Weekend Photos - September 2025

[healey36]

Oy, those names bring back some memories...some good, some not so good

Other than Ben (Bluelinec4), the rest of them must be off in the vapor, somewhere.

[healey36]

Besides the death-march that is painting the back porch, sealing the driveway, repairing gutters, refinishing an old dining room table and chairs, etc., all before cold weather hits, a number of railroad projects are being entertained. Throw in twice-a-week PT sessions for an aching back, and time seems short. A lot of juggling going on.

On the basement layout, I've had a problem running some of the oldest Flyer and Ives trains around the left side of the outer loop, their side-mounted manual reverse levers tripping as they cross through the Lionel 270 bridge:



I've fiddled with it a bit, but there's not a way to create enough clearance without raising the track nearly a half-inch, which of course looks terrible. So the bridge needs to come out, which is no big deal other than reaching it. I'm gonna have to climb up there, unscrew two or three sections of track so that I can pull it out. This of course will require moving a bunch of accumulated stuff (which might be both a blessing and a lesson learned, one being never to make a four-foot deep table against a wall thinking one can reach the back).

This is a rather austere looking chunk of ROW, so I've been thinking of ways to scrumble it up a bit. I've got some more of the 060 telegraph poles I could run down the ROW, along with a couple of signals.

Another idea I've been thinking about is one that John Potter wrote about in one of his articles, that of mounting a few low-profile mirrors along the wall adjacent to the track. He'd mentioned that he could pretty regularly find mirrors at yard-sales, the kind that are intended for hanging on the inside of a closet door. He bought a few of these, turned them on their sides and mounted them along the wall at the edge of his layout. Not only did they make the layout look larger, but it also reflected light which added some interest.

Another idea might be to make some building fronts and mount those along this back edge. There's a guy at York that makes some neat looking painted wooden fronts that have a tinplate look about them...maybe I'll check him out in October. Regardless, if I'm going to be up there moving stuff around, might as well work on this while I'm up on the table.

Another project that I've been wanting to take another crack at is the "tunnel/tree-stand" from three or four years ago. I screwed up the first attempt by, among a number of problems, making the tunnel too tight (even the smallest of tinplate cars had trouble getting through without scraping along the sides). It looked terrific and worked well as a tree-stand for a small four-foot tree, but the trains suffered. So I chucked it vowing I'd make another. Now I've got the itch to try again.

I stopped by Lowe's the other day and picked up a two-foot-square piece of 1/4-inch plywood (boy is lumber expensive again). When I got home I started noodling the track radius. It needs to accommodate O-27 as well as Marklin two-rail clockwork track (looks to be about 29-inch diameter):



The base will be in two halves, the track running through it at table-top level. This weekend, if I have time (a new Dell laptop arrived, so I need to get that up and running before the fourteen year-old Dell laptop croaks), I'm gonna make a paper template and bust out a few example cars to use to measure clearances. Hope to have at least the base cut by Monday. Hoping to be done with this by Thanksgiving...stay tuned.

Anyway, maybe not standard 3-rail fare, but this could be fun.

[webenda]

Anyway, maybe not standard 3-rail fare, but this could be fun.

I see three rail track in both of your photos.

The mirror idea sounds interesting. I ordered a Kentucky background from a new background printing company. They charged my account. Then refunded the money. Excuse, "You did not send a photo." My response, "No, I asked for the one in your advertisement." Their response, "We don't do that, you have to send a photo."

I am gonna try a mirror. Thank you for the idea, Healey.

[gregj410]

I'm gonna have to climb up there, unscrew two or three sections of track so that I can pull it out. This of course will require moving a bunch of accumulated stuff

Been here more than once. Usually the hardest part is the climb, after that everything else pales in comparison. Like everything else, you’ll be glad you did it and it won’t take nearly as long as it did for you to talk yourself into doing it. :lol. At least that’s generally my experience. I have a spot that I have to climb up on and the worst part seems to be remembering everything you need when you go up. More often than not it’s a minimum of 2 trips. I don’t know if you have a pair of grabbers but I find them to be handy during project like you’ve described. I can’t always get everything I need in the exact spot I’m working, but if I can get it close the grabbers might save you a bunch of up and down. Good luck.

[HONDO74]

The 270 bridge appears to be on the 4X8 section of your layout where the control panel is located. Can you get to it from the end of the 8ft or do you have to go from the control panel area. How do you get to the trains on the shelf above where the bridge is at ?

[healey36]

I'm gonna have to climb up there, unscrew two or three sections of track so that I can pull it out. This of course will require moving a bunch of accumulated stuff

Been here more than once. Usually the hardest part is the climb, after that everything else pales in comparison. Like everything else, you’ll be glad you did it and it won’t take nearly as long as it did for you to talk yourself into doing it. :lol. At least that’s generally my experience. I have a spot that I have to climb up on and the worst part seems to be remembering everything you need when you go up. More often than not it’s a minimum of 2 trips. I don’t know if you have a pair of grabbers but I find them to be handy during project like you’ve described. I can’t always get everything I need in the exact spot I’m working, but if I can get it close the grabbers might save you a bunch of up and down. Good luck.

I've been thinking I need to get one of those grabbers, but I need to find a decent one. My wife, who is pretty short, has one that she uses occasionally to retrieve items from the top shelves of cabinets and such, but they are pretty light-weight and a bit cheesy. I'm thinking I'll need to look around for something a bit more substantial.

Climbing up is not too bad, it's the clearing a path that's daunting, and even that shouldn't be too onerous. While I'm up there, I need to investigate a few "bumps" in the track I've observed when some of the oldest stuff runs across that length of straight track. There's an MTH illuminated lock-on back there and I'm wondering if it's higher than the center-rail, causing some of the smaller locos to hop over it. If so, easy enough to pull it out and file it down a bit. It doesn't seem to be a problem with the larger/heavier prewar stuff or any of the postwar stuff.

[healey36]

The 270 bridge appears to be on the 4X8 section of your layout where the control panel is located. Can you get to it from the end of the 8ft or do you have to go from the control panel area. How do you get to the trains on the shelf above where the bridge is at ?

Yup, it's on the back-side of the only 4x8 section, about halfway back from the front. Just can't quite reach it easily, and certainly can't unscrew/take up track from that distance.

And yes, taking stuff down off those shelves is a long reach. I can get to most of them from the front of the layout, but not too easily for stuff the farthest to the right. Poor planning on my part. I'm thinking one of those grabbers Greg suggested would be helpful.