P1101620 PP per TD1 only
It's been a long time since I posted new photos Because we were not having op sessions every 2nd Saturday of each month, Lenny and Allen kept busy applying scenery and new buildings. No op sessions meant we never cleaned up the layout to take pictures, so I finally got to take some just before our first one in August. The following photos in Albums 24 and 25 show our progress as of Oct 6, 2022.
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:05 AM•Views: 92
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P1001430 Cent Side Wam TD1 exp1_18 SC45
The western end of our center siding ("Harriman Siding") west of Wamsutter. It is long enough for our longest train, over 17 feet with a Big Boy. It is one of the 3 track areas that are controlled by an Arduino computer with inputs from electrical slide switches that set the turnouts at either end as well as sending inputs to the Arduino. I bought two full rolls of commercial carpet several years ago for the floors. The riser shone here is 18 inches tall and is the floor we stand on to operate the upper level.We will lay the carpet when the messy scenery work is done.
The Cheyenne yard is across the aisle, and the main staging yard is under it.
At the end of this aisle is the east end Cheyenne steam yard with some of the very large buildings. That bench extends to the left across the building and perpendicular to this aisle.
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:28 AM•Views: 90
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P1001431 Wam from W TD1 exp0.75 SC49
Wamsutter at the east end of the Harriman Siding. On The south side of the tracks is the Station, team track, and a RR outbuilding.
Across the tracks are Conoco Oil, and across the road is the stock yard, Ferguson Mercantile, and Snake River Sheering.
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:29 AM•Views: 89
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P1001433 Wam TD1 Exp 0.75 SC 49
Closeup of most of Wamsutter, Wyoming. This is almost as big as present day Wamsutter. A truck has just loaded a shipment from the team track dock.
In the following copy of this picture I have used the Luminar Photo Processing program to put sky over the steel mezzanine base, and I have used a more dramatic sky for the "new sky."
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:32 AM•Views: 88
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P1001433 Wam TD1 SkyRep1
Wamsutter with a Luminar post processing program sky replacement, which works great, if the sky goes all the way to the top of the exposure. If not I paint (clone and stamp) the sky over the non-sky background (inside of the building, ceiling mezzanine etc.) then replace the resultant backdrop/false cloned backdrop. The cloning and stamping is often done in many steps to first place the clone target properly, so second, the stamp of the target ends up sky. If I'm not careful, because the cloned area moves with the mouse stamp position, I may in my haste stamp a piece of non-sky. That may have happened here. A "shadow" of the first large telephone pole on the right appears to have been stamped on the cloud just above it and to its right. I could open this image in Luminar and stamp some cloud over the "shadow," but why bother?
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:32 AM•Views: 84
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P1001434 Wam from SE TD1
Sparkling downtown Wamsutter and depot and team track and loading dock.
If I wanted to put sky all the way to the top of this image, it would be easy here. I could use the biggest "brush" (actually a round spot with variable "soft" edges--the stamped result becomes less intense down to zero around the rim) could be used to quickly smear parts of the present sky over the hanging mezzanine. Too much sky would probably result, so I might crop part of the new sky off, or I could crop part of the steel first before the cloning and stamping.
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:33 AM•Views: 85
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P1001436 Wam from SW TD1 Sht
The east end of Wamsutter. Stacks of road crew supplies are laid along the station/team track road.
The brick buildings across to way with the tall smoke stacks are part of the Cheyenne steam yard on the bench along the far wall.
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:33 AM•Views: 90
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P1001437 Wam from SE TD1 Exp 0.83 SC25
All of Wamsutter except the station on the left.
Lenny made the crossing signals that work by optical detectors set in the tracks some ways away that drive another Arduino computer. That "dot" between the lower rails near the right hand edge of the photo may be one of the 4 optical detectors.
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:34 AM•Views: 86
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P1001449 Red Desert TD1 see sht
In this view the camera has hurried ahead of the mains and is now pointing back west towards the other end of Wamsutter around the far bend. This long stretch of track toward the camera is the modeled part of the Red Desert just a few miles from the southern Wyoming border. This country is good mainly for sheep grazing and antelope. Can you see the two antelope near the right edge of the photo? There is also the steel half round top to a sheepherder's wagon just a bit further west, about half way between the antelope and the road crossing the tracks.
This is desolate and lonely country, and no one (except Lenny) knows why it was necessary or worth it to put crossing signals and crossing arms way out here, and with electrical motors to automatically lower and raise the crossing arms when a train approaches from either track. Word has it that the disgraced ex-mayor of Wamsutter was on the take from Western Signal, Inc. and bought two installations, one tor Wamsutter and the second from West of Nowhere Wyoming. There are many such crossings across the Wyoming prairie, but I've never see a set of signals.
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:44 AM•Views: 86
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P1001448 Red Desertto Rawlins TD1 see Sheet
Leaving the Red Desert again looking east, this photo shows three fascia signs to aid operators, mounted above the open end of the end cap that joins two benches, which benches are for the Red Desert (looking east again away from Wamsutter), and the Rawlins bench. The wall mount phone if one of 16 that connects to the Dispatcher on the mezzanine.
On the left hand end of the bend in the track are the remains of an old cabin and well of homesteader, aka "squatter" to cattlemen.
There is an alternate main through all the yards of the layout,so superior trains can get around trains that are working at the yard. This is the western end of the Alternate Main of Rawlins.
The painted frame beyond the bench supports the main two track helix of 2 3/4 oval turns with ends of 35" radius and 7 foot long straights.
Below the fascia signs are several 85 oz. popcorn barrels handy to hold scenery sand, grass flocking, gravel, etc. and various bits and pieces of scenery, including a mat of sagebrush that Allen had left over.
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:42 AM•Views: 84
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P1001445 W of Rawlins shack TD1 per sht
Another view of the junk under the benches, and this also shows, the rock modeling just west of Rawlins WY on the right.
The framework of the main helix can be seen here. It is about 13 feet long by 6 feet wide. It was built with casters, so it could be rolled to three different locations of the layout. These three locations were the then current end of benches and tracks as construction proceeded on each of the two levels.
As benches were completed, we lifted the main helix off blocks, set it back down on its casters, and rolled it to the end of the newly constructed benches, and set it back up on the blocks, and connected it to the ends of the new tracks. This made the layout into essentially a large circle with the upper level track connected to the lower level tracks at each end, the "connectors" being the small helix permanently fixed in place connecting Cheyenne (upper level and east end) and Staging (lower level under the Cheyenne yard) to the other ends of the then completed benches.
If you examine the track plans in the top level folder/album, you can see how the straight 504 miles of track we model becomes a giant circle with the ends of that straight track joined by the small helix. The cover of that album has the black mailbox I turned into a locomotive.
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:40 AM•Views: 91
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P1001447 W Rawlins TD1
A dizzying overhead view of W Rawlins. This photo has been kept to show Lenny's and Allen's rock work in the cleft around the tracks west of Rawlins. This is also a neck craning view of the Rawlins stockyard, the Rawlins Mercantile Co, and the depot.
This also shows how the free standing mudroom "stacks up." In this elevated view, beyond the Rawlins backdrop, the lower level of the next bench over is visible, and above it is the blue painted Masonite back side of the upper level which is manned by operators on the the second upper aisle over.
Because this is a free standing mushroom design, operators down any aisle are all running their trains on the same level. A real advantage is that when you are operating, you can only see the scene directly before you or the track to the distant right or left, just like you are trackside out on the prairie. You are so engaged with your own scene directly before you, that you become unaware of other scenes behind you ,or on the other side of the backdrop, or on the other level. And you are not mindful of the bench behind you on the same aisle, especially if the aisles are 42 inches wide like ours.
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:41 AM•Views: 83
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P1001444 Rawlins Around Station TD1 per sht
This is looking west toward the rest of Rawlins, the Mercantile Co. and buildings, or the computer drawn (or cut and pasted from computer images) backdrop. Instead of a new Corvette I wanted, I hired a local artist to create the backdrop, which runs continuously around both the upper and lower levels of the layout, except for the no-scenery staging,and the back if the Cheyenne yard bench.
A New York modeler named John Busa scratch built our Cheyenne, Rawlins, and Rock Springs depots. Here at the Rawlins depot we have cut away the backdrop, so the street side of the model can be seen. Unfortunately, one as to stand on a step stool on the lower level floor to see it on that side, so hardly anyone notices the cut away backdrop, or if they do they don't look, largely because there is no sign and permanent step stool there. I am going to try to change that.
There are two retail oil distributors here but the second one is just to the right out of view. No mater the brand name on the local dealer's tank, it is Sinclair refined. This is a family joke. My pipefitter dad moved mom an baby me to Cheyenne to work work building the Frontier refinery in Cheyenne in 1942 for the war effort. He got a kick out of the trucks that hauled gas to local stations. Frontier trucks delivered in the day, other brands were delivered at night, filled from the same refinery tank.
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:40 AM•Views: 85
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P1001443 Rawlins Depot and Stk Yard TD1 per sht
I bought three depots from John Busa who lived in NY, and I want to give him credit for his fine work on them.
This is the Busa built Rawlins station. Lenny and Allen built the Mercantile Company general store next to the Depot.
The stock yard is this side of the tracks.
On the fascia are the car and block card holders with some car cards of the "Four card Operating System" I developed. The car cards are printed 4 to a sheet of card stock. These quarter page, 4.25 x 5.5" large and easy to handle car cards, are in the plexiglass card box , which is only about 3/8" thick. Some cars slots are only wide enough to accommodate the 4.5" wide cards, but some slots lot 8 3/4" wide like these two. They are wide enough to hold the 1/2 sheet ( 8.5"" x %.5" tall) Block Cards used for a string of cars (2 to ??).
Block cards identify only the first and last cars in a block, and the block and its card move across the layout together. If one or a few cars are needed to be taken from the block or added to it, it is easier to add or remove inner cars of the block, so only the number of cars that make up the block is erased and changed on the card. If the first or last car of the block is removed, then the pencil written ID of the first or last car is erased and rewritten as is the number of cars in the block.
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:39 AM•Views: 88
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P1001442 Rawlins from W TD1 C&R
Rawlins looking east again toward the Sinclair refinery. At the lower left is the stock yard to load livestock on the way to the packing house or to rest them per the legal requirements. Left to right across the tracks is the kit coal tower and an overpass scratch built by Allen. Behind it is the 3D printed scratch built freight house by Lenny. The second oil distributor is behind Texaco. The 7 row houses are by Allen. The Sinclair refinery is represented entirely on the backdrop except for the loading dock, which is a combination of four kits. Lenny built the loading dock after I turned it over to him. That was where I first suspected that I might have Parkinson's. With shaky hands I turned it over to Lenny to finish.
The loading dock can be seen better in two other photos coming up in about 4 screens.
Capture Date: Jun 14, 2022 10:39 AM•Views: 82
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