09-30-09 Train Room

My brother and I have been involved in model railroading since the 80s. My brother was the driving force for years, and still does most of the technical and electrical work around the layout.

Years ago, My brother used to drop by each week on Wednesday. He would be between jobs and stop by before heading home. Some years ago, my nephew then started working with him. My nephew worked three days a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, about twelve hours a day. That killed the chances of my brother coming to visit. Since my nephew was living with him. My brother would have to go home, then come back out. That is always a pain. I tend to plan to never stop at home while I am out and about. It is hard to get out of the house again.

The model railroad became a shelf, rather than a model railroad. The last time I ran it was three years ago. The cars derailed when I was not looking.

My nephew is finally moving into his own place, which happens to be his Mother In Law's old place, which happens to be about a block away. My brother, in about a month, will be coming to visit to do model railroading again.

I now have a project. I have to clean out the train room, get the railroad layout cleaned up, and ready for work.















This picture is how it looks after I pulled about half the stuff out of the room. AS you can see, I have more to do. I will empty the closet clear the floor. I will remove the junk from the tops of the railroad.

Finally, I will remove the structures (which are just setting in place, not permanent, and move the cars if necessary, from the layout so I can do a little work. I will vacuum the layout clean, clean the tracks with a track eraser, after I cut a slit down the center of the railroad layout.

This is a four foot by eight foot railroad layout was really difficult to get up into my fourth floor apartment. I want to cut a slit down the center so that when it has to be moved, It will be easy to separate the two sections so that I will be moving two eight by two foot wide sections, rather than one big four by eight piece. Just separating two pieces of track and a few wires, and then removing them from the frame it is on, is all that is needed.
I will also use that slit to put a low view block, designed to aid in the belief that there are two different cities there.


This drawing is what my model rail road layout and room looks like The section along the upper wall of the drawing is on a shelf of an metal industrial shelving unit. After that work is done, I will locate my structures, the industries of the layouts which are just setting on the layout, so that we have places for our trains to visit. I will cover more on this railroad layout and my model railroading later, along with news of my cleaning project.