PlateLayer

The base for the Eastside commercial and industrial area has been installed, on top of the eastside of the station tracks, giving a good area to build Eastside.

I have started to build some mockups of the buildings to figure out how it would be and to check out the different options. I am planning to use many paperbuildings and using photos of actual buildings to create the the front of the buildings.

The 4 images, in poor IPhone, low light quality, gives you an idea of how it can be.

There have been slow progress on the new permanent layout, the empire, the last months, but some progress have been done on the mountains the last weeks. Many rock pieces have been installed and the work can soon start to blend them into the surface with some plastering. I would love to start some coloring, but think I will wait until more of the rockwork have been finished.

Finally the Silver Creek Module has been finished and ready for the road and some Z-scale action.

Check out the Silver Creek Imagelibrary.

2 years have gone since last time I did anything with my Zmod-module, but now in 3 week, I shall on the road again with Saguaro River and my Zmod-modules, a weekend with 2 days of exhibition.

The module have never been finished, as I started to plan and build my new permanent layout. So I need to hurry, so the new Zmod-module can run trains.

I have now wired the electrical for the internal roundtrack, and tonight I have blended in a tunnelportal and also the abutment for the big trestle. The trackbed and beams for 2 other short bridges have been installed also, only missing some abutment for this 2 bridges.  

Some work have been done to create the concrete bridge abutments.

Some mountainwork has also been done. In the left corner, the whole mountain is made by gluing foam together and the whole mountain can be lifted up so the track inside the tunnels can be checked.

The last months I have been busy with a lot of different parts on the layout, from installing Led String Lighting for the layout, making of the fascia front, finishing trackwork and all the track wiring, including Power Distribution Panel and the conventional block switches for part of the yards to be used with traditional DC Power. Since my main power will be DCC, only a few tracks have switches.

The power is divided into several Power Districts, giving the possibility to run both DCC and DC at the same time on different part of the layout.

Near all tracks are painted and the first landscaping have started to be done.

Finally I have taken some more pictures to document the progress. Enjoy!

Read more about the Power Districts and the final as built layout drawing here.

A few days ago I put this first test run from the layout on youtube:

Tonight could have been the time to celebrate The Golden Spike Ceremony on the layout. All main track are installed and the first run with heavy freight in both directions in the mainstation have been done tonight. I had 5 engines operating at the same time. Great feeling, finally I can run some trains!!

A total of 55 meter(165 feet) of flextrack and 40 turnouts have been installed so far. With both the High Line and the Tehachapi Level, the total amount of flextrack will be app. 72 meter(216 feet) and 49 turnouts.

I have used MicroTrains flextrack and a combination of turnouts from Märklin, Wright, Rokuhan and scratchbuild Fast Track turnouts with Tortoise motors. 

There are still a lot of wiring to be done, and also some adjustments of the tracks and some of the FastTrack turnouts. As soon as the track are adjusted, painting can be done, before ballasting the tracks.

I hope I soon also can start some landscaping.