NTS&B Bigville Passenger Access

This is the first progress on the layout this year.  Had my main shoulder operated on about a month ago and have been working with only 1 hand, so this took about a month instead of a couple days.  Had to adjust some of the track for clearances, which was really fun with 1 good arm.

The overhead lights under Bigville are made from an LED Christmas light string.  When I get use of my other arm, I may drop them down an inch or so, so that the electrical stuff behind them is not so visible. The stairs were from an overhead pedestrian bridge that was in pieces that I purchased a few years ago.

 View of Bigville City hall and passenger access

 Close up of stairs and lights.

 Night Scene with Williams Southern Crescent Limited at the station.

NTS&B Catastrophy narrowly averted

The local news helicopter was busily taking pictures of the work being done on the City Hall air conditioning unit, when it drifted too close to the work zone and got tangled up in the crane cables.  The weight of the helicopter almost caused the crane to topple over.  Fortunately the boom on the crane ended up resting on City hall and even though it was precariously balanced on only 2 wheels, the crane manged to hold the helicopter while rescue workers struggled under the highly dangerous  conditions.   Miraculously, no injuries were reported.

NTS&B New Helicopter Car

My trusty PicooZ Helicopter that my son got me years ago gave up the ghost, so I decided to create a new one this year.  This time, I started out with a $15 Propel Chrome Flyer from JC Penny's.  The helicopter runs way too fast, so I added some wait on the tail end.  Even with that, when I put in the front wheel stop like the previous flat car version, the helicopter wanted to stand on its nose during taking off instead of leaving the car.  I ended up putting stops in from of the wheels in the center section, which solved the problem.  I used carpenter glue on all of the stacked up 'ties', then hot glued them to the car. Here are some pictures of the old and new versions in case you want to build your own:

 Original version. Stops in front of helicopter.

New version. Stops in back of helicopter. Rest of design about the same as the original. The rubber band on tail is to keep the nose up a little to slow it down.  Still seems trickier to fly than original.

Front view

The 2 Helicopter cars together.

NTS&B Merry Christmas 2013

Another year has passed, and the layout has not progressed much since October. I'd like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and Happy and safe New Years.  This year we went to Tenn to see the kids.  Instead of seeing Christmas lights we went ice skating and I messed up my shoulder, so the layout will not progress for a while.

Every year I send out a bunch of Christmas cards to let old friends know we still think of them.  As such, we get a bunch of cards back.   I hate to just put the cards in a box, so a couple years ago I came up with an idea to make a 'tree' to display them and enjoy them longer.  The tree is made up of 2 1x2's painted green, with string ran between the sides to hang the cards on.  There is a bolt at the top, so the tree can be folded up for storage.  Also, had to complete it by adding an angel.

NTS&B Roaming Trains

As part of assisting on the North Atlanta O Gauge RR Club Piedmont Pilgrimage at Hobby Town, we were requested to bring some trains to run.  Below are a couple pictures on the trains I brought:

MTH RK 8715 CSX SD60M  Loco pulling my Ace HW Tank and HT Box Cars

 Williams Amtrak EMD FO45s Pulling Superliner Passenger Cars

2026 Set Circa 1951-1953 (Actually being pulled by 2037 to preserve 2026).

NTS&B Forth Piedmont Pilgrimage Open House And Bigville Shaping Up

My forth Piedmont Pilgrimage turned out to be just as enjoyable as my other ones.  I had 4 full time helpers (Roger & Sherry, Bob P, and Les) , and a couple club members came over.  All told, I had 50 people including ourselves, which is smaller than last year, but still a good steady crowd.  We had a couple repeats from last year.  The interesting thing this year was that there were 2 new O Gauge layouts on the tour and both owners said that they were inspired by my layout go build ones of their own.

Of course the week before, I worked my tail off trying to get last minute finishing touches in, mainly on Bigville City Hall and lighting.   Completed adding traffic lights, street lights, ground lights, and building lights, as well as running main control and local control buttons.  Here are a couple pictures of Bigville and City Hall.  City hall has had an air conditioning unit fail, so Traffic is backed up while they use a crane to install a new unit.  The flag lighted on the front of City Hall is courtesy of Jenn.

NTS&B City Hall Complete

When planning Bigville, I wanted a fairly large City Hall building.  I decided to use the Kenner's Morotized Girder & Panel and Bridge & Turnpike set form the mid 1960's, that I had recieved as a boy. The panels are quite brittle, so it would not withstand grandchildren playing with the set,  so putting it on the layout was the perfect solution to display it.  I was short a few parts to make the building I wanted, but a friend in the train club had a few extra pieces from a set he had recently disposed of.    The building is lit internally using 2 individual circuits of LEDS, on always on, the other switched on.  The grounds lights are old computer bulbs, that were scrapped in the 1980's.  The flag at the top front of the building was a $ Tree gift from my daughter, that is wired in and alternates colors.

Original Box

Back View

Side View

Front View

NTS&B Starting Year 7

Wow.  Its been 6 years ago since I started the non-Helix part of the layout. Last year saw a little more progress.  I extended the mainline yard and subway by 8 ft, and a 3x4 ft platform for Bigville. (with some help from a couple friends).    Bigville has started growing with the  NTS& B Tower, and under construction City Hall.  The new upper loop and bridge are about complete.  Part of the year was getting ready for the NMRA national convention, and now the next Piedmont Pilgrimage.

My hopes for next year is to complete an 8x10 expansion which will complete the foot print of the layout.   If I don't get started on that, I still have plenty of work to do on Bigville (last building, lighting, stairway), the Mainline Passenger Platforms, and scenery between the layers.

NTS&B Tower complete

Eventually has arrived (see previous post).  The NTS&B Tower is finally open for business.  Below are a few pictures of the finished product, and the initial paint masking.  The tower started out as a Plexiglas Cylinder that I picked up somewhere while in college.  Its first life in my possession was a lamp with Christmas lights in it.   Now its a 10 story building with an observation deck on top.   The original plexiglass made 6 stories, with various plastic deli containers making up the remaining.  Since the deli containers are very flimsy, I made an internal frame from some scrap Gargraves Track.   Lights are all LEDs from a Christmas string, with a 2K Resistor always on for dimmer night time viewing, and switchable 470 Ohms to add brightness during day.  Building is complete, so now all I have to do is run power to it, decorate around it, create and light 2 more buildings, add street, street lights and small park. add traffic lights, and add small construction scene back in and Bigville will be complete.

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NTS&B Tower

NTS&B Tower Observation Deck

NTS&B Night scene

Masking started out so vertical bars were painted first

The original masking removed, and replaced to pain horizontal bars. Materials-$3, Paint $5, Masking tape-$15 :)

NTS&B 2013 NMRA National Convention Open House

Made it through the National Model Railroad Association (NMRA) 2013 National convention.  Every one was very pleasant. and seemed to enjoy themselves as much as I did, and went much better than I anticipated.  Not sure I would do it again.  Was a lot of work for the small turnout on Sunday, and the short tour on Monday.

Sunday  was a walk-in open house.  Only had 19 people, which included Kathy & Me, 5 workers, 2 club members,  and 10 additional visitors (which was about what I expected).  Furthest traveled was a couple from Geneva, Switzerland.  Mostly we had a good play session. As usual, whenever we messed up, the visitors would show up.   After the tour, John L added some excitement with his (almost) high flying Rocket GG1.

Monday was an organized bus tour.   It arrived about 15 minutes early, which was even before the trains were running.   We had 32 people total, which included Kathy & me, 5 workers, and 25 visitors (the complete bus load).  Needless to say, it was 'slightly' crowded.  The tour stayed about an hours, which was 10 minutes longer than scheduled, but still left ahead of schedule.  Furthest traveled was from Australia, although I didn't get a chance to talk to them.  Here is a picture of the bus that pulled up outside the house on Monday.