I had minor arthroscopic knee surgery last Wednesday and took a few days off from work to recover. I was able to make some good progress on the layout during those days. Here’s an update.

Traverse Table

Here’s what the small, 7 x 18-inch Hermitage Road layout looks like today. At the far end, the dark square box is the entrance to the staging area.

In this photo, the traverse table tracks are mocked-up to see what’ll fit. The drawer slides are underneath the table, and extend out behind the table to allow the table to slide across all five tracks in either direction.

Below. After the table was built and aligned, I was able to lay track. First, the roadbed must be placed. Getting everything straight and lined up as perfect as possible is important since the all the tracks need to line up on each end of the table. After gluing the roadbed down I used switch locks to hold it in place.

Below. I laid the roadbed at the entrance end first. Then one-half of the roadbed was laid using a straight-edge. Before going any further, I waited a day and allowed the glue to dry, and then glued down the other half of the roadbed.

Below. In this photo, roadbed for three tracks has been laid. Using the 90-degree angle tool and the long straight-edge kept everything in proper alignment.

Below. All the tracks have to be spaced exactly the same so they will line up with the end extensions.

After all the track was laid, I wired up the table. Wiring was simple. I had to wire the front and end extensions, and each track, and that was it. I wired all the tracks together into a bundle and left enough slack in the bundle to allow the table to move. The track wires have quick connections so I can disconnect the table in just a minute if needed.

Below. One of my daughters came upstairs to give me a hard time.

The layout is now operational again, thanks to the Mr. Traverse Table. Below, you can see that the engine is powered up and we’re hard at work moving coal cars through the portal to Hermitage Coal Co.

If you look closely at the bottom of the photo you can see that the height of the table doesn’t quite match up with the end. See the difference in track height? That’s something that needs adjusting soon.

Milwaukee Road 713471…or is it 714142?

You may remember this car from a previous post. It is an old Sunshine Models car that I finished about a year ago. I used the salt weathering technique on the roof, but in this case was never quite satisfied with the look.

Finally, a last overhead view. I think the weathered running board turned out well against the darker roof.

I got a mystery box in the mail last week with my long-awaited Rapido PRR X31-class box cars!

The cars look terrific and they are a great improvement over the Bower models, which–despite the molded-on stuff–I always thought looked great too. I got one of each for now because I need to save my sheckles for X-3s, GLas, an SP single-sheathed car, and whatever else they can surprise us with.

The Pros, in my opinion: Overall appearance, color, lettering, brake gear, details like grabs, etc. The Cons: Trucks (they’re awful!), brake wheel, coupler box/draft gear (why can’t we have something with some detail???), #5 couplers. There’s also no bell crank on the B end, but I’ll have to research that to see what equipment the real cars had. As for replacement trucks, Bowser has a nice pair of PRR-specific coil-elliptical trucks that can be used to improve the models.

Below. Here’s a closeup of the B end on the auto car. It looks terrific. The PRRT&HS had a lot of say in the development of this model, in particular the paint color, and I trust their judgement.

May God richly bless you and your families during Thanksgiving. Don’t forget to give thanks! – John