The D&J Railroad -- From Scratch


Yes good luck with the 3/4"...... be very careful
Question for you, with the control system you have, did you install toggle switches for all your turnouts or none necessary?

Thanks
 
My turnouts are operated by Tortoise Machines which are powered by SE8C boards. The control is with a single momentary push button or I can throw the turnouts with the switch control on the Digitrax Throttle. I can also throw the turnouts with the laptop that is running the Train Controller Silver that runs the signal system.
 
Got it in place as one piece and added another four feet on the far end of it. Leveled the benchwork support and have a smooth transition from the existing benchwork were the track feeder is.
That's enough for today.

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Apologies for arriving so late at this party (better late than never :)). Echoing what others said, tremendous work there Ken! Concerning recent posts, very nice divider you got there and good call on accessibility of tracks (one of the key things i learned from advice given here). Looking forward to seeing more of your progress!
Yannis
 
A little progress on the industrial area. The first photo is from the same position as the last photo but with the road bed and track installed.
The left most track will be the staging track where the freight peddlers will drop off and pickup cuts of cars from the industrial area. A local switcher will spot the cars at the separate industries and pull loaded cars out and spot them on the staging track for the next freight peddler.
A small lumber yard receiving dock is positioned next to one of the sidings.

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Track work is never finished.
I have some industrial type structures that I will plant next to the sidings to see how they fit. They may change though as operations prove what they should be.
I still have to ballast the tracks then do some scenery work to get rid of the plywood world look.
Somewhere in that process, I'll provide dedicated track power to the siding so the interlocking signals aren't showing red when a switcher is in there doing some work.
 
Did some more work on the scenery that divides the two sides of the peninsula.
This is a build up of foam board that will be covered with mesh screen then coated with wall plaster and finally a coating of earth tone textured paint.

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A couple square yards of screen materiel and a half bucket of wall plaster then smooth it with a cheap paint brush and add some vertical scoring for the steep wall next to the mainline.
This is so much easier than mixing the dry powder plaster and trying to get strip of newspaper to create a natural roll of hills. The wall plaster is a little thinner than peanut butter and spreads without dripping all over the track and floor and can be scored easily before it sets up. Setup time for the wall plaster might be a few hours or so before ya can't work it any more for detail. Adding addition plaster is easy as all get out.
The main thing though is to remember to secure the lid on the plaster bucket or else the top layer will be just like the scenery when ya go to use it again.
When this is set up I'll mix up a bowl of textured plaster with some earth tone flat paint mixed in and just slather it onto the plaster.

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Looking real good Ken. I have watched the construction of your layout since you started the paost and it is amazing that one personcould get as much works as you have done in the period of time you have done it. I really enjoy watching the layout evolve. Nice work.
 
Things have slowed down quite a bit on the D&J Railroad over the past few months.
I've been contemplating a bridge for a section of the mainline and have been looking at a few examples on line. This is a project that will probably be started next winter, around December or so. I have a few other items I want to finish before delving into this project.
The one thing I'm having trouble finding is blue prints for the bridge. I will have to size the model bridge to fit the gap shown in the video below. The gap will be contoured like the canyon in the video. That's the easy part. Finding I beams the size shown in the video may be difficult. Any ideas would be welcome.
One bridge that really stands out is the Diablo Canyon Bridge in Arizona. A beautiful arching bridge but is rugged in appearance.

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Ken,

Do you want I-beams that are as long as the bridge itself for spanning the gap on the layout (video)? I take it this is 3-5ft? The closest i could get to something similar is some lengths made of either steel / aluminum / brass (i think) from a home improvement store locally*, but they didnt have i-beams, just squares, angles, rods and rectangle profiles. Having said that a rectangular profile with added styrene caps could be made to look like an i-beam. I hope i am making sense with my description. On a different topic, i have seen ready-made metal bridges similar to the one you posted that have a span of 2ft by hack-brucken brand. Maybe these could be of some help at least as a base for the project.

*I recently bought some angle-profile aluminum length in order to brace internally a big kitbashed building i am constructing.
 
I would like to avoid metal in this process as I don't have the equipment to work it.
The main I beams of the bridge seem to be oversized. I can't find a source of plastic I beams like those.
 
That would be one impressive feature on your railroad Ken. It would probably be a lot of work, but it would be well worth it.
 



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