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The following are photos from November and December 2007 of the construction of the Windsor & Midwestern layout. Other pages of photos from the W&M layout can be found on the following pages: Ian D. has been taking photos of the progress from day one. You can view his photos here
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 Photo By: Fred Jr. |
December 20, 2007
The hand laid diamonds in the cement plant are almost done. The frogs need to be cut and isolated. The gaps will
be filled with epoxy, filed and painted. Nice work Geoff!
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 Photo By: Fred Jr. |
December 20, 2007
Track has been laid across the temporary bridge. Once the scenery in this area has been finished we will put the
actual bridges in place. 3 85' Micro Engineering deck girder bridges with a 150' central valley Truss bridge in
the middle. It is going to look sweet!
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 Photo By: Fred Jr. |
December 20, 2007
Phase 1 of construction includes only about half of the bench work, so to create a running loop in phase 1 we had
to build this temporary connection track between legs 1 and 5. The temporary connection will allow us to get
some trains running right away to start testing track work before ballasting and scenery really get started.
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 Photo By: Fred Jr. |
December 20, 2007
This bridge will pass over the branch line's wye track in a small, as yet un-named, mining town.
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 Photo By: Fred Jr. |
December 8, 2007
This is the top of the mountain. On the left the track has leveled off after climbing a 2.5% grade, the helpers
cut off at the siding and glide back down the grade to await the next job while the train continues around the
curve and begins a gentle .75% grade back down the other side. Or at least thats what will happen when we
finish the rest of the track work!
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 Photo By: Fred Jr. |
December 1, 2007
All the main line spline for phase I is glued in place now. The next step is securing the spline to the risers with
screws and then sanding the top smooth. We'll have cork and track on it in no time!
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 Photo By: Fred Jr. |
December 1, 2007
Another view of the spine work around the summit of the grade. We actually ran out of clamps glueing this section
of spline, over 30' of spline glued at the same time!
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 Photo By: Fred Jr. |
November 27, 2007
Track work for the cement plant is moving forward slowly. All the Fast Tracks switches have been built for the
facility and some track is in place. We have also started laying the first of two diamonds in the plant.
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 Photo By: Fred Jr. |
November 27, 2007
Spline work for the main line around the mountain is moving along nicely. Most of the risers are in place and
a single track width of spline is down. This section needs to be double width to accommodate a passing siding.
You can see the spline for the coal branch below the main spline.
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 Photo By: Fred Jr. |
November 27, 2007
With spline and track in place, some of the backdrop board is going up. We are using 1/4" masonite glued to 2x2
risers as our backdrop. The seams will be filled and sanded, then the whole thing will be painted. Some areas
will use commercially available backdrops, but most will be hand painted. This is the first curved section of
backdrop to go up.
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 Photo By: Fred Jr. |
November 27, 2007
With the plywood in place along the south wall, we were able to lay some cork down for the coal branch main line.
The final track plan has yet to be agreed apon, so no ties will be going down for a little while yet. But we will
sand and paint the cork so we'll be ready.
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 Photo By: Fred Jr. |
November 20, 2007
Some of us are getting impatient to run trains on the new layout, so we hooked a Zephyr up to some of the track
and ran an engine back and forth a few times. We'll just say it was for track testing purposes!
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 Photo By: Fred Jr. |
November 20, 2007
The first section of hand laid track on the coal branch! It may only be 3' long, but it is nice to see anyway. We
are trying to get the track in this area down so that the scenery team can start working in this area. There are
several bridges to be built, so the sooner they can get started, the better.
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 Photo By: Fred Jr. |
November 13, 2007
The spline for the coal branch around the end of the fifth leg is in place. This section of track will be
in a long tunnel under the WMRC main line. This track is on a 1% grade through the tunnel and levels off when
it exits the tunnel and passes by a Pulp and Paper mill. After the mill it will start climbing again to the
same level as the WMRC main line at an interchange yard.
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 Photo By: Fred Jr. |
November 13, 2007
The section along the south wall is dominated by the coal branch, with the WMRC main line partially hidden by
trees above. This section is mainly flat, so we used 1/2" plywood as a base to build the track and scenery on.
The foreground of this picture will have a small mining town with a wye extending under the WMRC main. Further
down will be a small yard with a coal mine and flood loader at the far end. All the track work in this area will
be hand laid.
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 Photo By: Fred Jr. |
November 13, 2007
We plan to hand lay the track work for all industrial areas as well as the branch line. Our club is all about
learning and having fun, so this is a great opportunity for our members to learn about hand laying track. This
is the cement plant, the plywood base was built first and the track centers were drawn on it. Next we glued down
our fast tracks laser cut switch ties and then glued the standard ties following the center lines drawn on the
plywood. The next step is a light sanding of the ties to ensure a flat even surface to spike the rail to and
staining the ties. The track goes on after the ties are stained and ballast comes last.
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 Photo By: Fred Jr. |
November 10, 2007
We have been using Fast Tracks jigs to build our own turnouts. The jigs are very easy to use and are going to
save us a ton of money on switch costs. They also eliminate the availability issues we had trying to get
Walthers switches. The switch building kits come with a scale billboard sign. We've temporary placed one of the
signs on the Cement plant power station.
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 Photo By: Fred Jr. |
November 10, 2007
All branchline and industrial track is going to be hand laid. Here we see the newly installed and stained ties
on the coal branch climb from staging. The ties were cut by Curt, glued to the cork roadbed, the tops were sanded
smooth and then they were stained. The next step will be spiking the rail down.
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