Preparation and Planning

First off I'm still preparing for the Proto Meet. I'm out of ink in the printer, so that's a project for tomorrow. I'm printing up some informational things as well as photos to put around the layout for the tour.

The bigger challenge, however, is that the addition isn't complete yet. So I'll clean up the basement as much as I can. I'm sure a couple of folks will stop by on Friday to check things out. There may be construction in progress then. The same applies to Saturday, including having a few of the guys over for dinner.

It looks like Saturday night (after our church concert), and Sunday morning I'll be doing a final post-construction clean-up for the layout tour. I'm assuming, of course, that they're only working Friday and Saturday.

In the meantime, I've started some planning. After this project is completed, we're going to move the laundry out of the basement. That means that the ex-laundry room will be available for some expansion. The first thought is to try to squeeze in the New Hartford branch. I think that it would be possible (but cramped) to try to do New Hartford, Collinsville, and potentially Unionville. One thought would be to have an intermediate staging position to allow me to alter the consist to accound for Plainville work.

The major issue with this approach is that the ex-laundry room is still the utility room and requires working around the furnace, hot water heater, etc.

I will definitely be putting Berlin line staging in the room as well, although the intention would be for that to be hidden behind the scenicked New Hartford branch. But a few things occurred to me as I was taking measurements and visualizing the space.

First, I can provide locomotive storage/staging in this room. I was planning on trying to squeeze it into the main staging, but this would work better.

Second, I could put a turntable at the end, or a cartridge system, for turning the steam locomotives. It's not essential, but an option.

Third, I have the hookups in place, so I can install a utility sink and move the spray booth into this room, using the existing dryer vent.

I was also looking at how I'd rework the current Whiting Street Yard to connect to staging here. That's when a different approach came to mind. I could model some more of the Berlin Line industries, and build the Whiting Street yard in the utility room. This would allow me to extend this line. I could even go so far as to model down to the Berlin wye. The advantage of this is that YN-3 does the work in Berlin, as well as Cremo brewery.

So I wouldn't be able to extend the New Hartford local run, but I'd get work for another train in exchange. In addition, I would have additional work for the New Britain switching crews between New Britain and Whiting Street Yards. It would also be a simpler project to build, although I'll now have to rethink the spray booth/sink option.

I'll have to take some more measurements and draw up some plans for the various options.

So here I was thinking that I was just preparing for the Proto Meet and now I'm back to some layout planning. I won't even mention what ran through my mind regarding the helixes...

Landers Frary and Clark

Dick mocked up the east end of the Landers Frary & Clark factory. This is where an arch allows the siding to enter the factory premises after crossing Elm Street.

Here's the arch that we're working on:

Here's the Sanborn map that shows the general arrangement inside the factory. Obviously, I won't have room for all of this. But a single siding hidden in the wall will be enough. The plan is to leave this portion of the wall open, with the factory (or portions of it) a removeable front to access the track if needed.

Here's another view of the entire front of the factory. I will have to compress it slightly, but it will still be the dominant feature behind New Britain Yard.

It appears that the geometry will allow me to penetrate the building and hide a siding in the wall. (I'm not sure why the pictures have the moire pattern on them).

It looks like to the left of the section with the arch, the factory will continue for another 37 window bays.  

Photo Library Night

We had a good night at Photo Library last night. It was a relatively small crew, and Charlie, Chris and I were working on pulling, scanning, and inserting photos into the NE Proto Meet clinic. I think it's coming together well. We'll have around 100 slides (mostly non-published), for the presentation.

I'm still working on going through what we've got and putting together the Powerpoint now. Charlie will be scanning more of the negatives we pulled (they take a lot longer to scan). Chris and I will get together for lunch next week to iron out the details and make sure we'll be able to get to whatever else we may need to complete next Thursday night.

Here's a teaser (it's the cover photo):

Right now it looks like we're light on J-1 and L-1 photos.

NE Proto Meet -or- Deja Vu

Well, we're less than two weeks away! The NE Proto Meet is coming up quick and I've got to complete a clinic and get the basement ready for layout tours. To make things more interesting, we have a rehearsal on Friday night for a church concert on Saturday night, so unfortunately I'll be missing the slide shows on both nights.

I'll be manning the True Line Trains table, so stop by and say, "Hello!"

I'm also featured on the Model Railroad Hobbyist and Model Railcast Show podcasts, both of which are available on iTunes.

Here are some past posts regarding the Proto Meet:
http://blog.newbritainstation.com/2010/05/one-week-to-proto-meet.html
http://blog.newbritainstation.com/2009/04/progress.html

So, it's only about 3 years late for the layout tours (and still far from anything resembling 'finished').

Pictures from Middletown

Testing out the blog. Here are some pictures from Middletown. Somehow Chris and I missed spotting these tracks (the old coal dealer) last time we were there. We'll go back to take measurements later.