Second Level Progress and Diagram

The progress on the second level has been slower than I wish. My wife always reminds me that things always take longer than you anticipate.


I have been laying track and adding feeder wire to the track. I have been working on frogs and points. I have wired a couple Tortoise slow motion turnout motors. Still lots to do.


Here is a labeled layout diagram of the second level.















I am working on the main track and the sidings first. The wye at Surf will be next followed by tracks into Lompoc and then on to White Hills.


I will try to post every couple of weeks or when something substantial is completed.

First Train in the Helix

I have started laying track on the second level. I had hoped to have all the second level track in by last Tuesday when my friends from the South Coast Society of Model Engineers came over, but as my wife continues to tell me, things take a lot longer than I think they will.

I did manage to get track in both the inner and outer helices. I used flex track for both. In the inner helix it is code 100 and is designed to take trains from the west staging yard which is also code 100, to the upper level (at this point level two). As it exits the track reverts to code 83 for the visible section of the layout. On the outer helix I used code 83 flex track connecting the code 83 main at La Patera on the first level to the code 83 main at Surf on the second level.

Michael Lopes has been assisting me in some of the construction and helped with the inner helix. We connected the flex track with track joiners and then soldered the track. The track was slid around the helix but as we did so the movable rail kept moving and would come up against the plastic ties causing distortion. I tried removing the ties but in the end the large sections of tie-less flex track was out of gauge. The track was trimed and resoldered. Then I tested the track with a good rolling hopper which eventually made it all the way down.

I wired the track to the power bus and checked voltage with a voltmeter and everything looked good. So I tried with a locomotive and made it up and down. Then the loco pulled one 85 foot Amtrak Superliner car up and down to check clearance. The track is still not secured but everything cleared easily both vertically and horizontally.

As mentioned above I did lay in some track exiting the outer helix above and the inner helix at Surf. Here are a couple photos.

The bottom of each helix has already been attached to the first level and functions well.

So when the SCSME crew came over they got to see the progress but we still did not get to run all the way across the second level. But Michael brought an Amtrak F59PHI in Pacific Surfliner colors as well as a few Superliner cars. He assembled his train of 6 superliner cars in the west Staging and ran it all the way up the helix and out onto the second level until he hit track I had not yet powered. We slid the train back just enough to pick up power and reversed it down the helix.

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Here is a photo of Michael and the first train in the helix.

I really appreciate the help that Michael has given me. It is encouraging to have teenagers interested and active in our wonderful hobby and Michael is just one of a long history of junior members in the South Coast Society of Model Engineers. Their participation ensures the model railroad hobby's future.

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Back to work laying track.

Clean-up and Procrastination

I have started laying track in the helices and am about to lay down Central Valley tie strips for the main, sidings and branch line for the second level. Between all these there is about three hundred feet of track and numerous turnouts. When I think about it, I am overwhelmed and fall into the mode of procrastination.

I attack a couple of small tasks that need to be completed. The track from Lompoc to White Hills climbs out on a steep grade. The roadbed needs to be supported above the flat homosote/plywood sandwich that will become Lompoc. I cut supports to go under the spline roadbed. They still need to be glued in place.

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I turn to the White Hills shelf which is also a homosote/plywood sandwich. The shelf is reasonably level along its length but needs some shims to make the shelf level front to back. It turned out that a 1/4 inch shim was perfect, so I cut some small pieces of left over roadbed masonite strips for the shims. Putting the shims in place, I drilled and screwed the shelf into place through the shelf brackets directly into the plywood. Now the shelf is quite solid and level all directions. I will need some grade at the back of the mine but that will come later.

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I have finished the major constuction tasks of the second level and the rest of the tasks -tracklaying, scenery, structures, operations aids - are more detailed and less "dirty". Because of this I spent a day procrastinating progressing by cleaning up the residual "mess" which was produced during the second level construction. I had put newspapers down on the first level to protect against some of the debris that is created during the construction of the walls, painting the walls, installing the supports and the roadbed before all the detail work can begin. I dragged out my wet/dry vac and vacuumed up the dust from the roadbed, the supports, the stiffeners and other horizontal surfaces. I put away tools and removed all the extraneous material that had accumulated over the extended period of construction.

Once the upper level was vacuumed, and the newspapers were carefully removed, there was still some dust on the first level. I carefully used the vacuum on the first level. Then I slowly worked my way all the way around the layout room sweeping the floor of everything that had managed to get all the way down. I swept the foam pads and reinstalled a few that had been removed for the duration of the construction.

Another post-construction need was the re-installation of the curtains below the fascia. Several of the velcro fasteners had come off the back side of the fascia. The 1/8 inch masonite I use is smooth on one side and rough on the other. I put the smooth side out and paint it. The back side does not provide for good adhesion of the adhesive that comes on the velcro strips. As a result they fall off the back of the fascia. That is not to say that the adhesive does not work. As luck would have it, many of the velcro strips that were attached to the fascia found their way to the curtain material itself and stuck with a vengence. The curtain is just black weed block and does not do well when the errant velcro strips are removed from its surface. I tried to be careful but in quite a few cases holes were created in the curtains. To reattach the velcro strips to the fascia, I used a hot glue gun, using yellow hot glue. It seems to have worked fine but time will be the ultimate judge.

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Double track and second level

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Santa Barbara on the left, west staging on the right with Lompoc above

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Surf above and Carpinteria below

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White Hills above and east staging below on the left and Goleta siding below and Devon siding above on the right

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The last minor job, I completed was attaching the new second level power bus to the command station. I did so and checked the voltage and got a good reading.

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So much for procrastination. The layout looks more attractive but I need to get the track down so that we can start running trains again.