Phone System Upgrade, Scenery and the V&R Railroad

With summer over and the craziness of Thanksgiving behind us, I finally felt ready to get back to work on the layout. I know I haven't been posting nearly as frequently as I used to. Part of the reason is the demands of having a two-year-old and an infant. On top of that, I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo this year and as such spent all of my spare time in November writing. But now, I'm finally back in the saddle.

The first thing I did was upgrade the phone system. As mentioned previously, you could pick up two phones and talk but there was no way to make them ring. To solve that problem, I ordered a device called a Private Branch Exchange or PBX. I got it for about $60 off Amazon. It allows you to connect up to eight phones. Now you pick up the phone, dial the extension you want and the phone rings. If you're looking for an inexpensive way to add a phone system to the layout, this is the way to go.

Another project I'd been dragging my feet on is building the mountains at the entrance to Johnstown. Plaster is a lot of work, I just didn't feel like doing it. I finally sucked it up and did it. I then used patching plaster to create rock outcroppings.Now the mountains need paint and the rocks need stain. A friend of mine (Hi Jess!) told me I should "Bob Ross it up," so in that spirit I'll "put some happy lichen trees" on there. Once all that's done, I'll ballast the track.

 

One more reason I've not made much progress on the Pittsburgh Division is, it's no longer the only layout in the train room. I brought some of my old O-Gauge equipment back from my parents house and whipped up the V&R railroad. It's name for my kids, Victor and Rosalie. 

The layout consists of two loops of Lionel tubular track. The curves on the outer loop are O-54 and the O-31 on the inner. The O-54 is great for my son whose idea of operation is to hurtle the trains around at top speed. The train on the outer loop and can hold the rails while the train on the inside usually goes careening off.

Scenery was dead simple, a few cotton snow blankets from the dollar store, some snow trees and ceramic houses I had laying around and that was it. Right now the layout is on the floor, which works  for my kids at the moment, but ultimately, I'd like to mount it on plywood. 

So that's all for this update. I'n the coming weeks, I'll be building a Cornerstone Ice House and laying more track in Johnstown. Stay tuned.