Stay the course or go to HO........that is the question.

So....It's been a bit since a post, especially a meaningful one (at least to me).  I have tons of N-scale structure's (built & still in the box), rolling stock, track & switches, etc. N-scale.  I have not really seriously worked on the railroad for over 1 year.  I like what I see in HO scale, especially structures, and the fact that the locomotives now come standard with sound.  I have a Soundtrax sound system that works with Soundtrax decoders, but I've never installed it.  I think trying to get speakers into an N-scale loco is a project I don't want to tackle.  With the Soundtrax system there is no need for individual speakers but the layout needs to be divided into "sound sections".  One of the things I love about DCC is not having to divide the layout into power districts, so I'm not a fan of dividing things into "Sound districts".  I'm not that electrically smart, I love structure building, and creating a believable environment.  I just don't want to have to dink around a lot with finicky engine stuff.

So the $1m. question, switch to HO or stay w/ N???

New Horizon (Background)

I was never really thrilled with the way my existing backdrop looked.  I had used some of the paper background photos, that were glued on to a blue painted masonite (brown press board).  They looked alright when you were at eye level and straight on but the sky paint didn't match the sky color of the printed picture and even the sky color from picture to picture varied and it bugged me.

I am always getting ideas for the New Rahel Terminus when walking through home improvement stores and I came across a 4' x 8' poly (plastic) wall panel.  It is relatively thin and cuts easily.  I used 3 colors of blue plastic rated spray paint on each 8'x 16" section once I cut them to size.  I like how they turned out.  My wife thinks they look a bit dark or stormy. I think they look serious and it matches my mood and the mood of New Rahel's cityscape.

 

Welcome Back

I've been on hiatus for about 2 years, finishing up my bachelor degree and  lot of dust has settled over the metropolis of New Rahel and the New Rahel Terminus.  Time has come to get back to the basement and see where I left off.

A little change is in store as I have moved the basement around again, all for a better railroad flow.  That's one of the beauties of doing this on tables or in sections! I did start a new shack for the Edison Electric plant coal yard. Maybe it's a maintenance shop of a place for yard workers to take a snooze in between jobs?  It's a GC Laser structure.  Pretty easy to assemble, all laser cut cardboard / pressboard.  I added a few things for interest and put it on pillars instead of it resting on the ground.

 

 
Overall I think it turned out alright.  It was a nice start back into the fray after a long time away!

 The tables are pretty cluttered right now with all the usual junk that one accumulates when doing any project, but now there is room to walk around the entire layout.  We'll see how things take shape in the future.
It's good to be back at it.

Edison Power & Light's Power Plant at New Rahel

It's been a while since  a post, but who's keeping track?  Probably no one.  I thought I'd drop a couple of pictures here on the power plants progress.

I need to weather the 2 new smokestacks
The old one were cracked.  You can see some
of the coal piles in the yard and I have a couple
of pieces of earth moving equip. to model and
add to the scene in addition to a maintenance shed.

The coal cars enter the dump shed that also thaws the frozen coal cars in the winter months.  I still have to paint the coal loads in the cars so they are uniform in color as well as weather the cars.

Overhead of the yard looking north.  On the hill to the right will be a freight transfer building and the track to no where will someday be a wharf and associated buildings.

~ 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.