Building the Frisco System 1980 - Construction Project Documentation - HO-Scale Layout

Progress really slowed down the past couple weeks due to a migraine flair up unlike anything I've ever experienced. Luckily, I had all of the difficult parts of Rosedale Yard done, or nothing would have happened the past two weekends. I was able to piece together enough short, easy sessions to finish laying the departing tracks for Rosedale.


While the last of the glue dried, I started moving equipment around from staging. This took awhile since there isn't a direct route from staging to those long departing tracks, and there's no mainline in place yet to pull past and back in. From left to right we still have a set of Frisco power waiting for me to unpack some more rolling stock, the UPL coal train, ATL coal train, a manifest to be named later and the FSE.





Feels good to hit another major milestone on the layout. Stay tuned for the next 0ne.

 

Inspirational Ethan, looking good. Well designed and executed. Hope to visit some day.

I love the variety of approaches to the layouts and model building on this site. I also like the encouraging tone set here.

 

Thanks!

 

Your progress is great. I know you have a lot going on and it is great to see progress.

Tony LaLumia

 

Thanks!

 

Due to ongoing back pain, I hadn't been able to work on the layout the past few weeks. Best I've been able to do is work on programing locomotives for an hour or so at a time. The good news is, I now have a few more sets of power ready to go for when the layout is operational. I opted for a couple HP hour lenders from UP and SCL in the mix, and an MP set for trains 38/39. The 38/39 wasn't marked for pooled power, but I'm making an election that they should have.


This morning I felt well enough to do a bit of layout work. I opted to roll paint on the next section of layout so I can continue track laying at some point. The stretch from Rosedale through La Cygne received the dark green paint I picked out for a base color. I like the way it turned out. The color name is Fresh Cilantro from Valspar.

 

I spent a little time yesterday tracing out the track locations for this first big curve around the end of the peninsula. This morning I came back and laid down some camper tape for roadbed. Never worked with this stuff before, so it took a few minutes to figure out the proper technique. There's some wiggle in there, but it should be easily hidden with ballast.


And another picture with a couple sections of track test fitted on top of the road bed.

 

Just realized this afternoon it's been almost a full year since I last posted a track plan. Here's the current plan as of today:

 

Ethan,
Have you known anyone that used campertape for roadbed and had good results with it?
I would be apprehensive to use it, especially after ballasting track.
What material is it made of? Would the wetting agent of ballasting track affect it?
Have you tried it on a test section first and seen the results, before diving into this.

John

 

Excellent questions.

Rick McClellan's large layout has a lot of camper tape roadbed on it, some of which has been installed for several years at this point. I haven't talked any specifics with him, but I haven't noticed any issues with it when I go up to operate.

 

I assume you have to use adhesive caulk and put weights on the track till it sets.
If you are not a fan of it neither am I.

 

I'm interested to see what a week's time will show, but I'm not convinced the adhesive of the tape is enough to get the job done. Even with a coat of paint on the plywood, I still had a couple spots detach and string-line off the curve. I'll report back again tomorrow.

 

The first thing I did this weekend was checkout the roadbed situation. I think there were a couple spots that I didn't press down hard enough during install. I restuck a couple spots and didn't have anymore issues. With roadbed in place, I went to work installing track around this first big curve over the course of the weekend. While getting the track in place, I had to push and pull on the roadbed quite a bit, and didn't have any come up, so I'm no longer worried about that issue.



With some more track in place, I had to kick the power on and run a couple trains out as far as I could


I'm happy with the way things came out. I've got road bed down to the other end of La Cygne. I'm thinking of laying track all the way to the north end of Ft. Scott, and then making a temporary staging yard from there so I can run some trains back and forth while I get caught up on wiring and turnout machines.

 

Slowly but surely, I've put together enough short sessions to lay track around to the north end of Ft. Scott. Gotta use my good days when I get em.


The corner between La Cygne and Ft. Scott has a pair of 50" and 48" radius curves that I was excited to see after installation. Long cars like auto racks and TOFC should look great here.


From there, it took a while to measure and place all the turnouts for the north end of Ft. Scott. With all of the turnouts in place, I started the process of laying the curved yard tracks yesterday. The first curve always takes the longest, but with an anchor in place, the others will go together pretty quickly.


I think with a couple more sessions, I'll have things to a state where I can move equipment around to Ft. Scott and then focus on wiring.

 

As I had previously planned for, I moved on to wiring after finishing up laying track (for now) in Ft. Scott. While wiring is essential, it's not as notable as track work, so there hasn't been anything to post the past few weeks. In addition to adding feeders in the Rosedale yard area, I went back and finished adding feeders to the staging yard tracks. I also found my dremel and created a power gap on all 8 yard tracks so that they are isolated from the rest of the layout. I went through with a volt meter and verified that each track was in fact isolated before moving on. The power for these yard tracks will be routed through a rotary switch so that only one track is live at a time. That same rotary switch will also control the turnouts as well. Speaking of which, this past week I started in on assembling the components for that project. I have to give a big shout out to Keith, our resident Whiz Kid. He took the time to explain the diode matrix to me, and even sent me some example designs to work with. Big thank you to him again.

At some point, I'll make a more in depth post about the how and why of the big turnout control system. For tonight, I'll just share a quick video demonstration

 

Thank you!

Other details I left out in the earlier post, I only wired one of the turnout machines backwards. 6 out of 7 on the first try is a passing grade right
I took the time to test all of the turnout machines before instillation, and yet one failed to work after being wired up this afternoon. I'm hoping it's just operator error, but I swapped it out and the next machine worked correctly.

 

While I slowly work through wiring and possibly some operating, I'm starting to look toward the next major step: 19th St Yard. Like I've talked about in the past, I like to employ a decent amount of just in time planning. It occurred to me that I haven't really examined my 19th St design for a while, so I spent some time on that the past few days. After looking at my design, and looking at the real thing some more, I decided on a few adjustments.

The first correction I made is removing an extra track in the engine terminal. Not sure why it was there, but that space next to the engine shop should be open to match the prototype. The next prototype change was to move the caboose track over by the lead for the engine facility. Not sure why I had it next to the fuel rack. I went back and looked, I've been pulling forward the same base design of 19th ST for over 2 years now, so it's hard to remember why/how some of these elements got placed. The final change here was a practical one, I extended the fueling tracks to be long enough to hold 2 sets of road power each.

The other big change was to move the receiving tracks from the front to the back. This fits the prototype arrangement better, and should make operations smoother as well. With the original plan, power on incoming trains would have to cut off and either run through the yard ladder, which would interrupt the yard switcher, or run all the way back to a crossover by Rosedale and then go to the facility. Now, power can cut off and run down to the fuel rack without being in the way of the yard switcher.

Compare the old and new designs:



New:



I'm still undecided on the design of the far end of the yard. I'll take a look at both options once the benchwork is up.



As always, feedback is appreciated.