Great Northwestern Railway

Roads - they connect the model railroad to a piece of the world we are all familiar with. As such, having roads on a model RR is an important scenic element. That said, I find roads to be tedious. Too often I see them dropped in without context, looking like they are anything but pavement, or flat out cheesy looking. So I have been holding off making roads... until now.  Turay sits on top of the helix. I wanted to use the space to tie in Armstrong and give the feel of a local center of population, without making it look like a big city. Think Las Vegas, New Mexico. So the city would have several key structures (more on that later), tied in with, you guessed it, roads. The basis for the roads are sheet styrene. My daughter works retail, so she was able to score for me some relatively heavy signs they were throwing away. Yay! Unfortunately the backs had some kind of adhesive on them that made the 'clean' side unusable. The printed side had pricing info on it... oh well. Next step...

It's been a temporary setup from the start.  A couple short metal filing cabinets and a scrap piece of plywood.  Add to that an old laptop and that was it - the dispatcher's office!  But a few op sessions quickly showed it was uncomfortable, limited in working space, and looked sloppy.  What to do? The good news is that using the temporary setup showed what was needed for the functionality of the office.  It's a small space - a repurposed hallway that used to go to the kids bedrooms... the same ones that were removed for the layout.  I did not want to remove the hallway as at some point, this will have to be converted back to living space.  So the idea was to cut a single piece of 3/4" plywood into the proper shape, finish it, and set it on stringers attached to the walls.  The desk itself then would have plenty of legroom under.  Experience showed the desk needed a side-table to store the car-card/train packs.   I elected to use bi...

Last week we had the second test run of the new GNW!  The biggest addition in this session was to test run the train sequence.  Seemed to work OK, but some tweaking to do.  All in all though, I think everyone had fun.  Kudos to operators Meeker, Kampsnider, Kersting and Mr/Mrs Botkins for tolerating trains without ANY blocked cars!  And then 2 switchers decided to poop out.  It was truly a pain and they took it all in stride.

I am genuinely surprised by how much work is needed to adjust the previous operating plan to this new layout.  Frankly, it would have been easier to start from scratch!  I added about 30% additional cars.  Delightfully, I had stashed quite a few cars over the years (eh-em, owing to more than a few visits to hobby shops), and the balance came out about right.  Still, it was quite an effort to prep the cars, get car-cards made up, and then... the really arduous part... writing up way-bills for each one.  New car cards - written out and folded, ready for taping. All the rolling stock was brought up to the main yard or just above it.  This allowed me to muse on how each car would fit into the traffic scheme. A lot more cars here than it would appear! Locos and cabeese also had to get their cards. The next step which is currently under way is the development of a train sequence.  This will let me plan out the flow of trains such that...

MAJOR milestone reached: The Great Northwestern Railway had the first "test" operating session!  The management decided the equipment had done enough trials, and the layout was ready for a real stress-test.  So an invite was sent out and 4 volunteers graciously accepted. Good news is the layout performed quite well.  There was a short punch-list of problems that were identified, but all in all, trains moved quite well and reliably. Next step is to flesh out the operating plan and set up waybills for the cars.  It's one thing to just pick up and drop off whatever you like; it is something entirely different to have specific destinations and car routing! Some highlights of the evening.  Thanks to all for making it a great success! Three of the four testers are, left to right, Dave Cochrun, Keith Hayes and Kevin Strong Gerry Glancy made up the balance of the test crew Multiple simultaneous movements in Armstrong yard was a key element of the tes...

LIGHTING Progress has been slow but good on the GNW.  First, added lighting under the deck of the upper to light up the lower.  It was always kind of dark and murky under the upper deck, and it really needed something to brighten things up.  Four 15' strips of LEDs and a new power supply were added and it made a huge difference! Lighting was simply hot-glued under the upper deck.   Compression terminal blocks distributed the power.  Of note, I needed to add power feeds to BOTH ends of each string.  Voltage drop along each string was enough that the LEDs were noticeably dimmer on the far end without.   Here is the new power supply - an Ebay special.  I located it mid-point between the two pairs of LED strips. LED Power Supply Some before/after shots. Looking east before lighting Looking east after lighting. Looking west before lighting Looking west after lighting.  Quite the difference! ...