Reply To: I’ve bit the bullet, Jan. 15, 2011

[David Boeschen]

I’ve shifted focus back to module 7, which is Eureka or at least most of it. This module had scenery supplies on it for a couple years, but those have been displaced and I have laid the track for Eureka. There is the main, with #6 turnouts at each end of the module for the siding, and at the eas end just inside the #6 turnout is a #5 for the house track. This track is far enough south of the main to (I hope) have room for the station. There were two grain-related facilities to the south of the tracks, one being something like a feed mill, and just to the west a small elevator with no outlying grain bins. This structure was just destroyed last month in a tornado that also did major damage to the rest home that had been built across the right of way after abandonment. Also on the south side was an oil dealer and probably some business that was done from the team track (I use this term interchangeably with ‘house track’. On the north side of the tracks was another elevator, basically served from what I’ve been calling the siding.

Back to the house track, in order to add some interest I deployed modeler’s license because I took the Santa Fe interchange track off from the house track. It actually came off the main several hundred yards to the east, but this way I have a place to spot two more cars.

If I ever have more room I’ll expand this scene onto another module, because I didn’t have room to bring the house track back to the main line. But in the towns I’ve done, I’m trying to lay the foundations, literally, by building up the street alignments and laying pads for the crossing signals. The Condensed Profile shows only one set of flashing lights, no gates, at Eureka which would have been Main St. just west of the depot. There is also one wig-wag shown, which is correct because it was in the middle of the street. Right now I don’t have room to model this one, I don’t think.

I’ve clamped this module to the one just to the east of it, which is out of order but it was the best way to arrange things. That module 6 represents Sallyards which is actually way to the west of Eureka. Test runs of the alignment are in progress.

In the near future, I’ll move module 8 from the other room and clamp it into place. It has that three-foot hole in the middle representing the Fall River bridge, so I’m thinking about sticking a piece of flextrack in there so I can finish wiring this part of the layout, and more importantly I want to fix the alignment between the island consisting of modules 9-15, and the island consisting of modules 4-7, and the island consisting of modules 1-3, plus twenty feet of main track hanging from the wall, into one slightly coherent piece. The construction of the jumpover or mini-mo between 3 and 4 depends on the alignment of the portion of the track from 4 on through the other wall to 15.

I already have sketches for three modules in north Wichita that I’m itching to build, so I;m trying to make myself finish all this before I go on. Can’t really do any fabrication of modules right now anyway, due to the temperature.

Ron Merrick