Humpyard

How do you like the Humpyard turnout throws?

I like the humpyards

I use them attached to simple wire bell cranks (Made from the same wire/teflon sleeve that Humpyard supplies).  By making the portion of the bell crank under the layout the same thrwo distance as the travel in the switch stand part, I get good reliable throwing action, and good holds at each end.

Keeping at the scenery, I

Keeping at the scenery, I took advantage of the MRC/JTT tree offer we got posted about last week.  Ordered three boxes - two of the 2in. pines and one of the 3in oaks:

They came in yesterday (3 day turnaround!) and I couldn't resist sticking a few into the ground:

Those are the 2 in. pines, and I think they make a nice compliment to the WS pre-fab trees I already have there.  The 3 in. oaks look too big to me in person, but they do photograph nicely:

And the stock keeps rolling

Just to keep myself busy while I acquire and install scenery products, I've also been working on another rolling stock scratchbuild (that yellow Critter in the background was the last one).  This is a shop flat based on a Burke and Turvis prototype that appeared one day in another forum I frequent (though you'd think MRH would be enough!).  The car is built out of Evergreen styrene 0.020 sheet, 0.020 v-groove siding for the deck, sone 0.020 right angle channel as internal breacing, and id detailed with BLMA 18" wire grabs and transition ers freight car stirrups.  Paitn consists of Badger Modelflex Glossblack (2 coats) over Polly Scale Undercoat.  The yellow on the grabs and stirrups is prototypical and is Polly Scale Railbox Yellow.  Trucks are scrap box denizens, with Intermountain 33" wheels; couplers are MT 1015s glued to the bottom of the deck.  She weighs next to nothing, but she looks really neat.  Now to find a load for this car, and work it into my operating scheme as a special move.

That short flat car on the

That short flat car on the other forum and your model is close to exactly the short car I saw behind a 200 ton wrecking crane as a hook guard and was connected by a large steal bar about 6 foot long where the couplers should be connecting the Crane to the small tender flat. I saw it just this past summer here in town as 2 of 3 SD40s rolled off the end of the dead end rails in the little yard here in Winchester when they didn't set the breaks properly and over that weekend the engines sank on the rails and roll off the ends about 60 feet grounding them selves and burred the lead engine 4 feet into the mud. The Big CSX yard somewhere north of Winchester sent their wrecking train and crew to pull the engines out of the mud and put them back on the tracks. I missed watching the show but saw the train and the 200 ton crane as they were leaving town. Of course that may not be the exact car but it's a close twin to the short heavy duty I saw only difference now that I think about it I believe it had 2-6 wheel trucks on it but I'm not sure.

That's a really nice model of the short flat you have built and not sure what you would do with the orange one in the back ground but they do make for interesting conversation. Great work

Dan

Hey Phil- Nothing to add of

Hey Phil-

Nothing to add of real value but I did want to commend you on your periodic posts and want to encourage you to keep them up.  You're good at keeping your posts to a reasonable length and keeping on subject (both skills I lack unfortunately!) and also keeping up with periodic updates. 

I find for myself that trying to keep up with regular updates (again, something I'm not doing a good job of myself) really helps put a microscope to my progress - or lack thereof.  Keep posting!  I'm always reading (if silently in the background).  I'm interested to see how your refinery scene comes together.

~rb

Thanks guys

dan,

The prototype was owned by Briggs and Turvis  which apparently was in the scrap business.  So you crane guard car idea might be spot on.

RB,

I'm watching your posts too - the collective groups of you guys doing NYC based railroads (particularly rail marine terminals) are in a whole area of model work I find fascinating.

And more scenery

With all those trees to plant (and more armitures and foliage to make into trees), work has continued on scenery:

this is the form for a low hill that will go in the back right corner of section 1.  it is four layers of corrogated cardboard glued together and then glued to the foam.  I've started applying Woodland Scenics Mold-a-Scene aroun it, and will post more pics when I have them.

On the workbench :

This is a Lifelike F7 mechanism that I'm looking to install a DCC Decoder in.  I did up the loco in a KCS paintscheme a number of years ago, and it runs like heck, so now that I'm upgrading the layout to DCC, I need to start installing decoders.  I'm thinking a small one piece decoder might just fit on top of the motor . . .

I'm also starting to convert this -

Into this -

Paint stripping is complete, now off to the airbursh!

Still more scenery this week

Here's an overall shot of section one, stripped bare and topped with WS Mold-a-scene.  The darker stuff is the wet "plaster" THis is as far as I got with the first tub - I'll crack the second tonight and get this all filled in.  Then its color, grass, roads and details galore.

I also spent some time going through the door section at our local building supply salvage place - and ifound this massive hollow core door:

It's 94 inches tall/long and 24 inches wide.  Since section teo of the benckwork is 92x16, this will do nicely once cut down and stitched back together.  I plan to support it on both ends with short L-girders (one attached to a lwall. one attached to the existing benchwork), and a single heavy duty brackt in the middle (attached to the studs between my windows).  Should serve very nicely with my light weight approach to scenery.

I've been working on the Railroad

And after many days away from the blog - some more progress shots:

First - some scenery:

This is an overall shot of the Refinery section (or Section 1) of my layout.  All the pink foam is now actually covered in Woodland Scenics Mold-a-Scene, and so the terrain is essentiallsy done.

I bought some Chinese trees of ebay - $5.95 shipped for 10 3 inch high "pine" trees.  Took three weeks to get here - not too shabby.  I pulled one out, pulled out the branches, and set it on the layout

Not too shabby if I do say so myself.

Since this section is focused on the refinery, I figured it was high time to get in gear and build it.  Thanks to a Walther's North Island kit, a BLMA instrument shed turned pumphouse, and lots of plastic piping, I got this done this last weekend:

The oil stained concrete base is another paper texture from http://www.scalescenes.com/ and I think adds a great touch to simulate a well worn path for maintenance rtucks.  The backdrop is a free internet stock photo that I cropped to 11x17 inches, printed at my local FedEx Kinko's store, and laminated to foamcore with 3M spray Adhesive.