The original house construction has a mansard roof, in which there is a vertical stud wall upstairs, two feet inside the positions of the first floor stud walls. There are angled studs, attached at the bottom to the first floor stud walls and attached at the top to the upstairs stud walls, forming a dead space about two feet wide at the bottom and about shoulder-width at five feet above the second floor level. That means I can stoop slightly and walk along the joists, if I have enough hands to hold a light, drag an extension cord, manipulate pieces of plywood, as necessary to build out parts of the railroad and work on some of the house utilities.

The mansard was very useful in construction, because my old a/c ducts for the downstairs could be re-routed entirely through the two-foot space. I am aware that this could be a maintenance nightmare later, but I’m not planning to attach the railroad to the walls in this area. I’m planning on building Free-mo style modules, in terms of structure and geometry. This includes having the scenery visible from both sides.

The original train room was over a two-car garage, but it had those mansards on all sides, so it was possible for me to cut holes in the wall so that the main line could go in on a curve and re-emerge three feet farther over. I also was able to go through the wall into the annex next door, although that track currently ends in empty space on either end.

My plan is to extend the railroad on two fronts, along the corridor on either side, into the new area. Those will be attached to the wall, maybe 6″ wide. At a couple of points, these will go through walls, if for no other reason that I may need to gain some elevation. My exact track plans once I get into the new area are completely lacking in detail.

Here’s the interesting part: I really like the Free-mo concept, and I’m trying to start out right building to the standard. But, I have one big exception — I am DC and plan to remain so. Yes, I know I can’t be interchangeable with those display guys, but I’m not in that market. We’ll see how this works out.

Ron Merrick

Eleven gallons of Kilz 2 went on the walls and ceiling. Masking around fifteen four-foot ceiling fixtures and several other appliances took almost as much time as the rest of the surface.

This weekend will be ceiling white, on the ceilings. I think I’ll paint everything before I start cutting holes in the walls. There’s also the little matter of fifteen route-feet of track (maybe 25 track-feet) of track to lay to connect the existing West Wichita to the place where new benchwork will start. This area has CVT tie strips, and CVT turnouts with frogs and other stuff from Proto:87 stores. I’ve been experimenting here — I cut out the plastic frogs I had originally laid from the stock CVT turnouts since I like the metal frogs better.

Has anybody noticed that the selection of investment-cast frogs, in terms of the combinations of frog style, size and angle, is pretty limited? The Proto:87 stuff is the best I’ve found, and it colors pretty well when you drop the frog into Micro Engineering’s blue selenium rail-weathering solution. Here, I’m beginning to install Blue Point turnout controls. Maybe when I get more experience, I’ll summarize it on the handlaidtrack Yahoo group.

Ron Merrick

I declared the construction complete last month, when the floor was finished. There are still loose ends like doorknobs not installed, but I’m moving in. I have 13-1/2 feet of new shelves for the kits, and I’m working on sorting un-climatized stuff from things I want to keep climatized.

I’ve moved several boxes of completed cars back onto the railroad, but taking this opportunity to overhaul things like couplers that stick (replaced with 158s) or painting wheels on cars that just arrived, and a limited number of locomotives. I had to lift the whole railroad, almost, and that is worthy of a separate discussion.

Ron Merrick

Started on module 14, the first place where track will go through a wall. This one is actually in two pieces, and I’ll use bolts to hold them together on the two sides of the wall like I did module 6, the first turnback loop which represents Sallyards. That module was intended to be in two pieces for handling but once I got it upstairs, that proved unnecessary. There are six legs but it isn’t the most stable tipping-wise, which will be OK because the direction it would tip will be anchored to adjoining modules.

My wife says ‘those beautiful walls, you’re going to cut holes in them?’

Many of the modules are/will be exercises in geometry, where I calculate angles and curve radii to meet some specific need. This layout doesn’t meet Free-Mo rules in so many ways, but the framing for sure is based on those design practices. And it really will fit together in only one way. One compromise already — the Sallyards siding is being located between Yates Center and Eureka, not between Eureka and Summit. Oh well — El Dorado, which will be modified from the existing Wichita 25th St. scene, isn’t even in the right room.

I have connected modules 4 and 5 and run locomotives across the joint. Only after I did that did I see the hump at the joint, but at least now I know what to look for when installing the fitter rails.

Ron Merrick

I built a couple module frames ‘on-spec’ last summer, which have come in handy to pile crap, er, construction supplies on. Then I did some measuring and realized that one of them is perfect to fit in a little corner between the new and old train room areas, to represent Durand.

It won’t be laid out in the standard way, since one end has to have the track leaving a few inches off center, and the other end has a track leaving from the side a few inches away from the end, at about a 30 degree angle. This will connect to the line leading railroad north, coming from Osawatomie. There will also be stubs representing the lines leading east, toward Fort Scott, and south toward Coffeyville. Fortunately, today, that land has trees that obscure the view. Since there was a creek crossing both lines, the trees very likely were there in my era also. I had to fudge the angles of the track layout to get it to fit, but it may look convincing.

Next to this will be a right-angle module connecting this one with the Yates Center module, which will be a standard end with single track centered on 24″ end. And, it avoids cutting a hole in the wall, but it just barely clears the door jamb. It actually can be done with 30″ radius, which frankly surprised me. These three modules, when assembled, will more less lock into place against the wall but I’d like to build them out so they could be viewed from all sides free-standing.

Author’s note: Those two modules that wrap around the door jamb became modules 2a and 2b. They fit precisely against module 3, Yates Center, effectively locking it in place lengthwise, and against module 1, Durand, effectively locking it in place lengthwise also, except that the track orientation changes 90 degrees in between.

Ron Merrick

Today I finished laying track on the ‘mini-mo’ (actually two very small modules, one about 20″ actual track length and one about 24″). This bridges the gap between Yates Center and Durand, and in layout terms this is the corner where track leaves the new train room, headed toward the existing railroad. What lies between are some feet of non-modular track which will be hanging from the wall, probably on 3/4″ plywood 4″ or so wide. I think I’ll find some clear acrylic or other plastic sheet to attach to the outside edge to prevent catastrophic hitting-the-floor moments.

I had one of those moments the other week. I shoved a couple boxcars, without crawling under to check, on the connection that I’ve temporarily made to the north end of Conway Springs. Unfortunately that connection snakes between some hanging Tortoise switch machines, and in the direction the cars were moving, one of those machines was angled so that it handily dumped the first car on the floor with resulting damage to stirrup steps and so forth. Oh well, should have used flatcars.

Root cause was that Conway is not tied down yet. It’s 3/4″ plywood on L-girders, and I’ve left it free to move so I can turn each half up sideways to do the wiring. These are not real modules, but they could be. So, it was out an inch from where it was supposed to be, but that (one inch out from the final location) was what the hidden track was designed for, several years ago when I installed it. So, some cutting is in order. Fortunately, that’s flextrack which is not yet glued down at the transition. And, if I take the Dremel to the offending switch machine, the clearance problems should be solved.

So now the new parts of the railroad are up to about 40′ of track length, in two disconnected segments of about 20′ each. (Author’s note: these would be modules 1-3 and 4-6.) Next up is the duckunder bridge to connect the two segments, plus I need to build a half-circle turnback module so as to be prepared for the Eureka and Tolerville segments.

The module frames are built outdoors, then taken upstairs to add legs. This time of year, most of the construction has to take place in the mornings due to the heat load, but at least it does keep a lot of sawdust out of the train room.

Ron Merrick

I’m now making somewhat interrupted progress on the railroad. While I’d gotten module 14 up to the stage where the track is finished, I was working in late summer on module 10, a turnback loop. Module 10 got the track laid in short order, all eight plus feet of 30″ radius curve with tangents on each end. It has a raised edge on the outer radius for another of those Kansas hills. Module 12 is a straight configuration of 7 foot plus, which is becoming the east half of the Tolerville storage yard. It’s actually not quite at Tolerville, but a half mile east of the east end of 25th St. yard. BTW, the track still exists. Its purpose in life would have been to stick grain cars on while preparing for harvest, or otherwise to stick unwanted stuff on so as to not clutter up the yard tracks.

My modeling efforts are probably more aimed toward stuffing as much equipment on the railroad as possible, if I was honest, so a four-track storage yard is right up my alley. Module 13, then, will be the west half of this yard and have a slight curve to mate with Module 14 which is about a 60 degree curve. Module 11 will have a jog, and probably a grain elevator siding like the one near what is now the Bel Aire development or perhaps at Greenwich. I’d like to work in the KG&E pole yard spur also.

(Author’s note: the spur that ultimately went in on this module is oriented like the Greenwich elevator spur, facing points if coming from Wichita, but it is being scenicked as the KG&E pole yard which is trailing points if coming from Wichita. Maybe after I move in a few years I can splice in another module and correct this little misjudgment.)

Modelwise, the four tracks of the yard are CV branchline tie strip with code 55 rail. I’ve been laying this using the technique of applying Barge to the bottom of the rail, letting it dry, then wetting it with MEK and weighting it. I did some several years ago like this, and it’s still down although I tried to shove some of it sideways and it let go without any damage. If nothing else, I might be able to spike it in a few places if it looks loose. Seems to stay in gauge OK, if I put a couple of gauges on it in between the weights as it cures.

Whenever I get to the 25th St. yard itself, which may be the last section I do, I’m probably willing to do the glue thing with code 55. I don’t think I want to lay the Conway Springs line in code 55, even though that would be the most close to correct size. Lots of other stuff to do before I have to decide that.

Oh, yes, the corrosion experiment. This probably belongs on the handlaidtrack group….

I have two number 6 turnouts coming off the main, one right and one left. Ain’t no fancy three-way turnouts needed when you have all of Kansas real estate to play with. So then, each of those diverging tracks then has a number 5 turnout, with the diverging routes of these being the inside tracks on each side of the main. I took four CV turnout bases, two 6 and two 5, and lightly sprayed them with Instant Weathering (a Floquil color). Then I glued all four of them on the module, starting about four inches in from the end. Then I started laying the tie strip for the yard tracks. Uh-oh.

Turns out one of the 6 turnouts got into its correct position, the second one. The first one actually was a 5. So that 6 turnout ended up as one of the yard turnouts, and was the second one that I laid tie strip up against. No wonder it didn’t look like the first one. BTW, there are exactly two ties’ difference in length between a 6 and a 5. I had actually spiked a couple of the frogs already — now I knew why those didn’t look right either. Fortunately the Proto87 frogs have a 5 marked on their underside. But now I needed two more frogs, so I dropped a couple of them in the selenium bath aka Micro Engineering Weathering Solution. And forgot about them for two days.

One of the things I deal with in my professional life is corrosion, so sometimes I bring in examples of corroded things. Not these — these frogs were so far gone they looked like something you’d find in an ancient shipwreck. Of course, the solder fared the worst, so they went directly in the trash, wrapped in a paper towel. Didn’t even photograph these as evidence.

Fortunately, I have an inventory of turnout parts, so I did two more frogs and went on with spiking. But I hope to remember this lesson, and in future keep better track of my 6s and 5s.

And, now the points of the first yard turnout actually are about three inches shy of the end of the module. Not desirable, but I know it will still work because the end-of-module terminal strips have enough distance between them to fit the switch machine that I will someday get around to mounting.

Ron Merrick

total main track – about 55 feet
total unconnected segments – officially 3
longest connected run – about 20 feet
most cars on the new sections of layout – about 30 last month