26/10/2010

My dad and I put up the ceiling sheets in the garage with the aid of a lifting device I rented for the day. It was well worth the $55 I spent and saved a lot of lifting and swearing. It will take a bit more time to fill in the gaps and cornices before I can paint the ceiling but at least the project is underway and the room looks great. So far it has cost about $320 in materials but it increases the value of the house, that's what I tell my wife anyway.




A little late but here is Pha and Alisha on Christmas morning with something every little girl wants for Christmas, when you press the smoke stack the whistle sounds and it chuff's along the floor about two meters playing music. It has encouraged her to start crawling too chase after it

Doing the ceiling

Dad and I have started doing the ceiling in the train room, my dad has never seen the pont in my facination for model trains but none the less he is giving me a hand with finishing the room off. He is retired now and it gets him out of mums hair for one day a week. The battens are up and I will be picking up the ceiling sheets tomorrow, thank god for nail guns.

14/02/10

The last week or so I have been assembeling a Walthers G.E.O Roberts Printing kit after a false start painting the brick work I just painted the exterior one colour because of the time and difficulty.
The kit goes together really well but when you glue the sides together you have to file away some of the interior window mouldings to get the sides to fit together properly. It will be a flour mill on my layout with silos and loading area for the bulk hoppers and boxcars for bagged flour.
I have also been thinking about the theme of the layout so I have decided to model a fictisious subdivision of the Southern Pacific. To add to the mix it will not be overtaken by Union Pacific. It will be named the Boyne River Subdivision after the Boyne River near my home here in Australia.

2/2/2010

Due to a tropical low dumping almost 250mm of rain in the last two days I have done some indoors work on the planning of the layout. With the plans I had made I put an outline down on the garage floor to test clearances and was surprised by a few things. I have redesigned the peninsula to extend less than before to give 75cm of room between it and the other side of the layout. I have also made more room for the helix by extending the layout by 50cm on that side.

This is the new plan I drew up today a little bit different but the width of the shelves in the same, below is a photo of the markings on the floor I used to test some clearances.

N scale digger and crane (nearly)

On a recent trip to Rocky (Rockhampton for all you non Queenslanders) I spotted these models in 1/150 scale in one of the cabinets of the Capricorn Model House, for such a small scale they have great detail and just look at the cabs. The first one is a Komatsu excavator that is fully adjustable and has two sets of rams (one long, one short) for different boom heights. The image below has the short rams attached an as you can see looks great on the flat wagon.

The photo below is the self propelled crane that comes in two separate configurations I chose the one with the extended boom the other model has the boom retracted.

This is the box the models are packed in, the one catch is you don't know which model you have until you open the box.

Ok here it is with the boom assembled you even get a little red hook if you want to string up a load, for a height comparison I have added a Walthers grain silo. I love this model its bloody awesome.

Track Plan Top Level

I have got around to sorting the top level out, it will be 43cm wide for the entire length with a 120cm wide perninsula in the middle of the room. Once around that the line heads to the helix down to the lower level. The line up will join the top level on the left of the entry so I will need two lift sections (top and bottom levels) to get trains across the gap.

Due to the construction method there wont be many large geographical features on the top deck, I will leave that for the bottom deck where I have more room to play with. The track plan will be developed when I draw in the supports under the deck. I could have used more of the space for the layout but I wanted plenty of room for people to operate the layout.

Track Plan

I have finally got around to sorting out the track plan, It is based upon a single level plan that appeared in Model Railroader. It fits perfectly into my space and there is room for a helix up to the second level without exceeding the space I have avaliable. I have also decided to construct the layout in a domino style inspired by Mark Lestico and his Cascade Sub so If I have to move the layout I will not have to destroy it in the process. This is the outline of the bottom level at the moment with the upper level to come at a later date. The track plan will not be the same all around the bottom deck but will be similar. The loop up the helix to the top deck will be on the outside and the track down will be on the inside of the helix.

http://macrodyn.com/ldsig/wiki/index.php?title=Cascade_Subdivision_-_N_-_Mark_Lestico