New turntable

The turntable base has been installed at Rigby Yard on the south end. I hope I didn't mess up to bad. For some reason I thought it was the same size as the old turntable. It didn't look small until after I installed it. The big disadvantage is I won't be able to place two diesels on it at one time. I'm not sure if this will be a problem or not. We'll see

South end of RIgby Yard

I finally got around to finishing the south end of Rigby, so that I could install the new turntable. I ended up with yard tracks that were all roughly equal in the length to the original longest track. This will add about 7 - 10 cars more storage in the yard.

I also added a yard lead and the ability to get to the mainline tracks. This can be done from boh ends of the yard. This should add a lot of flexibility to Rigby yard.

Room Changes

There was a water heater that was hooked up but not used in the train room. It had been isolated for many years. Today it was taken out. Removing the water heater freed up the area where the staging leads were to be for the upper and lower staging. This also freed up the power that was used for the water heater and gives me two more 120 volt power sources.
I also had a leaking outdoor faucet that needed to be replaced and it came through the layout area. It was also replaced. The water faucet would have caused problems for the layout if I waited and had to change it out later, because that line would have been behind the layout backdrop.
Now I have to figure out how to install a drop ceiling before continuing on the layout phase two.

A little while ago I received my new Walthers turntable. It was slightly different than my old Bowser turntable. This has caused a redesign the south end of Ribgy yard to make everything fit.
I finally got around to changing the yard today. It was a little more trouble than expected, partly because I had a left hand turnout where I needed a right hand turnout. I finally found the right combo, but I had to steal a turnout from the staging yard. The good news is that all my yard tracks are now as long as the longest one used to be. Now to rerun the main line and connect up to staging with a different turnout. This is really OK because the staging area is only temporary and I had to reroute the main line anyway.

I had a track plan revelation...

...and it came to me in church on Sunday. Needless to say my mind was not where it should have been. I did figure out a rough track plan for the rest of the layout and I believe I can do two levels without a helix. There will be two giant staging yards, with at least 8 tracks each, plus return loops, stacked on top of each other. There should be 7 towns total on the two levels, with the main yard near the middle of the run. I am working out the details in auto cad on the computer.

New Buidling & First Session

I had a friend from the club, who likes to build structures, put together my icing plant. I got it back the other day and it looks real good. I didn't allow enough room for the track, so I'll have to move the track forward a bit. This won't be a big deal. I'll just shorten the lead and everything will be fine.
I have been selling some things on Ebay that were just to modern for what era I was modeling. I realized that I could get the Walthers built up turntable in exchange, so I basically swapped some older stuff I wasn't going to use for some new stuff that I will use. In fact the turntable will be the next thing to go in.
I held the first session with someone other than me. It was mostly a teaching season for some that have never been involved with any operations. I believe the word will get out about the fun he had and we'll be having more people as time goes on.
I was told that if you build it they will come. I am going to build it and we'll see about the rest.

Added Icing Track

Added Icing track and another industry (to be determined) in the center of Portland. I always wanted to do more with the reefers, but I never got around to it. I also have the ice house under construction. I'm not completely convinced it will be located correctly, however we'll run a little while and see what happens.
The car cards and waybills are all new. I was just hand writing over the old ones, which worked for initial testing, but if I'm going to run official sessions the operators needed the real thing.