Back to the railroad

Lets get back to the Railroad

     After all that has happened over the past three weeks it's time to get back to the story of building my Santa Fe Railroad.
     I know I am going backwards here a bit however I wanted to show how the extra room that was made possible by completing the extension has been a god send. Much more room for all of the crew to move around in along with the additional space created between Hackney and Flynn that prior to had been a bit of a bottle neck to get through.
     As I was working on the return loop to enter the new town of Guthrie I planned to make the roadbed for the new link between Perry (the old location of Guthrie) much  narrower. To achieve this I offset the end loop into Guthrie by a fair margin and using a cardboard template of the track radius I wanted really helped. You can see this in the image below. The new L Girder bench-work from Perry was made only 6 inches wide, plenty wide enough for a single track and yet still plenty of space for scenery.

Here you can see the cardboard mock up at the end of the wall to get the offset that I wanted for Guthrie and allow for a wider space behind Hackney

You can see in the three images above that progress is well underway with the bench work and the degree of offset.

Here you can see the start of the bench work for Augusta East. I deliberately left the small wall in place to give a sense of distance from the main town and yards of Augusta.

Track down, valance installed and valance and ceiling painted.

Well that's it for today catch you soon.
Thanks for dropping by.
Rod.

the 13th National N Scale Convention

Our N Scale Convention has been and gone.

     I have been off the air a while whilst involved in our 13th National N Scale convention. Our N Scale conventions are held bi-annually and move from state to state. This was the third to be held in Melbourne which started in 1991 and it seemed to go down very well with the delegates who attended. For the first time we had delegates from every state and territory of Australia and 6 delegates from the USA.
     In total we had 143 full delegates 27 partners 2 day delegates and two junior delegates plus 7 ladies who came along to join their spouses at the Saturday night dinner.
     A big thanks to our guest speaker Craig Martyn from BLMA to our clinic presenters and the one who stayed up until after 1.00 am Sunday morning reworking his clinic for the Sunday sessions when he realized the amount of interest that was shown in the CTC panel on his layout, the D&H and on my SFRSD during the layout tours.
     Three coaches took delegates to seven layouts on the Saturday and 9 layouts were open for the self drive layout tours on the Monday.
     Thanks to everybody involved and see you all in Brisbane in 2015.

My lovely wife working the registration desk with John Fahey and Rob McMurray checking in.

Brendan's D&H layout created a lot of interest

Craig Martyn USA Vic Fitzpatrick Melbourne and John Benny USA

A Lunch time mini clinic on Lenz DCC

Jim Younkins USA  shares a story with Malcolm from Brisbane

 

Weathering Clinic by John Miller

The New York Room waiting for another busy day very early Sunday morning

That's about it for today.
Thanks for looking in.
Rod.

A backward step

Taking a step back.
  
 Before I move forward much further with the new work being carried out I was fortunate enough to have the Santa Fe Railway published in both N Scale Railroading and MR. The article in NSR appeared in the May/June 2007 edition.
   

    
     This is the start of the article in MR October 2009

     Both of these articles along with the images shown were submitted well before the extension to the RR. I have been fortunate enough to get a couple more articles published in N Scale Railroading with thanks to Kirk Reddie the editor, he's a good bloke.

Thanks for your interest in my SFRSD.
Rod.

The extension continues

Lets keep moving on with the extension.

     John my friend for many years and fellow modeller helped with installing the studs and internal walls and then the new fluros.It was a good idea to install these before we did any more work on the L Girder and installing Flynn into its new home.

Flynn back onto a wall. It took about 15 minutes to get in it's right spot

Here the fascia and valance is installed and you can see a portion of the new Guthrie to the left.

This is the bench work for Augusta East

Just another shot of Augusta East with the entry door on the left.

Bench work done, track laid and valance added for Guthrie.

And the first operating session on the new SFRSD in February 2008 just 3 months after starting. This is my great operating crew. That's me front row left, my good wife took the photo while we all posed.

That's it for now catch you down the track.
Thanks for stopping by.
Rod.

The Extension moves along

Lets keep moving along with the extension

Just a few more images of the work in progress. You will see that I offset the new town of Guthrie so I could gain much more space beside Hackney. I used a cardboard template t work just how it would fit before making any L Girders.

     Firstly here is a better view of Flynn on the deck with all of the wall removed as far as was needed.

The coved corners were put in at the time of lining the walls, they are at 12 inch radius.

This is a view of the new Augusta East at the far end with the Guthrie mock up on the right.

And this is where Flynn will reside you can see I have attached part of a wall bracket. The trees in the foreground are on the Hackney peninsular

That's it for today.
Rod.