I'm proud to announce......


Thats a good color. Much brighter in there. Keep us posted on the layout progress.
 
Even pink would have been an improvement over the train room in one house I owned. It had been a goth teen's room, and was painted flat black. Ceiling, walls, black floor tiles. :eek:
So, blue is much better. Maybe a few puffy white and white-grey clouds on the walls before layout construction starts...
 
If I tried to paint some clouds on the wall it would probably end up looking like a two year old did it, so that aint gonna happen. Although i do have a neighbor that is supposed to be pretty handy with a air brush. I did manage to make some progress today on getting some track laid down. I managed to figure a few things today like soldering two pieces of flex track together and then using that long piece was the way to go instead of doing one piece and then adding another on the end. Not much to look at yet but here are some pics. I had to stop earlier and bolt the tables together when i realized that any movement between them was gonna be a really bad thing.

I would like to put a rise on the back side of the outer loop. There is 2 3/4 inches between the ties of the large oval and the 44 inch oval. I would like to hear your opinion on if this is enough space to make it look like the outer loop is traveling on a cut in a hillside. Im thinking that if i only go up about 1 1/2 inches it should work.

The last pic is my new soldering iron that i got at lowes, i only mention this because this thing is really nice. It has a on/off switch with a light that actually shines in the right spot to make it usefull. If allso heats up in like 30 seconds with a red light that turns green when it is a full heat. Allso you dont need a stand becasue the body of it doesnt allow the tip to touch whatever you lay it on. If anyone is needing a iron, i recommend this one.
 
Looks good. I would think with soldering that there would be no room for expansion and contracting of the rails in the summer/winter. I have seen and talked with those who did that and it just caused problems for them. Even one guy stated he heard a pop and found that a good section of his tracks popped because of the expasion in the rails.
 
Yea, i read about that too, but i dont think its gonna be a problem. After all its inside the house and the temperature fluctuation isnt gonna be more than 20 degrees at the most. However if the power goes out, then all bets are off. I would rather solder most of the sections together and have to run less feeder wires than to fight with the problems of loose connectors and more feeder wires. Seems to make sense now, however i just may find differently in the future.
 
I think the expansion issue is related to the difference in expansion between the bench work and the rails. I know in my house I have a few doors that behave different in the winter then the summer.

I'm at the adding feeder stage currently and doing a mixture of feeders and soldered rail. So do people run feeders to all their switches as well?
 
cengel said:
I think the expansion issue is related to the difference in expansion between the bench work and the rails. I know in my house I have a few doors that behave different in the winter then the summer.

I'm at the adding feeder stage currently and doing a mixture of feeders and soldered rail. So do people run feeders to all their switches as well?
Click to expand...

Expansion/contraction can be in the wood of the bench work from humidity changes as cengel points out. If you want trouble free track then be sure to include track gaps.
 
The pink room would be great if you were doing a "Hello Kitty" theme train, but since i assume you ARE NOT :D the blue is a good change. I also notice you have the woodland scenics roadbed. We just got a bunch of that stuff. How do you like it? Does it do 18" radius curves well or does it bunch up?
 
I use the woodland scenics roadbed and I think it works fine for 18" radius. My inner loop is 18" and all I had to do was cut the stuff down the middle. No bunching.
 
The road bed definetly needs to be cut down the middle, pretty easy application even for a newb like me.

Update:

I ran into a few problems with this layout. Being new to model trains i didnt realize at first that to make the train travel in both directions on a track you will need 2 reverse loops not 1. Last night i was tracing the trains path around the tracks and realized that when the train was traveling arount the outer loops counter clockwise entering the reverse loop it came back out headed in the other direction, but the only was to run the reverse loop again was to back thru. DOH Well i figured out how to fix that problem, i gonna install a drop down to exit the train yard. This will be my other reverse loop. (the benchwork has not been built yet for the train yard, it will be on the wall adjacent to the existing table.

Allso to up the newb factor, (i just hate to be outdone) , to make the inner reverse loop fit i had to bump out the 24r curve and that made the table to short. So to fix that problem i pulled the table away from the far wall to where there is just enough room to allow the closet door to fully open without hitting the table. This will give me just "enough" room ( enought being absolutely no room to spare) for my final outer loop which is about 28 r. I dodged the bullet on this one, better to be lucky than good ive heard.

Any ways, here are some pics of the progress so far. The sidings that will extend into the middle of the reverse loops are gonna be left off until i can afford to get some industry in there. That way i can layout those better, i think. Im not 100% happy with the way it turned out, but for being my first time, limited room, and absolutely no plan in hand i think i can live with it. Just as soon as i win the lottery i plan on building a bigger one. LOL
 
Made some progress today and thought i would share some pics. I have allmost all of the track staged except for the train yard. I had to stop for today, starting to get burnt out after working on it most of the day. Gonna start back up tommorow after work and get as much road bed put in as i can. Im hoping to have all the track ready on the main table ready before Christmas. I bought my son a Bachman train set with a steam engine and im sure he will love getting to run his new train on the large layout. I will put track nail in the turnouts that are on the reverse legs to lock them out until i can get all of the electrical components and install them.

pic 1: added table extension to fix previous issue that i allready discussed
pic 2: built table for train yard
pic 3: installed bridge section to get from the large table
pic 4: staged track to get ready for roadbed. (had to make sure it worked)
 
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