And fascia photos, plus a little wiring

And, at long last, here's some photos of the painted fascia. The layout still in major construction stage, so it's messy! The paint was done using Behr paints, primed with a tinted good-quality primer, and then 2-3 coats of semi-gloss interior latex, in Windsor Moor, which is a dark green. I picked it because it's dark enough to not call attention to itself, but isn't black, and seems to blend well w/ planned scenery colors. Behr is available from Home Depot.

I was pretty pleased w/ the results. I picked the semi-gloss because I wanted something tough, that wouldn't easily scratch, scuff, or get marked up.

I plan to add car-card holders, in the same color, but that's on hold until wiring is further along.













Here's a kinda poor picture of the current wiring for Durango. You can see the BD8 from The Signaling Solution installed here. This is one of a number of wiring panels, one per town. This is hinged at the top, and swings up and out of the way when I'm not working on it.

Each panel has bus feeds for track and other power (upper left corner), then feeds those circuits out to blocks and other circuits for that area of the layout.

Signs & control panel grahics

Well - time for a few photos. Here's some shots of the signs and control panel graphics I've added. I finally got one of my BD8 detector boards wired as well, and you can see a couple of the blue LEDs I'm using in the panels, for detection of trains on hidden track.

Back to wiring

With signage complete now, I'm back to wiring. I've added some LED lights about the track-power kill switches scattered around the layout, for operators to more easily know where they're located (hidden below the fascia edge). With my control system, having kill switches has always been helpful to me.

I'm also beginning to wiring by BD8 detector cards, now that I've got panel graphics and can start installing the occupancy LEDs and perhaps signals (both of which are needed if guest operators are going to start running trains).

Scenery is still a ways off... oh well. But, I'm also building freight cars when I need a break from wiring, and I've added two more Accurail hoppers this week - custom-lettered for my version of the RGS.

Signs and panels installed!

I worked on-and-off the last several weeks drafting signage and control panel graphics, and today finished installing them.

After searching around and trying a number of freeware graphics programs, I finally settled on using PowerPoint. Eventually, I'll dig out the camera and post some photos.

To finish them, I went ti Kinko's and had them create color printouts on cardstock (black background with mostly white graphics, and color highlights), then laminated onto this stuff that's laminate on one side, but adhesive on the other; Kinko's used it themselves for some of their keyboard and phone notes. Works great, so far anyway.

The wiring is progressing

Wiring wiring wiring... sometimes it seems it'll never end! But, I completed all the control jacks, so trains can be locally controlled from any of the towns now. I suppose wiring in block detectors will be the next task, since it would be hard for multiple operators to use the layout w/o knowing if the hidden tracks are occupied or now.

Actually creating the bloc indicators, though, means I will really have to get to work on drafting the control panels. I have done lots of CAD work in the past, but for some reason I haven't yet come up with a good graphic design or layout for controls panels. It should be easy, right? I suppose part of the issue is that I'm not sure how much information to include, whether to create a full track diagram at each town (which I figure would be helpful for other operators), or what.

Stay tuned, I guess!