The rest of the ceiling in the alcove

I went to the store and got the rest of the materials for suspended ceiling. I am in the process of building the grid so that I can install the ceiling panels. I decided to go with the highest ceiling I could get for the rest of the alcove.

Testing upper level heights

I completed to drop ceiling for the area over Rockland. It is at 6' 3" of clearance. I am now playing with an old section of benchwork for the upper level. I knew going in that things might be tight. This section of benchwork was 2 1/2", plus the 1/2" plywood top.

I started thinking I would have only 11" clearance from the road bed to the lights. I did some measuring and figured I could start with a 13" clearance to the top of the bench work. I started with 18" deep, which is slightly less that the 20 1/2" of the lower level. Since I would not be having a town in this area on the upper level, I reduced that to 15". I could go to 12" deep, but 15" seems good for now.

The bottom picture shows the first try with a 13" clearance on the top and 17" on the bottom. There appeared to be room to lower the upper level a little so I came down an inch to the top of the backdrop I had installed. The upper picture shows this new arrangemeny. You could still see the back buildings on the lower level real good, so I think this is were it will stay.

Now I have to see how well I like this upper level clearance, because the next decision is whether or not to have a valence all the way around this section or just raise the rest of the ceiling higher because I can.

Decisions, decisions....

Drop Ceiling and Upper Valence

I finally got around to figuring out what was needed for a drop ceiling in the layout room. I am trying for two levels. It is made complicated by an already low ceiling and duct work in the way. I made some measurements and the best I could do would be 6' 4", which would be unacceptable for a single height ceiling.
The first thing I did was move the ventilation around to the perimeter of the room. This gave me more height in the middle of the room. I then had to build a valence over one side of the layout to hide the duct work and lights. This turned out to be about 6' 3", which is OK because it is over the edge of the layout. The upper level might only have about 11" of clearance. This is not as good as I want, but a single deck layout is just not acceptable at this time.
I will set up a temporary upper deck and play with the heights and clearances and see how it looks. The area I'm most concerned with is just going to be countryside. This might be a slightly lower, lower deck, but we'll see how it goes. If it turns out that I can live with the clearances, then I'll decide if I have a valence all the way around the room.

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.