Ralph, Kevin
Thanks for the welcome and the nice comments. This is the first model railroad I've built to this stage. The others all seemed to stop at plywood central..
It took a week from a piece of plywood to the state shown in the photos.
The idea of the layout is that it normally sits on a shelf in the garage out of the way. When I have a free day I can set it up, place the rolling stock on it and get it running relatively quickly.
The viewing section is six feet long by a foot wide. (The width seems to be the cause of the wobble problem). There is a two track 2'9" fiddle yard, just long enough to hold two 60" boxcars and one SD45, not that, that happens very often.
The track, which was glued straight to the plywood, is peco code 100 and all the points/switches are Insulfrog with push rods operating them. Electrics is very simple, as only one locomotive is used at anyone time, all tracks are wired to a Gaugemaster handheld controller and a MRC diesel sound unit.
The buildings are a mixture of Walthers background kits and Pikestuff with plenty of details added on. Then weathered with a black/grey wash to blend them together.
Operation is simply too. There are five normally five spots of rolling stock on the layout
Two covered hoppers spots, one boxcar spot and two RBL of reefers spots
All I do is pull on to the layout two freight cars, say two loaded hoppers (one grain, one wheat starch) and swapped them for two loaded RBL boxcars sitting at the distribution warehouse , then the train returns back up the branch (to the fiddle yard)
In the fiddle yard the two loaded RBL cars are replaced with two different numbered RBLs
In The next days train, these empty RBLs brought back to the plant for loading.
The return train is made up with an empty grain hopper (which arrived the day before) and an empty boxcar from the goods in loading bay.
Again in the fiddle yard the empty cars are replaced with different numbered loaded cars.
These new cars are, again, brought back for unloading and this time the empty starch hopper and one loaded RBL are pulled back to the fiddle yard.
To operate it like this two different numbered cars are allotted to each spot on the layout.
If you add in a single car train once in a while, there are 30 different combinations of cars before the same move is made with the same cars.
It is simple honest.
The legs seen in the photo were from an old layout and were the cause of the wobble, so at the moment it is sitting on a folding table in the garage.
The layout has been invited to its first show next Feb so I’ve plenty of time to find a solution to the problem,
Chris
