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Paullie's choo choo journal
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| Update time! |
[Mar. 6th, 2007|11:48 pm] |
What's been going on in the basement the last few months? Not much for quite awhile, then a flurry of activity.
Once the cold weather settled in and it was time for basement lurking, I was reminded by Samantha that it was time to build the mini-house we got her for her birthday. In July. I told her then that we would build it during the winter.
I opened the box to the kit and dove in. Samma helped with the painting. It was all fun and games until It was time to put the roof on. 700 little shingles. applied indivually. here's pics of the finished product...
Got that done then it was down into the basement.... pictures are worth a thousand or two words so without further ado...
I've put a little description of what's going on at the top of the album. I figure this is more continuity rather then jumping back and forth between here and the gallery pages. ya!
work done up through late feb
I build my first hill/mountain
early march - ballasting sidings new goat sucky lighting |
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| Huge update and a couple of pics |
[Jul. 13th, 2006|10:24 am] |
After my initial plunge of playing with scenery building and layout planning, I took a huge step back to look at what I was really undertaking here. The step from going to train set on a huge table to actual layout is just what I've been looking for in a hobby.
Some initial research revealed that I was so green I didn't even know what I didn't know.
Being a big picture kind of guy I googled into Benchwork, wiring, track laying pretty heavily while exploring scenery and structure options at the same time. After a bit, I hit solid gold, the model railroading forum over at trains.com. What a wealth of information! A bunch of great guys who have seen and built it all and seem to be very happy to help others out. I've not seen a need to even post a question yet. I've just searched the forum and found info I've been looking for to fill the huge gaps in my knowledge. Just from some initial browsing that site I've stumbled onto a couple of sites these guys keep. Two in particular have been priceless to me so far for helping me grab ahold of the big picture and inspriation. Mr Fugate's site http://siskiyou-railfan.net/ which had me so engrossed, my wife was certain I had finally gone over the deep end the last several nights sitting in my recliner, latop perched on my lap and my scrawling in my 'train notes' notebook. The other, which truly opened the door to my specific project was Mr. Minkwitz's howto on desert scenery on his site: http://www.pacificcoastairlinerr.com
I managed to come up with what I want to model and a basic layout idea. Because my previous experience has been continuous running (a bunch of concentric ovals with switching between them and a couple bypasses) and not much on operations I'm going to go with what I'm familiar with. This is going to be my Keep It Simple Stupid, first layout where I'm going to do my best not to try to overdo it. There is another, much larger (at least 3x) room in the basement here that will be the layout that I will spend forever building. :) So, with this endeavour I'll have a couple of mainline loops of some sort, branch line ops, and a small yard perhaps. I'm keeping an open mind and still looking for track plan inspiration other then what I've got envisioned in my twisted mind.
I read somewhere that when deciding to model railroading that you must ask yourself, WHY? well kids, My first trainset when I was 10 or 11 was a Lionel steam set, I still have that steam set and have added to it a bit over the years, and diesel,electric locos just don't do it for me so, steam it is. My inspiration for what i'd do here didn't require much 'why' or soulsearching. A single picture is worth a whole bunch of rambling
Taken at Fullerton Railroad days in 2001(?) where it was displayed hot all weekend. Nice tie dye eh?
That and the fact that a year or so ago I moved from my native Fullerton, California to balmy Buffalo, I find myself waxing nostalgic. My very rought vision has me modeling a not very prototypical but somewhat loosely based on reality 1930's-40's ish Grand Canyon Limited with the 3751 as a centerpiece to start. Starting with the Redondo Junction turntable (maybe the shed probably not might be too much undertaking at first), the Santa Fe Fullerton Station of that era out to Barstow via Cajon Pass and some desert scenery then a loop back. I spent my entire life driving to the Colorado River/Vegas area through Cajon pass and out to the high desert and can't think of anything that screams 'why' to me more then this.
That's the why. Now the how...
As previously mentioned, my idea of a layout before was build a huge table set up some track and a put out a couple buildings wire all my switchs and sit back and mostly watch my trains run, how great was that? great! I could do it for hours. Only downfall was, I like to build stuff and soon became bored. When I moved to buffalo, I quickly discoved they have these things in houses here that were nearly non-existent in Southern California. Basements. My basement has a finished room (with a fireplace, no less!) where the wet sump is but a dehumidifier quickly made that room operable. The kids initially used it for their den but since one is on active duty in the USCG and the other just graduated from high school I used my dad power of eminent domain and booted them out. I did my usual and built a 7' x 12' table in three 4' x 7' sections. This is all fine and dandy for running a bunch of O gauge stuff around in ovals but I quickly learned this would never do in building an HO layout. Following my KISS mantra I decided to unbolt them from each other and do some minor repositioning...
I just may cut a foot off that middle section lengthwise as 4' deep may be a bit much but I've also got to allow for desert scenery I have planned. Not sure yet. This is large enough of a deck to let me do and redo as I go along. I've decided (for now) to lay the pink foam over the plywood. I know there are a jillion schools of thought on this but for me, it is easier to, at my stage and relative uncertainty on what I'm going to do, cut holes in the foam for scenery, switch machines etc then try to elevate track and fill later as many more advanced folks do.
My basic idea for layout is, on the righthand portion of the layout is to have my redondo junction and fullerton models then go into the middle section with cajon pass (don't ask how i'm going to deal with elevation change yet) with barstow in there somewhere and the lefthand table to be desert scenery and some desert landmarks I love (copper canyon in Lake Havasu comes to mind). That's my initial vision, I'll keep scouring other people's layouts and looking at track plans to find something I can twist to fit my own needs. Next thing for sure will be to do something about the lighting. |
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| Landscaping, tiny small style |
[Jun. 11th, 2006|08:12 pm] |
So here we go. HO layout learning time. Armed with a the latest few issues of model railroading, the internet and what is self proclaimed to be the "largest hobby store in the US" nearby. I am good to go.
Went to niagara hobby http://www.niagarahobby.com and picked up a few things to start playing with. Here's the results. I've found that putting ballast down will take some practice and patience. the other thing i've found is that taking pictures of this stuff and getting the pics to come out the color that the landscaping is will not be easy. I've read articles about how guys use two or three different kinds of light to light their layouts to get a 'natural light' effect. more to learn.
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| Good Day and welcome |
[Jun. 10th, 2006|07:05 pm] |
I recently decided to forgo building an O-scale layout due to the fact that I discovered that and HO layout is much more forgiving to a rookie at this hobby. More available stuff at a better price and takes up less room. YAY!
let's get right down to the pics.
These are pics of all my O-scale stuff that will soon be put away into boxes. I just built this table. It is somewhat modular and I may switch it around a bit. as it is, it is 7' x 12'. Plenty of room for some good HO stuff.
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paullietrains's journal