Fascia Rough in Complete

Another major milestone for the D&H

Well, today I finished the rough in of the fascia boards made from 3mm MDF board around the entire layout. There are 23 sheets that are 610mm x 2440mm x 3mm that cover the front of the layout. That's just over 56 meters of fascia board.

The fascia runs from Plattsburgh around the layout past Willsboro, to Whitehall, to Ft Edward to Saratoga Springs to Corinth and North Creek. So, if a train was to run just on the main deck around the layout from Plattsburgh to North Creek, then it would cover just under 56meters and if I convert that to scale kilometres that's just short of 8.9 scale kilometres. Wow that's a long run..

Here are a few pictures with all the fascia installed.

Now for the big job of cutting the holes for the panels and cutting in the hill / maintain / ravine  contours along the top section of the fascia. Some will be simple as they are along the front of towns and will be relatively level, although I may leave in high sections for road over passes and perhaps signal protectors. I intend to do 1 sheet at a time to enable me to get a uniform finish and that includes making blocks that mount behind each join so they sit flush and smooth.

Till next time.!

Fascia Time

Procrastination gone, fascia on the way.

After much procrastination, or I call it preparation, for fascia, I have now started the long task of installing roughly 52 meters 3mm x 2400 x 600 of fascia on the layout.

This will be a long task as not only do I need to install it, I need to shape it for hills and gully's, I need to cut holes for all the turnout panels (18 of them), the UP5 / UR92 (7), car card sorting shelves (6), portholes for the transition tracks from staging to the main desk (too many to count)..

Today, I finally got started on it and installed 10 lengths of the 2400mm x 3mm MDF. As you can see from the pictures, at present I have only roughed in the fascia on all but 2 of the sheets as I figured I would get it all installed, then one by one shape each sheet, then one by one, cut all the many holes in the fascia.. Then finally finish it with a lick of paint. Hopefully, now that Christmas holidays are here, I can make a decent dent in the work needed.. (that is if Michelle does not plan on family holidays away..!!!)...

As this is the rough in stage, the joins between sheets need to be blocked from behind to leave a nice join and also the screws need to be counter sunk.

Shish, any wonder I procrastinated for so long before I started this!...

Here are a few progress pictures..

 

Till next time....

Car cards and more car cards

Time to sort some car cards.

Now that the last test operations session is completed and the planning and preparation for installing fascia is well under way, I decided that I needed to sort our my car cards and place them with each of the cars and figure out what cars I have cards for and what I don't.

I am also in the throws of preparing to develop a schedule and that heavily relies on all cars and loco's having a card each.

Some time ago (about 5 years) I photographed all my cars and loco's and made car cards for them. Since then, there have been additions to the fleet and this issue needed to be resolved.

In order to find all the cars with no cards, I had to take all the trains out of staging and get them up onto the main level where I can see the numbers on the cars. I then sorted the cards into car type and this then enabled me to do many many laps of the room to find all the cars.

I placed each card next to the relevant cars. This then enabled me to locate the ones that don't have cards.

I then made up a stack of cards that belong to each train and moved the trains back into staging. The cars left over are the ones with out cards.

I then rounded up the cars and placed them into 1 location so I can photograph them and make cards for those cards.

Here are a few pictures to give you some perspective of the size of the task..

All in all, about 6 hours to sort, find, place cards, make train stacks and move the trains back.

There are around 80 loco's, 440 cars all in 13 different trains and cars at industries.

Now that I have taken a break from the fascia work, I will now get back to that.

Until next update.