Building the yard

Got some work done this past week.  Its been a bit frustrating as I was waiting for bridges and was hemming and hawing over the elevation, and curves.  Just thinking too many things and not doing anything.  So I said 'screw it' and built the yard.

I'm now debating on whether its going to be the Kitchener Station or the Streetsville yard .  Kitchener is where I was born and raised, so there's some nostalgia, but Streetsville is close to where I work now and its more a true yard (and its CP).  I might put Kitchener across the table now, so I can have the best of both worlds!

The original plan has met some changes - shocker!  - and due to lack of foresight on my part about cliffs and scenery and other stuff, two tracks were discarded.  No big deal, they were just going to be rip tracks and engine spots.   Oh and the angles on the one side are off, but it still works!

Building the yard

All put together and glued down

So that's the work that's been going on lately.  Still having issues on where to place all the controls for the switches, as the front of this section's table has all the electrical wiring going to it.  Hindsight being 20/20 it was the wrong place to put it all.  Oh well.

Rolling Stock

I love to get parcels in the mail.  There's just something Christmasy about it.  Anyway, recently I ordered some Thomas the Train stuff from my N scale supplier, so I tacked on a few things that I needed (well, wanted is a better word).  And I finally found some Rapido Via Rail cars on line from a great supplier in Manitoba (go Canada eh!? Rapido is also Canadian so its nice the total solution was sourced from here)  and the more I looked at his stuff, the more I decided to buy.  of course. 

So in addition to 4 Via Rail cars, pictures to follow, I got 4 hopper cars from Intermodal.  Ok, my thoughts on the Rapido - wow, awesome detail, nice rolling, great stuff but I expected that from their price.

The Intermodals were surprising though.  Inexpensive, 15 bucks or something, but the detail and quality are top notch. Very impressive.

 

Hoppers in action!



Going East out of Fergus's Industrial Spurs

Track plan revision

I've done some things here and there, but its slowed down.  I'm finding that I've been thinking way to much and doing to little.  So I thought I'd post this and see if I can push forward a bit.

I revised the plan to include another way down from the top layer, before I had only 1 way down and no way to turn a train around.  The revision allows a train to come up, make a complete loop and then descend to the bottom layer.   The picture is below, the green is the top layer, about 10" above the blue.

Revised Track Plan

Also a bit frustrating is my deviation from the plan !  I'm finding that I'm close in my layout but there are some serious differences. For example the Kitchener Yard - I screwed it up a bit and my two engine leads are going to have to be on the south end and not the north as on this plan.  Also there are going to be some seriously steep cliffs as I don't think I thought enough about horizontal elevation changes.

Prettied up in Photoshop

I thought of a new style for my layout plan - the actual with pictures, so I tried it out with mixed results.  Only the top half, I still had a few problems with skew and my angles.  I think next time I'll have to rig up a fix to hold the camera vertical every time.

I hope that it will all work out in the end !

 Also I'm ordering some Via Rail stuff to go with my P42 Via Rail Locomotive