Here is a shot of our Square Foot Gardens that we are growing veggies. as mentioned in previous articles I downsized the original railway to make way for the garden boxes.

The garden has been fun for the kids to watch thus far so it was worth all the work in redoing the railroad.

Here I laid out the main line, and cut in the “pit” for the tranfer table.

I also located the switches to determine where everything would fit.

Here is the layout with the mainline track and sidings all laid. I just have to finish the connections at the transfer table, and decide where I am going to locate the turn table. Then I can wire up the layout and run some trains.

The first project was to build the transfer table. Which I did from some plywood and wood scrap I had laying around. I used brass angle glued to the edge of the plywood for the track for the transfer table to run in.

I have wanted to do a micro layout in HOn30 for some time. This now gives me the perfect excuse to do just that.

I spent my spare time over the holidays exploring Carl Ardent’s micro layout site and found a lot of inspiration. I highly recommend the site.

At any rate I decided on a size of 18″ x 36″ with a mining theme.

Here is the rough draft for it I created quickly using sketchup.

The railroad will feature the lizard gulch mine and a low relief town  housed in a canyon on one side of the layout, and an ore processing plant on the other side of the layout with the company town of mooreway  located next to it, along with a small turn table and locomotive servicing shed of some sort. The feature I really like on the layout is the hidden 2 track transfer table that will allow the empty and full cars to be moved back and forth from plant to mine unseen by the observer making it so there is always a string of cars to pick up for some operations.

I am planning to go slow on this little layout, breaking it into small projects that I can work on in-between all the distractions that life with 5 children brings.  I plan to have it ready for a debut at the Nov 2011 Rocky Mountain Region NMRA Convention in Salt Lake City, later this year.

I will be starting with the transfer table design, since this is the major part of the layouts operations.

This last spring I finished up one of my sets of corner modules. The idea started with a shipment of cars a friend of mine got that had a extra helping of Orange Cars in it. So I decided we needed a car dealership for our layout.

I started the project by drawing up the building in Sketchup and printing it out so I could see how it fit on the module.  It needed a little bit of resizing and this is what it looked like in Sketchup

I then prepared the sketchup file and exported it to be laser cut. This is what it looked like folded flat and ready to cut.

Next I took the parts I had laser cut from Matte Board and Card Stock and layed them out for assembly

all parts

The roof

The building.

Next I used my BevelMaster Jig to bevel or miter the corners of the parts to fit them together nicely

before bevel

after bevel

Next I assembled the roof and building and painted them leaving the top so it would come off.

I next put in the interior of the building, I wanted cars in my show room and shop

Then we added a sign and put things on the module.

and added some scenery

and last but not least is the credits photo… My Daughter is a big help with scenery and helped me to do alot of the work on these corner modules.

T-Trak is a great size for public displays and small home layouts and I enjoy the module projects I build in it.

It received an NMRA Merit Award at the 2009 Wasatch Division Show.

It is constructed mainly from Ozark Miniatures casting parts and other items I found around the house when I was building it.

Trains Running on the Layout

My Son’s Engine going across the Temp. Bridge

My Son Driving His Trains

The Railway has been constructed with simple track work for 2 reasons. 1) I like to just watch the trains in motion, and 2) Because I have young children and it was built with them in mind. The track plan allows for 2 kids to run trains without fear of collisions.

The Mooreway and Lizard Gulch Ry has 2 separate loops of track. The lower loop runsunder the Lizard Gulch Bridge and through the town of Lizard Gulch. Lizard Gulch was named for the lizards who quickly took up residence after its construction.

The Mooreway and Lizard Gulch Ry has 2 separate loops of track. The lower loop runs under the Lizard Gulch Bridge and through the town of Lizard Gulch. Lizard Gulch was named for the lizards who quickly took up residence after its construction.

However as luck would have it the construction of the railway was set back by many delays (including a snow storm, it only snows here once every 10 years.) 6 months and several redesigns later the track was final ready for operations.

]]> http://railroad.mooreway.com/archives/14/feed 0 http://railroad.mooreway.com/archives/37 http://railroad.mooreway.com/archives/37#comments Wed, 27 Oct 2010 00:59:36 +0000 mooreway http://railroad.mooreway.com/?p=37 Continue reading →]]> On Oct 27th 2010 after 2 weeks of weather and work caused delays, Trains ran for the first time around the MW&LG 2.0 and they ran well, I am happy with the new road bed and really like the effect that the tunnel adds as the trains appear and disappear from view on the layout.

After looking at my desires and needs the following track plan was devised and construction began earlier this summer.