Trainmeister Ruben MacBlue at the Fillmore Station
Rock City Railroad News!
November, 1998
Hello, and welcome back to the progress report. I've been working hard on the layout all summer and fall, and now it's winter and it's starting to get cold out there at night, so I'm finally getting time to update the webpage.
We had an open house in July, when we finally got everything running, and soon after, we tore everything down for remodeling. It's been down eversince and a lot has beeen done. I was hoping to get it back up and running for Thankgiving, but the amount of work to finish the wiring is enourmous, so it looks like Christmas. Anyway, here's what's been done since March:
The entire layout was lowered 3 inches. This involved cutting 3 inches off the bottom of every leg. Not an easy task. there's 32 legs.
The entire layout was moved 8 inches forward (towards the garage doors) to make room for the Z scale layout to go across the back. Then 8 inches of Z (and N) landscaping was done.
The entire background, which consists of about 18 backgrounds, was also lowered 3 inches to match the lowering of the layout.
The Z scale was built across the back, around the back of downtown, and all the way to St. Louis. The St. Louis Z layout has been started, with the form being carved in foam and the track partially pieced in place. The St. Louis Z layout is the best one yet. The Hollywood Z is a figure 8, the mountain Z is a figure 9, and the St. louis layout is a figure 89. All three of these corner layouts can be run individually, or can be configured into the mainline. See the entire Z layout from the control panel map here.
The N scale part of the layout was completely remodeled, with all the track and ballast being torn up, painted, and nailed back down. Inside loops were put into the mainline loops, so now 3 trains can run at once. 1 on the mainline and 2 on the 2 inside loops. The N yard was tweaked, an N section was built in the back of downtown, and the N section of St Louis was completely rebuilt to make room for the Z layout. All the switch motors were purchased and built and mounted in the layout, and now I'm ready to start wiring them up.
The HO part was remodeled across the back to pull the tunnel track out, mainly due to my aggravation in trying to clean the track in the long tunnel.
The N scale and HO scale turntables were planned out, and an N turntable was purchased in the recycler for about $75. I'm still looking for an HO turntable and the indexing units for them. I got roundhouses for both at swap meets for bargain prices.
Now just purchased 5 500 foot rolls of telephone wire from Home Depot, and about 40 terminal strips, and am wiring the central control boards for the N and Z wiring. This is underneath the Z Mountain layout (South East corner). There are 35 swithes for both the N and the Z, 18 blocks for the N track, and 35 blocks for the Z track.
I also painted over most of the N control panel and am redoing it with all the remodeled sections. The Z control panel was planned out recently, though it's a while before I can begin that one.