Day Log 10

Wednesday April 29, 2009 Lethbridge, Alberta

9:00 am

I made the following comment to myself earlier this morning:

Model Trains: I have two major projects on hold at the moment. Installing decoders in 5 locomotives is waiting for the decoders to arrive, and installing a control panel for the Coaldale Yard switches is waiting for a trip to Calgary to see if I can locate the necessary parts. But I am now moving on to a third major projects which is the assembly of my remaining buildings. I started on a loading platform yesterday and will begin work on a UGG grain elevator today. I also am motivated to begin putting a little more effort into my groundcover and scenery. I also want to play a bit with the idea of having distinct layout sections with a barrier separating them. A clear plastic barrier along the sides might also be a good idea as it would prevent accidental mishaps as I walk around.

Now to move to the basement and begin working on the buildings.

9:30 am

I have tried placing a few pieces of wood shelving on the layout to get a sense of what it might look like if I put "barriers" between the various sections of the layout. I like it! I will need 3 pieces of 12" pine shelving, each 8' long. By cutting these into appropriate lengths I will have barriers (with tunnels) between Black Diamond, Distillery Row, Pine Ridge, Prairie Dog and Queenston. I have some sky blue cardboard that may work as a more realistic backdrop.

7:30 PM

It has been a full day, focused exclusively on installing "barriers" on my layout. I bought the lumber and began cutting a couple of pieces to length. Fortunately not all of them. As I began placing the wood on the layout it quickly became apparent that it would help if I altered the location of some of the track in order to make each discrete section more attractive or functional. In most cases this involved moving the track a little further from the edge so I could cut out a tunnel portal rather than having a notch in the barrier where the barrier met the edge of the layout.

However three of the changes involved a little more modification. One was in the Distillery Row section where I had to change the location of a switch in order to place the barrier at the location that would separate Black Diamond from Distillery Row.

The second change was a result of placing a barrier in front of Queenston. There was no longer room for the Interchange track that I had in that location. I was reluctant to lose this feature but finally convinced myself that a passing track near Pine Ridge could serve this function.

The third change was the result of adding a barrier between Pine Ridge and Prairie Dog. I used one of the turnouts that originally was part of the Interchange track and added a spur line along the Prairie Dog side of the barrier.

I then cut tunnel portals and cut a couple of the barriers to the proper length.

All of the barriers (4 in all) are now in place on the layout. However they still need to be fastened down and much to the track needs to re-tacked down.

Here are a few photos:

barrier
barrier between Black Diamond and Jasper yard

barrier
barrier between Black Diamond and Distillery Row

barrier
barrier between Queenston and rest of layout

barrier
barrier between Pine Ridge (on left) and Prairie Dog

I would say that I spent about 7 hours on this activity today.

Next steps include:

fastening the barriers to the table tops
re-tacking all of the track that had been moved
removing the barriers and painting them (sky blue?)
I may try fastening some sky blue cardboard to the barriers and see what that looks like.

The first two steps are critical. As soon as they are completed I will be able to begin running trains again.