It was a great tour, but I am happy to be back in the US of A, spending quality time with my lovely wife, eating plenty of BBQ and burgers, and of course, working on my model railroad.
A quick introduction to my layout: Its a fictional branch of one of my favorite prototypes, the Farmrail/Grainbelt system in western Oklahoma. My layout depicts a "what if?" sort of scenario: a piece of the old Katy Northwest District from Elk City to points north is saved by a small short line and is later absorbed by Farmrail.
It's HO scale, built on shelf brackets and two hollow core doors in an L-shape in our spare bedroom. Here is a track plan:
Operations are designed to be simple: Farmrail's Elk City switch job creeps up the branch a couple times a week to switch the Co-op elevator, team track, and the yet unnamed factory or warehouse. There's been a recent uptick in traffic lately with lots of frack sand being delivered to the local drilling operations.
My layout has been hugely influenced by David Barrow's South Plains Industrial District project layout in Model Railroader as well as James McNab's Grimes Line layout. However, the work of Lance Mindheim has been the most invaluable. His book "How to Build a Switching Layout" has been my model railroading bible as I build my first serious attempt at a pike. Its full of straightforward, easy to follow, and cost effective steps to tackle a small layout one project at a time and make a dream a reality.
Now, on to some photos of layout progress:
Since this is my first layout, and I don't plan on taking it with us to my next duty station, I tried to keep the cost down and focus on learning modeling techniques. I built the benchwork on shelf brackets and hollow core doors (I even got a deal on the doors because one was slightly damaged). Fascia and the backdrop are both Masonite. I painted the backdrop a simple sky blue, as I'd rather have the eye focused on the layout than on scenes painted on the backdrop. Track is Atlas Code 83. I operate the turnouts with my fingertips rather than wiring a bunch of switch machines. Next time I will definitely be using spring loaded turnouts from Peco or Micro Engineering.
I wired the layout with a Zephyr starter set from Digitrax. Then, I weathered the track with some dark brown spray paint from the hardware store. Next, I began ballasting the track with ballast from Arizona Rock & Mineral. This has turned out to be a great investment. I also got a little ballast spreader from a British company called Proses, and this has proven to be a great tool. The ballast is all applied and now I'm working on applying layers of dirt to the grain elevator area. Next projects will include building the staging cassette, installing a control panel for the Digitrax system, building and weathering the warehouse, and installing the road that bisects the track on the layout.
I hope you've enjoyed this update, please stay tuned for more!
