Here are some pics from current goings on.

Here is the beginning of the turntable. It is a Diamond Scale that after 3 years of searching I finally found at Gulf Coast Hobbies in Sarasota Florida. I can't complain about the service and would recomend them to anyone looking for a hobby shop to mail order from. They are a full service train store and a re more than willing to take your money over the phone. Unfortunately, for the price, I'm not impressed with the turntable. It should have come completely assembled, tested and ready to go. Instead, it came as a kit. The only part that is done for you, is the pit wall and ring rail support. The support has the ties cast into it which would be OK if not for the fact that they are very badly pitted from being taken out of the mold. This makes it very difficult to glue the rail to the plaster. One good thing I can say about it is the bridge design. The bridge itself isn't actually attached to the shaft. It floats on top of the rails allowing for shifts and movement from tempurature, humidity, and general aging adjustments. That makes it less important that the ring rail be perfectly round. What you see here is as far as I've gone with the turntable project itself. Once the yard is done, I'll finish the turntable and post more pics of it.

This is the business end of the yard before any ties were put down. The milled basewood roadbed was all cut from a tree that had fallen on my uncle's property in northern Michigan several years ago. He had it cut into slabs and I managed to talk him out of some of it. The photo was taken around March 2000. All of the turnouts are #5. All rail is code 70. The picture is distorted due to the camera angle and inexperience of your host with digital photography.

Now some ties have been laid down, the slots for the throwbars have been cut. See my new router in the turntable pic. That with the plunge base made cutting those slots a snap. Shortly before this pic was taken, a friend of mine mounted all of the tortise switch machines. Lesson learned.. DO NOT TRY TO GLUE ALL TIES AT ONCE. Lesson Learned.. MAKE SURE THERE IS NOTHING THAT CAN CATCH THE SANDPAPER WHILE SANDING THE TIES.

Here you can get a pretty good birds eye view of the main throat and most of the yard tracks. There are still ties to put down and the spiking of rail has just begun. The Walthers car shop will serve as the diesel shed.

This is the piece of trackwork that made me say uncle and swear, never again. You are looking at a double crossover and the one you are looking at is the second one built in the exact same spot. To the left is the warf area and to the right is the rest of the yard throat in the pic above.

Here is a poorly focused eye level view of the yard standing next to the double crossover. All of the left hand turnouts are in place and ready to be wired. Soon engines will roll from the engine facility and pull thier trains from the yard out onto the main. This is about where the yard stands now (Sept 1, 2000). A few ties are still needed and some straight track. Short work for that Kadee spiker you see sitting on top of the table. To give you some perspective of what you are looking at, the laundry sink at the end is 15 feet from where I am standing while taking the pic. This yard will easilly accomidate 150 freight cars. The roadbed for the passenger terminal hasn't been installed yet but it will be to the left of the yard. The end of the yard will actually disappear under the edge of a city scene elevated above the tracks.

New pics 1/24/2001

The other end of the yard throat. The yard entrance (the bascule bridge) comes from the other side of the layout across from the trestle.

An overall pic of the almost completed yard. What's left at this point is to wire all those tortise switch machines. The picture was taken December 25, 2000, the day I finished the track.

Another pic, Same yard.

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