The Union Pacific Soggy Bottoms Subdivision (HO scale)


That's going to be a great build. Can't wait to see it take shape.
Thanks, Warpiper! Since most of the layout will be flat, the plan is to build conventional benchwork. I think the inclines will be Woodland Scenics foam risers. After the benchwork is built, I'll do the outer loop just to get something running. Like the Big Boy.
 
While waiting for the kids to get here (C'mon! Hurry up already!) I decided to get started cleaning out the basement. I got some stuff taken out to the trailer, which will be taken to the dump when full. Getting rid of the unneeded stuff, NOT the trailer, BTW.
The old tube TV on the floor will be leaving, and my wife's gardening supplies (which she hasn't used in several years) will be relocated elsewhere. Then the RC planes will be taken down and the ladder taken off its brackets. The ladder will be stored behind the layout on the floor. I will be building a 12" extension onto the back of the the rear benchwork to create space for the ladder. The decking for the extension will be cut to fit around the I-beams. The two I-beams on the ends will be painted, but not framed in like the center one. This is so that any issues with the I-beams will not be hidden. The center one was framed so the phone could be installed there. It was like that when we bought the house. The brackets are welded to the I-beams, so they will be cut off and the welds ground down. The Milwaukee angle grinder has a job ahead of it! I have off until Jan. 2, but the wife goes back to work tomorrow, so that would be a good day to do that.
The cabinet looking thing in the corner back there is where the gas and water meters are located, so the layout cannot extend past the side of the cabinet. This ensures access to the meters if needed.
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There is an outlet next to the I-beam, and one on the side of the meter cabinet. You can just see it to the right of those 5-gallon buckets. I'm not sure what happened to the outlet next to the I-beam. It still works, but I think I'll replace both outlets with some heavy duty ones. I thinking I may get a couple of 8' LED shop lights and suspend them from the water pipe. The two fluorescent lights currently in the train room will stay.
Once this area is cleared out, the benchwork from the train room will be brought out here, and the plastic shelving units will go in the train room, which will become the new workshop. The bench with the drill-press and vise will be the last to go in. The pegboard/light assembly will have to come off so it will fit through the doorway, then put back on.
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The line where my foot is is 7' from the I-beam. The layout cannot extend farther because the door needs to be able to open all the way out, so things can go in our out of the workshop.
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The door cannot be made to swing inward due to the construction of the ceiling in the new workshop and man-cave.
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Well, the kids finally showed up, so that's it for now!
 
I got the brackets removed from the I-beams, and some more stuff cleared out. I still need to get an outlet for the wall.
Today I will take up the track on the layout and remove the river scene. It will be nice to be able to walk straight in. That's one of the things I will like best about the new layout: it will have a lift gate and I can walk straight in! Sort of like when I was driving a semi around the Midwest and the company got me a condo unit instead of the flattop. I could finally stand up straight again to get my pants on! :D
I've also been playing around with RTS 8.0, the Atlas layout design software I use. It's free and I like it.
As mentioned, I will put a 12" extension onto the rear of the layout. This will make the rear section 36" deep, a bit of a stretch, but there will only be the elevated loop around the very back. The inner loop will be on flat ground. There will be some scenery between the two. This will bring the front edge of the benchwork 12 farther forward, so while it looks like the lower edge of the yard will be like the earth, hanging on nothing, it will really be on the benchwork.
The yard is a copy of Dave Barrow's Mesa and Summit yards on his famous layout, the Cat Mountain and Santa Fe. He diagrammed it in Andy Sperandeo's book, The Model Railroader's Guide to Freight Yards, Kalmbach Publishing, 2004, page 32. I did make 2 changes from Dave's plan. He only had 3 classification tracks, I added a 4th. I also added a diagonal track to the right of the caboose track to allow an arriving locomotive to back down to the engine servicing facilities without having to use the yard ladder to do so.
The lift gate hinges will be on the right side of the double bridges. The opening will be on the left of the river scene. to the right of the bridges there will be a rerailer on each track and the double crossover will be to the right of the rerailers.
Here's the plan so far:
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I'll explain the yard. Across the top of the yard is the inner loop main. Below that is the siding. Below the siding is the arrival/departure track on the left, and the switching lead on the right. Below the A/D track on the left are the 4 classification tracks. Below the classification tracks is the thoroughfare track. This is normally kept open. The diagonal tracks are, from left, the yard ladder, the caboose track, and the locomotive lead to the service facilities, which are on the two tracks at lower right. The crossover on the left between the siding and A/D track allows the switcher to access the siding from the rear of a train, permitting it to take off the caboose.
I like this yard plan. It's fairly simple, but allows the switcher to work unimpeded by trains on the siding or A/D tracks. It's a keeper.
 
I'm seriously considering expanding.
The new and improved Union Pacific Soggy Bottoms Division will be a surround style layout with an open area in the middle. The only part I will be unable to access from outside the layout will be the back side. The dimensions along the outer edges of the benchwork will be 19 feet by 7 feet. More room would be nice, of course, but this pretty much occupies the entire room as proposed. The doors to the current train room, which will become the workshop, and the man-cave open outward and they cannot be made to open inward due to the ceiling in those rooms. See the second pic in post #173 to see what I mean.
So why do they have to have doors at all? Or if there really has to be a door there what about the sliding barn door type? Those are very trendy today.

Also, no thought of just tunneling through the wall and keeping what you have in addition to the new space? Seems I remember a tunnel portal into a wall, can that just be made a real tunnel into the next room?
 
As Gopher said in one of the Winnie the Pooh movies: "Look out below, she'sssss comin' down!"
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The river scene and benchwork to the right of it have been taken out of the room, and the yard and about 2/3 of the mainline are out. The hardboard on the floor was under the yard on the middle bench and a little on the left bench. That came up better than I though it would. Some of the track did not survive the removal process, however. That caulk is some tough stuff!
The RC planes will be stored under the right side table of the new layout. The shop light above the left bench will come out. I already have plans for the three brackets. I will install them near the ceiling where the workbench is now in the main room. I plan to put a board across them, then a short board at a 90 degree angle to that one to act as a stop. I will store my fluorescent tubes up there.
I should have all this out of here tomorrow, then I'll start moving the plastic shelves in.
It's getting there.
These three are NOT happy! Guido isn't saying much (he never does) but Mater and Luigi are letting me know they don't think this funny!
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So why do they have to have doors at all? Or if there really has to be a door there what about the sliding barn door type? Those are very trendy today.

Also, no thought of just tunneling through the wall and keeping what you have in addition to the new space? Seems I remember a tunnel portal into a wall, can that just be made a real tunnel into the next room?

Thanks for your reply! I want to keep the doors on the rooms. One reason is the compressor for my airbrush is the oil-less type, and they can be kind of loud. I keep the compressor in the current train room and run the air hose under the door into the man-cave, where my paint booth is. Closing both doors quiets things down.
The sliding door just doesn't appeal to me. Tunneling through the wall would bring the layout into the man-cave right where the paint booth is. I had considered that at one time, though. Having the layout in the main room will allow a lot more space, and I can do some things I just wouldn't be able to do with it where it is. Such as have an elevated loop, and super-elevate the curves on that loop. I can also have a lift gate. Rolling under the layout on a mechanics stool gets old after a while.
Trust me, this is a change for the better!
 
And... it's out.
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If this were going to be anything but a workshop/storage room, I would repaint the walls and fix any little dings. But it's not, so I won't. You may be asking: "But where did all the benchwork go?"
Well... just turn around.
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Notice I did leave myself an exit.
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Now for the Chinese fire drill with the plastic shelving units. Before I move any of them, I'm going to empty it. I will have to decide what's staying and what's going bye-bye. Too much stuff down here that never gets used.
 
Looks a bit different in the main room now:
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3 days ago, there were trains in here!
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The 8 foot fluorescent light fixture had to come out. There wasn't enough room for the workbench's light fixture with it in there. It's headed for the landfill. The layout room will have LED fixtures in it. The two ceiling lights in there now will be replaced with low profile round LED fixtures, and some LED shop lights will be suspended from the water pipe. 3 shelf brackets will be installed 12" below the ceiling on the right side, and a board will be screwed to them to make some storage space for the fluorescent tubes. I plan to advertise them on Craigslist free to anyone that wants the 8 footers. The smaller ones will be kept.
 
At the train show a few weeks ago, I spotted this Model Power Twin Loco Shed kit. I don't really have a use for it as a loco shed, but the first though that popped into my mind was "Hey, that would be good for the RustEze Medicated Bumper Ointment plant shipping/receiving building!"
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The plan is to have a separate track for shipping and receiving. I like the way the doors are cut to go over the tracks. The kit has the doors hinged on their sides so they tilt backwards and forwards. My plan is to have them be roll-up style doors. To do that I will glue a length of I-beam to each side of the door frame, cut the bottom edge off the door, then glue the door edge inside the I-beams. That will make it look like the door is inside a roll-up track, like a garage door.
Here are the kit parts:
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There are four doors, two on each end of the building. I only plan to use two of them, so the back wall of the building needs to be sealed up. I bought some Plastruct O scale corrugated siding, #91519. Why O scale? Because it actually came a lot closer to the siding profile than the HO scale siding did! I cut a piece the dimensions of the door opening, then placed the wall section on my building board so the outside wall was facing down. I placed the new wall section in the opening and glued it in place with Testors liquid cement. I just don't have good luck with the Plastruct cement. I glued some .040 strips of styrene along the edges of the opening to reinforce things. I don't think it came out too bad. The wall sections don't have exactly the same profile, but unless I had another of these kits to use for parts I don't think I would find anything that's an exact match. I think it looks OK, though! Once it's painted and weathered, it will look even better!
Here's the back side of the new section:
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And the front side:
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I will do the same thing to the other opening.
 
I finished up the back wall. I glued a piece of styrene across the new siding sections to stiffen them. I may glue a thin piece of styrene sheet across the inside of the wall to hide the bracing.
The outside:
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The inside:
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I'll paint the outside after I get all the walls assembled.
 
I started work on the front wall today. There will be two tracks leading into this building, one for shipping and one for receiving. The doors will be modeled to be roll up style doors, rather than the plank doors the kit depicts.
Step 1 is to slice off and sand smooth the brackets on each side of both doors. See the third pic in post 230 to see what I mean. I also cut 4 2-1/4" lengths of 1/8" I beam strip stock. These will go along both sides of each door.
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I glued a strip of .030 x .080" styrene strip along each side of both doors. These are to allow the doors to be centered in the door openings while allowing the I-beam stock to be cemented flush with the door opening. The doors themselves are just wide enough to fill the opening, but they need to be .030" wider on each side to fill the C-channel of the I-beam stock. This will become clearer as we go. I used a 6" steel ruler and some small bottles of paint to align the edge of the I-beam with the edge of the door opening. I glued along one side of the I-beam, then when that was dry I glued along the door opening edge.
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A close up of my custom built gluing jig:
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Once the I-beam was glued along one edge of the door opening, I used the door to position the other I-beam and glued it into place. I did this on both doors. Here you can see why I glued the strips to the sides of the doors. Most of the doors will be removed. There will be a little showing below the top of the opening to depict the doors in the raised position.
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This afternoon I began the task of reverse engineering the benchwork from the old layout. The smallest section will be saved and used on the new layout. The second smallest section got taken apart today. The other two sections are both the same size. The benchwork is held together with screws into 2x2's. I designed it that way so it could be taken apart with minimal damage to the wood, if that were ever necessary. There were 3 or 4 screws that didn't want to come out very well, but on the whole it wasn't too bad a job.
The Homasote will not be reused, but most of the other wood will find its way into the new layout.
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The tear-down is complete! I have decided that trying to get the old construction adhesive off of the old plywood decking would be more trouble than it's worth, so the plywood will not be making the transition to the new layout.
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At this point, I'm leaning towards L-girder construction for the new layout. Finding time for it in the next 6 months could be challenging, though! But it'll get there.
 
I like your gluing jig. It's a lot like the ones I use ;)
I have little time to work on the layout, too. It's been 15 years since I started building mine and now I'm doubling the size. So maybe in another 10 or 15 years - maybe. :rolleyes::)
 
I like your gluing jig. It's a lot like the ones I use ;)
I have little time to work on the layout, too. It's been 15 years since I started building mine and now I'm doubling the size. So maybe in another 10 or 15 years - maybe. :rolleyes::)
Cheap & easy! My favorite way to make things!
It's frustrating the way life intrudes on the important things, isn't it? ;)
 
Ya . . . like working, grass mowing, shoveling snow and all of those other distractions from my layout building and operating! ;):)
Hopefully, this time next year, I'll be retired. Then there will be a lot of action down in the train room!
I hope you surpass your construction schedule!
 
I decided it was high time to get back to working on the RustEze shipping/receiving building.
The kit came with some strips of yellow plastic concrete block footing. It has 2 long strips for the side walls, and 6 short pieces that are supposed to go on the end walls, 1 in each corner and 1 in the middle between the doors. Having sealed up the back wall, I needed a longer piece to go on that wall. I decided to ditch the original concrete block sections, and make my own. I used some .060" thick styrene sheet and cut strips the proper width, then glued some strips of Plastruct 91620 HO scale concrete block along the bottom. This way all the walls will have the same block for the foundation.

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Here I am gluing two wall sections together using some more custom made gluing jigs:
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For longer joints such as these I prefer to use Testors plastic cement from the orange tube. I find it gives a stronger joint for wall sections. I use their liquid cement from a bottle for most other applications. I'll probably leave these sections alone for a week to really bond well, then glue the two halves together. I'll mask off the foundation and give the building a coat of gray primer, followed by a color coat. I haven't decided whether to go with a galvanized steel finish, or paint it another color. Once that's done, I'll give the foundation a coat or two of Testors Model Master flat concrete. (I don't think I've ever seen gloss concrete in the real world!)
 
Last Sunday (5-12-19) I was looking online for some LED strip/shop lights to go above the new layout. My go-to place is Menards. I had seen some LED shop light 2-packs for a decent price in their store, and had put off buying them, thinking "I'll get them later." Well, 'later' finally arrived, and Menards has discontinued those lights! :mad:
I checked to see if any stores nearby still had any, and there was a store about 175 miles away that had 3 units in stock. Umm, no. I'm not driving THAT far! So I ordered 2 packs (4 lights total) off of their website. They showed up today. Ordered Sunday, received Thursday. I can live with that! These lights are linkable up to six lights. They are 46" long, and the area they will be over is 19 feet long, so that should give pretty decent coverage. They are also very lightweight, which is good because they will be hanging from the water pipe. The listed weight 4.25 pounds for two, so they are just a bit over 2 pounds each, although they don't feel like it!
This is where they will go:
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Here are two of them hooked together:
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They will be controlled from a switched outlet that will be mounted on the benchwork. There will be 4 lights linked together above the benchwork, with 10-12" between lights. That should be sufficient.
Now back to the RustEze building......
 
Back to the RustEze building:
I got all 4 sides glued together. I'm going to make a 3/16" thick styrene floor for the bottom of this building. I cut one from 3/16" thick cork sheet I have just to see where it puts the door of the freight car. That thickness puts the door just above the molded line running the inside perimeter of the building. I plan to install a .030" styrene sheet along that line, with cutouts for the cars. That way the cars will be inside the building, but the 'floor' will be high enough to permit a forklift to enter the boxcar. The space between the floor and the base will be concealed with styrene sheet.
Here is the cork sheet cut to fit, and a boxcar inside the building. The ties on the track will be concealed with styrene sheet painted to look like concrete, and wheels stops will be attached to the rails to prevent the boxcar from being backed into the wall.
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Here is a closeup of the molded line I will use to set the height of the floor:
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I didn't think about doing this until after I had cut the foundation walls for the oversized doors included with this kit! :oops:
I will fill in the gaps and get some new doors. I will use some 1/8" square styrene strip to strengthen the inside of the corner joints, then put some styrene sheet along the back wall to cover the old door brackets and wall bracing.
The roof on this building will be removable, so I want to have the interior fairly decently detailed. For employees, I was thinking....... Minions! 3D printer files are available, but in 1/87 scale the short ones would only be about 3/8" tall, the tall ones about 1/2", so it would take a good printer to do it. I don't have any 3D printer at all, so I'd need to find someone who could print them for me. Something for the future.
 



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