The third wood project completed last week was the building of tunnels for the supply HVAC. The supply registers for the 2 rooms are in the floor. With the skirting installed, the registers are behind the skirting. I built a couple of simple tunnels to direct the forced air outlet to the front of the... Continue Reading →

Another project tackled last week was cutting wood for operator shelves to be placed around the railroad. One of my pet peeves is when operators put stuff on the railroad. Stuff like clipboards, throttles, radios, paperwork, etc. sitting on the railroad drives me crazy. To help dissuade this, I’ve installed some narrow shelves around the... Continue Reading →

It was a busy week last week both on and off the railroad. After installing a new double hung window unit in our 4th bedroom, I spent a day outside on the driveway with the table saw, miter saw and circular saw cutting wood for various projects. The fascia material was ripped from 3/16” tempered... Continue Reading →

This week, Jen helped me install the skirting around the railroad. The skirting is basic landscape fabric cut to length so that it doesn’t touch the floor and stapled to 1” square wood stock. I used the same material on the old CWI and it worked quite well. The skirting is complete in Illinois and... Continue Reading →

Now that the track painting has been completed on the railroad, I’ve begun the task of giving final names to the industries. Names are vital to the JMRI Operations program. I’ve pulled out some more rolling stock from storage and used them to see what types are needed at each spur. Combining a list of... Continue Reading →

Now that the track laying is done, I’ve begun to paint the track. The ties of the flex track and turnouts are a shiny black and the rail is shiny on the sides, not realistic. I broke out the Paasche airbrush and used some thinned flat latex enamel wall paint and went to town. Years... Continue Reading →

After another detour to install our new induction range and the wiring for it where the propane range was, I’ve progressed on the trackage in Illinois (the south bedroom). The last of the feeders were wired in and the track tested. Everything ran well with no dead sections. I then filled in all the missing... Continue Reading →

After taking some time off to install gutter screens on our house, I finished laying the last of the track in ‘Illinois’ yesterday. Illinois is the south bedroom. The track layout looks nothing like what I had envisioned when I was designing the railroad in CadRail. It’s much better. Having the actual physical track and... Continue Reading →

Seeing as I am totally freelancing this railroad, identities of towns, tracks, industries, junctions and such have to be determined. Starting in the broadest sense, I have decided that the north bedroom will be Indiana and the south bedroom will be Illinois with the tunnel through the wall being the state line. Each wall section... Continue Reading →

Today, I finished nailing down the last piece of track in the north bedroom. The track is all wired up and works. A few stats… 198’ of track including 41 turnouts 108 track feeders 23 ‘industries’ 68 car spots Still to be done…name the 4 ‘towns’, name the ‘industries’, reinstall the ties that were removed... Continue Reading →