020 - Richlawn RR v2 - A Diet Plan for Richlawn

Well, it seems my friend Rick is not all mirth...in fact, he's girth.  Lots of girth.  He asked me to design a layout around his needs.  Turns out the needs are pizza and beer.

Actually he needs to use the layout as an office.  What better place to work?  We discussed possibly making the aisles a bit larger.  I didn't think it would cost him to much operationally or scenickly.  But let's give it a try.

Here is the layout as it stands now.  The aisle are slightly over 2 feet, which is not bad for a small layout which will seldom see two or more operators.  But let's put it on a diet.

Let's work on East Louisville first.  The grain elevators can move to the open scenery spot on the Left Wall.  Let's move them, but keep some backdrop space for a warehouse facade.

 Hey!  With a curved turnout I even get more trackage!  Let's add a siding to the backdrop for warehouses.

I've added a turnout near the siding and looped it around to the backdrop.  Plenty of room.  We've gained 5" making the aisle quite large, and we've added more operating potential.  We paid the price in open scenery.

Let's swing over to West L'ville.  All we need to do is cut down the sidings on the top of the drawing.  Whack!  They are gone!

Six inches of reduction, and no tracks were really affected.  All we lost was some length.  I know...every guy hates that.  But the sidings are still there.  I drew in the warehouses and and a large grain elevator complex.

All in all we picked up 11" of aisle space, widened both aisles to roughly three feet.  More than enough for a chair and pull out for the laptop.

Watcha think, Rick?

039 The Augusta Railway - Layout Drawing

Here is the latest layout drawing of the Augusta Railway...

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019 - Richlawn RR v2 - Layout Drawing

Here is Rick's latest layout drawing...

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Larger Plan - Click to Enlarge

018 - Richlawn RR v2 - Rebuilding West Louisville

After putting Rick's drawing away for a few days, I came back fresh and knocked out some changes tonight.

Here is the current drawing of West Louiville.  First, I've got to take all the trains off the track.  That is easy because they are all part of the Rolling Stock layer.

Poof!  They are gone by removing one check mark.

Curved turnouts are a powerful design tool!  Though expensive and not always known to fit as drawn, we'll use one to lengthen this passing siding.

Rick wants a heavy industrial area.  We'll start by putting in a 5 car passing siding.  That let's him bring a full train into the area.  We need a passing stub on the right for one locomotive and one car minimum.  Backdrop building show a lot of action in little space, so we want to use the backdrop.  By crossing the tracks we can lengthen the siding.  Then we add some other trailing point sidings, providing you back the train in.

The backdrop sidings don't leave enough clearance and we have plenty on the other side, so I'll move the backdrop down.

Ok, let's test it.  I picked up the west bound with four cars and a caboose and went to West Louisville.

We'll drop off the crummy since its just in the way.  Its easy to put it on Palmer Asbestos' siding.

The green CP car needs to go to the warehouse, and we need to pick up a car that is outbound, so let's make that move.

We clear the turnout and proceed on the passing track.  Wow!  We have a problem here.  I can't switch this district without fouling the main.  That won't work.  I put a sticky note to fix it on my computer.

Dropped off green, now to pick up brown...

Hooked up...and the brakeman signals "all ahead."

We'll leave the brown box with the caboose for the trip out.

 Now we need to move the plastic pellets car to the injection molding plant, a trailing siding move.

The pellet car in place, the next move is the remaining to boxcars to Perry's Private Warehouse, a facing point move.  We'll run the loco around for that.

 Around back we pull the train backward and set the switch.  "That'll do!"

A quick shove and a check of the paperwork show we are done with today's moves.

Time to go home.  We hook up the outbound train.

After picking up the Brakeman, we are gone back to town.

Another test I wanted to make was to see if five cars can fit on the cartridge, and be pulled out on the siding, with a locomotive.  Here we have the move set up.

We push the cars onto the cassette or cartridge...and they do fit, less the engine.

Let's draw them out.  The siding needs to be just long enough for the five cars and the loco, maybe a slightly bigger loco.  The siding is too long and may interfere with the town, so I'll put a sticky note on the computer to lop it off.

You can see here how the West Louisville siding interferes with the main with only one or two cars in tow.  Not good for traffic.  Gotta fix that.

I don't want to connect to the yard tracks.  This is a town further away, so we'll add a turnout and make this a very long lead to West Louisville.  It makes things a bit crowded, but I believe it will be ok.

Richlawn needs to be a big town as Rick has a lot of great buildings.  So let's bury the mainline here and build over it.  The West Louisville lead will remain visible, and at a slight grade.

Here we put a concrete tunnel entrance to make it more city like.  Looks good!  Time for bed.  I may come back and work on the main line tomorrow.

038 The Augusta Railway - Need More Support

The more that I look at the end of the layout, the more I know it needs support.   So let's add some!

I didn't want to move the light switch for the room.  Probably one of those things that I'll regret later, but for now it stays.  Because of the switch I was trying to leave this section un-braced so that you could easily reach the switch.  Unfortunately this section needs a little more propping up, so we'll have to add an angle brace.

Basically we are going to do the same thing as we've done before, but we will have a shorter brace that is not at a 45 degree angle.

Here is the new brace mounted...very strong now!

I painted the screws orange and checked the leveling one more time.  Perfect!

I know I have a lot of track, so that is a good thing.  What I don't know is what do I actually have and what do I need.  So I dug out the track box.  It is very heavy!

After borrowing another long storage box from the wife I decided to divide out the box into two boxes; track I need for this layout, and track that is for other purposes.

You know you are a rubber gauger when you have Gargraves 3-rail in the collection.  Actually, I think I have some of every track made, at least a few pieces.  This comes in handy when working on someone else's equipment, or building displays.

Hey!  HO brass!  Didn't know I had any of that.  Ok, now we have three boxes; use, keep and scrap.  I'll take the scrap box to the next meeting and give it away or trade it for a soda.

O, On3, On30, HO, HOn3, N, and tons of varieties of each.  We'll keep some of each, and all of the On30.

As the "use this" box fills up, I've got a lot of HO code 83 track.  Some is Micro Engineering, and the rest is Walthers.  I have some concrete tie track, so I'll either swap it for more wood tie track, or use it in the hidden trackage area.  All  the Walthers turnouts are DCC friendly, and there are crossties and rail of each code.  Plenty of cork, too.  More than enough to get started and possibly enough for the whole layout.

I put the track in the box and sat it under the benchwork on the floor for next weekend.  Not sure exactly what I need, but it is very little.  It will take almost two months to get the track in, so if I need something I can pick it up easily at Warren's Train Shop who carries Walther's track.

017 - Richlawn RR v2 - No Studs at Rick's House

From my friend Rick:

Scott,

If I could please have your expert opinion on benchwork:  I had originally planned to mount my benchwork to the wall using similar methods to what you did.   That has changed due to our recent experience mounting our TV to the "studs" in our master bedroom.  First, I found that the "studs" were on 24" centers instead of 16" centers.  This isn't a big deal; however, the dimensions and connection method of the "stud" is.  I went over to a house under construction and discovered that the walls against the concrete block are NOT studded with 2 x 4s, but instead are covered with furring strips approximately 5/8" thick by 3/4" wide AND these strips are only held on the wall by 3 concrete nails.  While these furring strips are fine for holding drywall I suspect the will NOT be strong enough to handle the pulling force of a shelf layout not supported by legs.

So, I'm thinking legs for support and screw it to the wall for stability.  I sent you pictures from my iPhone.  Your thoughts, please.  

Sincerely,

Richard Wade

Dear Rick;

Ouch!  This could be a problem.  You aren't going to get enough "bite" with a screw to hold anything.  My first thought is to go with stand alone L-girder and leg construction.  My guess is that your interior walls are studded, so you would only have to do this on the one exterior wall.  All the rest would be studs.

I see that Zorro was there!

Others...if you have ideas, shout them out!

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