Adding a staging yard

My original track plan included additional sections for the harbor town of Tennant's Harbor (now spelled Tenants Harbor) and a quarry.  Since I won't get around to building those sections for a while (if ever!), I added a four-track staging yard to allow me to run trains in and out of Thomaston. One track will represent the quarry, two will be reserved for Tennant's Harbor, and the fourth will be an escape track to allow locomotives to run around their trains.  The railbus gets its own cassette so that I don't have to dedicate an entire track to it.

I used Kato N scale unitrack so the tracks can be easily reconfigured in the future.  The unitrack is code 80 which matches the Peco track used on the rest of the layout, so I simply soldered a short piece of unitrack to the adjoining flextrack and then connected the staging yard to that piece.  All of my locos and rolling stock handle the #6 turnouts without problems, and the turnouts are power-routing so electricity is only fed to one track at a time.  At some point I may add an electrical control panel but for now I just operate the turnouts manually.

The staging yard runs in front of a window well so there is a fence on both sides to prevent accidents.  At the far end there is a unitrack plate girder bridge that serves as a cassette to turn locomotives.  The unitrack joiners make it easy to align it with the staging tracks.  

The tracks are laid on 1/8" cork that ends just short of the cassette.  There is a sheet of white styrene under the cassette that shims it to match the staging tracks and also makes it easier to see what you're doing as you move the cassette between tracks.  

Lighting for the freight house

The freight house will have both exterior and interior lighting: an exterior light over the entry door and two overhead lamps inside.  For the exterior light, I used a gooseneck lamp from Woodland Scenics' "Just Plug" series of lighting fixtures. The "Just Plug" system includes a base station that controls the current to each light, and the fixtures have plugs that plug directly into the base station.  Since I don't actually use the "Just Plug" system, I cut off the plug and wired in a 1000 ohm resistor to adapt it to my variable-voltage lighting bus. Here it is hooked up to a 9V battery:

For the interior lighting I used a couple of HO scale spotlights purchased from a Chinese company, also with 1K resistors. Since these lights gave a cool white light, I colored the lenses with a yellow sharpie to warm them up.  When I added lighting to my station I used theatrical lighting filters to adjust the color temperature, but the sharpie is a lot easier!  

In both photos you can see that I'm using yellow/black for the lighting wiring to distinguish it from the track wiring (black/red for the blocks and blue and white for the two cab busses). 

Freight house update

It's hard to believe it's been almost three years since I started the freight house kit from Bollinger Edgerly Scale Trains (see previous post here), but I've been making some progress on it over the past couple of weeks.  Since the building will have lighting, I first installed a floor and added some interior details, including a few piles of crates and barrels from Bar Mills Scale Model Works, a pile of timbers, and a somewhat crude stack of sardine crates carved out of a pine block.

The crates are supposed to be from a cannery at the other end of the line, and they actually have decals on the front that read (note the old spelling of Tenants Harbor):

4 DOZ. TINS – MAINE SARDINES

WEIGHT 10 – OZ. EACH

PENOBSCOT CANNING

TENNANT’S HARBOR ME

Or at least that's what they are supposed to say... My home printer doesn't have anywhere close to the resolution necessary to print the tiny lettering, but they add texture and it was interesting to research what typical sardine crates would have looked like.  Here's how they look through the door, using a flashlight to mimic interior lighting:

The loading dock has over 200 individual pieces but my mini chop saw made quick work of cutting them. The stringers and decking were assembled using a jig to keep everything square.

After installing the legs and bracing I test fit the structure and loading dock sections on the layout, with a narrow gauge flat car and standard gauge boxcar to check heights and clearances. The freight house will sit on a slope, so the timber piers supporting the freight house will need to be 1/4" longer in the back. 

In addition to the structure piers, lighting and roof, there are still a few trim pieces to be installed. It's been a fun kit to assemble so far and it should look good sitting between the station and the transfer crane.