06/01/2017

Working on the Railroad.

Building more kits and other stuff.

    As the roundhouse got moved over to Johns layout ready to be fitted into position I asked John if he had any further kits he would like put together. "Yep a few grain bins from Rix need doing," so 3 large HO bins along with a Guthrie N Scale set arrived on my work bench (such as it is at the moment as it's on the kitchen table). As I have built several of these kits before for the SFRSD they are not that difficult to assemble. These will most probably finish up in the yet to be built Mopac yard opposite the old town of Augusta.

    This is them assembled but in need of some weathering as yet.







    

      Now that the old SFRSD is set in place it was time to attack the scenery where the cuts were made to disassemble the layout from my train room. We tried to ensure that the cuts were neat as could be and in positions that could be relatively easy to repair once back in place. John was kind enough to ask if I could assist in this so who was I to say no.
     There is several spots that needed attention. The end of the Winfield / Red Rock peninsular, The centre of the Ponca / Hackney peninsular on both sides of course, the join where Perry now meets Flynn again and the melding of Guthrie to the Udall section between the grain elevators of Udall and the bridge over the Wichita River. Apart from this there is a few areas that received some minor damage when the modules were taken through the upstairs window and considering the length of these modules that is to be expected.
    Armed with some blue foam, a nice sharp knife and a tube of no more gaps I set to to see how we would go.

    Here is a few snaps of the areas going through repair. By the way John had already completed the repairs to the track-work so scenery was all that remains in these areas.


This is at Perry. 13 inches was added here to make the walkway between Flynn and Hackney that much wider.




This is the Perry Red Rock corner. This section was removed so we could cut it from the wall. It fit back quite well. All that is left is some paint and ground cover along with some fresh water ( you know the sort).

The inside repair between Red Rock and Ponca. Hope the road repair crew can do a good job.
The outside repair opposite the one above. This is between Hackney and Winfield.
The corner at the far end of Winfield as you approach Udall.
About 6 inches was added here so the Udall peninsular could rest along the wall. This gave a huge improvement to the track geometry between this and the town of Guthrie in the next room and gained more room between Winfield and Udall.

Work in progress at the intersection of Guthrie to the mainline of Udall.

 Filling in the gap at the duck-under that leads into the old town of Guthrie.
    Whilst I was cracking on with this John was busily cutting the slots in the sub road bed for the installation of the 15 stall roundhouse. Not an easy task with the layout 55 inches off the ground.






Over the Christmas break John has been adding sub-road bed to the sections between Augusta and Augusta East and Augusta East and his new open staging Newton / Flynn. (one day I will add all the new town names as soon as I can remember them all) sorry John.

Here's a few pics.












     And finally this is where the section that was single track attached to the wall behind Guthrie and beside Hackney in the old layout. This will now most likely be the mainline for the Santa Fe between Augusta and Udall. It is planned to have a new yard built for MOPAC in the front and just a tad lower. This will then be an interchange between the SF at Augusta and run through (with trackage rights by joining the SF main at Udall) and Udall on its way to Guthrie. It could even have its own dispatcher if the cards fall correctly and wouldn't that be fun LOL.






So this brings everything happening right up to date. Stay up to date by following the progress.
Regards to all.
Rod.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for the update Rod. Looks like the layout is coming back together nicely over at John's. Of particular interest to me is seeing the sections spliced back together as that is very close to I will be doing building my layout section at a time.

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    Replies
    1. Hi Brad.
      Yes it is Brad and even better than I think we expected. When I made the cuts to break the layout down to manageable sizes I used a fairly new Jack saw. This allowed me to cut only 3 mm (saw blade width) out of the sections. When we put the Winfield / Hackney section back together I spliced a piece of 2 x 1 pine between the two Masonite sections of the backdrop thus giving us a neat joint. I even spliced pieces of 3 x 1 behind the L Girders which allowed us to use these to realign the main sections. It has all worked out really well.

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  2. You and John are making lots of great progress there Rod. I'm looking forward to running on this layout!
    Regards,
    Ron

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