KLR Video - Layout ver. July 26, 2015

Patience, this may take a few moments to load the file...sorry but the video is the sharpest but was done just to provide a general overview to go with the photos. Sorry no sound narration either.

ONRH&TS Convention Time

Here are additional photos of the layout, albeit a little later than my intended timeline

 Commonwealth Plywood

 View of the KLR upon entering the basement

 Pembroke aisle, featuring Commonwealth Plywood and Beaver Lumber

 Muskoka Timber module

 Main street of Pembroke under construction. A new station is coming in the upper left corner of the photo.

 Niagara Distribution module

 Rough in of the Unimin mine module. Future plans may see this module relocated to another spot.

 Nephton countryside

 Corner module

 ONR 1737 crossing Eels Creek module

 Farm #2 module

 Paper Mill (warehouse and engine shop under construction)

 Paper Mill module 1

Paper Mill module 2

View of the NW corner modules.  Farm in the foreground, Comenico Fertilizer and station on the left central part of photo.

 Quaker Oats & Canada Malting Company Ltd. corner

 Quaker Oats & Canada Malting Company Ltd.

Sherwin Williams Paint plant under construction

ONRH&TS Convention Preview - Part 2

Pembroke is the home of several forest products businesses, including Commonwealth Plywood, MacMillan Bathurst Inc (corrugated containers), and Temple Inland(Medium Density Fibreboard). While not all of these industries are modeled due to space limitations, the KLR does service the Commonwealth Plywood facility. 

Here we see a few scenes from the downtown area as well as the siding for Commonwealth Plywood.

 True North Climbing Center & Sam's Bike Shop - named for my sons

Commonwealth Plywood

Royal Bank and RedTail Paddle Co.

ONRH&TS Convention Preview Part 1

I opted to preview parts of the layout for convention attendees.  Here's the first of the businesses found on the KLR.

Quaker Oats Company of Canada Limited- The Quaker Oatsplant in Peterborough produces cases of cereal and cake mixes at their facility. Raw materials, including various grains, oils, are transported to the facility by rail. It is quite common to see the yard filled with colorful grain hoppers of different sizes. Finished goods are transported by boxcar or truck.

A Beaver Lumber yard is also present in the town of Pembroke. I think that the old style Thrall all-door box cars were a really interesting design of rolling stock, so I took some modeling license and incorporated a business which could readily use this type of car to transport finished goods. 

 

Another Forest Products Industry for the KLR

I'm fortunate that my job allows me to travel to some interesting locations within North America. So whenever I'm traveling, I can usually be found toting a camera in hopes of finding a train, or at the very least, an interesting business to photograph. If the business is supported by rail, so much the better.

While working in Shawinigan, Quebec (approximately 90 miles SW of Quebec City), I came across an interesting forest products company operating under the name of Commonwealth Plywood Company (or Compagnie Commonwealth Plywood Ltée for any French readers). A review of their business on the web suggested that they were producers of lumber, plywood, millwork and wood panels. Now I don’t know if they do all of the above at this location, but I thought the buildings would make a great addition to my layout for several reasons. First and foremost was that all the buildings were all painted a bright red color. As you look down the street, all you could see was a very red building.  Always interesting to bring something to stand out on the layout.  The other aspect that peaked my interest was that they had a relatively small wood yard, complete with sorting table, truck mounted log loader and plenty of log piles being sprayed with water. Lots of interesting details that I wanted to capture and would fit into the layout.  While the operation was not directly supported by rail at this location, I was able to find that their Pembroke, Ontario location does have rail present.  So a little prototypical transformation and the industry now finds a home on the KLR.

Most of the buildings were scratch built, using sheet styrene and left over parts from other structures. I wasn't trying to model the scene exactly as it is present in Shawinigan, rather, my focus was to get the essence of the industry and fill in with some of the site specific details. The main factor was to have another business that requires the railroad to get their goods to the customer.  The roof lines are drastically different in my model, and I also opted to add some truck bays for the large height building. Of course, the biggest change is that I added rail loading doors in the far building, when there are none at the Shawinigan complex. Although you can't see it in the photo, future plans will have the right side of the photo becoming the yard area. Maybe some time in the future I will decide to model it truer to the prototype. However, at this time, it's an active business for the KLR. Modeled Area

Prototype, Shawinigan, Quebec

Getting Organized

I've spent some time over the last several weeks getting the rails organized and ready for the ONRH&TS convention.  The biggest and best investment was purchasing about a dozen heavy duty plastic totes. I opted to use two sizes for the storage of rolling stock and other building and scenic supplies.  Large 18 to 35-gallon totes are used to store large amounts of rolling stock, with each type of rolling stock getting it's own tote. While this may seem like I have a large number of rolling stock, I really don't but you have to remember that rolling stock such as centerbeam flatcars, wood hoppers, etc require a large amount of room and typically can't stored on their ends.  I use the 3-10 gallon totes for those cars which I don't have many pieces.  While not an endorsement, I prefer the Rubbermaid Roughneck totes as they seem to be a heavier duty plastic material and not prone to cracking like some of the cheaper plastic totes available.  A small and large tote can easily be stacked beneath the layout, creating storage space and plenty of room to organize rolling stock for the next operating session.

I built shelving for my paint bottles and small objects in the process of being built or repaired.  This is located just above the work scape and includes a fluorescent lamp mounted to the base.  I also mounted a strip of corkboard immediately below so that I can tack up drawings or building plans, which can be quickly and easily referenced from the work bench.  Also very handy to get the small extras out of the way of the work surface.

The next item was taking some plastic electrical outlet boxes, cutting them to size so that they could be used to hold throttles.  I use the cheapest gang box, which costs about half a buck, and cut off all of the extra plastic which holds the nails, turn them on their side and cut a slot down the center and through to a portion of the base.  A little black spray paint and you have a great throttle holder which is easily screwed onto the layout fascia.