I Am Finally Unveiling My Layout!

[BradKT]

To all of you good people who have really helped me over the last year-plus to resolve a variety of issues, I have decided to unveil my layout so you can see the payoff...and the progress to date.

I have posted over a hundred pics at the following site:

http://s584.photobucket.com/albums/ss284/BradKT/

The basic theme is an industrial park, with oil refinery complex (Conoco oil refinery, storage tanks, natural gas unloading facility and tanker truck loading facility), rail yard, fire station, engine house (with overhead crane, passenger car washing station and diesel locomotive refueling station), cement plant, gas station, warehouse, construction equipment rental company, bus terminal, taxi stand, passenger station and truck-rail facility.

The locale is either central or Southern California...in the eastern part of the state.  The time frame is the early to mid-1970s.  The flags that I run are Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, Denver and Rio Grande Western and Santa Fe.

I made many of my own decals and got a substantial amount of billboard and advertising material from the 1970s era off the internet to re-create the era. 

This is still a work in progress.  I still have to do the following:

1:  wire the street lights, traffic and working RR crossing signals;
2.  install the RR crossing signals and actuators;
3.  install the background around the 2 outer edges of the L-shaped layout;
4.  assemble, paint and install the passenger station and figures; and
5.  assemble, paint and install the truck-rail terminal, vehicles and figures.

Yampa Bob took the time to teach me how re-size the files and how to post these images and they are a manageable size so they won't slow down your computer trying to load them.

I hope you enjoy what you see.  This has been a fun project and I couldn't have done anything near this quality had it not been for the contributions, cautionary notes and suggestions that so many of you have made.

Once again, thank you everyone.  There is a part of all of you in this layout.  Enjoy.

[pdlethbridge]

NICE!!!!!

What scale? N?

[BradKT]

HO Scale.

[Yampa Bob]

Brad,
Only one word I can think of:  Magnificent!!

[pdlethbridge]

Well I'ii see your magnificent and raise you a awesome.!!

[az2rail]

Ya. What those guys said.

Nice work.

Bruce

[Joe Satnik]

Unbelievable.   I sense a future magazine article.

Next?  Perhaps you could experiment with light weathering.....

Thanks for the tour.

Sincerely,

Joe Satnik 

[boomertom]

Brad,

Very inspiring, I see a great deal of time and obvious enjoyment in building to this stage.

I for one would like to hear more about your operating scheme.

Great job, keep it up.


Tom

[OkieRick]

That is great.  I've been looking at layouts on youtube - as good and/or better than most I've seen.

Rick

[BradKT]

Thank you all for your compliments.  Heeding the good advice that I have been receiving from the group has definitely kept me on the right track.  When I make some more progress, I'll post some more layout photos at that same site.  I think that the layout will really be something once I have the background, passenger station, RR signals and crossings and truck-rail terminal installed.

Boomertom, I am not quite sure what you mean by my operating scheme.   My layout is a DCC layout using the Bachmann E-Z Command system...or are you referring to the 4 railroads that I operate? 

I usually run 2 or 3 trains at the same time.  I can run all trains of any one railroad or any combination of the 4 railroads...both passenger and freight.

[pdlethbridge]

 Brad, could you please give us some info about the layout like minimum radius and switch size on mainline and yards? How long is the main line? Track plan? etc. Thanks, Paul

[WGL]

Congratulations on a fine job!  It seems like more than a year's work just to collect all of the parts to assemble your layout.

[Santa Fe buff]

BradKT,

I was REALLY bored today... I have stuff to do, but I have 2 hours of free time. So I did this:



I hope to see further updates, great job. 

Joshua

[BestSnowman]

That is a great layout!

[BradKT]

This is the copy of an E:mail that I sent to Yampa Bob that details the story of the building of this layout:


"I started to assemble my railroad layout in January, 2008 after I had fixed up the interior of the back house during the Winter.  First, I got the Model Railroading book on benchwork,  Then I got a couple of 4' x 8' x 1/2" pieces of plywood and the wood for the benchwork from Home Depot (that's why the color of the outside of the benchwork is Home Depot orange) and put it all together...including the elevated part of the outer track in the back.  I have collected a lot of woodworking tools over the years and really got a good chance to finally put them to work.   I also had a great workbench that I hadn't assembled for years after I had bought it and put it up in the back house.

I had a working track setup by March, 2008 (which I made 4 minor realignments on earlier this year to eliminate derailments) and added the access hatch.  My threads on the Bachmann site began about then.  That's when we first became acquainted.  Ever since, whenever I encountered a problem, I started a thread on the Bachmann general discussion site.

All during this time, I was planning the scenery and settled on the idea of an industrial park in either the mid-eastern or southeastern part of California.  I found a number of the buildings on EBay (particularly the Atlas HO scale Union 76 North Island Refinery, which is out of production, the gas station and several of the detail items) and got the rest through either Hobbylinc or Blue Ridge Hobbies.  I was spending about 1-3 hours on this project 5-6 days per week.  It was a good way to keep my mind occupied.

Next, I measured the layout, planned and painted the streets and sidewalks and the foundation area for all of the buildings (using the model measurements), I got all of the switches working right (thanks to some advice you gave me in a discussion on the Bachmann thread).  Then I did the scenery and one of the sub-projects that I did was to search the internet for logos and ads and make my own decals.  That's how I turned the Union 76 North Island Refinery into a Conoco Oil Refinery...plus I had already had a bunch of Conoco tank cars.  That pretty much took me through the summer.

Between October and December, I assembled and painted buildings and put them on the layout.  This is when a lot of things that I learned during my model shipbuilding years came into play.  Next came the vehicles, street lights (I got them cheap on EBay from China) and figures (I painted most of them).  I made the street signs by using my computer and a scanner.  Most of the billboards were made the same way...I found ads for the early 1970s era and scaled them down to size, got some lighted Model Power billboards, printed my ads on photo paper (coated with clear acrylic paint) and put them on the billboards.

In January-February, I tackled putting the DCC decoders in my Athearn engines (remember those threads?).

Now, as I have previously told you, this project is still incomplete.  After I complete my re-wiring project to properly power the track  (another recent Bachmann thread), I am going to wire the street lights that have already been installed.  Then comes the truck rail terminal and passenger station, the crossing signals, the railroad and the background, which will run along the outer two sides of the "L".  I expect that part of the work to run though the summer."


The layout itself is an a "L" shape (9' x 5' on the left side and 14' x 6' on the other, with an access hatch).  There are 3 tracks.  The outer and middle tracks go around the shape of the "L" and in the rear of the layout the outer track is elevated.   The outer track curves are 28" and the middle track curves are 22."  The inner track is a large oval about 11 feet in length with 18" curves.  All three tracks are connected by switches (#6 turnouts), which allow trains to be switched back and forth between tracks (there are two turnouts at each location so the trains can be switched off of one track and onto the other...each set of two turnouts is wired into and controlled by a single Atlas switch).  All of the turnouts are powered by a separate DC transformer (also Atlas).    There is a siding and small rail yard in the middle rear of the inner oval track.  The 24" square access hatch is located inside of and on the left end of the inner oval track.  Two more lines come off the siding to the small rail yard and engine house (these are #5 turnouts).  At the front of the layout (where the controls are located), there is another siding coming off the outer track (#5 turnout), which is to allow cars to be placed on and taken off of the track.

I'm sorry that I don't have a diagram of the layout to put on the site, but I am going to take a couple of pics that will be aerial shots that will better illustrate the entire layout in a day or two.