Woodlawn Industrial Park (was Northeastern HO scale switching layout)


Rico said:
Good news!
The layout turned out great, and you’ve really captured the feel of Inkster Park.
Looking forward to seeing it with scenery!

Oh, and I noticed that you stop pushing the caboose ground throws down when the hit the indent. Don’t know why but it’s a pet peeve of mine is seeing them pushed all the way to the ground! 😉
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I have to offer big thanks to you for posting those pics of Inkster Park. They really influenced my design a lot as you can see.

I agree about the Caboose ground throws - no need to push the all the way to the ground - dies not look prototypical.
 
boatwrench said:
Looking really good. Glad you have a introduce someone to beyond an oval. How good does the foam board absorb the gear noise of a locomotive? I have used homasote, cork and cork on homasote previously and have always been unhappy with gear noise.
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I think that rigid extruded foam is probably somewhat better than plywood but its still pretty noisy. I think the rubber roadbed from Woodland Scenics is probably the best noise absorber. One good thing is that most modern locomotives are pretty quiet nowadays.
 
Put down the sheet styrene for the paved areas on the other side of the layout and painted it. It still needs another coat as latex paint does not stick all that well on styrene. I guess I should spray some primer but ventilation is not great in my basement. In any case, with a couple of coats of paint, it looks fine.

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Finally - I got started with adding texture. First step was to put glue on the landscape and sprinkle green foam and gravel. Next step will be to apply static grass. I just bought a Woodlands Scenic static applicator. This will be the first time I am using static grass so wish me luck :)

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I tried out the 12mm static grass from woodland scenics on a patch of bare ground and it looks great!
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But the spring time grass from Noch is simply too bright for my US based layout. Mind you, I think it would be perfect if I was building a Swiss layout though :)
If you haven't been to Switzerland, you will not believe how green the grass is over there in the springtime! here is a pic that I took on vacation a few years ago. We were traveling from Lauterbrunnen to Kleine Scheidegg on our way to Jungfraujoch. And yes, those are waterfalls on the cliffs!

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Put down some ground cover finally! I have used a wide mix of materials - Woodland scenics ground foam, Heki and Silflor ground cover. Weed clumps from Walthers, and some sifted gravel. Track ballast is from Woodland Scenics. My thought is to use fine white ballast (which will weather in the sidings) and some reddish ballast in the main tracks.

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Really need to add some trees too

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Ballasted the first turnout on this layout. So far so good - I tried to be very careful not to get the ballast into moving points. The main tracks are going to be ballasted with a reddish-brown ballast but the sidings will have fine gravel (I will give that a black wash to weather them).

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I am finally getting over my fear of ballasting turnouts :) For a long time my main fear was of getting ballast stuck near in the points. Turns out that the solution is really simple - just don't put too much ballast under the points :)

After I glue down the ballast, I slather a little bit of machine oil on the tops of the ties that are immediately under the points. I also keep flipping the switch periodically to make sure it does not get stuck in place.

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Previous layouts I put duct tape on the underside of a turnout, adhesive side facing up. Very lightly sprinkled ballast on to the adhesive before laying the track. I too am nervous, unsure regarding laying ballast with white glue as adhesive.
Thanks for showing your progress i look forward to your posts.
 
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boatwrench said:
Previous layouts I put duct tape on the underside of a turnout, adhesive side facing up. Very lightly sprinkled ballast on to the adhesive before laying the track. I too am nervous, unsure regarding laying ballast with white glue as adhesive.
Thanks for showing your progress i look forward to your posts.
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Putting tape under turnouts is a good idea - will keep in mind for my next layout. I also realized that I made a mistake in not painting the foam boards before laying track - that would have definitely simplified things a bit!
 
I have been making steady progress with ballasting tracks and adding ground cover. The static grass clusters came out looking pretty good. The trick is to put down the static grass before the other ground cover.

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The white ballast in the sidings looks a little uneven when viewed at an angle but it's actually ok when viewed at normal angles. In any case, once I give it an ink wash, it will blend in much better.

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