Major Announcement

As many of you know I have been going through a very tiring process of trying to finalize plans for my railroad.  I have interests in many things related to railroads and other things e.g. ships and amusement parks to name a few.  I also love the mountains and mountain railroading.  So after being pulled by these sometimes conflicting interests I have reached a decision that I earnestly believe I can live with.  Hopefully you all as casual observers of this very difficult process will be pleased that I have finally settled down and set some bounties for the layout.

Basically in a nut shell, the layout will consist of two unrelated but connected railroads, the Western Maryland Railway and the Chicago, South Shore, and South Bend Railroad.  They have a common connection of the C & O as being owned by the C & O at various times.  The WM of course was purchased by the C & O/CSX and still operates what is left under CSX.  The South Shore was owned briefly by the C & O also but is now an independent railroad again.

The WM will run and haul coal and other freight mostly within WV.  A connection with the C & O will allow interchange with the South Shore.

The WM portion will be modeled after real locations and the South Shore also will be modeled after real locations and both with operate as prototypical as possible.

Also a future addition to the urban portion of the layout will include a short section of CTA L (elevated) from downtown to the suburbs.  The South Shore portion will go from downtown (Randolph Street Terminal) to Gary, IN.  Traffic East of Gary was and is very sparse.  So this covers 80% of the railroad's traffic.

My theater that has been seen in some older posts will be re-designed to represent the Chicago Theater in Chicago near the loop.

In the next few days I will be posting photos of the WM side of the layout showing the mountain scenery of which some is finished and other portions under construction.  I will also post an updated layout drawing.

I have also deleted out of date postings from this blog.

Signal and CTC Circuit Boards

Here are photos of three boards I had made for ease in building and controlling signals as well as wiring my CTC board.

Signal Control Circuit.  8 bits via CAT5 cable controls 12 LEDs in four signal heads.  Can therefore control an OS section with a two three color signal heads for each route and one two head three color signal for the point end of the turnout.

Breakout board route eight wires from a CAT5 cable to eight screw terminals.  Many uses when using CAT5 rather than single wires or phone cables.

Same breakout board but with Molex connector which allows connection to DIN24, DIN32, DOUT24, DOUT32, or SMINI boards.  Eliminates building molex connectors and crimping molex pins.

Progress Report on Wood Trestle

Here is a snapshot of the deck of the wood trestle I am building for Blackwater grade.  It is almost a scale 160' long and 80' high.  The deck will be painted later and NBW castings will be added.  Built with strip both commerial and some homemade stringers.  The rail is code 125 and I am using Right O' Way's rail joiners which have the bolt detail cast into them.  Snapshot taken with Kodak Easyshare C180.  Better photos later.

Second Part of CTC is nearing completion

Backside of Lower Panel with Switch Wiring only. No LEDs wired yet. The use of RG45 connectors allows panel to be unpluged and moved to a work bench for repair or for changes.  This board has seven Breakout Boards.  Each has a RG45 connector.  Each DIN32 and DOUT32 cards also have Breakout Boards.  A simple CAT5 patch cable connects them together.  When the LEDs are wired they will connect to our custom Signal Control Circuit board (SCC) which controls 12 LEDs with an eight wire CAT5 cable.  The SCC then connects to the Breakout Boards via a CAT5 cable.

Front of Lower Panel

Half of the CTC showing Model Boards and Lower Panels

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Update May 22, 2012 Painting Finished

My Son in law and his brother have finished drywalling, priming, and painting the ceiling and the backdrop for the layout.  Below are a selection of photos of the results.  Now we have to clean off the top of the layout and get back to building the WV&TRR.

Layout Update May 9, 2012

It has been a while since I posted to the blog.   Currently we are in the process of dry walling the ceiling of the layout room.  We have used 50 sheets of drywall.  Today by Son In Law tapes about 40% of the ceiling.   After taping all of the ceiling there are two additional coats of drywall compound, then primer, and finally paintint the entire ceiling.   Then we can get back to building the railroad.