Great layouts start with great bench work! Great job. Personally, I've always stayed away from helixes in my designs; the thinking being that, for all the efforts toward prototype realism, helixes are jarringly unreal. They are, also, undeniably useful and pretty cool looking.
@coreybonsall in this case it's a frog at standard junction with a big gap. It's never caused a derailment, and I love the sound. So, no plan on "fixing" it! Thank you!
@CraftedJR metal wheels, yes everything on the layout has them, probably 90% are walthers metal wheel/ metal axle. Everything is kadee metal couplers - I like the whisker couplers the best but there are plenty of good old number 5's around. Weight... that's tricky. The roundhouse hoppers are insanely light. A lot of people have addressed this by gluing stuff into visible side of the car and.... I won't do that. I intend to run empties and I think it looks like hell. What I do is glue fine steel shot into the UNDERSIDE of the spaces created by the bays. This means I have a limit on how much I can add. So, they're weighted... more than stock, but still pretty light. They come in at about 3.2 Oz on average - the shot adds just shy of an Oz. The loads I make are also quite light, under an Oz- I don't want big differences in loaded vs unloaded trains operationally so the cars have to track good with our without the load. Since shooting this video I successfully added 10 more cars and pulled 60 cars up without issue. Realistically, trains will max out at 30ish in ops
I grew up next to the B&LE and used to have a similarly sized HO layout of the B&LE system. Your layout brings back a lot of good memories. Thank you for giving this railroad the attention it deserves!
Loved the entire tour. I think your presentation was very easy to follow with the system map, the prototype photos and the explanation of each point of interest on the layout. That layout is so massive, I don't know how you find the time but, with every update, you've made significant progress. I cannot wait for you to tackle the Allegheny River Bridge. It is SO MASSIVE while also being the most recognizable structure on the entire railroad!
Always enjoy your updates. For the ones that watched the entire video in one sitting (me) is not incredible. Your work is incredible! Thank you for the update.
Please, for the love of all that is Holy, if only behind the roundhouse, dirt, ballast. ground cover, a dead tree, a bush...anything!! Please! Sometime between now and 2030 would be super!! 😊 I'm sure you see your layout in your minds eye everytime your down there, as we do in the hobby. Doesn't mean I still don't want to see a smidge of scenery. That said, I've been watching this layout from almost the beginning and it will be a thing of legitimate tours, articles and accolades someday. Your knowledge of the B&LE, benchwork, trackwork, rolling stock and roster are some of the best in the hobby and weathered to near perfection. Long overdo and great layout update Ray!
@daviddryden8088 thanks man. Scenery will come in time. I'm one guy, and doing a marathon not a sprint. I think there will be some scenery in the next year.
I really enjoyed the tour, Ray. Interesting back-story to every scene on the layout, and tons of operational potential. Gotta Love It! Good to hear that you're still teaching drum camp, too. Best wishes. . . . . . .Lawrence
I’m hoping to start my own basement build this year and I feel overwhelmed at the prospect. You work is so precise, clean and huge, How long did it take for you to get from an empty space to where you are now? Any advice for a person new to this hobby ?
I'm a little over 3 years in, starting with gutting what was there, and building all the walls, blacking out the ceiling, etc. I should do a "so you want to build a big layout" reflection video someday lol. Advice. Pick a railroad or region, and time frame to focus on. Let that drive your purchase decisions. It's easy to start buying stuff you like, and the next thing you know you have a small fortune in trains and can't piece together one train that looks like it belongs together. Other than that. It's a marathon not a sprint. The goal isn't to finish, it's to enjoy the process. Start small (this is my 5th layout build) and learn, make mistakes, try again. Good luck!!!
For one guy, u really have done so much. If you need scenery and color guy, it would be fun to help. Not sure what you do for work, but must be good seeing there's a bit of coin involved with proje t like this. Great layout bro. P.j. signs.
Having a scenery guy... sounds mafia and I love it. Lol! I'm an manufacturing engineer, started as a tool & die maker. Got my journeyman papers in 2001. You're not wrong, there's nothing cheap here. I am pretty proud of how hard I deal hound though, the trick is to not be in a hurry to get anything and waiting for killer deals to show up. It's a hobby of its own lol.
Very cool tribute to Daylight Dave and BACV! I miss him too, his humour and the experience and knowledge of 1:1 railroading he was sharing with all of us...
Sure miss Daylight Dave, and the box car with his name is sweeeet. That's a very cool and large layout. Thanks for sharing Now to go watch one of Dave's video 🤠
Erie had trackage rights on the Bessemer from BK to XN. And of course a significant interchange at Shenango. The B&O at Butler was another major interchange, but more so later on.
@@bessemerlakeerieinhoscale6061 "From 1906 until the late 1930s, Erie trains were granted overhead trackage rights on the B&LE Meadville Branch from French Creek south to Meadville Junction, then south on the B&LE mainline through Greenville to Shenango, a distance of 32 miles. In later years, the Erie and EL would use this route when necessary to detour trains, such as during the 1966 installation of welded rail on this section of the EL," page 34 of the Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad in Color.
Watch the whole video and never got bored, i absolutly love this layout, the size of it, the plan it has, including so much, taking personal libertys to add in industry, to add scenes that otherwise wouldnt be possable, i love how openly realistic the whole layout is! I also really like the attention to detail you put into the locomotives to get them as correct as can be, for example the 3d printed smoke box cover, also how is the project of the bigger steam engines coming along? With the brass boiler and cab on a BLI drive? Also love the MARKS caboose's being added to the rolling stock roster, aswell as the factory on the bottom level, that is awesome, and the daylight tribute car is really neat aswell! Absolutly love following this layout, have for a year and a half and enjoyed every single video, cannot wait for fall to roll around! And last but not least, sorry for the wall of text 😂 Have a good one man and good luck on your travels!
I have not started work on my 2 10 4 drives. I need to. I just know it's going to take a lot of time, and there's just other things to focus on. Still. I need to get to that one.
Nice catch! Those hoppers are really clean. Hardly any Graffiti. They must not sit around too much. Also, I wish they could remove the CN lettering on the engines and replace it with the Bessie logo. Ah well.
I had a guy at my train club that had this exact problem. Our club uses Digitrax. What I did to fix it was to turn off DC mode. The best way to do that I have found is to use JMRI and read the page with the decoder address on it. Once done, change the setting to NMRA only which turns off DC. Export the changed cv's to a text file. Go back in JMRI or any application that will allow programming on the main. Change the cv's listed in the text file to the values listed with programming on the main. Once done the issue seems to disappear. Programming on the main prevents the BLI decoder from getting messed up which requires a factory reset.
4:34 Hey Ray me and my boy were in Albion Yard since 6:30 am. we were at RX waiting, and we were trying to catch the NB. I missed it by 20 min long wait for the south bound!
