John's Alaska Railroad HO Scale Layout

February 3, 2021

Tonight Rick brings in wooden strips he made at home from a 2"x4" board and cuts them to length. He will use these as supports for the existing foam board on the north and east walls.	Crawling under the table he screws these strips to the underside of the plywood sheet. These cantilevered strips are all that is necessary to support the weight of the foam board.	The foam board is still too wide in places and must be trimmed with the hot wire cutter. Finally, everything fits into place.

Max, our construction foreman, provides the necessary supervision to ensure all tasks are carried out properly. The only time he is not on site is when food wrappers are rustling in the kitchen.	Continuing to document the electrical components of the layout Rick spends some time on his back under the tables locating terminal blocks and adding them to our main electrical diagram.	Rick spends the remaining time experiencing the joy of running trains. He tries a variety of passenger cars and finds a three axel baggage car is unable to negotiate even a 38-inch radius curve. No amount of tweaking fixes the problem.

While running a passenger car set Rick finds one of the McKinley Explorer railcars derails when backing up. Upon closer inspection he finds a coupler box component pushing the air hose into the ties. He will take this car home and make the necessary modifications.	At the beginning of the week Ted installed the remaining backdrop on the east wall and began the final segment along the south wall. Due to a planning error on my part the south wall backdrop will be two inches lower than the east wall. Hopefully, a future mountain will cover up this error.	This panoramic photo shows the outer backdrop as well as the inner scenic backdrop.

February 10, 2021

Ted stopped by on Sunday to finish the installation of the outer wall backdrop. Although the south wall is a 16-foot straight run he found it to be a very challenging installation for a variety of reasons. Additionally, I decided that he should cover two of the cold air returns, but cut a hole for the third one. Eventually, my artist will paint the cold air return cover with matching sky and clouds.	Ted installs the top mounting frame. Crawling numerous times under the train table and through the L-girder opening proves to be quite the workout. Now all that remains is the installation of the end (vertical) frame as well as framework near the "smooth as glass" curve. Eventually, all frames will be painted to match the wall color.	This is a panorama view of the train room. I wanted to capture all the newly installed outer wall backdrop. I apologize for jarring the camera during the capture. This resulted in the top wooden framing appearing jagged as well as gaps in the track at the bottom of the photo.

On Tuesday I cut existing pieces of foam board with the hot wire cutter to a commodate the bottom frame of the backdrop. Ah, the joy of melting foam board fumes!	The arrows show the boards that required trimming. To avoid gaps I did a series of repeated "trim, fit and trim again" dances each of which required extended reaching and releasing the board by popping it from underneath.	When train night finally rolled around Terry surprises us with a fun Valentine's dinner complete with red plates, napkins and cookware. She serves up spaghetti, homemade bread, red Jell-O hearts and a large heart shaped chocolate cookie. Jackie brings salad bar and a beautiful bouquet of flowers.

John spends part of the evening working on the installation of the foam board which will accommodate a future large mountain. Fortunately, there is some painted foam board left over from some track modifications. We never throw anything away as it potentially could take on new life elsewhere on the layout.	Rick makes some measurements to the Whittier barge area and thinks we will be seeing it sometime soon. He spends the rest of the evening running trains and looking for ankle biters. If you watch the video closely at the end you will see a Princess car derail. What in the world caused this?

February 17, 2021

The scenery on the southeastern section of the layout has largely remained untouched. Tonight Rick installs the supports for the mountain that will reside here. First, he installs a wooden support for the existing foam board section at the southern portal.	Now he begins working on the mountain support table at the southern end of Usibelli Coal mine. This table will be comprised of a small support arm and two risers. First, he installs the support arm by mounting it to the track plywood support arm.	Next, he installs the support riser for the eastern end of the plywood table. This riser is mounted with a single screw to the L-girder framework.

The second riser is installed. A small block of wood is attached and the table is screwed into it for stability.	Here is the finished table. Now John can begin building the second mountain. It will rest on the plywood table, corner foam board (shown above) and the joist located at the southern portal.	As a final step Rick cuts off the exposed screw of the wooden support near the southern portal.

February 24, 2021

On Monday David continued painting and completed the sky portion on both sides of the inner scenery backdrop. As an added bonus we had fun swapping life philosophies, music interests and literature.	This photo shows David has finished sky and clouds on the outside of the inner scenery backdrop and the sky on the inside of the backdrop.	Now David begins work on the clouds of the inside of the backdrop. He expressed interest on beginning early next Monday so he can "power through" and finish all the clouds.

The Clayton Alaska Railroad suffers from sun kinks (rail expansion) just like our prototype up north. This caused kinks at the rail joiners at three curved locations. First, Rick uses a putty knife to loosen the paint cementing the ties to the cork road bed. Next, he removes the solder at the joints and pulls the track nails. Finally, he straightens the rails, drives new track nails and re-solders the joints.	Shown here the the third and final fix. We will continue to monitor the rails and if kinks reappear then expansion joints will be added.	John continues to work on the second mountain. He added another layer of foam board at the western mountain support base.

Eighteen years ago Pat and Casey Durand made an "Alaska Tree Making Kit for Dummies" for me. The contents inside the box was padded and survived years of relocation. I reread his instructions (1, 2) and plan on igniting a tree production process.	These trees are made from strands of Bumpy Chenille purchased from local craft stores. A friend of mine has volunteered to work on trees like these in his home.	Our three axle baggage car refuses to remain on the railway curves. Rick has tried just about everything to beat these rascal's antics without success. Finally, I purchased two axle trucks. Ricks installs them and the test runs show no derailments.

Ted stopped by on Friday to work on the backdrop framing. By my request he added an additional framing section at the "Smooth as Glass" curve. He still needs to add a piece perpendicular to the bottom of this one to finish the framing.	He also added an end framing section at the western end of the backdrop. I am so thrilled with the entire exterior wall framing project. Indeed it was along time coming!

Feel free to contact me at john@alaskarails.org
Page created 9/4/17 and last updated 3/4/21