Measure Once, Cut Twice. Um ...Okay ... Repeat

At least I can make it smaller

I found a slight miscalculation in my wall measurements, but at least this part is too big rather than too small. This is the deck for the south part of Newton, which is the old Carolina & Northwestern line going to Lincolnton, Gastonia, and York, SC.

Moving! (This is not a sad story.)

Into the life of every layout there comes a time to move, or be chopped up. This time has come to my Southern S-Line, which wasn't even very far along yet.

 

Here are the pieces of the layout I had in the train shed, carefully removed by the truck driver and ready to load. Fortunately, I have a new job, a new house, and a new knee (well not new, just repaired). I did learn a lot building this part of the layout. I doubt any of these pieces will be used again, but the Southern's S-Line is not dead. It is coming back better than it would have been before.

Oyama Staging Yard II - Wiring

At the end of the last post, I left you with this picture.

Now it's time for some Whats, Whys and Hows. For those of you whose eyes glaze over when people start talking about wiring, electronics, and programming, you may skip this section and get your friend like me to come and do this. 

Oyama Staging Yard I - Construction and Track Design

The west staging yard, which I'm calling Oyama, since it is in the place where Oyama Yard is on the S-Line, is now finished and installed in the train house. I've got a video on YouTube showing this yard and how it operates.

Trains in the Trainhouse!

Okay, no trains yet, but at least the first piece of the layout.

Layout Construction III - Backdrop & Valance

My backdrops are made using aluminum flashing. This is available in various widths in fifty foot rolls. That long enough to all around the train house with no joints. Here's the finished backdrop with the framing for the valance.

Backdrop and Valance Frame

Layout Construction II: Roadbed & Track

I used spline roadbed on my last layout and will continue it on this one. Here is a picture of the results, and then we'll get to the details.

Layout Construction I: Shelf Benchwork

The Eastern S-Line layout will be multilevel with three levels of operating railroad and staging above and below the layout, all connected by helices. Like all multilevel layouts, there is a premium on having the decks as thin as possible so there is more room for sceniced, operating layout.

My first thought was to use 3/4 plywood as described in Tony Koester's book Designing and Building Multi-Deck Model Railroads. Thinking about this I realized that even though the layout structure is only 3/4 inch thick, there will still lots of "stuff" hanging down below the layout. This includes switch machines, wiring, signal and power distribution circuits, and lighting for the level below. Depending of the particular equipment used, this will generally be not more than about two inches thick.

If the stuff under the deck that we have to hide is two inches thick, we may as well used that for the layout structure as well. This will save vertical space by having the "stuff" and the structure use the same space. The design that I came up with is shown below, upside down on the workbench.

Bottom of Layout Shelf