tokeri51's blog

Progress is slow, I run out of funds for a while so the yard work will have to wait a couple of weeks. Meantime I decided to tackle the upper left corner adn work on the landscape. I finished carving the foam and then added some of the plaster cloth to attach it the the track.  Then I painted it dark green and brown to create a base. I added some turf and a few trees; it started to look a little better.

While my wife concentrates in adding roads and details to the lower part of the layout in Karolville, I started laying track for the main yard in Miriamburg.  This yard will have 4 storage tracks a long yard lead that also serves a couple of industries, a caboose track, and an engine service facility. For now, due to lack of revenue the TT will not be installed and it will be just a couple of tracks leading away from yard. You can see the layout plan in my gallery.

This weekend my wife completed a Blair lines model of a drive in, and we promptly found a place for it in Karolville. This model is great, comes with a lot of details and looks very nice. As you can see from the picture, it will fit nicely in the busy street, and all the folks from the Dummont Chemical and the Lumber yard will have a place to eat.

I also posted a change in the layout plan, please compare it to the previous version in the gallery and let me know if it is an improvement. The change is in the access to the industrial division of Karolville.

It seems that I can only work on the layout during the weekend.  This time I added a Chemical plant to Karolville, this plant will require some tanker cars and other supplies I will think later. The Dummont chemical plant is an old laser cut wood kit that was completed for a previous layout, but looks very nice in this new location.  Here is a picture:

I will add a road to the front in a near future.

This holiday weekend gave me time to work on the layout and start covering the ugly pink color of the foam. As a start I did the assemble the Walton Lumber yard and with a lot of help  from my wife, we set it up on its place in Karolville.  My wife bought some Woodland Scenics ground cover sheet and we glued to the foam, then we placed the 2 buildings and added the details.  Hope to continue with more industries and roads for Karolville in the next couple of weeks.  Keep you posted. Here is a picture from the gallery:

A lot has happened in the layout since the last time i posted. I finished laying all the track in the left side of the plan. I came up with a name for the layout Karoltown and Miriamburg RR. And came up with a central theme for the layout. 1. The Karoltown and Miriamburg is a fictional branchline that connects these two fictional cities to the Boston and Maine railroad. 2 The era is modern day but certain steam engines will still run in the summer for the tourists!. 3 There will be a passenger service between the two towns and a connection to Boston.

After completing the DCC wire bus underneath the styrofoam, I am ready to start adding the roadbed. I decided to use cork for mainly because I am familiar with it and know how to use it. I started the process at the lower left side of the layout. Incidentally this will be the industrial section of Karolville, (a small fictitious town somewhere in western Mass or soutwest NH). I also going to try to use ground throws for most of the accesible turnouts. I will post pictures as work progresses.

I am in the process of wiring for DCC the Layout. The firs thing I will do is run 2 cables across the benchwork to create the DCC power bus. I will use gauge 16 single thread wire bought from my big local hardware store.  I will then connect to my Digitrax zephyr so it wll be ready to take feeds from the rails.

Construction finally has begun on my new layout. So I will try to keep a blog as construction progresses. The benchwork was done by a good friend of mine who did an excellent job and I placed the 2" foam boards today.  The layout was posted on the Layout design forum and got good feedback from many users. I still not totally happy with the yard, but since that is the last thing I am going to build, I can change it later. Once all the foam is set, I will start laying track, hoping to complete the main line first and then doing all the branches.