Building the Walwynn and Western layout


Ballasting is under way. Since the rail is not on the ties it is much easier to put the ballast down.
Pic 1- spoon out ballast down the ties. This is Woodland Scenics Gray Medium.
Pic 2- Use a Brush to distribute the ballast evenly between the ties. At this point I am only interested in apply the ballast between the ties, the Slope of the roadbed will be done later.
Pic 3- I slide a metal block across the ties to insure all ballast is below the tops of the ties. I also tap the ties with this metal block to settle the ballast.
Pic 4- Apply a generous amount of diluted Mat Medium/ wet water. I mix it in a small Elmer's glue bottle.

After the Mat Medium dries I go over the ties again with the metal block since there is always some ballast that floats up onto a tie. I'll go over all the ties again just before any rail is spiked and then vacuum to ensure that no ballast gets under a rail.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks wilson,

lol. 'wet water' is water with soap and alcohol added to reduce the surface tension. Just 'plain water' will bead up on the ballast whereas 'wet water' will soak in.

I pre-mix the 'wet water' by the quart. It contains a few drops of dish soap and a few ounces of alcohol. Then in the small Elmer's glue bottle I fill 1/4 full with Mat Medium and top off with the pre-mixed 'wet water'.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Just visited your post. Nice work! I love your techniques. Look forward to seeing how it progresses.
 
The weather has been hot and humid, the basement is a nice cool place to be so more work has been done on the layout. Finished with the ballast so that the turn-outs and rail can be wired and spiked. The ares under the turn-outs will be ballasted later to ensure that the moving rails and points do not get jammed.

1st pic is after soldering a wire onto the underneath of the turn-outs frog. The frogs will be powered from a Frog Juicer.
2nd pic is the same turn-out in place with the wire attached to the frog. The wire can just be seen and later some additional ballast will completely hide the wire.
3rd Pic is of rails soldered between two of the turn-outs. The rail joiners are Micro Engineering code 70 cut in half. Once the rails get painted the joiner will not be easily seen. I still need to clean the rosin flux off. I'll do this with a 'Q-tip' and alcohol.

In the 4th pic the far rail has been spiked and a spike in being pushed in for the near rail. The yellow gauges are from Railway Engineering. These work much better then the ME gauges and come in a set of four.

In these picture the Tie painting details can be seen. I'm very please with how the ties look in the close up pictures.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Here is a pic looking down through Winifred Junction, the interchange with the PRR. On the right is a section of track before being spiked and having the four gauges in place.

2nd pic is of the electronic/junction panels under the layout with a hex Frog Juicer mounted. The two terminal blue connector on the board is the track power and the upper six position blue connector is where the turn-out frogs connect. The white clamp above the hinge line helps route the wires to the board. The five holes are for wires to pass through to the control drawer (see post #11) and to the rest of the layout. The black cord in the left most hole is from the AC power brick to the Digitrax Zephyr.

This panel is 12 inch wide (top to bottom in this view) and has plenty of space for additional circuits. I have thought of cutting its width in half.

3rd picture is with the panel in the up position. A latch is still needed to lock the panel in the up position.
4th pic: It is very easy to sit under the layout on a short stool and work on the wiring.

My plan for today is to wire the lighting fixtures above the layout and to install more rails. Stay tuned for updates.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Looks great

Waltr,
Thanks for the information. Looks to be a layout crying for closeup viewing. I think that hand laid track and turnouts are beyond my abilities, but your efforts are awsume.
BTW, looks like you have a gnome living under the layout!
S_24-516742918.gif
 
Thanks Steve.
Never been called a Gnome before. Been called lots of other things however.

I have found that the fine details are more easily seen with close-up pictures than by eye.

The latest is that the lighting above the layout is now fully wired with a dimmer switch. Also added two new outlets, one under the layout so I can get rid of a few extension cords.

Here is the latest motive power to the W&WRR. A Blackstone HOn3 C-19 early version, green boiler with Tsunami sound.
 
Waltr, your choices of rolling stock, track, your technique and style is so enjoyable to see and watch. Thank you for showing it. :)

Mike
 
Thanks Mike.

The style and techniques I have collected from many sources. Some books but mostly off the web from Clubs, individuals, small companies and from the forum posts here.

So far only some of the narrow gauge rolling stock has been shown. I just got power run to the standard gauge track a couple nights ago so I should put my standard gauge locos and cars on for a quick photo shoot. Everyone likes to see pics.
 
More progress. The power bus and feeders are now soldered. I was test running by using clip leads from the Zephyr to the track.

1st pic shows one of the connections. The 14ga twisted red/white wires is the main DCC bus. 22ga wires are soldered to the buss and run to short 28ga feeders that are soldered to the track. The yellow/blue wires are from the Frog Juicer to the turn-out frogs.

2nd pic is a section of track to move the narrow gauge from the right to the left side of the dual gauge track. This is to have the narrow gauge cars next the the station platform at Winifred Junction. This is the third on I made. The first two had too short of a transition and the loco's drivers would bind although a freight car would go through.

3rd pic are W&W's standard gauge motive power. On the left is a Bachmann 4-6-0 and on the left is a Bowser/MDC 2-8-0 old timer built from a kit.

In the last pic The standard gauge 2-8-0 is stopped while the narrow gauge C-19 leaves the yards from Winifred Junction.

The Blackstone C-19 is running better than any engine I've ever had and this is right out of the box. Only thing I've done is adjust a few CVs to my taste and a few drops of lubricate as per the manual. It will craw from one end of the layout to the other without a glitch. I am very impressed.
 
It has been a while since the last update. I have now gotten all the turn-out controls done on the left half of the layout. The turn-outs are controller from scale levels as used in the old control towers. These are from Hump Yard Purveyance.
http://www.humpyard.com/
The parts for these are very well engineered and the kits complete with cables and screws.

The first two pictures is of the levers mounted behind the fascia. This will prevent bumping the levers while operating. I need to clean up the edges of the cut-out (it doesn't look this bad in person).
The last two pictures are under the layout. One of the back the the turn-out lever mounting board showing the cables exiting. The lever mounting board is held on with four screws and can be clamped to the front bottom of the fascia with full access to the lever mounting screws.

The other is a general view of under the layout showing the routing of the turn-out control cables and wiring. The two pair of alligator jumper wires are powering the two sections of track that will be switchable Ops and Programming. More on that in later posts.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Here are a couple of mechanisms I build the change the direction of the turn-out control cables. The turn-out control levels are setup to easily set the turn-out direction. If the level is pulled out then the turn-out routing is toward the front of the layout. If pushed in the the turn-out routing is toward the back of the layout. This way the operator doesn't need to see the turn-out's points.

I made two types of mechanisms. First change the cable direction 180°, When the lever pushes the cable to the mechanism the mechanism pulls on the cable that connects to the turn-outs 'throw bar'.

The second changes the cable direction by 90°. These mechanisms are built on 1/4" plywood. The bell-crank for the 90° one is cut from perf circuit board.

The 'U' shaped wire is 12ga house wire bent to fit the two holes drilled in the plywood and anchors it onto the foam. Once I'm sure all is working properly I'll squeeze a glob of caulk between the plywood and the foam. I also use 'U' sharped wires to hold wires and cables in place (can be seen in the under layout picture in the last post).

The last picture is looking up through the foam to the bottom of the plywood sub-roadbed. The end of the cable housing is anchored with a clip and screw (supplied with the lever kit). The 0.025" diameter SS wire is bend at 90° and goes through a slot cut in the roadbed and sub-roadbed then into a small hole drilled in the PCB tie throw bar.

This hole through the foam was 'cored' with a piece of sink drain tube that had been filed to a 'saw tooth' like edge. It is a simple matter to twist the tube into the foam to cut out a round plug (second to last picture showing the tube and foam plug). The control cable is routed to the top surface of the foam through the slit cut into the foam seen on the right of the last picture.

I think its now time for an operation session.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Well the Turntable kit finally arrived today. This took over 18 weeks from the time I order it but was warned before hand that they are not fast in delivery but do deliver.

This is the Diamond Scale SS-065, Steel Girder 65 foot Turntable that was common around 1900.
http://www.diamond-scale.com/products__turntables.htm

In fact the East Broad Top (EBT) in central Pa has a very similar turntable they bought used in the early 1900's.
http://www.ebtrr.com/equip/steam.html

Drawings of the turntable and building at the EBT.
http://www.totalracing.com/ebt/drawings.htm

I will have this turntable with dual gauge tracks and it'll be located at the far right end of the layout. (see the track layout diagram in the second post).

A couple of pictures of the box just opened and then the contents laid out.
Then a closeup of the inside the the cast Hydrocal pit and ties.

I am debating whether to do the turntable build thread here within the layout build or do the turn table in a separate thread. I am leaning to the latter. Any opinions?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
waltr said:
Well the Turntable kit finally arrived today. This took over 18 weeks from the time I order it but was warned before hand that they are not fast in delivery but do deliver.

This is the Diamond Scale SS-065, Steel Girder 65 foot Turntable that was common around 1900.
http://www.diamond-scale.com/products__turntables.htm

In fact the East Broad Top (EBT) in central Pa has a very similar turntable they bought used in the early 1900's.
http://www.ebtrr.com/equip/steam.html

I will have this turntable with dual gauge tracks and it'll be located at the far right end of the layout. (see the track layout diagram in the second post).

A couple of pictures of the box just opened and then the contents laid out.
Then a closeup of the inside the the cast Hydrocal pit and ties.

I am debating whether to do the turntable build thread here within the layout build or do the turn table in a separate thread. I am leaning to the latter. Any opinions?
Click to expand...

waltr,
Believe it or not I may have shipped your turn table to you! Sometimes when I go to the hobby shop I take the out going parcels to the post office for them. Enjoy the turntable. I watch them make those sometimes and it is labor intensive. I'm still waiting on them to start the 134' so I can get my area going. I love your layout too. Awesome!
 
The weather has rather nice so I have been spending less time in the basement working on the layout. I have begun working on building the turn table so here is an update.

A few problems I ran into are in the pictures.
1st- the wood blocks to space the width of the bridge frame were too narrow. I didn't notice this until I tried to place the center block between the frames. I had to cut the end block down the middle and glue in a spacer. The spacer is seen in the picture and was made from a paint stir stick (happened to be the thickness needed).

2nd- The Worm gear is to held on the shaft with a roll pin. The holes in the worm and shaft were pre-drilled. However the hole in the worm was drilled off-center. Luckly the worm is nylon and easy to drill and the hole was grossly off. So I aligned the hole in the shaft to the hole on one side of the worm. Then used a 1/16 inch drill bit turned by hand, slotted the hole in the worm until the drill fit into the hole in the shaft then drilled a new hole through the other side on the worm. The old hole and new hole with the pin can be seen of the picture.

3rd- The tie from the bridge were all pre-cut and came in three lengths. The widths were all the same but the 2" long ties were thinner as seen in the picture. I had to remove these ties then make new ones from tie stock I have for laying track.

Last picture is the top of the turn table bridge with all the ties and rail pieces (stanches get attached for a hand railing).
 
The next step was fitting and attaching the molded plastic girdle side to the bridge frame.
1st pic- This is the four plastic pieces. These come longer than needed (also used for the 75 foot turn-table) and need to be cut to length.
2nd pic- two halves cut and ready to be glued in place. Above are the 'tie' plates that get glued over the seam.
3rd pic- The plastic girdles and tie plate glued to the bridge side frame and under the ties.

4th pic- These are the dollies on which the bridge rides on the circular rail in the turn table pit. They are pewter castings that need the customary cleaning up. the wheels are machined brass with steel axials. The closer one is upside down to show the small peices that hold the axil in place. These are glued on and the small pin is peened to assist holding the plates in place.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
You must log in or register to reply here.



Back
Top