Superior & Seattle Railroad Build

[bparrish]

John.......

You are really cooking on this railroad.  Too bad I live so far from Michigan.

We have a lot of DCC operators here in the valley and one has used a drawer idea like yours and it works well.  My command station just hangs off of the edge of the bench work in one area along with the test track.  Pretty out of the way.  I use all wireless stuff so needing the command station is a pretty seldom thing.

see ya
Bob

[S&S RR]

John.......

You are really cooking on this railroad.  Too bad I live so far from Michigan.

We have a lot of DCC operators here in the valley and one has used a drawer idea like yours and it works well.  My command station just hangs off of the edge of the bench work in one area along with the test track.  Pretty out of the way.  I use all wireless stuff so needing the command station is a pretty seldom thing.

see ya
Bob

Thanks Bob - If you every get this way I would be happy to show you the layout.

[S&S RR]

Before I get this build thread up-to-date with what I'm working on today we need a track plan.  This will do for a start but I need to find a better way to display it here.



The dimensions of the L - shaped space for the layout are 40 feet by 60 feet. About 60 percent of that area will be devoted to the layout.

[S&S RR]

Layout Diagram Portrait, this may be easier for some to view.

[ACL1504]

John,

Holy Cow! I'm green with envy of all your space! I love it!

Tom

[gnatshop]

I'm in envy that he retained his grammar school skills of drawin' with all them
colored pencils!    (need a 'rollin' on the floor' smiley!!)

Serussly, that layout diagram is awesome!! 

[S&S RR]

John,

Holy Cow! I'm green with envy of all your space! I love it!

Tom

Let's just see if I can fill it with some good stuff.  We are sure working at it!  Thanks for following the thread.

[S&S RR]

I'm in envy that he retained his grammar school skills of drawin' with all them
colored pencils!    (need a 'rollin' on the floor' smiley!!)

Serussly, that layout diagram is awesome!! 

Those colored pencils come in handy - we referred to them at work as CAD version 1.0. All good designs start with a pencil. This drawing was done with a software package called CADRAIL.  It is good for design refinement but it all started on a drafting board. I'm not happy with the way it displays - I need to do a version with colors that photograph better.

Good to see you back David - thanks for following along.

[S&S RR]

Today, I added two more drawers to the main control panel for the DCC equipment. I also got back to the workbench after about 3 months of track laying and wiring.  At this point the lower level track has been completed and is ready for ballast. This is about 40% of the total track that I need to complete - but I'm now going to start working on both track work and structure builds to break things up.  The project on my workbench is the Stone Roundhouse for the yard. I spent a few minutes loading the build pictures of the Stone Roundhouse build into the gallery last night so tonight I'm going start to put together an abridged version of a build thread to bring this thread up to the point that I left off 3 months ago.

[S&S RR]

One of the structures that I wanted to use as the centerpiece for the yard on my layout is the Stone Roundhouse. The first time I saw the structure was in Linn Westcott's book "Model Railroading with John Allen". I confirmed that I just had to have this structure on my layout after seeing George Sellios' Franklin and South Manchester layout in 2007. After many attempts over the years to purchase one of Bob VanGelder's Stone Roundhouse kits,  I gave up – just too much money in the collectors market – I would need two kits to make the roundhouse I wanted. Like everyone in this hobby, I sure wish I would have purchased the kit when Bob released it.

On a return visit to the F&SM I mentioned to George that I really wanted to build the Stone Roundhouse but the ebay prices for the kits on Ebay were way to rich for my blood.  A few comments about Ebay crazies followed and then I went off to look at more of the F&SM and George started a conversation with one of the other guests at his open house. When is was time for me to leave George handed me a red box - he said that these were the left over original castings that Bob VanGelder had given him for his roundhouse. He told me to make a mold and scratch build the rest of the parts that I needed. He also asked me to ask Bob if he cared if I copied the original castings.  I talked to Bob at the EXPO and he was fine with it - he actually sound excited that I was building it with the original castings as the seed.  Bob also had some comments about Ebay crazies.  So that is how this build started - the castings have been in that red box for a few years while I completed enough of the layout to be ready for this build. Let's start with a few pictures of John Allen's Stone Roundhouse.

[S&S RR]

A few pictures of the Stone Roundhouse on the F&SM.

[S&S RR]

And finally a few pictures of Bob VanGelder's Stone Roundhouse on the South River & Millville.

[S&S RR]

This is a photograph of the original castings that George gave me.



The original side wall castings were rectangular - no roof pitch.  From these castings I made molds and then cut and fitted the plaster castings for the sidewalls, back, and front of the roundhouse. At one point I was counting stones on the castings and then counting stones on pictures to get the proportions just right.

[S&S RR]

This sequence of pictures shows the resulting molds and castings.










I made dozens of castings from each mold because I knew I would waste some during the cutting and fitting part of the project.

[S&S RR]

The next step in the process was to cut the base out of the bench work of the layout. Here are a few pictures of the bench work and the hole that was left after the base was removed.







Future home of the Stone Roundhouse.