Recent content by VunderBob

Never happened to me. I'm still scratching my head over the idea of how to melt a Caboose Industries ground throw. :mrgreen: If you're smoking Atlas twin coils, I'd suggest using real pushbuttons and a capacitive discharge power supply. The pulse is of a much shorter duration; the pushbuttons...

I have 2 sheets of 3/4" plywood waiting to be ripped into (nominal) 1X3s and 1X4s for my layout. Two reasons: 1) plywood, by virtue of the glue and the respective layer grains being perpendicular, is more resistant to moisture related swelling and shrinkage; and 2) is cheaper than buying the...

It's a mishmash of A, B, and C. I'd run a power bus through the entire layout, with taps as appropriate for each town or building. The individual items would have plugs of some kind, and depending on the item(s), there'd be a switch to control 1 or several. Of course this is based on my...

My envision my example as a 5 mile short line. If I were the Head Robber Baron In Charge, the entire 5 miles would be Yard Limits. My not-so-imaginary inspiration for the question is the original Progress Rail operation in Minnesota, where 2 engines switched a large industrial park and all...

Dumb question for the sake of discussion: Are railroads required to use some kind of track posession system? Warrants, TOs, timetables, CTC are all great and make sense where you have multiple movements contending for the same section of track. As a counterexample, consider a shortline with a...

I built my first layout in the early 70s as a tween, using Atlas brass flextrack and Snap switches. I'm now in my late forties, with layout #8 in early benchwork, and I'll still be using Atlas switches, albeit the higher end stuff. I've never had a problem with any of them that was not of my...

I mostly use cork, with framing shims to provide the grade between road bed heights. I have some Homabed on hand for those occasions where I need to handlay some custom track, but I've never used it.

Can you lay some plastic strip on the inside of the rails, fill as before, and pull out the strips when your paving material dries? When I did it last, I dyed spackle to the right gray color, paved, and cut the flangeways with a hacksaw blade like I do with frogs when building turnouts.

My last functional layout was a timesaver with an extension to one end. I staged on and off via 0-5-0 at the 'interchange', then rolled onto the timesaver portion.

Any chance you can have someone mill a new frame out of brass stock?

Remember, I said the parallel look is a limit of my (very poor) artistic ability and Atlas RTS V7.0, and that it will not necessarily carry through to implementation. Think of my artwork as more of a schematic than a plat. I'm also very good at handlaying track, and I build some beautiful...

Here's the first round of comments worked in, plus some attempts at placing industries and other comments thrown in. I hope it's big enough to see... http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a378/VunderBob/TarheelOldDominionv11.jpg

I may trim a spur or two out of the peninsula, and maybe one of those yard tracks, but no urban canyon there. The effect I'm going for is modern industrial park, with the peninsula representing new development for the short line, hence the bad track CR connection. The bad section is meant to be...

OK, so I'm late for work... http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a378/VunderBob/TarheelOldDominion.jpg

I'll post a Photobucket link later to a much larger JPEG. It's 'go to work' time right now. There are run arounds in the peninsula and interchange yard; the yard at the bottom is staging (the one that may go to a lower level)