John's Alaska Railroad HO Scale Layout

January 20, 2021

COVID-19 struck our family in January and it shut down all work on the layout. I had three particularly bad nights in a row and was feeling pretty down. Terry got the mail and put a package in my lap. It could not have come at a better time. Many thanks to friend Steve Roberts for sending me this Triton Alaska State Trooper vehicle. During my 1986 Alaska trip I passed an unmarked state trooper's vehicle at a fairly high rate of speed. I got a ticket for $14 plus a courteous speech about slowing down and enjoy all that Alaska has to offer. This Triton vehicle will be seen somewhere on the layout pulling me over so I can get the cheapest speeding ticket of my life.	I absolutely love the new backdrop brother-in-law Ted has begun installing. If not for our COVID-19 break out, the work would have been complete. He will return this Sunday for another session on backdrop installation. Hopefully, he will get most of it installed. For now, I just love looking at the first completed section. If you've been following these weekly updates then you know what a long and hard process it's been.	The backdrop added a thickness which impacted the foam board inserted in the vicinity. I trimmed the foam board and put it back into place only to watch it fall to the floor. The previous work crew had cut the foam board a tad thick so it force fit against the wall. Next week Rick and I will install supports to hold the foam board in place.

Rick spends part of the evening finishing the tracing of the electrical work on the layout. With a meticulous flair, he traces every wire, electrical component, Tortoise switch machine and power supply and now has a complete understanding of all things electrical. If a failure takes place somewhere on the layout he will now be able to quickly trace and fix it.	Under the category of "a penny wise and a pound foolish" is the usage of turnouts from the old layout. We discover one of these turnouts in the Anchorage yard is bent out of gauge and causing derailments. Rick removes the old turnout with very little effort.	Installing the new turnout is another matter entirely. The Tortoise switch machine butts up against the L-girder frame work and makes it extremely difficult to position the switch as well as installing the spring wire. I can always gauge the difficulty of a project by the number of sighs I hear from Rick. Although this was a 14 sigh effort Rick finishes the installation successfully.

January 27, 2021

Ted stopped by on Sunday and worked on the outer scenery backdrop. The next section did not meet up perfectly due to a bad cut by Digital Fringe (see line above the locomotives). We will try to fill this in with caulk and paint later on.	Ted is a master of graphic arts and made a perfect cut and fit around both corners. The foam board was cut from the back side while leaving the print intact. This created a seamless surface wrapping around the corners.	Two thirds of the backdrop is now finished. Ted will return soon for the final installment.

Artist David returned on Monday and continued painting sky and clouds on the inner scenery backdrop. He completed the section at Portage depot.	Heading south David completed the sky and clouds through the entire Anchorage depot and APU areas. He will be taking next week off for a family commitment.	Rick was a whirlwind of activity. Over the week he put the small parts on the state trooper car, mounted springs in the truck of a caboose and updated the electrical diagrams. Tonight he works on Spook's corner and discovers the Princess rail car's truck was binding. The mounting screw was loosened a quarter turn and it now passes smoothly through the curve. Rick ran a seven car passenger train around the layout without problems.

Feel free to contact me at john@alaskarails.org
Page created 9/4/17 and last updated 2/4/21