More updates on the railroad

Greetings followers of the Atlantic Pacific Railroad! With less than 3 months to the NMRA/NER layout tour open house, I've been trying to get things finished on the layout, in between work, travel, and some family issues as late that needed to be addressed. 

At the end of May, here’s what I still needed to do for the railroad prior to the layout tour. 1  – Build the flat that will go under the main display case. 12 sections of DPM featuring a closed warehouse with cathedral windows. 2 – Install the engine house building, the middle sanding and fuel racks. Add the tracks in and around the engine building and wire them in. Build the panel to control the area (this is easy). Paint the surrounding wood top in that area. 3 – add the fueling racks by the oil tank tracks. 4 – Add the Mi-Jack Kits (need to build two of them). 5 – Make the skirting that will go around the lower level to hide what is under the layout. I may use black outside ground cloth and add Velcro to it to save on going out to buy actual cloth material. If I have time, add the rest of the subway line to go over to the Amtrak Station, even if it’s not running, it would be in place…

Fast forward to today, and some things have been worked on. The engine house is in its final position and the tracks need to be put in place that lead to the turntable. The way they will line up will look something like this:

I decided to tackle the auto rack yard as its a major area on the railroad. I had the Walthers Distribution kit sitting on the shelf for a long time and finally put my mind to it. The auto unloaders needed to be painted. They come in a light blue, but photos and visuals that I have seen show it in yellow, so that's what I did. Also added the guard shack and office to the area.

Another area that I wanted to work on is the peninsula where I have the Three Amigos warehouse and the tank cars. I got to thinking about the oil tank I had there. Started to look at the tank cars I had and really didn’t see many oil tank cars. I have corn syrup cars by Cargill, vegetable tank cars, LPG tank cars and more. I had a nice supply of the LPG tank cars so I picked up the kit to add some LPG tanks to the railroad on the peninsula. Then I started thinking if this would be prototypical in the real world. So I reached out to my friend here, NJ John, as well as my friend Steve. We tossed it around and it could be prototypical. The LPG tanks could supply gas to heat the Three Amigos Warehouse, according to Steve. Last Thursday I went up to the hobby shop and NJ John was there. We talked about it with a couple other guys there as I told them I wanted to put a barrier, like they have on the highways to protect the tank cars and the warehouse. They do make concrete walls in HO scale, but I wanted to see if I could make it out of wood. The answer was YES! 


I bought some balsa wood 3/16” thick by 2” high by 36” long. I cut the balsa wood down to 10’ HO scale height. Also bought some 3/16” strips and cut them to fit on the wood every 2” to show the concrete wall is built in sections. 

Once cut, I gave it a coat of gray primer. 

Now dried, this gave me an idea on how it would look. However, the gray primer still shows the wood lines and it’s really not looking realistic. The guys at the hobby shop said to get a textured spray paint in an ivory/tan color or close to it and give it a coat, possibly two. Home Depot is my friend and I know that store eyes closed. Found some paint and here’s the result.

I think it came out great. The ends need to be touched up, just not sure if I can. Also, the wood is slightly warped so it will need to be glued down. Now that I have the separation, I can put a road for trucks to come in and out of the area. Also painted the cork the dark gray. Now to add some piping on the ground and finish building the propane tanks, which I started.

Other than adding the pipes, this area looks 50 times better.

Still need to tackle other items on the list. We head out in less than a week for a vacation with my brother and his family, as well as a wedding in central Florida. Then back home with less than 2 months to go. 

More updates to follow as they happen!