In reply to Appleseed :
Those are pretty cool, but until we expand and, hopefully, have a decent sized yard, we're pretty much out of space for rolling stock. Those would be cool for a fictional excursion railroad, though. That's been part of my long term plan, but I suspect Kazookid2 will want to use that as a way of introducing some steam power to our layout. If we're introducing steam, I'll probably try to sneak in some old Pullman heavyweights instead. That's still SEVERAL steps in the future. Thanks for thinking of me, though.
Got the "tank farm", containment basin and pumping stations for the fueling facility roughed in tonight.
"Tank farm" is painted up and ready to install. I kind of need my "bucket of track" to arrive so I can figure out where to place everything. Once I know the track spacing, I can start building the fueling island and figure out where the tanks and pump house (next project) need to go.
Pretty happy with them given they are a scratch build, and I probably don't have $5 in them.
Wooowhooo, got the shipping tracker on the "bucket o track" today.
Since our "town" is part reality, part fiction, the Miatas do epic burnouts:
Got the "bucket o track" in the mail today and wow, just wow.
Pic:
It would take up way too much time to catalog everything, but I can't even estimate the retail value of this lot. It's easily 5x more than we paid for it.
There's $150 worth of swiches alone. Score!
Duke
MegaDork
2/22/21 9:20 p.m.
In reply to kazoospec :
I really like those overhead truss bridges!
In reply to Duke :
I haven't finalized things yet, but it's looking like I may not end up using at least one of them. I'll probably be looking to pass some of this stuff on at GRM friendly prices once we figure out exactly what our expansion is going to look like.
Small project tonight. Made a "sanding tower" for our fueling facility.
Finished up the fueling facility today and integrated it into a pair of "ash pit"/inspection tracks. This also gives us a "logical" place to park a couple more locomotives if our fleet ever grows. Unfortunately, each track is probably only long enough to park one modern loco.
More of a "photo op" than an actual project, but we did a bit of "track testing" tonight. We've got some work to do on the switches before we're ready to permanently put down the sidings, but the basic design and electrical feeds seem ok. While we had the engines out testing, we took a few pics at the new fueling facility.
This weekend's project: Got the "pump house" for the fuel facility built.
Successful trip to the "hobby recycler" train store today.
The eventual goal for this:
The RDC we bought is actually an RDC-2, which isn't "perfect", since CN 1501 is an RDC-1, buuuuuuut, if we want it to be "perfect", I'll need to redo the shell at bit anyway, and the price was right, so we grabbed it up.
Also painted up the Mustang we got and another Miata.
Small piece of good news: I was able to order a "replacement shell" from Kato, so I can hack up just a shell to build our CN inspection car. If I'm happy with it, I'll swap it over. If I'm not, I haven't mucked up a nice little engine.
Unfortunately, Kato only has RDC-2 shells left, so I'll need to make a few more changes than if an RDC-1 was available.
Patience just scored me this for $110. There's an easy $100 worth of Ebay controllers and power cords alone.
In reply to Appleseed :
Looks like a solid score. I'm seeing the controllers for about $40 each, so you're close to what you paid just with those.
In reply to kazoospec :
Yeah, and the SOBs usually don't include the cord. That's an extra $25.
Wow, long time no updates. Tonight, I asked Kazookid2 "Do you want me to put light posts by the parking lot or by the fuel tanks?" Kazookid2, "Yes". OK, "yes" it is.
In reply to kazoospec :
I need you to teach me wiring. I've got big dreams of Adrino controlled interior lights and "random" effects. But without a diagram (and even then, that's asking a lot) I'm lost when I comes to electrons.
I need to remind myself to go Roadkill on this HOn30 micro layout. "Don't get it perfect, get it running."
In reply to Appleseed :
Well . . . I'm kind of an electrical knuckle head as well, but here's what I've figured out so far:
Basically, for lighting I've used the Woodland scenic "just plug" kits as kind of a basis. If you don't have too many lights, you can just stick with their stuff and it's pretty much idiot proof. If, like me, you're getting into several dozen lights, you might want to do what I did, which is buy a few "just plug" hubs as a power source. They're pretty easy to link together and there's an available "on/off" switch that turns them all off and on together at a single switch (since we don't alway run the lights when we're running the trains). The money adds up pretty quickly, though. To cut down on overall costs, I bought a number of cheapo lights on Amazon. So far, out of several dozen lights, I've only had one or two that didn't work. To keep the number of connections and the under layout wiring spaghetti to a relative minimum, I ended up adding several "bus bars" (also Amazon stuff) to areas where there are a lot of lights. The big thing is making sure that the lights have an appropriate resistor between them and your power source. It is sort of complicated, but not as bad as it sounds. So far (knock on wood), our lights have been pretty reliable.
Tonight, got a bit more groundwork done.
