplers
- Major industries either mocked up or built
- Some sort of operational scheme. Switchlists, etc.
Time and finances will tell if I can make these goals. But in the meantime I’m slowly getting some stuff crossed off the to do list while taking a much needed break from track building.
Because I’m strange, and one of my more immediate goals is to convert the fleet from the standard USAT/Bachmann/Lionel low mount couplers to a more Kadee standard, a few years back I purchased from @Burl_Rice his 3D printed draft gear and installed in on a few pieces of rolling stock.
Well years ago by and I figured why not design my own with a slightly more prototypical width draft gear. I think Burl’s is 21" where as I’ve got mine down to the 13" that’s typical of most centersills. I’m stealing some of Burl’s design characteristics as well.
It’s not a finalized version yet but the goal is to have 2 different sets of draft gear. One will be a standard 3.25" non cushioned draft gear and the other will be a 6.25" cushioned draft gear.
And yes, I’ve been testing to make sure they go around my minimum diameter curve of 8’.
I did discover that a 89’ flat car won’t work on my layout but a 72’ centerbeam should barely fit with a slightly wider (21") draft gear. Good thing the longest cars during my modeling time are 72’ or shorter. The early centerbeams during my era were in the 60’ length!
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So those of you following along on Facebook will know that I’ve been doing some serious reconsider of my modeling era after the discovery of some new photos from Ed Wiess a local railfan during the early 90’s.
Between 89 -91, Metro Transit (the local Seattle area transit agency) ordered and received 234 Breda articulated buses. These buses are dual mode, both diesel and electric trolley. Beasts in terms of weight as well.
Anyway, Metro had them shipped via rail to Issaquah for final assembly. I first saw a photo of these about a year ago and didn’t think too much of it. But for the last week I’ve been doing some hard thinking and am pretty sure I’m going to be shifting my modeling 20n
years sooner.
I reached out to the local bus fan community and low and behold they found some more photos.
I even did some digging around and found out the area they were unloaded off the main as well. And then someone shared with me a basic dimensional drawings of the buses. Basically enough to get me started building a bus or two.
Ed also had some photos of T-D Feeds that caught my eye as well.
I know a 89’ flat won’t go around my tightest curves leaving the staging yard but it should fit around the other curves just fine. So I’m trying to recalibrate the tight curve to be a bit bigger. That area is the same area of the trestle so it’s not done anyway. Worse case I can either modify the coupler swing on a 89’ fault or just leave them in Redmond and carry them by hand on/off the layout.
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Been trying to work on my rust making techniques. Not perfect but its a decent start.
Needs more coloring and layering on the ‘base’ rust layer but I’m starting to use the salt mask method with some decent success.
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You won’t know how you do until you do it… 
Weathering is for sure an ‘art’. These trucks are more freelanced weathered than anything else. When use photo reference material it becomes a little easier actually because you can just follow the picture.
So I’ve been mocking up my feed mill to get a sense of the size. And trying to figure out the next steps forward. I originally was going to make the entire base level out of 1/8" styrene and make a bunch of supports. But as I got thinking about it, I figured why not make it out of 2x4 or 2x6 PT that I have on hand and then skim that with styrene. That way I can walk on it when I need to climb up and reach when assembling the piping etc.
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For what it’s worth, I’ve found anything that improves durability without jacking the price is a worthwhile investment, not just for maintenance but for preservation. Beyond our latest dogs (a pair of 45 lb running machines) we found that other people’s kids proved the biggest hazard to structures on the railroad, leading to the early demise of a dock, a couple of landslides, and a few snapped details. You may as well build with the assumption that someone will climb up there while his / her parents aren’t looking.
Eric
I caught my own kids last summer climbing and playing in the sand on the elevated layout ( lowest point is 3’ above ground, highest is 5’. It freaked my wife out a bit but I wasn’t worried as I’ve walked all over the layout. So yes, I can totally see my kids climbing up…
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Been kinda silent on this build over her at least. I’ve had some major rebuilding taking place to increase my minimum radius curve all due to this photo.
And this photo too.
This required moving my entire staging yard a foot, tearing out and rebuilding the connection between the staging yard and the outdoor layout and rebuilding the trestle.
Now it looks some like this.
And now I should be able to run 89’ flat cars with some scratch built Breda buses on them sometime in the next 5-10 years. 
Thankfully there’s a small company making 89’ flats. I’ll probably just get 2.
if you keep lookingand reasearching you will be in a constant change to get what the newest photo or bit of research shows. Good luck on making the busses and hope to see it running soon. wider raduis curves are always for the better.
My wife thinks I’ll never finish my modeling projects. I sure hope she’s right in that aspect. But I hope she’s wrong when she says, the layout won’t ever be finished. 
But then a few moments later she politely reminds me not to spend money on expanding the layout. So what’s it going to be?
I don’t even want to think about all my possible projects lists… Layout built with buildings is the main focus for now. Then I can move back to rolling stock and locomotive projects.
After a quick visit down to Paul Burch yesterday to grab some stuff (thanks Paul!) and to blow my hobby budget for a few months buying some AML covered hoppers, he asked about the layout updates…
August was busy with camping and getting ready for the start of school so not much action happened. The focus in September was preparing for my local Railroad Prototype Modeling Meet on the first weekend of October. Between building a 100 slide presentation on my railroad (I gave a 30 min talk), I managed to build the final sections of layout benchwork for phase 1 of construction. This spur services two industries: Stoneway Roofing Supply and Cedar King.
I have probably about another 12-18 feet of track I need to build along with a #9 turnout but so far everything is progressing according to plan. My goal was to have all the track back and operational by the end of '22 and I might just make that goal.
Between layout building and RPM prep I also managed to spread 20 yards of free wood chips around the backyard. I’m patiently waiting for more (last time it took 2 months).
IMG_20221006_174946738 by Craig Townsend, on Flickr
Nice progress, got to do it when you have the chances!!!
We haven’t had any fall rains yet so it’s been nice to work outside in the layout longer than expected. But now with pretty much the whole west side covered in wildfire smoke for the past week (fires on the Westside of the mountains blowing west), my lungs and my nagging cough are ready for the rain.
The things I wanted to do still are get some sand covering the landscape fabric for these newly completed sections but that’s going to have to wait.
You are evil. In a large part your design idea is one of the reasons I decided to re-imagine my layout and make it a single town. Your use of gigantic buildings is so much fun.
Glad to know I’ve contributed to the delinquency of modeler.
I might try a foam building when I get to Darigold. That one is even bigger than the feed mill. If I don’t make it a building flat. Not sure at the moment.
Craig: what kind of 3d printer are you using?
Burl,
I have a Epax E6 resin printer. It’s got a little smaller build plate than if like but it works for now.