More Turnouts

New possibilities

As part of the planning of industries to service and therefore buildings, I found that I had space for a flat industry in Whitehall. I could also then re arrange a few things and move the propane dealer to Port Henry on the short track and use the longer track in Whitehall for a printing works that could use paper from the mill and provide another destination of on line and off line cars. So Star Printing was born. (after a real printing works on the D&H in years gone by). This then enabled me to use a few buildings is received from Barry and John.

I also have had a old plaster very long, low relief warehouse that I wanted to use. I found a space in Whitehall and I was going to model a dis used track and warehouse. But I could not let the opportunity for another industry to slip by. So this necessitated another track that I could connect to the main. The only issue was, I was all out of right and turnouts. Given 80% of the turnouts on the layout are hand built, then making another was not a big issue. I also have long been planning on replacing a turnout on the main entering Port Henry as I was not happy with the reliability of it. So 2 more turnouts were planned to be built.

I prepared the relevant tools for the task at hand, turned on the soldering station and... Pooof.. with a large bang or pop and a large amount of smoke escaped from the soldering station.. Well that did not go to plan. It was 5:05pm on a Monday evening, so I jumped on the phone to my local Jaycar supplier here in Sunbury to procure a new station. Fortunately, they had one in stock that was the same as my old one. I have a very fine point on the iron so wanted to retain that.. A quick run down the street and back and by 5:25 I was good to go..

Thus turnouts number 105 and 106 were created. I then weathered the turnout in readiness for the install.

Here are the turnouts, ready to go.

Here is an updated plan of the layout with the extra siding at the top in Whitehall.
The top level is unchanged.

Now to install the turnouts and change a few tracks in Port Henry to enable them to align with the planned buildings.

Building rough in

Did someone say Jigsaw's?

This weekend I spent time reviewing and revising the plan for the industries on the layout. This includes the products that come and go along with the car types and the possible on line or off line destination. This then helped with the planning of the buildings. I had completed this time ago but it needed review, revision and enhancement.

Once this was completed I then searched out all the buildings that I have been hording for a number of years. This includes a number of Walthers cornerstone modular kids, 2 x Superior paper kits, other Walthers kits and a number of DPM kits.

I already knew what types of buildings I was after per the plan so set about playing jigsaw puzzles with buildings to make up what I needed.

I managed to cobble together a large power plant from part of the Superior paper kit along with a large long main paper mill building. I then used the remainder of the red brick parts of the paper mill to make a power station for the glass factory across the isle.

Some of the kits may be recognisable. Some not so much.

I wanted to use the long plaster warehouse flats that I had, so plan on adding a old unused track next to where the building is in Whitehall.

While some of the industries are correct (in name only) to those on the D&H, the others are made up based on the types of industries that were on the D&H. So not strictly to what was there and a fair bit of modellers licence. I am on the other side of the planet compared to up state New York and it is my layout..

Here are a few pictures of the building walls taped together to get the feel for them..

TOFC Facility

Ball Metal Container Co

The yellow heavy duty crane will be along the front of the building.

Power plant for the Glass Factory

 General foods

Lay-Z-Boy chairs

Lay-Z-Boy Chairs

 Pt Henry Doors

 SL Scrap

Pt Henry Doors

SL Scrap steel

 Loco facility in Whitehall

Post Star Printing - Whitehall

Cement - Whitehall

 Paper Factory. Further down the town, there is space for tank and pulp logs.

 Power plant for the paper mill

Propane gas dealer

The Glass factory will go here and still needs more planning

Now to get building..

Somewhere for the Laptop

A place for the Laptop.

As I use JMRI to manage the signals and routes on the layout, I needed a place to sit the laptop.
When I get to operating sessions the panel will be managed by a dispatcher in the other part of the garage. While I am running the layout myself, I needed a central place to locate the laptop so I could do some loco programming / speed matching (if needed) as well as run the JMRI panel.

This weekend I build a roll out shelf / drawer for the machine. If needed the screen can be closed and the machine left running and it can be pushed back under the layout and out of the way.

The Loco buffer and power supply for the layout are tucked up under the layout to save on messing around with cables.

Here are a few pictures on the finished product..

Next up.. Building planning (I think)/.....

Start work on the scenery

Foam, Foam, more foam and a hot wire cutter.

I finally have my mojo back and with Covid-19 lock down and a full 4 day Easter long weekend I decided to get stuck into cutting up the loads of foam that I have been storing for some time.

After searching for about 2 hours for my cheap and nasty hot wire cutter (that I bought off ebay from China a few years ago) I got stuck into it..

Four days later all foam is roughed in and about 1/2 of the foam is now painted brown.

Some parts on the top level I will look to change over time by adding a few bridges and river beds etc.

Here are a few pictures with a train running through them to enable a sense of size.

The last picture is bags full of off cuts of the foam.. Now to gradually get rid of them in the rubbish bin 1 bag per week.

Now onto building planning..