In the first week of December 2023, I finished construction and scenery for the layout—all the messy work—and transported the layout downstairs to its permanent home.

The layout had been in the garage since July where I did all the messy jobs like Styrofoam cutting, wood cutting and dirty scenery work. The layout’s permanent home is on a carpet remnant in the basement of our rented home, so I did all the dirty work outside where I didn’t have to worry about messing up the floor. I use real coal and real dirt for a lot of the scenery and boy is it dirty. I think it looks great but it gets everything filthy, especially the coal dust.

The first thing I had to finish was painting and reinstalling the backdrop. I painted the backdrop with Valspar Clear Blue Sky, Eggshell, which I’ve had on hand since 2012. I used the same paint for my original Ackley layout. It’s a neutral blue color suitable as a morning sky color.

Next I painted and reinstalled most of the front fascia. The black color used is paint I bought in Germany, at OBI, the German sorta-equivalent of Home Depot. The most important part of the paint is the RAL number which is 9005. RAL is an international paint code that allows a painter to match any color at any participating outlet. However I’m sure we can find a close-enough match at any Lowes or paint store. I use satin finish by the way.

Once all that was complete and the layout was vacuumed clean, my wife and I carried it down to the basement to its new home. The staircase to the basement is a “180-degree switchback style” (yes, that’s a real term) so we had to bob-and-weave the layout all the way down. Good thing I made it with lightweight materials. If that thing weighed 150 pounds we could’ve never got it down those stairs.

Below, everything is in place now, but there’s a lot of finishing work to do, reinstalling more fascia, reinstalling lights, routing wiring, and cleaning up surfaces. The traverse table was attached and then levelled.

The lights I used are 3200 Lumen LED shop lights I got at Menards. They were inexpensive and at 3200 lumens they’re plenty bright. I bought two of them and wired them together behind the top fascia.

Below. Here’s the top fascia installed and painted. The opening looks low but there’s plenty of room to reach in to uncouple cars. In a pinch you can reach through the top as well.

My buddy Clark Propst said the top fascia makes the layout look like a fishbowl. Well…yeah, I guess it kinda does…

The traverse table is wired and levelled. All Systems Are Go.

Finally, when all the installation work was done, I cleaned the track, plugged in the NCE and got an engine running. Everything worked well. The layout is just one electrical block and wiring is simple, so things run reliably and there’s not too much crazy stuff like wyes or three-way turnouts to troubleshoot.

Lights and power on…

…and now to set up staging for ops. Loaded coal cars go to Hermitage Coal Co. Box cars go to the grocery warehouse, the team track and Alcatraz Paint & Varnish. The reefer goes to the brewery (not yet built). The tank car goes to Southern Fuel & Oil (not yet built). The covered hopper and gravel car goes to the cinder block plant. The engine is a Stewart VO-1000 leased from my friend John Moenius.

My son Jacob, 22, and youngest daughter Kirsten, 17, ran trains for a short while.

My oldest daughter Kay, 19, came down the next day to run the engine for a while. The girls seem to like running trains more than my son. They’re patient.

Below, Kirsten is using what she calls the “power stick” which is her term for the uncoupling tool. When she came down with Kay, the first thing she asked me was “Dad, where’s the power stick?” I said “The what?” I guess I still have a lot to learn about my own hobby.

I celebrated our first informal ops with a good beer my son brought from London. He went to a Bao restaurant in the small London Chinatown district and brought this beer back for me. Yes, it was terrific. It has one of the best labels out there too!

I hope you all have a productive weekend. – John G