Worked on a few more things this week, in between taking care of Benjamin :)

One of the turnouts in the Langmeil staging area was given me some trouble. I'm using PECO electrofrog turnouts. These rely on the point rail making good contact with the stock rail to carry the current through the frog. Occasionally this doesn't work like it should and trains will stall on the switch. The fix was to solder a wire to the closure rail. This was then attached to the power bus through an Atlas snap switch. The snap switch is hooked to the same DS64 as the turnout so the correct polarity current is routed to the frog. Not a difficult fix, but I could see where this could be a problem with a hard to reach turnout. Will keep that in mind and be proactive and wire all the turnouts in the Kaiserslautern staging yard in advance - just to be safe.

Also  been spending time on the computer with paperwork and operations stuff.  Previously I posted about timetables based on ideas from FREMO  and Werner Falkenbach's website on Schmalspurbahnen. Using these ideas I've worked up some station information sheets (based on the FREMO standard) and some car cards for freight switching. 

I've also been interested in freight switching and over the years have played with many different systems including switch lists, car cards, and computerized options. I've decided on using car cards based on those shown on Werner Falkenbach's site, but modified slightly.  At first I was looking at the Fremo style cards with waybills, but decided that N scale was just to small for reading reporting marks, especially if I weather cars.  There is also a lot of information on the standard Fremo card that doesn't apply to N scale and isn't needed on a home layout.  By having a card that only identifies the car type, and car of the type in the train can be used making switching a little easier as well. The cards are in German to keep a touch of authenticity. I added a picture of the car type to the card. I'd like to be able to operate with friends and family and not everyone will be familiar with the standard Wagengattung letters.  The cards are laid out in Excel and formated so each one fits on a standard business card. I printed them out using Avery's business card stock. You can see some examples here.

I did adopt the station information sheets (Bahnhofdatenblatt) from Fremo practices. These provide a nice overview of each station, the switch and track numbering, and where the various industries are located. Having reviewed a bunch of these, I was also able to get some good information on the various loads each industry would receive and  ship as well as the type of freight cars used. This help a lot in completing the car cards. An example of Enkenbach is here.

Backdrop

Well with the track down and wired, it's time to move on to scenery. This is my favorite part of model railroading as it brings everything to life! I have a vision of how things should look, hopefully it well work out that way.

First step is to get a backdrop up so the layout looks like it is only a slice of the world we are seeing. The closest I've ever gotten to doing a backdrop before was placing some MZZ cutouts on blue poster board back when I was building a shelf layout (just out of college.) With this a more permanent layout, I wanted a better looking backdrop.

I actually started on this before starting any benchwork. Just before putting up the benchwork I taped the drywall seems and sanded them to make a smooth surface along the entire area the benchwork for phase 1 would go. I then painted the wall from the benchwork height to the ceiling with a blue paint (Valspar brand, color: Skywriter, flat - from the local Lowes.) This was put on with a roller and seemed to have lots of streaks, but dried without any. Afterwards, I've read several articles on painting backdrops and the recommend using both a white color and the blue and blending them so that the color closer to the benchwork is fainter and thus looks farther away. You can see this if you look at the sky outside, it's whiter and fainter towards the horizon.

Having done that prep work ahead of time, this week I started on the rest of the backdrop. Over the last few months I've been reading articles in my collection of Model Railroader magazines to get a feel for what needed to be done. I also called on my local artist expert for some advice. My mom has been painting and drawing since she was in school and so it was natural for me to turn to her for advice. From talking to her and reading in MR, it seemed the the easiest paints to use would be acrylics. Mom gave me a link to order from (Cheap Joe's Art Stuff) and ideas on the colors to get (white, black, ultramarine blue, some greens, burnt sienna, burnt umber, and a gold for fields). I purchased the Liquitex basics brand as they came in tubes and were fairly inexpensive. I went for the 8 oz tubes since I'll be painting a lot before the layouts finished.

So on to painting clouds. Having spent several weeks looking a clouds, reading Scenery Step by Step article in the latest (June 2008) issue of MR on painting clouds, I was ready to jump in. First I praticed a painting a few on a spare 1'x1' ceiling tile I had laying around. Having gained confidence (and Mom's approval), I jumped into the "real" thing today. Using white, ultramarine, and black I painted some clouds behind Neuhemsbach and over the autobahn scene (south of Enkenbach.) I also used a wide brush to paint some white on the backdrop and then a clean wash cloth to smear it almost off to give the effect of thin clouds. It helps to have a few photos around for reference.

I'm not sure what I think so far, but with acrylics I can paint over and try again if I don't like it. Let me know what you think!

Passing Time

Been quite awhile since I posted any updates. Not much more has been done on the layout. My time has been focused on preparing for other events - my first born arrived on May 29th! 

Time with the layout has been in short spurts. I've been playing with schedules in TrainController and learning more about the vast possibilities it offers for controlling the layout.  Installed a few more ceiling tiles to protect the layout from dust and dirt from above. Sketched up some scenery ideas and purchased a few kits for buildings.  Also just some general running of trains.

The current planned projects are to work on painting the backdrop, scenery for the Autobahn area between Enkenbach and Hochspeyer, and work on building kits (Heger und Müller Eisenwerk, the  Raiffeisen lagerhaus in Neuhemsbach).

I'll try and get some updates on these in the next few days as time allows. First will probably be the backdrop painting which my Mom is helping with (she is an accomplished artist).