We are getting really close to being done with track on most of ackerville. Then the great snow storm will happen and everything should come together quite quickly. So this is just another quick update of what got done today.

The whole track area got a good dose of ultra flat brown krylon camo paint. It looks a tad green but drys brown.

Immediately after painting I cleaned the paint from the railhead with a track cleaner. It’s messy and the whole area needs vacuuming before the matt medium goes down.

We did have a few mistakes and over spray onto the snow but this looks kinda weathered so whilst I’ll clean this it could be a good technique to mist some brown when weathering the snow near roads.

This was tonight’s final Job this is the track feed board for the South end of ackerville. The block detection unit will go in the centre of this board.

Right on to tomorrow let’s see what we can get done.

This is just a quick update to day that we are now at 90% of the track laid with feeders attached on the ackerville section of the layout. I have covered my track laying efforts before so this is really just an update on progress.

Now it’s onto snow & trees, lots of snow and trees.

An opportunity to buy some more code 55 turnouts will allow me to add a classification yard to my yard. As a quick re-cap the yard on my layout is also my staging yard, in the first iteration of the plan it contained five loops and a small loco shop area.

I managed to get an assortment of medium and large radius turnouts which will allow me to have a calssification yard and switch lead. The idea being that manifest trains are made up from the cars in these tracks and then broken down upon their arrival back to the yard area. I don’t know how I will do the operating schema for car forwarded as the cars wont have industries on the layout so it may be left upto the switch crew to choose cars for the train based on a quantiy of each car required for each train.

By sacrificing one of the through loops in the yard I was able to add a 7 road classification yard which will have a capacity of 79 cars. The classification yard is served from a 27 car capacity arrival and departure tracks.

The loops in Green and Purple on the plan allow me to store four unit trains in the main yard although with layouts out on the railroad this is really about 6 unit trains in total. Each with a capacity of 40-50 50′ cars but the passing sidings will only take trains with a max length of 40 cars plus locos so they won’t fill the sidings.

The loco servicing area has now had a re-vamp with two additional tracks and yes that’ll mean more Gevos & Dash 9’s.

So here is the whole yard area I am hoping that not being able to see each end of the train will trick you into thinking that the train is actually bigger than it really is. The use of mid train DPUs will help even more with this illusion.

As we know snow scenery attempt 1 didn’t go very well. https://gordy.uk/2021/02/22/quick-update-on-some-snowy-stuff-on-a-saturday-afternoon/ No matter how much glue I applied the hoover ripped it up.

I decided therefore to modify my process and use acrylic medium onto the painted surface and then apply the snow to the wet medium. My idea is when that dries it will hold the snow. lets look at the process.

For those who have been following the blog, you’ll know that the layout is in two parts and most focus at the moment has been on the Waukesha Sub however thats just because I am focussing on completeing my scenery AP and I was waiting to order a helix from https://www.gleiswendelshop.de/ .

This post will just cover how I constructed my helix which is number 2 on the layout and there will be 4 in total. If you want the short story on this and prefer videos I suggest looking at this video by my friend Peter Borcherds building exactly the same helix.

For my helix i went for a 3.5 turn helix and each turn climbs 7cm (2.75″) which is steep it is a climb of 3.1% but this part of the layout has short trains with 4 axle units that should handle this no problem.

So how to get it done. well in the box you get threaded bar a ton of nuts & washers and the cut half circles of cut ply for the Helix. With any helix the most important part is the first level becase once you have that level nailed its just the same seperation between each deck.

So the measurements for mine were rod 2 (2.25cm), rod 3/4 (3.4cm), rod 5 (5.75cm and the back to rod 1 (7cm). All these measurements are from the the end of the rod except the second set of nuts on rod 1 which is from the top of the helix deck. You measure to the underside of the helix deck.

ok and to save time use a dremel with a brush bit to move the nuts down the rod and tighten them with a spanner.

and then we get another deck on

An awesome little project, i would always suggest grabbing a kit for a helix unless you have the skills, time and the tools to be as precise as the CNC machine that made this kit.

A lovely project for a sunday morning, this is just sitting on the benchwork it’ll be fitted in its final resting place when the next deck goes on. I always plan my helices so that the base is wider than the connection to the upper deck.

Well this will be it on the WSOR until the Ackerville scenery is completed. I don’t know what is coming tomorrow yet but stick with me I have lots of projects to do with materials on hand so we should be ok for a few more weeks.

Remember last week I did the last bit of sculptamold for Ackerville well we had some nice weather this weekend and it finally dried. That means it was time to get a wee bit of paint down.

So this is what it looked like when if had dried. The WSOR is on the right coming downgrade to be level with the CN mainline and both will parrallel each other around the corner before diverging with the WSOR heading to Milwaukee and the CN continuing towards Waukesha.

At the moment I am focussing on completing my Scenery AP which means I need to do 18sqft of scenery and that means just doing into that corner you see in the picture but I call Ackerville done when we get the scenery finished up to the point the tracks get level again.

So here we are with the base scenery on, its the usual burnt umber that will have woodland scenics flex paste over the top and then snow powder. Of course thats plan B as the first attempt didn’t go quite as expected, you’ll see how well it goes or not later in the week when the materials arrive.

Anyway I know Brad is bored reading this now so I can promise that tomorrow we will be moving to the WSOR Northern Sub to add Helix Number 2.

Stay Safe

Gordy

Well we are around the corner from Ackerville and heading towards Waukesha the WSOR here is decending to be level with the CN mainline for the next scene on the layout.

As you can see sculptamold everywhere but when its painted you’ll not see some of this mess and it’ll be buried under snow anyway.

Here is the transision between the main Ackerville section the lines here are curving away to the right which is the area in the first photo.

Yeah this looks like a mess but paint will hide it all. The CN is on the left and WSOR on the right.

Well thats a right mess i’ve made i best go clean it up and plan tomorrows entertainment. See you all soon

Gordy

I took a couple of days off this week and yesterday as you say I got the backscenes into placce. Today i added feeders and cut the flex for all the main lines through Ackerville. I don’t glue my track down until its all done but today i got the feeders soldered to the rail and fitted through the baseboard with the track cut to length. I just need to add the yard tracks one evening this week and it that track will get glued into place.

looking northbound you can see whats left to do here in Ackerville

looking south the track on the mains is in as far as the corners which won’t get done until I add the sculptamold to the next board and get it painted so thats a job probably for next week.

The final shot showing a box car on the WSOR mainline about where the Highway overpass will be fitted. That track on the incline still needs to be fitted the gaps there under the roadbed will be filled with woodland scenics flex paste.

Well not sure what we will get done tomorrow possible these last few tracks in the yard or that sculptamold I guess it depends how messy i want to be after my first day back in the virtual office.

Well till next time.

Gordy

Well its all about trees I am experimenting with different things some plain out the box. Others are painted brown, grey or brown with a dusting of grey. I am still not sure what I will go with what do you think?

And here are some pictures to give a flavour of what the finished layout might look like.