The D&J Railroad -- From Scratch


Did a test fit in the river bed. Had to do a little cutting of the plaster here and there so the pylons set down below the creek bed level. I'll back fill it with dirt when it's in place.

Test Fit.jpg

Painted the river bed to a dirty/muddy color.
Set the second bridge in place with the pylons attached then fill in with the dirt. Hit it with some wet water and a glue/water mix to keep it all in place.

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I'll add the track to it tomorrow then ballast it.
 
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Finished. Ballast is in place and the facia is trimmed to follow the contour of the river bed.
The yard leads are open again.

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I have occasionally had problems in switching the layout on due to the large number of locomotives in the division yard. Typically, there might be at least 10, most with sound and keep alive systems. This causes a large current draw and sometimes the breakers just won't keep up with it so they trip and won't let the layout come up to full power.
TAM Valley Depot makes several products for the DCC layout, including this Soft Turn On for this very application.

http://www.tamvalleydepot.com/products/dccbooster.html

I picked up a Soft Turn On board from a friend who now a dealer for Tam Valley. I brought it home and installed it on the power district that powers the division yard. It just cuts in between the command station, in this case the DB200 Booster, and the next thing in the track power line.

It took me about 5 minutes to install as I mounted it to the board and routed the wires through the panel for a neater look. In the picture, it's the smallest board in the bottom right, just above the command station.


Soft Start.jpg
 
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Way back in post 650, I included a picture of a three way turnout as part of the intermodal yard. I have been having all kinds of problems with that turnout and finally decided to pull it out and install two regular #8 turnouts in its place. I took a few days of cutting, caulking road bed down then gluing track down, installing the Tortoise machines then finally installing the last pieces of track. The two small slide switches next to the turnouts activate the Tortoise Machines one way or the other.
Nice long turnouts for smooth transitions into each storage track. All five tracks are for the intermodal yard. The two on the right are pass through tracks while the three on the left are stub ended. I'll get the ballast down later this weekend.

intermodal yard turnout 1.jpg
 
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Hey Ken,

Since my knowledge of electronic is 0 to none, what are all those boards for?
On my other layout, I connected the wires to my NCE and my trains were running great, ok I didn't have turnouts, signalization, sensors and what ever else could be installed, but if under my layout it should look like yours, I'm up sh.... creek without a paddle as I wouldn't know were to start.

I guess with the size of your layout, you don't have much choice.
Thanks for giving us a glance.
 
Lloyd, those boards are for the signal system and power management, i.e. circuit breakers. One board is for block detection. I have the layout broken into electrical blocks so the BDL168 board can tell me what blocks are occupied. The other board is the SE8C which controls the lights in the signal heads based on what the BDL168 is sensing. I have software running on a dedicated laptop that coordinates the two boards. Another card detects shorts in each section of the layout so just tge one area is effected instead of the whole layout.
 
Been busy this weekend with scenery and planning. In previous videos you could see the benchwork gap between the two sides of the peninsula where the yard is. I was wrestling with the idea of putting up a back drop down the middle to separate the two sides and tracks. Yesterday it occurred to me that I could just put a natural barrier there and it should be fine. I started cutting and gluing the foam board in place then covered it would wall plaster. I'll let it set for a few days before applying the ground color. This bit of work is about 20' from the wall to where I stopped. The stopping point is where I will be installing a few industry sidings. The stub track heading off to the right of the small mount is the oil facility lead. Not much has been going on there because I still can't decide how I want the track laid out.

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This area provides about 12' along the right side of the mainline. The turnout access to this area is about 8' further back toward the camera.
I'm thinking of a primary track were the road switchers will leave cuts of cars which will be shuttled into the industrial area by one of several switchers.
I'm thinking of maybe 4 or 5 industries in here. One of them will be back toward the camera and will have to squeeze by the blue pole.
The scenery will just be foliage or scrub desert across to the right where it meets the double track mainline.
The first big effort is to get an 8' long piece of 3/4" plywood in there without smashing the signal bridge.

Industry.jpg
 
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Looking good Ken. Some scenery will make a lot of difference. I really like watching your railroad evolve. Looking forward to more updates.
 
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