It has been many months since the Mid Atlantic RPM, but I wanted to keep up my momentum on the blog, so here is a few minutes of entertainment for you.
I'm a sucker for RF&P (obviously):
More shots on the gallery at richmond-terminal.org
Operators of the Richmond Terminal are familiar with the fascia mounted control panels used to indicate turnout status and control same.
The mix of control panel circuit board layouts that I used over the years has been a bit of a logistical and training challenge; one of the early designs that was used was missing mounting holes. (Whoops)
I went ahead and did a redesign on these, and when I had them remade, I chose a white solder mask to make them standout better against the black fascia.
Old and new at Hamilton.
One of last summer's efforts were related to the Crossroads (XR) control point.
This area has been plagued by various issues over the life of the layout that I trace back to the crappy plywood that I used as subroadbed here. This plywood had separated plys and inconsistent thickness over its run, which caused phantom uncoupling and other operating annoyances over the years.
When I went to put in scenery, I realized that it was going to be just about impossible to add in any structures.
So, the obvious solution was to rebuild from the ground up.
I made the area wider, matching the width of the lower deck, across the entire area. I also updated the track layout to better match the prototype.
I moved the crossover south around 6 feet, and angled it, to make sure that I could make the mainline match the curve to Hamilton smoothly.
This has been in place for the last 6 sessions and I have gotten good feedback from the crew, so I will put this down as a success. In a future post, I will talk about the structures that I've installed in this area.
A few more photos can be found on the gallery at richmond-terminal.org.
One of the things I keep discovering is that even background structures need at least 1.5 inches between the edge of the track and the backdrop to be installed.
Many of my switching areas has less clearance than that, and in some cases, there is 0 between track edge and backdrop.
One of those places is in Greendale.
After multiple attempts to fit a backdrop structure in at Boxes to Size, out came the oscillating tool.
Here's an aftermath shot:
Note the standard wall color - this had been covered my the masonite backdrop previously.
There was a huge open space at north Acca that I'd thought about turning into an industrial switching area, but the reach in distance was going to preclude anybody but folks that were tall from working there.
After thinking about it, I decided to make the backdrop curved and closer to the track, making more of a shadowbox effect in the area.
Here's a shot of this work in progress:
After a much longer layoff than I planned on, an operating session was held on the 2nd Sunday in April.
The winter months saw a significant rebuild of the South Milford area. The initial track layout in this area wasn't very prototypical, and there was a switchback that was the source of many operator complaints on getting the work done here too.
I took that feedback, and realizing that trying to apply scenery in this area wasn't going to be easy either, I decided that a full rebuild was in order.
It took way longer than I wanted it to, but that's how it always go.
We had a new crew member join us for this session, Reid.
A few shots of the rebuilt area:
The coal train made an appearance:
More pictures can be found on the gallery on richmond-terminal.org.
Due to Mother's Day, the normal operating session was pushed back to the 3rd Sunday.
A full crew trooped down to the basement and put the railroad through its paces.
More pictures on the gallery on richmond-terminal.org.
