The Empire

[Zephyrus52246]

Track worked fine.  A non "Keep Alive" equipped switcher crawled along without stalling.  The four back tracks are already in, but in the pic you can see a couple extend over the black homabed, so I cut a small piece to extend these.  It also extended the shortest track just enough so the Pioneer Zephyr can fit on it.    Over a couple of days I built a cabinet base and put together one of my IKEA drawer cabinets.  In the pic the one on the right is 36 inches wide.  I thought I had another 36" and two 24" ones, but I only had a 24" and 18" ones.  It's been over a year since I bought them.   
Anyhow, the 24 inch one is now together and ready to be crammed with "stuff".    This will leave the 36" one for rolling stock.  I need to make some kind of partitions for these drawers so the cars don't fall over.


Jeff

[Zephyrus52246]

Meanwhile, back at the East end yard I've started laying track again, and remembering how it's not my favorite pastime.  At the end of the yard (where the soldering iron is) I've cut a piece of homabed to extend this by another 13 inches to fit more cars, though I suspect these tracks are much longer than the ones in the West yard.  I didn't think I'd be soldering track here, but I decided to run track feeds only at the one end and also some of the joints are on curves.  Waiting for the glue to dry on the extension piece.   


Jeff

[PRR Modeler]

Looks good Jeff. I never thought about using IKEA drawers, but I usually try to stay away from huge stores like IKEA.

[Zephyrus52246]

I had originally seen IKEA drawers on a layout tour at NMRA Portland 2015, as shown in these pictures.  The owner used them for car storage.  I liked the industrial look of them, but the IKEAs in Chicago don't carry them, so I got the plain white ones.  They open fully and have a soft close feature. 


Jeff

[cuse]

Everything is looking great Jeff!


John

[ACL1504]

I agree, it all looks great. Well done Doc.

Tom

[Zephyrus52246]

Thanks, John and Tom.  The North Coast Limited cars are out to make sure clearances are OK.  So far, so good.  Three tracks down, six to go.  Or total of seven down, six to go. 


Jeff

[GPdemayo]

Good progress Jeff.....

[PRR Modeler]

Looks nicely done Jeff.

[Zephyrus52246]

Thanks for looking in, guys.  The yard is finished.  That didn't hurt.  Actually, I came up under the table too fast and have a nice scrape on my back from it.  But no pain, no gain, right?   

[Zephyrus52246]

Next up is wiring the yard.  I needed a small shelf to hold the power switches like I made on the West Yard, so to do that I needed to hang some fascia as well.  This took a couple of tries (and some broken masonite) to figure out how it would work.  The shelf isn't too deep, just enough for the switch box and a Diet Dew.  Making it deeper would make it harder to reach the back tracks.


Jeff

[PRR Modeler]

That is a really large yard. Do you have enough cars for it or do you need to go shopping? 

[Zephyrus52246]

Before the yard tracks could be wired, I noticed that in my haste to complete the other end of the layout after getting the East loop done, I hadn't fully wired the turnouts, so they have to be done first.  I bend the wires at the ends so I don't pull them through.  I remembered this after pulling the first one through.     There's so many tracks here I marked the ones that needed wiring with blue tape.  I leave the sawdust piles so I can find the holes. 


Jeff

[Zephyrus52246]

Ha Ha, Curt.  I have so much stuff here in boxes unbuilt, I probably have enough cars.  I did just get several new BLI and Tangent Tank cars though.   


Jeff

[Zephyrus52246]

Drilling, wiring, soldering.  I had to build a box to hold the micro switches.  Didn't take as long as the last one, since I could use the dimensions from the original.      First up is soldering sires to the switches.  Medusa of wires!


Jeff