Category: Hobbies

West Seneca Valley Railroad Photos

What a morning it was. In between some other work I have to do, I manage to spend a bit of time putting in the foam on the second table. I’d estimate that I’m somewhere around 35% – 40% complete with the sub-roadbed work. Now comes the long, draw-out process of doing the two tables […]

West Seneca Valley Railroad Photos

Today saw the beginning of layout the sub-roadbed area out on the layout. First, I put in that bottom panel I’d talked about , then I began the sub-roadbed. I’m starting from the center section (Mary Ann Junction) and working my way out from there. I picked up a piece of 2 inch insulating foam […]

Track Laying Completion (Sort of)

If you didn’t know it, I actually have an issue that is called psycho-physiological insomnia. I’m not sure if that’s actually the proper name for the issue, but it’s the one I’ve heard, and it makes a reasonable degree of sense to call it that when you hear the description. The general result of this […]

Track Laying Progress

I’ve been pretty busy with work-related projects, but I wanted to share some snaps of the latest progress on the layout.

Layout Progress

I realize progress on the layout has been slow as of late; trust me, it’s been frustrating, but priority mean that family concerns MUST come first. On the bright side, Wednesday evening saw a LOT of progress made on the construction of the 3 remaining train tables. As of right now, I have all the […]

Drone Flights

This past weekend, I began the process of getting familiar with my new acquisition, a DJI Mavic Pro Platinum drone. The ultimate goal is, of course, to turn this into a commercial venture – indeed I already have a few potential clients for this in the near future. In the meantime, though, I will be […]

Kato Turnout Control with Arduino (Preview)

I’ll be writing a more detailed post about this soon, but for now, here’s a quick preview of the Kato Unitrack control I am planning for the layout, driven with Arduino micro-controllers. This took some research, a bit of luck and a lot of finger crossing to accomplish, and some fantastic info provided by the […]

The Track Begins to Arrive

So today, I had a package come in that truly starts the building process. The first load of Kato Unitrack that I am adding to my new layout. I unloaded and placed everything up on my initial table, and minus 1 additional piece I ordered (an uncoupler, since I couldn’t find my previous one), I […]

Holy Cow! He wasn’t kidding about the trains…

Believe it or not (no, you can actually believe it), I finally managed to get the first table for the model trains built. Not perfectly, mind you, and I have made a decision to make one final adjustment on this one, but considering I haven’t done anything like this in 5 years, I’m pleased with […]

Train Table Construction – Part 1: Design (Drop Frame)

While working through material costs and considerations, two points kept crossing my mind. One was the point that Earl Hamil raised to me about the height of the tables the other day. I realized that he was right: a 4 foot height actually made the most sense. So I adjusted all of the table legs […]

Train Table Construction – Part 1: Design (Revision)

A quick bit of thank to Earl Hamil who suggested I make the legs taller on the table to get them to a 48 inch height. After looking at the design, I opted to go from 34 to 44. The reason for not going all the way to 48 is that I intend to have […]