This is pretty cool. Its a book that is part of an Open Source Library orignally printed in 1903. You can read it on-line or download it - for FREE!!!

I can't wait to get home to download this onto my 'puter and give a quick cursery read. Should be interesting and insightful as far as how track was constructed and laid in during the early 1900's.

http://www.archive.org/stream/notesontra...0/mode/1up

I did find by chance an interesting area downtown Orland. It is the blocks north of Silver Meteor Drive. In two blocks are three tracks running parallel between "shoe box buildings" with a lot of load and unloading docks. The tracks extend more to the left (west) with more industry.

Do we have someone from Orlando in the forum who might comment on the kind of industry and may be add some detail photos?

Google Link
http://maps.google.de/maps?hl=de&ie=UTF8...6&t=h&z=18

Bing Link
http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=28.5830...l=17&sty=h

A screen shot of a small sample with bing birds view.

What about a facility producing and shipping industrial gases?

I finally got back into the world of the gainfully employed. It is not my dream job, but it pays the bills.
It doesn't leave me much time to work on the layout, but I take every chance I can.

Matt

I just became the new owner of a suydam Roundhouse kit. It is very similar to Steamtrain's New foundry build-

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It is an all metal kit, along with some additional stalls and wooden detail parts. this structure is huge, but in several, half finished pieces. the parts still in the box are nice and shiny, but the other parts are bent, tarnished, or even corroded, though nothing so serious or obvious that couldn't be repaired, cleaned, or painted over.

Here is a photo of what i've got. the structure is huge, and i have a few extra stall kits. I think i have about 15 stalls worth, though i haven't actually counted all the add-on kits i have. I might work a little on it, but i don't know where i'll put it. I'll probably work on it a little between building catenary towers for my other thread. It looks like i better get used to soldering!

Hello all;

I'm, like many, planning a new layout and am currently in the process of doing due diligence on / experimenting with various track making parts. Once I've decided, I'll make a larger purchase.

On the track front, I stumbled across Central Valley's tie strips a year or two ago, put it out of my mind, then came across them again in the last six months or so. This time I'm closer to building, so rather than just look at photos and wonder how easy / hard they are to use, etc. I decided to buy the sample pack that contains all three types they produce and experiment.
- Mainline (9')
- Branchline
- Mainline 8'6" Ties

I haven't seen a lot of images of these outside of the CV site, and since I have seen a fair number of posts (i.e. interest) about these on this board, I thought I'd share some photos.

   

All are common in that they come in 1 foot lengths with the ties at either end molded half thickness. Given this is styrene, you simply glue the top half of the tie at the end of one strip to the bottom half of the tie at the end of the next strip. I had this pictured completely wrong in my head, so I'm glad I bought these - I like the way this works. As a side note, the end ties have little nubs for indexing, which speeds assembly, but these nubs are not the same from type to type - i.e. you can't index one type to another (you'd have to cut the nubs off - no biggie, but I'm curious as to why it was done this way)
   

The end result can be bent into impressively small radiuses (the track around the radius of the image is about a 21" radius, for reference):
   

Cont...

here are three late 60's.
jim

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Hello all;

I've been away awhile, good to be back!

I found this device in the ads in the back of Model Railroader. I've reached middle age and have recognized the need for good light, so I picked one up (actually, I put it on my Christmas list, and it appeared under the tree). It's intended to attach to the front of an Optivisor identically to the manner the lenses themselves are mounted. Provided with the kit are a pair of mounting pins that are long enough to reach through the frame of the LED light frame and the lens.

It's a breeze to mount and relatively inexpensive (about $20). In use, it's virtually unnoticeable; it makes the Optivisor hood *sligthly* heavier, and the LED's are sometimes visible through the lens if you're looking for them. I have not found this distracting in the slightest - when you're looking at your work, you won't notice.

This device will not replace good workspace lighting, but it is handy when you are looking into something; such as looking into the interior of a structure or car. They do cast a bluish light, so keep that in mind when painting.

One downside - if your kids looked at you strangely when you wear the optivisor around the house before, this does not help your "cool" image!

   


   

   

Matt

Hallo,

here are some pics of my newest module. Some minor work like painting the module sides still must be done.
The bridges are completly scratchbuild from styrene.
[albumthumb]1993[/albumthumb] [albumthumb]1994[/albumthumb] [albumthumb]1995[/albumthumb] [albumthumb]1996[/albumthumb] [albumthumb]1997[/albumthumb]

Can I please ask some questions regarding these two brands?


(I tried looking up the info on their websites and using the "search" feature here first, but couldn't find what I wanted. Perhaps I didn't phrase my searching correctly.)


Anyway, I am under the impression that the Kato Unitrack is the preferred choice over the EZ track product. As I am still armchairing it, I would like to decide on one brand or the other before I start buying anything! . . . What do YOU guys think?


Since any layout I will build will have to be quite small, I will not need any remote turnouts or crossovers and would prefer to operate them manually to minimize wiring, etc. But both the Unitrack and the EZ track turnouts and crossovers seem to be remote only. (I know that Atlas and Peco offer manual turnouts, but I wanted to go with a built-in roadbed product rather than the "flex track" stuff) . . . Is it possible to manually move a remote turnout?


Finally, If I am forced to use the remote (wired) crossover, would I need a separate power pack?



Thanks very much, guys! I would greatly appreciate your opinions and suggestions!



All best,
Joe