Time trials at the Lumpy Potato Proving Grounds

I cobbled together a lumpy loop from two pieces of Atlas flex track, wired it up, and let'er rip. Ok, well, not let'er rip exactly, but carefully placed the loco on the track and carefully ran it with different speed settings. It runs quite well, but I need to get some rolling stock. I'm thinking a combine if I can find one of a suitable vintage.

And you're right, that is a giant screw head in that dome. I need to hide that.

0-6-0 search finds ?-4-0

I searched through some of E. L. Moore's photos of his Elizabeth Valley Railroad to see if there were any locos similar to the USRA 0-6-0. All the photos in this post are cropped and enhanced from larger ones.

I didn't find any exact matches, but I did see this little engine that I think is an 0-4-0.

Visually, it looks like a shorter version of the USRA 0-6-0, and they've both got a coal hauling sloped tender. It's interesting that the 0-4-0 has no markings even though he lettered other locos with EVRR.

That's a very tight corner between the water tower and the store.

This little thing was even used to push a giant snowplow.

Acquisition #1 for EVRR 2

The Bachmann USRA 0-6-0 loco arrived and Gord from accounting came down to check it out as soon as it was taken out of the box. Looks good. The next job is to build a little test track to give it a spin, then it's off to the paint shop.

Well, wikipedia tells me the USRA 0-6-0s were built in 1918 and 1919, a few years out from E. L. Moore's favourite era, 1890 to 1910 or thereabouts. I'll need to put my thinking cap on to see if there are any things I can do to visually back date it a bit.

The engineering department is still on the lookout for a small English or Welsh loco to appease the Rowland Emett faction at EVRR2.

Foundation and Floor

Before any building got started I went back and inked in the plan.

The sub-floor and foundation walls are cut from 0.060" styrene.The floor plan is laid out on the styrene such that the outside walls will wrap around it, not stand on it. The plan looks a little odd because the garage floor and the side door are at finished grade level and the main floor is about 2 1/2' above. I'll need to add in floors for the garage and side entrance.

The kitchen and bathroom floor - in the upper right - was cut from 0.020" styrene, scribed with a tile pattern and painted, and then glued in place. The hardwood floor is made from leftover basswood strips I had in my scrapbox. They are around a scale 6" to 8" wide, so they aren't representative of the width of the actual floor boards, but when stained up - using cedar stain I had leftover from staining the back fence last summer ! - they don't look too bad. The strips are also 0.020" thick, so they join quite nicely with the tile floor. All the strips are glued down with a gel superglue.

Building the floor was very pleasant and I'm looking forward to the next step: adding the internal partitions.

From the wayback machine

Before the house, the subdivision was a farmer's field.

Nothing sophisticated about the footing forms, just boards nailed together and staked in the right place.

But they did the job. Here they are filled with concrete.

The foundation walls were standard concrete blocks. 

Even with that black goop spread on for waterproofing, there were still leaks.

Clearing spring snow along the EVRR

Spring snows can be heavy and it looks like the EVRR crew has the plow out for one last time - hopefully ! - before the birds find their way back from up north.