First turnout in Aquia Landing

I completed the first turnout in Aquia Landing tonight. One down, nine to go!

The work went pretty smoothly. I am still not sure about pre ballasting the track before laying the rails.

 I was able to find all the track laying tools after a couple years of storage.  I am using switch stands that I recycled from McCooks Landing. That saved a bit of time.


I didn't power the frog yet, but I did wire feeders to the rest of the track.







I test ran the first train into and out of Aquia Landing. It  ran pretty well. Some tweaking will help smooth things out. Here is a quick video of the action.

With just few more turnouts I could run test op sessions using the three track  yard at Aquia landing as a staging yard. I am eagerly anticipating that.

Aquia Landing Concept Sketch

For those of you that don't recall, here is a early artist concept I drew for Aquia Landing on my layout back in November 2010. The key is to have easy access to the tracks on the wharf. That is why the tracks on the right side of the wharf are so close to the aisle.

I am following this early concept fairly closely, though the benchwork is more a
rounded rectangle that the oval end shown in the sketch.

I am currently laying track in Aquia Landing. I tried ballasting some of the track before spiking the rail. But I think I prefer to do the ballasting after the rail is in. Seems like it will be easier to change things that way if I find I need to make adjustments.  Film at 11.

















On Sunday, I took my mom for a visit to the Lyceum to see the Alexandria Waterfront Diorama on display. She enjoyed the visit.  The diorama has a single primary light directly above and slightly to the rear. That makes the front of the buildings in shadow. It looks good in person, but the back lighting makes taking a photo difficult.

Back on the Track Gang

Alicia poses by the wharf. She was helping me test reach to the tracks.

Wow, after seven years delay, I am finally starting to lay the track in Aquia Landing.
I started with a mock-up of the wharf to refresh my memory of how major components fit. I concluded that there is room to include the Passiac ironclad as well as the Mt Washington paddle wheel steamer. If I put the ironclad on the north side of the wharf then operators will have to access the tracks on the wharf by reaching over the Passaic. That task is not that bad because of the low freeboard and deck of the ironclad. Alternatively, the Passaic could be tied up alongside the steamer. To do that I would rotate the wharf to the north to make more berth space on the south side of the wharf. I could just omit the ironclad. It could be made removable and taken off for op sessions. Lots of options.

The engine house is recycled from McCooks Landing layout

I starting laying the road bed and glueing down ties. I am using 1/8 inch lightweight plywood for the road bed. For ties I am using basswood.

I plan to put the engine shed from the McCooks Landing layout  inside the wye. The mockup at the left shows there will be room for storing two engines. Some of the other McCook's Landing buildings will also be recycled into this layout.

Now that I am glueing down ties, I need to finalize the track plan. I decided to add a third yard track in Aquia Landing. That will make the yard work much more efficiently.

The first ties are glued down

I am really looking forward to bringing the first train across these tracks.

View across the wye and toward the south-west.

New Smoke Generator on Haupt

I've been experimenting with a new smoke unit from Cogswell Cogs Inc. It is DCC controlled. You load it with tiny little logs, add a little kindling from shaved pine bark, turn it on and and it takes over. It seems to work pretty well, but it keeps setting off the smoke detector in the basement.

For those that are interested, this is a hand held iPhone shot. I took multiple images and used focus stacking. Then I did just a little post processing in Photoshop.

If you want a full resolution copy of this image you can download from this dropbox link. It might not be there long as Dropbox is closing soon, so get it while you can.

The week of DCC Comes to an End

The week of DCC comes to an end with the creation of a separate easy DCC zone for PoLA. I had ordered a separate Easy DCC Zone Master a few weeks ago, but finally got to install it today. The most difficult aspect of the job was running the bus wires from the central distribution panel under the bench work. The rest of the hook-up was pretty straight forward. Once I connected the wires and double checked everything, I flipped on the master power. Fortunately,  there were no sparks or smoke.  Everything seems to be working.

This concludes the to-do list of DCC items I wanted to finish. I still plan to add a third booster for Aquia Landing. That will be relatively easy, as I had previously installed the bus wires under the benchwork as I built it. I also have some wiring to do when I lay the Aquia Landing track, but that will be done incrementally as I work on the track.  All the steam locomotives have functioning DCC and sound. All but one have either batteries or current keepers.

Brad is watching Margaret operate PoLA

Earlier in the day Brad and Margaret Trenkamp visited the layout. They are new neighbors of ours as they recently moved into a striking modern townhouse in the Del Ray area of Alexandria, a mile from my house. Brad is building a Florida theme switching layout in a spare room of the house in the style of Lance Mindheim. It is great to have another model railroader near by. Lance was also scheduled to visit today, but the snowy roads caused him to abort.

Margaret got a chance to run a train on PoLA. She said it was the first time she ever got to run model train. She did a great job as she carefully listened and followed the guidance I gave her on operations. If only my normal operators were so meticulous.  Later Brad got to take Osceola on a run over the USMRR with 5 cars in tow. One of the cars derailed on a turnout in Brooke. But Osceola ran and sounded great. Afterwards, Brad and I discussed the next step in the layout plans.

After they left I checked the turnout and the wheel sets of the offending car. For once it was a wheel set with a wobbly wheel that was partially out of gauge and not my track work that caused the problem. Our the past two weeks I have been tweaking and tuning problems on the Aquia Line as I discover them. Things I have done included, adjusting some stub points to prevent interference. Humidity changes seem to affect them. I also fixed a few switch stands that had minor issues. I cleaned the track and wheel sets on the locos. That is the first time I have done that in probably two years.   The layout is operating better as a result. I did some dusting too, but the layout should probably get a thorough vacuuming. Another remaining task is to check all the cars for consistent coupler height.

I am running out of excuses to avoid layout track in Aquia.

I also did a bit of editing of the Osceola Silent Film Check it out if you have time.