I was able to find the exact grass mat I started with on Ebay. It’s been over 10 years and the price was only about $6 more with free shipping. It’s not a perfect match to my old leftovers but close enough. New in center, old to the left and right…
This is pretty cool stuff. Way better than the old Lifelike grass paper. It’s vinyl and can be shaped with heat or scraped off for roads. From Woodland Scenics…
It will be my base layer for the entire indoor layout. Ballast and scenery on top.
Just a suggestion.
Maybe paint the outside edge of the bench work a dark green (almost on the blackish level). Or perhaps you plan to trim it out? Easier to put paint on it now and besides the layout is a different element of the room.
Just a thought.
Eventually.
One option is black edge cap on the plywood and either paint the frame or face it with something like vinyl or Masonite. I might want to ballast the track and to do so will require a face that extends above the ties to contain the ballast.
This is all ‘down the road’. Now that weather is good for working outside I have more than a ton of projects to work on. The RR will once again take a back seat once this end is operational and I’m very close to that.
As mentioned above, that’s not in the budget right now. But what might work is a custom bent curve of a little tighter radius. I have some 5 foot pieces of SS and 6 footers in aluminum. If I can gain just 6 inches that will do it.
Looking super sharp, Jon.
I found my old Aristo single rail bender and was able to approximate a 6.5’ diameter curve to parallel the 8’ diameter inside track. That allowed me to move the crossover and track 1 switch 6" toward the corner giving me enough room to get two cars and the 45 tonner clear of the switch on track 2 (center).
After some brief testing I screwed everything down through the curve. Track 2 is attached to just before the next crossover switch. To finish screwing down track 3, I will need a custom cut. I want to do extensive testing before cutting rail.
With some help from Ric Golding I’m close to settling on a track plan for the yellow area. This is the latest…
The turntable will be constructed similar to the one Al Pomeroy built in his garage. Instead of folding down, it will fold up to allow access to the bins below. This will be a project and may delay much more track being laid before fall.
After discovering a pinch point in the curve, I tweaked it a bit and re-attached track 2.
Track overview in the corner…
Locomotives in the yet to be named west yard…
Hopefully I can catch 19 here tomorrow with good light…
That’s Awesome!!
I spent the morning finding homes for most of the stuff that was still on top of the RR bench. The goal was to be able to put down some test track on the turntable approach. I ended up going one better and simulated the turntable with some scrap plywood for the bench and a 30" piece of track pivoting on a screw at center as the table…
The long straight blue tape is the center. The tape where the curve begins is the end of the turntable. I ran several tests with the diesel to confirm that the approach was good and the “table” would pivot on the screw with an engine loaded. Once that was confirmed I very carefully turned one of my C-19s.
Now that this proof of concept is good, I need to construct the actual hinged bench and table before committing any of the other track. The view from the other end…
The long range goal is development of the area above the tool bench (just beyond the Rolling Rock case) and then installing the Brunt Coal trestle.
I put down a little more track on the North end, put out a few more cars, and then ran extensive tests. The S-Curves created by the crossovers cause a bit of a problem with close coupled locomotives. The C-19 has more side to side throw on the coupler and pulls everything I have tested through the S with no issues.
All of my Fn3 cars tested so far will traverse the crossovers connected together with no issues. The diesels, however, have minimal coupler swing and can pull a car off the rails through the S.
Along with testing, I started logging track capacities and drew up a schematic for what has been built so far…
Industry #1, Track 1 must be switched one car at a time as there is only room for one car clear of the switch while track 2 can switch two cars at a time.
I still need to come up with location names. My old railroad town names were taken from places near where I am now like Kistler, Meadow Gap, and Tyrone. Maybe I should use Connecticut town names here 
Jon;
You kindly mentioned that you first experienced the idea of the “Edge of table” half pitless turntable, here on the OVGRS, IPP&W railroad. We do have 3 of these turntables in constant use during our EVERY Saturday morning operation, during the Summer months. www.ovgrs.ca
The fact is, that the original idea for locating a turntable in such locations came from Dave Goodson many years ago. He deserves the credit for the idea…
I hope Dave drops by and sees that he isn’t forgotten for his many years of supporting OPERATING Large Scale Model Railroads, and the pioneering the use of Radio Control/Battery on our railroads.
I gather that he is still alive and "Playing with Trains…and I think we should reach out and let him know that he is remembered and missed on these pages.
Fred Mills
