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A partially completed model railroad still offers plenty of play value if the right bits of trackwork are in place and functional.  I can while away close to an hour simply exchanging hot metal cars at the steel works, and running a passenger train around the milk train likewise keeps the operators busy.

That's a highlight reel of what was running during the recently-concluded March Meet.  I tend to have a short train running continuously on the powered display track up high.  The drive units on the rebuilt old-style Atlas F units require more tweaking.

The continued early spring weather suggest more opportunities to carry on with heavy construction and sessions at my workbench.

WINDING DOWN THE SWAP MEET SEASON.

The Chicago area March Meet is likely now the largest O Scale show in the United States, and surely the largest of the winter swap meet season.  The Gloucester Branch was available for layout tours again, and here's a look at a few of the trains that were running.

A longer video with more of the locomotives equipped with onboard power is in preparation.

WATCH THIS SPACE.

Two months ago, the benchwork for the staging peninsula circling the workbench was in place.

Here come the tracks.

First, ensure that the tracks line up without any annoying kinks or seriously tight curves.  Trust me, I've learned about that second challenge the hard way, more than once!

Here, a few sections of tie strip cannibalized from older Atlas flex track will serve as anchors for the handlaid turnouts to be built.  A curved 83" with a 63" diverging route and two conventional N^o. 10 will bring the four staging tracks into one to cross the liftout section.

Here we are two weeks later, with the points and throw bars installed and most of the spiking done.  Note that I use two strips of circuit board, one for the throw bar and another to hold the alignment.  There is more fettling to do yet.  I have hand-powered some cars through the special work, sometimes without incident.  Good cars will run on questionable track, and questionable cars will run on good track.  I'd rather get the track good as it's installed, and deal with the questionable cars from swap meets, of which there are many, later.

The connecting curve and lift-out section in place.  There will be additional terrain to the right of that curve, to keep anything from going on the floor should the worst happen.  There's another month of working time in advance of the Lombard O Scale show.

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The early snows are good reason to go down cellar and work on the railroad.  Fortunately, I was able to mow the yard and give it a Thanksgiving Milorganite feeding before the snow fell.

Contemporary model railroading practice treats the layout as a stage upon which a cast of scripted performers (the timetabled and extra trains) perform.  Thus, track plans include provisions for staging the trains awaiting their cue.  Many of the photos and videos from our documentation of construction show the staging along the west wall, which is under Rockport at the north end.  Here comes a staging peninsula that will be under West Gloucester and Gloucester in the center of the basement.

We're looking toward the northeast corner of the basement.  Four staging tracks are already in place about halfway around the peninsula.  In the background is the steel plant that has also featured in several posts.

Looking southeast, the four staging tracks will narrow to one.  Yes, the peninsula goes around the workshop.  A post from a year ago looks at what is in place between the steel works and the staging peninsula.

Yes, that's still a cluttered workshop.  And yes, that is a gap in the benchwork.  The four tracks narrow to one where they do in order to cross a single, lift-out track permitting easier ingress to and egress from the workshop.  I'm not as flexible as my younger self was.

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The peak model railroad show season is past for this spring, although model railroad construction season never ends and there's always a swap meet somewhere.

For this year's showing of the Gloucester Branch the recently-configured locomotives with onboard power and radio control did most of the work.  They'll go through their paces for you to close April out.

The steam locomotive might be eighty years old; it has a 21st century motor in it, and the battery and control module are in the tender.  The road-switcher is an extensively reworked Lionel "Train Master" that is more accurate as an H16-66.  The cab unit is from an Atlas starter set of the early 1970s that I bought with some food service job money and brought home on my bicycle.  It has new trucks, a new drive train, and a beefier motor.  The booster is the battery car, just like the big railroads are experimenting with.  As these units go through their paces you might see some of the Atlas mill gondolas of that era that have been going through upgrades.  You'll also see a few of the cars lettered for model railroads.

WATCH THIS SPACE.

Swap meet season continues, with the big Chicago area O Scale show scheduled for Lombard, March 20-23.  The Gloucester Branch offers an open day as part of the layout tours, and this year's feature will be locomotives with onboard power, dead rail if you will.

The power in the video began as a Lionel "Train Master."  A previous owner converted it to two-rail operation, fitting it with a Central Locomotive Works drive and an ingenious reuse of the Lionel side frames, and an open-frame permanent magnet motor.

The motor mount is exactly the right size for a can motor taken out of an Atlas F unit from the 1970s, and there's plenty of space for a Ring Engineering onboard power module and the battery, and a speaker for sound.  Sounds and lights are yet to be installed.  The drive train is in good order.  Enjoy.

IT'S STILL SWAP MEET SEASON.

Model railroad swap meet season is busiest from November into March, with the big Chicago area O Scale show to take place March 21-23.

Here's a project taking shape in time for layout tours.

That's a Bronze Age Saginaw or Central Locomotive Works H10 of the 1940s, with a Ring Engineering control module going into the tender (that wood floor came with the tender when I bought this loco at a swap meet about thirty years ago) and a very smooth running Rod Miller drive train and Locomotive Workshop brass driving wheels, all of which replaced an open-frame motor and the plastic-centred (!) drive wheels that came with the wood tender floor.

COMING OFF THE WORKBENCH.

This Sunset model of the Boston and Maine Lima Berkshire has been on hand for years.  It's probably fifteen to twenty years ago I attempted to install a selector switch in order to run it on command control track or on track energized with the traditional direct current.  Here it goes through some running-in.

I took out the selector switch and replaced some wires that had worn thin.  That ended some annoying shorts.  I did not essay rewiring the headlight and class lights to illuminate separately.

For what it's worth, 4019 went to Santa Fe just before the end of the War.  My layout is notionally set in the summer of 1952.  Model railroading is supposed to be fun.

ON MY WORKBENCH.

The summer heat offers opportunities to repair down cellar and work on the railroad, with the earlier sunsets as the temperate evenings might return cutting into that read outside until sundown relaxing.  Look for more frequent progress reports.

While the temperatures are high, the spray paints flow more easily, and I'm getting several freight and passenger cars ready to be assembled.  That steel works we saw in a recent photo has to have lots of scrap delivered to the Open Hearth, which means there can never be too many mill gondolas.

Those will all roll out relettered for the home railroad.  I've held back one of those green Readings to repaint and reletter in the 1952 fashion.

I haven't let the passenger fleet go fallow, either.

I've always liked the Akron Canton & Youngstown boxcars with the large letters, even at the risk of creative anachronism, and decals are available for both the red cars with white lettering and the yellow cars with red lettering.  If they wind up billed to an implement mechanic in Centre Barnstead on a line that was already abandoned, well, so be it!

Pullman named their 28 seat drawing room parlors after women, often authors or painters.  I borrowed a name from the family tree.

Yes, a new Trains of Summer video is still in preparation.

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I was taking videos up high for a future Trains of Summer upload, and while there took an aerial view of the West Lynn and Revere industrial complex.

At center is the Open Hearth shop of Midvale Steel, with the hot metal track below and the upper level tracks for delivering scrap, refractories, alloying additives, and coal tar, here delivered in two large tank cars.  The box cars occupy the Outward Exchange Siding, which sometimes receives transfers from the New Haven and sometimes serves as a time being track when one crew is working both sides of the Eastern Route Main Line.  The crossover at left middle between Outward and Inward tracks helps those operations. Coming closer to the camera, we see the Inward Exchange Siding, and two spur tracks serving General Electric's River Works.  That will be an access hatch in the foreground.  Two tracks of the Saugus Branch and the Lynn Common Industrial Lead are at right.

Now that the switches at West Lynn Junction, where the Saugus Branch joins the Eastern Route Main Line, are in place, there's enough headroom to work all those tracks from either the Saugus Draw or the West Lynn end, and that alone is enough to keep one or two crew members busy for several hours.  Work continues on extending trackage into the area under the garage.

ON MY WORKBENCH.

Well, that has been a stressful week on the current events beat, combined with some ongoing dental work that might not be completed until Oktoberfest season, and then the Brewers had runners thrown out at home three games in a row.

There's been time, though, to put the Victor E. Garden in, and resume work, now that the workbench has been put into a somewhat organized state, on Pullman cafe-sleeper Harvard Club.  (Has that project languished since the move to new quarters?)

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It has been over three years since we featured an "On My Workbench" post, and one could easily see in that post that the workbench was, to put it charitably, cluttered.  The most recent "Watch This Space" post featured the addition of staging tracks in a central peninsula.

Inside that peninsula is space for a workshop.  Once the March Meet wrapped up, that space started getting organized.

All the workbenches and machine stands are in one place, and the clutter on the bench tops is being sorted through, discarded, or put in a proper place, and there might be some progress reports of actual work on those actual workbenches in the near future.

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The model railroad swap meet and show season, which runs from November through March, is winding down, although the continuation of wintry conditions in the State Line make working on the railroad rather than doing yard work a better use of time.

The Gloucester Branch was available for layout tours on the Sunday last, as the Chicago area O Scale meet wound down.  Despite the competition of St. Patrick's Day events, Selection Sunday, and several other swap meets in Rockford and Lena, some 25 visitors looked in.  The powered display track was at work, along with more operable tracks than were on offer a year ago.

WATCH THIS SPACE.

Winter is a good season for working on the model railroad.  That's also true of the other seasons; winter, though, is when most of the swap meets take place, the layout tours go on the schedule, the new stuff has to be tuned and put into operation.

So it is with the State of Maine Northern.  There's an industrial complex a-building that features an Open Hearth steel works on the outward side of the tracks, with the General Electric River Works on the inward side.  The tracks through that complex are now in place.  From the aisle back are the Melt Shop tracks, the Material Yard tracks for the Open Hearth, the Outward Exchange Siding, the Outward and Inward Main Line tracks, the Inward Exchange Siding, and the River Works track.  There's enough switching to be done in this relatively small space to keep one occupied for several hours, more so if the full schedule of passenger trains is running.

Consider this video a preview of coming attractions for the upcoming March O Scale Meet.

There might be more new features on offer by the time that swap meet comes around. Stay tuned.

MARKING OFF.

It has long been my custom to post a Festive Season video, featuring vintage, or sometimes modern-retro, tinplate trains under the tree and a look at progress on the model railroad.  I'm in a somber mood this Festive Season, and this year's video is in that vein.

I'm taking time away from posting for that proverbial long winter's nap, and to work on the railroad.

Thank you for looking in.  Posting will resume, if all goes well, after the maids come a-milking, with the next Friday short takes around Three Kings.  There will be no drummers drumming or pipers piping to herald that resumption.

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The train room at Cold Spring Shops headquarters includes a powered display track orbiting the basement up high.  It's reliable enough with properly tuned rolling stock to turn it on and let a train run while I'm working on the main level, or perhaps catching up on my reading.

The video features a number of trains going through their paces up high.  A few test runs up there or on the State of Maine Northern are sprinkled in.

The video description includes the new You Tube indexing feature, pick whatever train suits your fancy.  Enjoy all 21 minutes if you wish.  Yes, there are two scales (British Gauge O and North American O Scale) and three countries (United States, United Kingdom, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) showing off.

DOWN CELLAR TO ESCAPE THE HEAT.

This week's posts are going to be relentlessly documenting E-T-T-S moments.  There will be lighter fare, generally to conclude the day's posting.  Sunday was a good day for model railroading, first at the local model railroad club, where I was focussing on switching up the local industries, rather than recording train movements, and then at home, where some new track down is excuse to break out the clip leads and run a test train.

I hope to have more progress at home to document before the snow flies.

ROLLING OUT THE TRAINS.

The March Meet has concluded, and with it the layout tours.  I had a sequence of trains staged to have something moving whenever things got quiet, although layout visitors were of a mood to swap stories, and a few wheels didn't turn.

Even with a limited amount of the track available for running trains, there were plenty of switching opportunities, which are excerpted in the video.

The upper level display track also got a workout, and the Special Projects Office showed off its work.

WATCH THIS SPACE.

The Chicago area O Scale March Meet has returned to its traditional St. Patrick's Weekend dates, and the Gloucester Branch will be available for layout tours.  The summer projects were preparing the part of the train room that is under the garage, and there might be some operable track for visitors.

The Gloucester Branch junction with the Eastern Route Main Line is almost ready for track.  The paint booth will be hidden behind the backdrop here.  The continuation of the Main Line will be this summer's project.

The Gloucester Branch is double track as far as Gloucester, with a few crossovers to allow any local freight train to get out of the way of passenger trains as well as to run around for switching industries.

The section from Beverly Shores to Manchester-by-the-sea should also be installed during the summer.

As long as I'm taking liberties with some of the town names, I can add some industries, such as a fruit broker at Beverly Shores.

We'll see about action videos later this weekend.

WATCH THIS SPACE.

The point of commissioning a house with a train room under the garage is to have a train room that extends under the garage.

Look closely: curve templates, turnout templates, and a yardstick to establish tangent lines as the spline takes shape.  The last thing I want at what will be a critical junction on the layout, with some industries back by the paint booth, the Eastern Route Main Line diving into staging, and the Gloucester Branch on its way to Manchester-by-the-Sea and beyond is to have some kinky track or tight turns as a consequence of wishful thinking.