~ Beautiful Bridge ~

This is a very long and beautiful bridge that I drive by quite often.  It spans 2 roadways and the Sheboygan River.

It's a combination of several deck bridges and a girder bridge.  Old rusty iron patina and it still has rail traffic on it.

The bases and abutments look like they could have been made by Chooch.  It's very inspirational and I thnk I will have to try and replicate it on my layout. (Sometime!)

Edison Power & Light II

I made some time for the layout over the last few days and it's amazing what a person can get done when they're focused and not interrupted!  I got the rubber track bed glued down and the track laid.  The layout changed a bit so I could store more full and empty coal cars and be able to move them around on the real estate I've allotted for the scene.  That's good and bad.   It's good for the stated reasons and bad because it created a problem with fitting the car heater building in where I wanted it to fit.

Out came the utility knife and after shortening the width of the building it should work out just fine.  I like it because it's no longer "Right out of the box" and will be a unique structure.

It helps to have a long skinny drill bit
to make the holes for the wiring.
I like to run a feeder after every turn out.

One great thing about module layout
building is the ability to do this when
you wire them!

Pink foam land forms have been glued down
after a test run of the track.  The power plant
and light house are in their rough spots.

A street view looking north towards
the power plant coal yard.  I moved
the Gazette publishers building onto this
new street.

A sky view of the yard.  You can see the modified
car warming shed as I have narrowed it own a bit.
The hill to the right is going to have a track on
it as well that will serve the freight dock and other freight related
business along Bay Street.

Edison Power & Light

The modules have all been moved to where I believe will be their final resting spot (at least for the next 24 hours!)  I had to create one more, as I had the top done but I needed to add the legs and I decided to cut that one in half length-wise.  Now I have 2 modules that are 18" x 72".  One will act as a through point module and one is going to be Edison Power & Light a major coal fueled power plant and yard.

The base for this area is a new product I'm trying out.  It's either some sort of brain disorder or something, but everywhere I go I see things and think how could I use this on my model railroad?  Such is the case for the new base material.  I'm not necessarily eco-friendly but the product is very much so.  It's recycle rubber tires that are pressed and shaped into 6" x 4' pieces that are 1" thick.  You can even find some steel belting bits throughout it.  It is made for concrete expansion joints for driveways.  I thought it would make an excellent sub-roadbed material for this coal yard.  It should absorb sound as well as cushion the track.  The color means no painting will be needed and I glue roadbed material down on it just like with foam or cork roadbed.  I found it at a big box home improvement store, Menards and one piece is about $2.86.  I'll attach it with some form of construction adhesive.  The yard lead comes in from behind the New Rahel business district behind Schetter's Department Store. (Lunde Studios kit) 

     

On the opposite end there's the main power plant & the lighthouse for the harbor.
The power plant is a Walthers kit with some modifications.
The lighthouse is a Branchline Trains structure kit.

The placements are rough at this point and the scraps of foam provide a height perspective.  The power plant was too low compared to the lighthouse so I raised that up.  In researching coal power plants I saw I needed a structure to heat the coal cars (at least we do here in WI) so I decided to use the Walthers machine shop kit for that purpose.  I taped the kit together just to get an idea as to how it will work in the scene.

The machine shop should work out well as the facility for warming frozen coal loads and dropping the coal underneath the building.  from there it's moved up into the conveyor tower and dropped into the holding yard in piles.  From there the coal is moved on to other conveyors and also by machinery to the power plant.

I should have a good amount of storage for coal cars in the area.  In the real world, storage yards for cars as well as bulk coal piles are huge and can take up several hundred acres.  Obviously I don't have that kind of real estate but this should give who ever has to work this area something to play with.

Change is for certain.

Many things have changed in the last few months and time is a precious commodity.  The New Rahel Terminus line has moved, not very far, just across the room.  When I changed the layout from an around the walls with some peninsulas to a module style with wheels it was for just this type of situation.

The old layout area redone as the "New" family room area.
It was cramped for a layout space and the posts were an
obstacle to always work around.

The new area is free of posts and wider!  Now I just need to
decide which direction to roll the tables into??

A photo from the other side.

 The family room area in my basement that also serves as my layouts home was congested and was 1/2 carpet and 1/2 rolled vinyl flooring that was an eyesore.  I only had 2 sections of the layout finished to a point of track work and some scenery.  That area measured 16' x 32".  While I have several other module tables finished and awaiting foam and track, etc.  the finished sections were sticking out into the family room area too much for my liking.  The area that I had to use was roughly 25' x 11'.  Now that I've technically swapped   areas (family area is now where the layout was and vice-versa) I have a new vinyl plank floor under the layout and an area roughly 25'x 18' to work with.  This will make for wider aisles and the ability to move the tables around a bit more to suit my whims.  I'm also dabbling with a layout software program (Any rail) to see if I can come up with a plan to my liking.  That's another great thing about using the module / table.  With the proper amount of planning they can be shifted around to different configuration's.