Scenery...finally!

In my opinion, nothing does more for a layout, in terms of its appearance, than scenery.  Even a little bit of basic ground cover or slapping down some earth colored paints looks better than bare plywood with tracks strewn about.  I feel that once you get enough trackage down and finished the track work in a small section you should start scenery in that section right away.  Not only does this allow you to escape the never ending saga of cork, track, and wiring but it also gives vision.

This vision is important because it keeps you interested and motivated, one can easily get burnt out if they continue wiring forever and ever (unless you are an electrical engineer, of course).  It is nice to be able to break away and work on something new,  this is one of the reasons that I decided to build a modular layout.  Vision is also important for when you have visitors to the layout.  A bare plywood table doesn't do much, especially  for people who are not necessarily into just trains, like most of us are.  Once they see the artistic side of the hobby they are more likely to "get it" and generally are interested in seeing more.  Not because they think that the trains are cool but because they think the artistry in your work is incredible.

So...I finally finished the main switch ladder and lead into my yard so I decided it was time to make the layout come to life.  My girlfriend is especially thankful for this; not only does she love to help with scenery but, it makes my layout look a lot nicer. 

Here is a shot of my yard ladder (the track work is actually complete now, you can see the last turnout in this picture only has the straight route stock rail):

And here are some pictures of the abandoned switch tower that used to govern the yard in its earlier life. This would be before it was sold off to Ohio Central and shut down to four interchange tracks:

More to come soon! Thanks for looking!

It's Alive!

I have started a small series on youtube that I am going to call Model Railroad Quick Clips.  Essentially they are just raw clips that I feel like shooting while I am downstairs working on the layout.  They might be small thoughts or updates.  Or like these first two, a shot of trains running.

Progress!

I have been sick for the past couple of days which means I have had time to lay here and dream up my railroad! I have continued looking into the Port Siding area and I still feel that it will be a much more exciting area for me to model.  I was able to come up with a track plan that includes three industries that I want to model:

I was also able to find more aerial imagery thanks to Bing Maps...such a great tool for at home RR research!

Starting with what I am going to call Kurtz Bros. Gravel (for now, until I figure out what it really was) you can see the empty hoppers that I think were loaded by front loader.

It looks like OHCR stores random cars on these support tracks too.  I would guess that these came from Magnum and Heartland up the way.

Here again you can see a randomly placed boxcar.

Moving to Magnum Drywall you can see where they unload the hoppers and load finished products on to centerbeam flatcars.  I have yet to see a car spotted on the southern track so I am assuming that it is just used for switching purposes within Magnum.

Finally, here are a couple shots of Hearland Petroleum including one from when it was under construction, pretty neat!

A Possible Diverging Route...

Hi everyone!

I have decided or think I have decided on a NEW modeling location...I know this might be somewhat surprising to some of you but let me explain:

What I had been trying to model before was nothing more than a series of EXTREME compromises and artistic interpretation of what I thought would make a cool model railroad, but really it was causing frustration.  I could not find any of the information that I needed to fully model CCF because it no longer exists. I hadnt even the slightest clue as to what it might have looked like or what they shipped in/out.  The information was just not there.  The double track main that runs through the 2AIL is mostly laden with massive trains, that I would never have the space to model in my present situation.  Also, I would have never been able to model Clark Grave Vault to any sort of realistic representation.  The factory is over a 1000 feet long in real life...All of this was leading to the eventual downfall of my plan.

Enter Ohio Central and OC's Port Siding!

I happened to stumble upon this while at work the other day and I had no idea what I had been missing out on. Before this, I had never heard of this small Class II branch that is literally 10 minutes from my house and, for the most part, it all still exists today! This may be one of the most diverse 2.5 mile stretches of track that I have found in Columbus:

Starting just N of I-670 W of Port Siding we have the dismantled Pennsylvania Railroad St. Clair Ave. enginehouse and 20th St. Shops, which is the NS/CSX/OC interchange that will be serving Port Siding industrial district.

Heading E from there we encounter Alum Creek and OC Alum Creek bridge and the abandoned Nelson road water treatment plant:

Continuing down the line we encounter Columbus Window Co. and Midwest Express Co. both of which are railserved!

Going even further we come to some even more interesting stuff!  First is some sort of gravel/cement company.  Unfortunately, this is gone today but according to aerial imagery it was there in 2010, so I think I will model it.  It seemed to have some rail service! 

Continuing E we come upon Magnum drywall products, which is definetely rail served and has some very neat structures for unloading hoppers.

And finally rounding out the industries is Heartland Petroleum!  A very very cool industry with amazing potential for modeling.  This will be the last industry on my layout and the last that I will build because it is going to require a lot of skill that I have not developed yet.  I will definetely have to pick the brains of some of the modelers that I have seen do refinery type structures.

So that's it... I am very excited about this new breakthrough I have had and even more excited that I have found it so close to my home! Visiting and snapping photos wont be too hard. Let me know what you all think and if you have any information about this location please feel free to share it. More updates to come as I narrow down what I will model and how! 

In other news...track work continues into the yard:

More testing!

I have been very busy with school and work so I havent had much of a chance to work on the RR unfortunately...

I have continued to test my first turnout and so far it is working great! I did run into some slight gage problems with varying wheel set types but that was easily taken care of with my Mark V and some extra spikes...all seems to be in order now:

I have also continued adding kadee couplers and 2 rail wheelsets to all of my equipment...thanks to my good friend Jim (PRRfreak) I should be able to get all of my equipment set up! This will be very cool now that we are up and running at COOSE!

Here are a couple shots of my sd50 with new couplers and a snow plow! I had to weather it because for some reason MTH thought that a blue plow would look good......

Thanks to photohio I was able to find more pictures of Columbus Coated Fabrics.  Information is hard to come by but I almost have enough to make a decent representation of the plant!

CCF 1937:

Update 1/27/2013

I got a lot accomplished on the RR this weekend and actually was able to start test running some trains. I completed my first handlaid turnout and I am pleased to say that it operates flawlessly!  I have never seen a commercial turnout work anywhere near as smooth as this, definitely makes all of the hard work worth it!


Here's a shot of the turnout in the works:

Both  point rails in testing the frog and the straight route:

My NS D8-40CW (An MTH model) on some fresh rail:

Turnout complete:

Added Caboose Hobbies Ground throws I am using HO scale throws as they are smaller (more to scale) and I have a lot of them:

I have been adding some extra bolt detail to the frog area of the turnout:

EX-CR passes an abandoned signal tower just North of Columbus. The turnout is aligned for the diverging route down the 2nd Ave. Industrial Lead.

Layout Update #2