First run of Amtrak 737

 While I am waiting to receive the switches for the railroad I thought that I would check out the loco that my friend Dan, in Connecticut, sent me for Christmas a few years ago. I have had it fitted with a sound decoder so it is really a nice piece of kit. Also, I bought a few freight cars on eBay which have now arrived. They were an absolute bargain as the cheapest I can find a car on US web sites is around $19.99 and I paid £15 for these four! I have laid out two yards of track and coupled up the freight cars and of it went.

I think that, considering it has been sitting there for around 3 years, it went very well.

Putting in the Wiring Buses

 I am awaiting my LHS (local hobby shop) to get my Peco code 83 switches into stock. They are promised for tomorrow. In the meantime, I have been carrying out a few tasks that can be done without the track.

First off, I have been putting in some wiring for the two busses that I need along the length of the baseboard. These are the DCC bus and a 5V bus for lighting and Arduino use. The DCC bus is laid with 16awg stranded wire whilst the 5V one is 22awg as little power will be going down that. The DCC bus is also twisted. To connect wires together, I use what are called "Lever nut wire connectors" which I get from Amazon.

I have these as shown which are through connectors. I also have a large collection of these for single wire distribution - I have them with 3, 4 and 5 connections. These are convenient for distributing wires around a larger layout. As it is, I use these through connectors as terminations for the two busses. as can be seen in this close up.

The whole underside of the board looks like this now.

The red and black are for the DCC and the white and green are the 5V DC. Once installed, I run them both out to 5mm jack sockets on the side of the layout.

ECoS is my DCC controller. Lastly, I have been laying down some DCC Concepts foam roadbed. I am not sure if this is a mistake laying it before I get the switches but I am laying it down using Copydex, which is rubber based UK carpet glue which should be relatively easy to lift if I need to.

The white extension is the staging yard - off scenic. It is a u-shaped construction out of foam core. I have installed some Neodymium magnets in the end of the staging and the side of the main board and the staging now jumps onto position making it easy for connecting the track between them. As you can see, the staging encroaches onto my computer desk so it has to be moveable.

As I mentioned, I have been promised the switches by Wednesday (tomorrow)  but if they don't come, I will have to think about buying over the internet, which I am reluctant to do. What is happening on the internet is my selling of all my N Scale and unwanted Märkin/Roco/Piko European stock. I have been given some good prices by Rails of Sheffield. So far I have gathered over £250. Although, it doesn't seem like much for each item, eBay was producing worse prices and I need the capital to invest (!!) in some HO stuff. I need a collection of freight cars, at least one more loco (see below) and some structure kits.

The loco that I have is a circa 1942 EMD SW1 ex-NYC that is still in use by Amtrak in Sacramento. There are two arguments against using this. Firstly, I don't really want to model the present day as all the cars would be longer and I don't want to repaint the SW1 as it was a present - although I have fitted it out with a decoder and sound - and a limited edition Walthers item!

We build baseboards

 I have mentioned on many occasions that I make my baseboards out of 5mm foam core. Well, this time is no different, except that I videoed the whole process. I got my usual four sheets of white A1 foam core from Hobbycraft for £10. I then went to my local art gallery/art supplies shop to get a couple of sheets of black foam core. I like this for the basics of the boards as it is much denser than the white and is very much tougher. The only issue is that the art gallery wanted £12.50 per sheet! I did ask how much their white was and the answer was £8.50 - a sheet! I will continue to go to Hobbycraft where their service is great and they know me by name.

OK, so I had all the board that I needed. Then I had to make sure that I had a plentiful supply of hot glue sticks and 2" double sided tape. To outline the process, I cut the white into 3" strips along with a few black one. The top of the boards and the outside of the supporting bars will be black and the rest will be white. When laminated using three sheets and the double sided tape, the resulting girders are very strong. Anyway, I have created a stop frame video of the process. I am sorry that the beginning is dark but I was still getting to understand the process. My nice Olympus mirrorless camera takes up to 999 frames  at your choice of delay and when finished melds them all together into a video - very clever.

Here is the baseboard in position. I have used the legs from the previous layout.

Here is the view from the left hand side where you can see the white extension for the staging.

I have printed out the Anyrail layout in full size and run along the centre of all of the rails with a pounce wheel.  Following that I am outlining them using a white marker. Here are the pounce wheel and the marker.

and here is the board with some of the track centres highlighted.

Next up, I have some DCC Concepts trackbed to go down and, then, when the LHS gets their act together and gets some switches in stock, I will lay the track. As I am waiting for the switches, I will probably put the DCC bus and a 5v bus (for structure lighting) under the board ready.

Oh dear, here we go again!

 Yet again, I have destroyed what I have and have moved on to something different.

I was contemplating opening up a Youtube channel and describe how I would make a small 6 x 1'  switching layout in HO. Then I tried ballasting the N Scale layout. I managed to glue up 4 out of the 10 points and couldn't fix them. As they were now ballasted, they were stuck firm so I couldn't get them out to try and free them up. So... I decided that the idea of an HO switching layout sounded good - especially as I have a nice little SW2 switcher complete with DCC and sound that I had left from my previous HO layout that got taken down on the arrival of my mother-in-law. In fact, the loco was a Christmas present from my friend in Connecticut so I would be glad to be using it again.

Then, I proved one of the laws of entropy. It takes you weeks to build the basic structure of the layout, lay track and fix all the wiring BUT it takes 2 1/2 hours to rip it all up! The foam core went down to the apartment block bin room, the wiring went into a bag for later use (that includes the SwitchPilots etc.) and the track went into a box ready to be cleaned up and sold on eBay. 

After cleaning the Kato track, I put it all back in its display cards ready to be sold. Then I realised what a huge task it would be to actually ship all of the Kato packs that I had. I might have achieved £100 for the lot but I can live without that. I came to the same conclusion about selling 25 freight cars. Hence, I now have both of these packed away in our storage unit for later use (??).

I have dug out all of my Märklin, Roco and Pike stuff which I will try and sell as there is a lot of money there and I will also try and sell the four N Scale locos, all of which have nice decoders installed.

I have bought a couple of lengths of Peco code 83 track and 2 #5 points plus a couple of DCC Concepts Cobalt IP point motors. The idea behind that was to test the plan for the 6' x 1' layout but that has been overtaken now. It seems that DCC Concepts IP motors as unavailable so I will go with their analog motors which I can drive with my Switch Pilots. My LHS is getting some more code 83 so, hopefully, in a few days I will be able to buy the rest of the track. Now, the problem.

I would like to try the idea of a Youtube channel as my use of foam core is quite unusual and might get some interest. However, I am hesitant about doing it for a few reasons. Like a lot of people, I hate the sound of my own voice when I hear a recoding. Secondly, I have to get the flat quiet which is currently an issue as my wife has a bad chest cough! I do have a nice Olympus mirrorless camera which can take first class video and can also take stop frames so, once going, I can do some good stuff when building the baseboards, for instance. Also, I am quite adept at iMovie and have a copy of Adobe Premiere so am well set up technically.

The New Layout

Here is the current thinking regarding the new layout. It will be about 7'x 1' 4" with a 2' 6" extension as a "fiddle yard" or staging as  the US calls it.

More to come on this when my thinking is straighter.