The track realignment is complete!

This evening I was able to finish the track work at Fordyce thanks to Doug F.  I was short two medium Peco turnouts and he happened to have a few on hand, Thanks Doug.

I still need to drop a few feeder wires and work a few kinks out of the sidings, but with this section done I can now get things cleaned up (and I mean a thorough cleaning) and ready the layout for an ops session to give everything a good shakedown. Woohoo!

Here's how it turned out and looks with the max amount of cars per siding.

Even though I say all the tracks are in place, I will probably still need to adjust the spurs in all the locations once I start working on the buildings.  The tracks are still just tacked into place and can be moved or adjusted if needed.

Once I get the next session ran and all is good I can then get started on the scenery!  But I have no idea where I'll start?

I still have some track work left to do, but I will need to install the raised portion of El Dorado between the yard and backdrop first.  I'll need to raise it approximately 3" and then add the Woodland Scenics foam 3% incline to reach a couple of industries I have planned in El Dorado proper.  This will not affect the operations as I have a short spur next to the yard that is used for the two industries in the town. It might be awhile before I get to that though as I want to get some color on the layout first!

A light power move...

Earlier this week I took a break from track work and installed a few more chips.  Now when I get ready to have another ops session I will have a few more locos to use.

GP38-2 - 4303
GP40     - 363
U33B     - 298 (It's a B23-7 for a stand in until Atlas decides to produce them)
GP40     - 367
GP40     - 382
GP40     - 368
GP40r   - 3001
GP38-2  - 874   (MoPac)

Changes at Fordyce

In the last post I mentioned about removing one turnout and connecting two spurs, well that went by the wayside.  While adding the Gavilon Fertilizer plant in Haskell I removed one small industry that received flat cars, which left only industry on the layout that used flat cars.  Wanting to have a more flats in use I came up with a company that received pipe on flat cars.

It produces Irrigation piping and I named it Ozark Irrigation. Along with loaded flat cars, some pipe may arrive on Bulkhead flats aswell and also gets some a boxcar for some of the smaller items like fittings needed to produce the irrigation pipe.  

This new industry replaced Dixie Woodworks and will probably not allow me to have the street running as I had planned.  But that's progress.

Before

After

The next project is to reconfigure Flappers on the left.  Before I had the Flappers Litter track on the right side of the main in the background.  Now I'm gonna have to move it to the left side.  

Another side project that needs to be done with all this realignment is to reconfigure the Wheel Report and add a few more Tabs for all the new industries

Once I get done with the trackwork in Fordyce, I plan to clean up the wiring a bit, then I want to put together an Op Session to test and see how all the work pans out.   

  

Riceland complete.

While relaying the elevator tracks last week, I ran out of  turnouts so I had to order a couple. They arrived tonight so I slipped down quick and got them installed.

One thing I did was to address the closeness of the elevator tracks to the mainline. Doug M. brought this to my attention after getting the mainline relaid behind Riceland a few weeks ago.  This should allow me to get a bit scenery or fencing between the tracks now.  Good call Doug.

The only thing left is to attach the feeder wires and trim the tail end of the elevator tracks.

I did forget that I have one more small bit of trackwork left to redo in Fordyce.  I want to remove the turnout for Dixie Woodworks and attach that spur to the spur for Flappers Litter track.  Two reasons for this.  1) I want make a little more work for the Haskell Turn so they might have to move any tank cars sitting on the Litter track to access Dixie Woodworks.  2) I want to try and get a little street running on the layout and I don't want to have a turnout buried in the middle of the street.

Fordyce seems to be a good candidate for this because of the viewing angle. Standing at the bend in the layout you can look right down the tracks.  I also want to move the spur for the Litter track and Dixie Woodworks a bit towards the backdrop so I have a little wider area to layout the street.

We'll see how this works when the time comes.  Here's the reason I kind of forgot about it, it was buried just a bit.

In this view you can see the turnout that I want to remove that's just in front of the blue tank car.  That spur will connect to the end of the spur with the two black tank cars.  Then I will try to move them a bit closer to the right towards the backdrop.  This also has the bonus of having one less turnout on the mainline.

Once I get this work completed, I plan to get an op session together to test all the new track I've been working on for the past few months.  Another thing I've been working on, I've been rebuilding my Wheel Report, adding the new industries and cleaning it up a bit.  Another reason for the Ops session, to test out my Excel skills! Thanks for all the help on that Steven!  

Riceland Re-do

After finishing up the basic track work for the Gavilon Fertilizer plant, I got started on ripping up the turnouts that lead into Riceland Industries this weekend.  I wanted to move the turnouts back down to the south end of Haskell siding.  

This has always been a troubled spot through the turnouts with frequent derailments and electrical issues, so hopefully this will resolve those issues.  This will also allow me to move the elevator and mill tracks back towards the backdrop and away from the mainline to give me a little extra room. Overall the track plan will stay pretty much as it was.

I'm still planning to leave the drill track (top picture next to the backdrop) in place for the Riceland switcher to use, but I'm working on another idea.  The whole purpose of the Gavilon plant was to add more work for the Haskell Turn because it never took as long to run as did the Winnfield Turn.

My thoughts now are to have the Haskell Turn switch out the Riceland elevator and mill tracks during it's run.  This means that the Haskell crew will be spending the majority of its time working in the town of Haskell.