After attending the narrow gauge convention which was a real treat as it always is, we were driven by Bill and Donna Weltyk to there home in Downers Grove outside of Chicago. We spent the next 3 days being shown the sights in and around Chicago. One of the places we visited was the Illinois Railway Museum which is the largest railway museum in the country.
One of the many engines they had on display was a Union Pacific gas turbine. I had never seen one of these engines before and I was impressed with how large it is. The museum has hundreds of engines, freight cars, passenger cars, interurban and street cars, many of which have been restored and can be ridden.
During our tour of Chicago, we visited the Illinois Museum of Science and Industry. They have a fully restored Zephyr that we were able to tour. Quite a treat for a West Coast guy. That is my friend Bill on the left standing next to me. Chicago is a beautiful city and Laurie and I cannot thank Bill and Donna enough for showing us the sites.
I have finally gotten back to working on the railroad but do not have a lot of progress to report. I removed the entire railroad from the garage so my son could spray paint some haze onto the blue sky.
It is very subtle and I'm not even sure that it will be noticeable in a photo but it looks better to me. I have returned all of the bench work to the garage and this time it is bolted together and attached to the wall. This makes it very stable and it does not shift around when I am working on it.
As you can see in the photo I have hot wired a little more of the scenery behind the upper track and have fastened the pieces of foam together using Liquid Nail for Projects as recommended by Dave Frary in his
excellent books and DVD's on how to create model railroad scenery. A must have if you are building a model railroad. In the bottom of the photo you can see that I have started fastening down track and soldering the feeder wires. The lower track on the right is part of the lower loop that will be in a tunnel and the track on the left is hidden track to store a train that I may want to run around the loop at times. Sort of a staging track. The upper track is the tail end of the upper switchback and has a runaround track so that I can move the engine to the other end of the train. This is because it is a 5% grade and I always want the engine on the down-hill end of the train.
Since this railroad represents a backwoods logging and mining operation, I do not want any kind of a formal built up grade or any ballast. I do, however, need something between the track and the plywood to deaden the sound so I have glued some 1/8" cork down before attaching the track. This should maintain a low profile and allow me to cover most of the ties with dirt to get the look I want. Next up I plan to weather the rails, put Sculpt-mold over the foam, and paint it. That should keep me busy for the next week.
