Trainmeister Ruben MacBlue at the Fillmore Station
Rock City Railroad News!
OCTOBER, 1997
Hello there railroaders. We're back! After about 6 months of working on the railroad and not working on the web page, we're making a pitstop for a quick update.
Let's see, where were we? Oh, yeah, working on the control panel. Well I finally got that finished. it took about 3 months to wire the switches on the HO control panel, with lights. THer are now literally hundreds of lights on the control panel and all the HO switches are wired and working. More on this adventure in the
control panel section.
After finishing the HO control panel, I started the N scale control panel, positioned just above the HO panel. In July or August I got the blocks wired, but in September I redid the entire N layout adding loops inside the big loops and extra spurs and sidings. I also painted all the cork gravel colored and all the track brown. It's now the end of October and I'm still nailing down the N track for the final time (I hope).
Did I mention I added Z track around the entire outside of the layout? It's grown from just one section in the corner to a special layout in each corner of the room, all connected with a long mainline that goes completely around the back of the layout. One corner is Hollywood, another corner is the Rocky Mountains, with a yard, another corner is downtown New York City, and the last corner is St. Louis, a midwestern city with the arch (gateway to the west). Z gets expensive, so I've been going to swap meets looking for used stuff. So far so good, I've gotten some great deals, but missed a really great deal in the recycler by one day. For more on Z scale stuff, check out the Z Scale section of this site
Recently (October 97) I decided the layout looked too much like a layer cake, so I began adding roads that went uphill or downhill to connect the different levels in a realistic way. It worked well and I spent a couple weeks building roads all around the layout. Just like the Romans, I went road building crazy. Winding roads that zigzaged up the mountains going from HO scale all the way to Z scale. For more on roads, check the roads section