Rebuilding a museum layout

[AyTrane]

I have been hired to help rebuild the two rail O-scale layout at the Durham Western Heritage Museum here in Omaha. Apparently the track wiring is overly complicated, and is in need of a rehab, so we are going to gut it, and start over. I am quite excited that the museum has taken some initiative because I personally haven't seen this layout run in two years, so it will be great to get the trains running again. The "new" layout has lacked a bit of luster since the museum was spoiled with their first layout, a donation by Godfather's Pizza founder William Theisen, which featured a scale model of downtown Omaha. The old model also featured the UP tracks headed to Gillette, WY.

The old layout was HO scale, and is long gone (I hear it is in Souix City, IA), but the new one has a lot of potential, so we'll see what we are allowed to do to it.

I will take some pictures today of the layout.



In my search to find you a picture of the current layout, I came across our power plant's model railroad...

 

[tankist]

huh. that is definetly a photograph and i could swear of the original thing. but that loop looks just so much modelish! is this for real and thats a weird return loop or is this photoshop ?

 

[Motley]

That's a real pic of a real power plant. I think what he meant was the power plant's track looks like a model railroad, which it does, I've never seen that before.

 

[Secondhandmodeler]

Is that Z scale on a 4x8? It even has a grass mat for scenery!

 

[Rico]

Cool pic Adam!
I used to work at a power plant and when I was bored an electrician and I would run around on the loop in the locomotive looking for "phantom electrical problems".

 

[UP2CSX]

Sounds like quite a challenge, Adam. I don't know what kind of budget you have but I'd sure be looking at DCC rather than set up another complicated DC block wiring scheme.

I'ver seen that picture before. I don't remember where it is except that it's somewhere in the midwest. The plant receives unit trains of coal but doesn't have the real estate to set up a normal ladder and yard. Some bright engineer, whom I suspect must have been a model railroader, decided there was no reason a yard couldn't be a loop, hence the 4x8 look in real life.

 

[ICG/SOU]

I thought all these places had loops. I just didn't think they looked like a roundy rounder.

 

[AyTrane]

I am back from my second day working on the layout. We made a LOT of progress. We must have removed several thousand feet of wire. Tuesday or Wednesday we should be able to finish up the wiring.

The track is not going to be wired complicated at all. There are three main lines, so there will be three sets of bus wires, connected to three transformers. Since the old layout was designed to run on a computer system (which was never implemented because the project was abandoned during construction in 1999, which is also why the layout isn't technically "done"), there were a lot of unnecessary wires. The goal is to simplify everything.

Here are a few photos I took as we were heading out the door at the end of the day.

Looking westward from the pit. Notice the full size Southern Pacific passenger car sitting outside the glass.

Looking Eastward toward the roundhouse.

An overview of the roundhouse.

Looking Westward again, I like the double track main line along the ridge.

This is probably the biggest problem with working on this layout; there is little to no space to get around and do things.

To get in and out of the layout, and to even get around we use auto creepers.

This layout has a lot of potential, we are going to see if the money is available to upgrade the scenery. But right now the main focus is to get the layout to operate again.


I will try and get better photos next time, we'll see how much time is available. Thanks for looking!



P.S. The power plant "layout" is south of Council Bluffs, IA. about ten miles.

 

[Graff]

It looks like a good size project you have there.
Hope you´ll get some financing for the landscape and detailing as I think it is a very good base to work on.

 

[UP2CSX]

I guess those windows dictated how high (or low) the benchwork could be. It does appear to exceptionally low, and must be a backbreaker to work underneath.

Do you have any more information on the SP passenger car outside the window? I've never seen and SP car painted in UP yellow and red.