Christmas and shots from the layout

Layout is coming along. Christmas is also coming along. Some more fine tuning on the bridge will be needed but trains will be running over it soon.

PG car cards and a few industries

 We're almost ready to get the ops going. I added car card racks. designed and printed car cards and waybills, sorted and matched the car card to the actual cars rebuilt a few derelict cars. The two major projects left are to add the bridge over the doorway and construct the piers in Punta Gorda.

Buildings are underway and 25 freight cars have been added to the fleet

25 weathered and properly weighted cars added to the fleet. Many covered hoppers and open hoppers for the phosphate fleet and box cars for general duty. The cars are shown in front of the town of Parsons in my Allegheny and Shenandoah Railroad.
Building construction has started. The three structures shown were all build from the same Lakeville Warehouse kit, What a great kit! It's modular so you can build it to serve either rail or trucks as you choose. The Publix warehouse structure was build with all the leftover parts from the first two false fronts.

Punta Gorda and ALL TRACK is in and painted!!

The track is all in and even PAINTED. One of the great things about battery power is that the loco never stalls or jerks and YOU DON"T HAVE TO EVER CLEAN THE TRACK.
The first shot is of Arcadia now that all the track is in and the next three are of Punta Gorda with the barge unloading dock in the foreground and the car ferry to the rear.

These shots are overviews of the entire room showing all the trackwork and the beautiful painted rails.
I relocated all the equipment using the locomotive and the operation was flawless, no stalls. no jerks, and more importantly no derailments!! What a pleasure it was and also very satisfying:)
Alas it is time to pack the tools, vacuum the rug and depart for Spring in Maryland. See you in November we we start anew with the structures and the equipment. 

Arcadia Yard is nearing completion

I pride myself on my organization and planning. So when I started to enlarge the track plan to begin track laying in Arcadia I discovered a problem. THE DESIGN ASSUMED AN 10' peninsula and only the 8' ONE I BUILT WOULD FIT THE SPACE!!! Uh oh...... What a dufus!
Off to the design software. I'm now on the 5th or 6th redesign of the yard. The battery cars attached to the locomotives take up some room on the tail tracks so their length all had to be double and triple checked, i.e. revised, to be sure cars could be switched and run around moves could be accomplished. Originally the yard had a very linear design and now the the space required a compound track arrangement as shown in the photos. Now on to Punta Gorda that also had to be redesigned many times a also it occupies the now too short space.

Wye is installed, finally

After one false start that had to be removed, the wye is done. I mistakenly placed the two wye turnouts that are near the palms too close together resulting in sub-optimal radii on the yard approach end of the wye out the bottom pic to the lower left. All is well now and work has continued on Arcadia yard itself.

Peninusla construction finished

Construction on the peninsula is finished. The black areas will be the water locations in Punta Gorda. I tried a new approach for the cork. Rubber cement works great. I installed the backdrop between the foam sections and just glued it in with foam glue. Now I am ready to install the wye leading into Arcadia and the yard tracks emanating from it.

Peninsula is born

The peninsula has been constructed and attached to the wye end of the railroad. The wye will feed the Arcadia yard and the far side will feed the Punta Gorda dock. The next step is to get the floor coverings back in place and then cut and attach the foam and backdrop sections.

Wye staging in service!

This row of palms gives a demarcation between the main layout and the staging stub ended tracks. There are also two double ended staging tracks behind the tank cars. I'm off to Home Depot to buy the lumber for the central peninsula that will be the next phase of construction:)

Scenery has begun!

Actually this was required because the next step is the addition of the central peninsula that will make access to this area more difficult. It was fun working with the palm trees.
The stub ended tracks are for staging and the trees screen the staging area. These few are a test for clearance, many more are on the way.
Some of the grass in this area is spring green that is unfamiliar to us northerners as is shown in the bottom photo.
The peninsula will be approximately 3x8 and contain both the main yard and Punta Gorda port facility. Off to the Home Depot tomorrow for 1x2's.