Full Steam Ahead!

 

 

 Today was a productive day on the layout. First and foremost, I decided to try and return my I1 to service. It had stopped responding to the throttle and then one of it's tender trucks fell apart. I put it on the programing track, addressed the decoder and, when tested, the locomotive moved! Thank God! with ongoing chip shortage (damn pandemic) getting a replacement may be a tall (and not to mention costly) order.

After the I1, only my T1 and Alco FB remain out of service.

 

 

 

 Next on my list was ballasting. Now, all but about ten feet of main line are ballasted. That just leaves the yard and a few tracks in the Juniata Shop. That will have to wait until I get to the hobby shop.

Another project, painting the fascia burnt umber. It looks so much better in a neutral color.

 

 

I finally started laying track in the Pittsburgh staging yard. About damn time! The track is the old Atlas code 80 stuff.

 

 

Lastly, I added some turf to a small area near Altoona with some help from  Victor.

This is about all I can do until all the stuff I ordered arrives. I swear waiting is the hardest part. Didn't Tom Petty write a song to that effect?

More Buildings for Altoona

     I stuck with my Altoona plan for a whole ten seconds. I was going to leave the whole area inside the Altoona loop undeveloped. Well, the more I thought about, I realized there were some structures I really wanted to include.   

    To wit, I have ordered up American Model Builders' "Railroad Rooming House" and Blair Lines "Green Door Lounge" kits. Both should lend a nice seedy, wrong-side-of-the-tracks vibe to the area. I've always wanted to include the former on a layout. Perhaps I'll add a few more structures and make a few blocks long area. I'll add a few businesses and a few houses.

    I've also realized I goofed when it comes to the mountains. The shops are south of the tracks and the city is to the north! Um, oops! I guess I'll need to hunt down some generic city backdrops. On that same note, I went ahead and moved Alto Tower to the north side of the tracks.

    Lastly, I thought the shop complex needed a power house. Thankfully, I had Model Power's "Coverall Paints" building sitting under my layout. This was salvaged off my last layout. I previously removed the base, painted it Floquil "Boxcar Red" and did the mortar effects. So all I had to do was pull off the "Coverall Paints" signs, plunk it on the layout and call it a day. Eventually I will add roads and parking areas.

Ballast and Backdrops

I managed to paint the backdrops last night. The project took all of about 10 minutes. I took some Apple Barrel "Holly Branch" green paint and mixed in black until I got the real dark green of distant mountains. Then I mixed up a darker batch for contrast. I slathered onto the wall with a big old paintbrush and that was that.

I've managed to ballast about half of the mainline tracks around the Altoona loop. The process seems to be going smoothly, so I can't complain.
 

For my last trick, I resoldered the feeder wire seen in the bottom right corner of the photo.

The Altoona Endgame

 Hey everybody! I'm back and boy do I have a lot of excuses for all the tumbleweeds blowing through this once-active blog. Want to hear them? Well, I'll tell you anyway (I know I've used that joke before).

First off, for a good little while, my wife and I were seriously considering putting our house on the market. This would necessitate removal of the layout. And there's no point in working on it if you;re goning to tear it down. But, the good news is, we decided to stay put.

Also, as mentioned elsewhere in this blog, I was just getting kind of burnt out on the whole thing. Part of that was not knowing how to finish Altoona and having a lot of unpleasant items on the to-do list. And that, my friends is the subject of this entry.

My plan for Altoona is to finish the shop area, paint some backdrops on the wall, build a bit of mountain along the wall, add turf to the flat areas and call it done. I know, that sound like I taking the easy way out, but hear me out.

I'm building this layout for operation. That means operators in Altoona will be reaching over things and any building in the way stands a high risk of damage. Hence the minimalist approach.

In service of that goal, I painted the rails in the Altoona yard. Normally, rail painting is something I can only stand to do a little at a time. But today? Baby I was in the zone! I knocked it all out in a few hours. And let me tell you, it came down to the last few drops in my bottle Polyscale Rail Brown.

With that, every inch of track on this layout is painted save for the Altoona yard turnouts. I'm not going to bother. In the past, when I've painted them, no matter how careful I am about cleaning them and avoiding the contacts, it results in some very balky turnout operation. Looks may suffer but, I'll take reliability over aesthetics any day.

Now on to ballasting!

Leafing Through It

 I was running trains last night and I noticed some areas of the layout are starting to show their age a nd look a bit dusty, dull, and lifeless. One such area is around Gallitzin. I solution I learned from Bob Hayden is to simply apply more turf over the existing turf. However, the area I wanted to rejuvinate is a forest.

If you've ever been in a forest, you've no doubt noticed the floor is rarely green grass. I'd experimented in the past with using ground up leaves to mimic the look of fallen leaves, but I wasn't fully sold on it. But I decided to give it another try.

I must say the results are quite convincing, at least to my eye. The trick I find is to late some of the green turf bleed through. 

To make this stuff, I gathered fallen leaves from my maple tree, put them in the blender (please don't tell my wife) and let her rip. Once the leaves were chopped up fine enough, I put them through a strainer to ensure I used only the finest material. As of yet I haven't glues it to the layout but, I may do so in the future.

Another part of the project was cleaning up all the clump foliage my Woodland Scenics trees had shed over the years. Other trees were leaning quite badly and needed a few drops of CA to help them stand up straight.

2019-20 Annual Progress Report

 Happy belated seventh birthday to my layout! I must apologize for the delay. Anyway, I don;t think I need to tell you 2020 has been a crazy year. I hope you all are doing well and staying safe with this pandemic. I've not done all that much on the layout this year, but here's hoping I'm getting my mojo back.

On the motive power front, I've made no further progress on the NS fleet DCC conversion. But, one of my goals last year was repairing my bad-ordered locomotives. I accomplished this and all but 3 of the PRR locomotives are out of service.

There's also not much new in terms of track. However, I have started mocking up Pittsburgh Staging. I'm not in a real rush on this project since I can't hold operating sessions yet, damn pandemic.

Finishing Johnstown was last year's other goal. I knocked that one out of the park. It's done and I'm happy with it.

In last year's progress report, I told y'all I was a bit disheartened that things breaking on the layout. I spent some time this year going around and making a lot of minor repairs. A light here, a DCC jack there, but the cumulative effect was making the layout feel refreshed. 

Let's talk about goals for this year. 

-I'd like to get all track ballasted and painted.

-I'd like to make significant headway on Altoona.

-Continue with small repairs and maintenance.

It's hard to believe the layout is 99% done. While I didn't make a lot of progress this year, the progress over the last seven as been astounding. Here's hoping 2021 is a hell of a lot better than this S show of a year!

Johnstown is Finished

 I finally sucked it up and tackled the last Johnstown project I've been dragging my feet on. I strung the rest of the the high-voltage transmission lines. I'd been putting it off because the lines runs through very difficult to access part of the layout. But, I persevered and got it done. 

I was going to run regular telephone polls too, but decided that would be overkill. It's reasonable that a smallish city like Johnstown would have underground lines. 

So that's it. After three long years, Johnstown is done. That leaves Altoona as the last bit of heavy lifting. Speaking of which...

I dug out my jar of raw umber acrylic and painted the Altoona end. As you can see I've relocated all the scenery supplies and assorted junk formerly residing there beneath the layout. 

As of right now, I'm still not entirely sure what the game plan is for Altoona. Since this yard will be used for operation and there will be a lot of reaching across, I will probably limit structures to the backdrop.  may even cut a hole in the middle of the loops to better facilitate switching. We shall see.