Been a long time, been a long time, been a long lonely......

Well, as promised (because I know at least four people are watching!), here is what I'm gonna call my "back to the future" update. Why? Well, because I have been VERY busy with railroad AND band stuff, and will continue to be for the near future. I'm gonna try to do my best to keep things updated though, I promise!

Honestly, I suffer from three reasons why I don't update things much around here - #1 - I'm lazy! #2, I spend all day on a computer at work, and want to work on the layout when I get home, not update my blog!, and #3 - I never remember to take "before and after" pictures of what I DID do!

So without further ado, this blog is going to cover about three months worth of work. Let's get started, shall we?

Let's start with everyone's favorite piece of the layout, the float bridges -

After a sucessful work session back in I believe September, Jay Held, aka the Marine Superintendent, messed with the interface between float bridge and carfloat to assure a smooth, derailment-free action. I'm happy to report that we (and I after a recent 2 night fix-and-repair that I again DID NOT photograph!) have acheived a 90% sucessful ability to do so. Because of the method of construction of the floatbridge apron, the mating of the float-to-bridge interface will never be super-tight and I have found that any remaining car derailments are due to excessive speed or things like tight trucks on cars, or over-scale car door tracks getting caught on the lifting yolkes.
And speaking of cars.........

During the "great storm of '12", aka Sandy, I got to spend 2 weeks at home from work! Once the power came back on (kind of hard to work in a dark basement), I started working on weighing and
re-couplering my carfleet where Ted DiIorio, aka The Sheriff of Bloggingham -http://maparr1943.blogspot.com/2012/11/blog-house-cleaning-or-getting-rid-of.html - 

and Jay Held left off two work sessions ago. As you can see, I got a lot done after a few visits to Home Cheapo for various nuts (for hoppers and gons) and Harbor Freight for some stick on weights (everything else)......

And the end result of over four weeks of almost daily "weighing sessions", was over 200 cars "layout ready" -

 

At one point, I lined 98 40ft box cars from one end of the carfloat to the end of track at west (Oak Island) staging.....It was kinda cool to see exactly how long the layout was from end to end! Doing this also let me know what types of cars I was low on (reefers, tank cars and home road cars) or had too many of (50ft box cars).

Another project that was a "big deal" in as far as really achieveing a good overall look, was the installation and rearrangement of lighting around and under the layout. I've had in place for a few years now, some thin, made for under cabinet lighting that I intended to place under the overhead valence doors. I never got very far until the September work session when Dave Ramos and Tom Callan said "let's get it done!" Well needless to say, we didn't have enought to do the whole job, so I sent out my VERY lovely girlfriend to Home Depot to pick up more (in the interim years, better ones became available, so instead of the "no name" ones I had, the new ones are from GE) and then after a  SECOND trip by me before luch to get four more, we now have a nicely highlighted layout, almost shaddowbox in effect -

 

The effect isn't really shown to full effect in these photos, but along with moving the overhead shop light fluorescents I had hanging in the middle of the isles, It really makes the layout "pop", not to mention making it easier to read car numbers and reporting marks!

And oh yeah, the guys yelled at me for having "flimsy benchwork" (and rightfully so), so we re-did the "backbone" and legs of the west staging, using my favorite layout leg material, PVC pipe - 

So now it can "take a licking and keep on ticking", and the three tracks (3 on each level) can hold the 15 car trains that I have designated as the layout's maximum train length.

One last "improvement" was the addition of waybill boxes along the layout -

 This was an idea "stolen" from Mike Confalone (of Allagash Railway fame). They are sold as "wooden tote bags" at A.C. Moore. All I did was cut off one of the bag "handles", and then I Velcroed them to the layout fascia. Just needs paint and labels.......

And if you're wondering, "is all this leading up to something?", then why yes, it is......

  

On November 30th, I held my 6th shakedown session. Luckily, each one gets a little better, and I think that next year starting in February, I can start having regular monthly sessions. This year was tough for me in regards to getting things running smoothly, but with a little help from my friends, we got past the hurdle and I saw the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Right now, the major mechanical hurdles have been met, and the ones that do remain can be delt with in short order. The major probelm the last two times has been lack of time getting the paperwork done (he funny part being that those who know me call call me "Mr. Paperwork"!) and the layout propperly staged in time for everyone to come over and run the railroad (I always thought that was the easy part, and I envy my friend Dave Ramos for making it look so easy!).  The derailments were minor and the work list has been drawn up on what needs fixing (to be covered in the next blog entry), so I think we're on a roll here to make things happen in a big way in 2013!

So that about wraps it up.....I made my 11:59 December 8th deadline (ha,ha, Ted!), and I hope you guys enjoyed what I've caught you up on (and please excuse the typos, I'm trying to make a deadline here!)......Much more to come in 2013, and maybe even before!

And as Beetlejuice once said.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vprx6nKZmbU

Super Layout Sunday

This post was originally going to go up last Sunday, so if the references to Sunday confuse you, that's why......

So, what does one do when he doesn't care about watching football? (Yeah that's right, I said it!) Well, he works on his layout! Or to be more precise, he tears chunks out of it.......

Around these here parts, the saying goes "If there aren't any pictures, then it didn't happen", so with that, I bring you pictures!

Umm, sir, please close the layout behind you, your letting the cold in.....

Now, sane minds would ask, "When you have 50 other more important things that you STILL need to complete before your next shakedown in two weeks, WHY are you tearing your backdrop out NOW?!?" Well, it's like this.....Ya know how certain things about your layout just bug you, maybe not enough for you to take action, because you figure that the aggravation of the time and effort of fixing it will probably overshadow the enjoyment you'll get out of it (at least I do!). That, and that it's always the one thing that EVERY SINGLE TIME you go into the basement and look at that part of the layout, it jumps up and down and points it's evil finger at you and says -

"Fix me, or when people come to see your layout, they will laugh and point at me and your shame will be eternal!"

No you say? Never happened to you? Gee, it looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue....

"Johnny, what can you make out of this backdrop?
This? Why, I can make a hat, or a brooch, or a pterodactyl....."

OK, OK, I'll be serious now, no more Airplane references......I guess I was bored, and I guess I just didn't want to get involved in another more tedious project that night (dropping track feeders), so I took on the beast and pulled. Then, I said, well, now that I ripped it, let's go full out........

Here's the 'before" shot. As you can see, it appears to smoothly flow around the corner, but looks can be deceiving....

See, I told you it looked funny!.......I recreated this "before" shot to show you a side view of the "wave effect" after I pulled at it and snapped the plastic. The shadows that play across the backdrop as it bends doesn't help any, either!

Up until then, the joints themselves were attached to the 1x2's with double sided foam tape from 3M, brad nailed, and then the joints spackled. This is probably why I had to pry it lose, and it snapped as seen in the very first photo!

Now, I'm sure some of you are wondering what I used for the backdrop, and that's easy. It's a non-vinyl PVC material called Plas-Tex, made by Parkland Plastics - http://www.parklandplastics.com/polywall.shtml. It is sold as a backsplash wall material, and comes in 4x8 sheets. I ripped them in half long ways, and since it's decently heavy enough, it kind of supports itself, so minimal framing was required. One side is smmoth, and one slightly texured, and it's the textured side I put "out", and with some early paint tests, it not only took the paint well with no priming required, but also the slightly textured surface worked to increase the "depth".

Now, can you see why I thought this had to go? The "double wave" effect of the backdrop HAD to go. So, I guess I should explain WHY this came to be like this, hmm?

When I was laying out the CNJ Henderson Street Branch on the other side of the back drop here, I found that I did not have enough room to all ow for the Jersey Ave. Freight Station tracks after the railroad made the bend around the curve of the layout. (see below)

As you can see, I needed more depth here, and the only way to do that was to push the backdrop back. After I opened up the continuous run of the backdrop sheeting to get at the 1x2 wood framing, I eliminated the support framing, and pushed the one side of the backdrop up against the other. (sorry, don't know where the pix of that debacle are). This what caused the backdrop on the LV Edgewater Branch side to bow out. had I thought about that, I would have fixed the problem then. In fact, I guess it didn't bother me too much at first, because it's been like this for at least 4 years now! The effect of the bow is not, for some reason, objectionable to me on the CNJ side, go figure.

In the above view, you can not only see the new joint(s) where the filler piece was installed, but in the lower right, the darker piece of "filler" foam in front of the building that needed to be installed to close the gap once the backdrop was pushed back. Originally, the backdrop continued straight across and through where the freight house is now. All in all, I gained only about 3-4 inches, but that made a difference, not only in track length, but also visually to allow for the proper track alignment as per the valuation maps I have of this area.

Surely, you didn't do all this just to get 3 inches of room! I am serious... and don't call me Shirley.

OK, so I lied.........

So, here is where we stand currently, and where it will stand until after the next shakedown. It doesn't affect operation, and heck, it's like "The Invisible Layout", to put a positive spin on things. The job to fix this is gonna be a doozy, but it'll be worth it, 'cause I ain't gonna sleep well until I fix it!

And that's that......

Ralph