Tuesday night at the Huff & Puff

Only a few trains were ran amongst the rubble as the rest of us pondered all the changes. I don't quite how we ended up working on 4 projects at once and are thinking about 1 more! But as true model railroaders do, we all jumped in. The arrangement of the cement plant was adjusted and improve upon. It will now be all in a line where the coal mine was, being serviced by 3 sidings. Heritage Furniture siding will be made longer.
 At the same time the new foundation for the upper loop and station was worked on, we even opened up a hole in the backdrop. The work here is progressing well.

Also see Lincoln Plan in next post.

Thoughts about Lincoln

What's wrong with Lincoln. I would have never thought about moving the station, but now the new location makes sense, and again its great that the idea came from one of our newer members. However moving the station leaves a vacant lot. So why not address the other problems, switching Buckley Mills, piggyback ramp, and the lumber yard is difficult at best, and all those turnouts clustered together causes problems. With the ideas listed in the post Look Out Lincoln, the sidings to Buckley Mills and the piggyback ramp will be gone and the lumber yard siding will be in front of the buildings and easier to reach. Perhaps the back run around (which is behind the old station) could be moved to the front and the remaining turnouts replaced and realined. This would put the ice house behind all the turnouts where it will not have to be reached over. The lead for the Miller Interchange Yard and possibly the yard ladder may also have to be reconfigured, and maybe moved to the front of the layout, with the mainline behind it. Put on your thinking caps, let's see if we can fix Lincoln.  Now that it's out there, I think this should be done before we tackle  the changes to the rest of Wellington. Of course the other projects should be finished first and we may have to wait until we have the funds to cover the cost of new turnouts.

Sunday Fun look out Lincoln

I guess on Friday the station location in Lincoln was thought not to be in the correct location. Don thought it would be better over in the corner by the church. But it is on the branch line track and there is no way for passenger trains to get back onto the main. Someone should help that poor lady, she's fallen and can't get up.










What about joining that branch line back up to the mainline just after the curve. At the same time we all know how hard it is to switch Buckley Mills so why not move it to where the ice house is and add the piggyback ramp to the end of the team track. The crane could go there too.













The ice house can be put where the station was. It is lower than Buckley Mills so you can reach the turnouts behind it.

Sorry about the punctuation, but my keyboard has a mind of its own today, cant even get the question mark to work.












 The lumber yard track and the old track to the Piggyback ramp will be moved to the left where the lumber buildings are and they will be put behind the 2 sidings. The piggyback ramp will be added to the end of the team track.










 The ice house location will become the new home of Buckley Mills. What do you think.
The station will not interfere with mainline switching, the lumber yard will have 2 sidings and be easier to spot cars, Buckley Mills will be easier to spot cars at, and the mainline will have another run around in Lincoln.

Sunday Fun Cement Plant

After trying several arrangements this is what we have come up with. The area under the smoke stack and back to the turnout was levelled. Then the area from there to the warehouse, was levelled, the stream will have a wall with a culvert in it. Heritage Furniture is back in it's old location as that siding will not be used for the cement plant. Glen made the comment that it was nice to have 1 industry on the layout, up front and in your face. I agree.






The silos will be raised to the level of the mainline and be switched from there.  All members will see it on Tuesday when they will have a chance to input any other ideas. I do have some reservations about the turnout location, being behind the warehouse.

Sunday Fun Upper loop

Well we had too much fun for one post, so I will break it down into projects.

The area for the old cement plant was removed to get a look at the table structure.











Trent is pleased with the destruction. More will have to be done to get the area by the wall lowered (where the loop will go through the wall.
















The turnouts for the upper return loop my have to be in this location or even further back toward the trestle.

Tuesday Night at The Huff & Puff

Hot night at the Huff & Puff. Even so some running was done. Here Bill and Glen switch Lincoln.













Tate brought his buddy Xander to have a look at the layout, him and his Mom were impressed, so much so Xander didn't want to leave.














Trains being run didn't stop some destruction, Glen and I are taking apart the old Zorra Cement area. It will be lowered for the Wellington station and town buildings.











The branch line turntable was wired up by Jim.














Trent even got in on the fun.















First switcher on the turntable, worked great.

Tuesday night at the Huff & Puff

Quite the gab fest at our monthly meeting. We talked about some changes we should make, which I discussed in the last blog entry. What happened next was what I like about a group. We moved to the layout and again listed the changes, but now they were visual. Then with a diagram, we went over each change in detail. Now the lights went off! After moving the coal mine and seeing the space left, we don't have too move the mountain, just blend it in better, was one idea. Why raise the coal mine area, the elevation change adds visual interest, was another.  Why don't we put 2 tracks through the tunnel, hmmm? When we brought over the cement plant we found it will have to be modified to get it to fit, but we ran out of time. We even talked about the tracks to the power plant. The point being, the GROUP came up with a lot of changes to the original idea, model railroading at its best, I think.


Testing the fit.














putting in new turnout

track installed

adding a new retaining wall

The coal mine at it's new location. Because it is at the back and in a corner we will batch switch it like we did Tuck.  That is how many hoppers you deliver, you will pick up that many, max of 8 right now. The car cards will be left in the card holder for Tuck.