That's Zac, still in his PJ's, with a hand on the gas, an eye on the train, just doing his Railroad thing.
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Introduction ...
Once upon a time, a long time ago, I called myself a Model Railroader. I joined a local Model Railroader club, built a large layout in my basement (it filled every available inch, and I had to crawl on hands and knees to get into the middle of it) bought subscriptions to both Model Railroad rags, participated in Mall Railroader Shows, spent more $$$ than I should have, and squandered more time then I like to admit cleaning my brass rails and adjusting KD couplers. (Hey ... I said it was a long time ago.) After a few years I stopped doing all that. Then a couple more years passed and one day, for no particular reason, I threw (literally) all my Railrod stuff into boxes, dismantled my layout and tossed most of it into the big green garbage container in the alley, and even ripped out and pitched most of my benchwork. I had a great time being a Model Railroder and don't regret even one hour or dime that I invested. But, I was through with all that. For a couple two or three decades I never even once called myself a Model Railroader. I'd outgrown it. Survived the addiction. Or so I had thought.
One day a while back, my lovely wife (Judy) looked at me and said, "Whatever happend to all those trains you had? I'll bet Zac (the Grandson) would like to see them." "Gosh," I answered "I dun'no. Packed up in boxes down it the basement most likely. Haven't seen 'em or thought of 'em for years." That conversation was a couple of years ago, but it got me to thinking. What follows it the result of that thinking.
The Plan (track and otherwise) was simple. Make an oval out of my old track, hook one of my old power supplies to the track, dig out a couple of my old engines and a few cars to pull around, and play with trains. Easy plan, but there was a draw back. What was left of my old bench work wasn't big enough for an oval, or even just a circle of 15" radius. Easy fix. Just get a 4' X 8' sheet of plywood, cut out an L shaped piece to nail down over my old bench work that was big enough. Then tack down an oval of track and play with trains. So that's what I did.
But the old brass track I had, not to mention the wheels and pick-ups on my old engines was just too dirty to run well. Worse, no matter which of my boxes I looked in I couldn't find my bottle of handy dandy track cleaner. Soooo ... off to the hobby store I went to buy some. They didn't have any and the kid working there didn't even know that they once made HO scale track with brass rails. He patiently explained that Nickle Silver track didn't need to be cleaned and that I should probably throw away all my dirty brass track and get some good track. So I did. Got a couple of switches too and enough for not only an oval but a passing track too. It worked fine and I played with trains. Life was good. Then it occured to me that Zac would probably get bored pretty quickly with just an oval and a passing track. The kid in the hobby store was happy to see me.
I bought enough switches and track for two more passing tracks and a small "fiddle" yard.
I also bought some cork, rail joiners, wire, nails, etc., etc. because I was going to need them. Oh yeah, I ordered a Thomas the Tank Engine, A Percy Engine, and a few cars for them to haul around. I knew Zac would like them and I was right. I think they are fun too.
About this time I figured there was going to be room, up close to the wall for some scenery. Great idea!! Zac could help build that too. Wasn't long before I had some wire frame made up and placed on the little layout for some serious track testing. I figured the most serious wrecks would happen inside the scenery back up against the wall ... and then there were the three powered turnouts under there to be considered as well. So I build the scenery sections, even the town, to be easily removed from the layout and just as easily replaced. Murphy's Law seems to be a major constant in my life and with Zac around is almost a sure thing.
This is the final track plan with the unfinished scenery modules in place. I rummaged around and found some old buildings and laid out a temporary town on a piece of scrap plywood. I figured to play with trains for awhile before finishing the mountains and the town. I wanted to see how the powered turnouts against the back of the layout would survive a few operating sessions with Zac.
I might make some mention of just exactly how Zac likes to operate. First he picks an engine, and sometimes but not always some cars, and puts them on the track. For a seven year old he does this very well. Small fingers, good eyes, steady hands, and all like that. Then he dumps the throttle to see how far around the track he can go before the train derails and crashes into something. If, after a few laps, the train doesn't crash and burn, Zac will slow the train down and start placing various objects close to the tracks. The idea here, I guess, is to see how close he can place them before the engine crashes into it. Zac is very good at this and sometimes is able to spin things off the layout without derailing the train. (I've tried this myself and it's harder to do than one might think.) Sooner or later things get placed directly on the tracks and the expected wreck is sometimes spectacular and sometimes not. It's all good. Zac and Grandpa both have a good time.
After several track testing and operating sessions is was time to move on and do some work on the scenery. I had no idea there even was such a thing as foam scenery (silly me) so I just mixed up some white glue and water, ripped up some newspaper, and turned Zac loose. He was a natural and before long we had converted all the wire mountains to paper and glue covered mountains.
At first Grandpa (me) supervised (hovered over) Zac as he dabbled for the first time into the wonderful world of paper mache'. It soon became obvious that Zac needed and wanted no supervision soooooo ... Grandpa (me) just got busy on his own mountain. Personally, I was pretty impressed that one so young as Zac could soak newpaper in gooey stuff and find just the best place on the wires to stick ... errr slap ... errr plaster ... errr artfully place said soggy mass. As I mentioned above Zac was a natural and seemed to enjoy the messy mountain making almost as much as Grandpa.
In a single afternoon Zac and I finished off the three mountain sections.
After the mountains dried we plastered the horozontal sections, with a thin coat of Plaster of Paris. Later, after it had dried Zac and I tried our hands at painting HO scale rock faces.
Turns out that Zac is a natural at painting rocks as well as slathering plaster and papering mountains. In the picture just below you can see the concentrated effort that Grandpa (me) uses to select the exact color I needed to achieve perfection in rock painting. You might also notice the relaxed, easy, almost zenlike technique Zac uses ... which is to randomly use all the colors available.
I carefully paint and Zac just slops paint everywhere. In the end it really doesn't seem to make much difference. Zac painted one of the sections all by himself while I painted the other two. The picture below doesn't represent the colors very well but I must report here that fully 80% of people who have viewed them up close and personal ... sigh ... pick Zac's painting as the most realistic and pleasing. Who knew that "Zen" stuff really worked?
The big grey rock on the corner of the layout is indeed a big, heavy, rock plucked right out of Grandma's garden. Heavy is the operative word for this particular rock as it holds down the warped corner of the plywood. Zac and I are still pondering whether or not we should paint it so it would not only be a rock, but look like one too.
There are many ways to aquire trees for a model train layout. Zac and I kind of like the "Dip and Sprinkle" method. At certain times of the year (I pick mine in the fall) veritable HO scale forrests can be found, at least in the Pacific Northwest, along almost every secondary road. In less then an hour, with no more then a pocket knife and a paper bag, it's possible to gather a couple hundred each of several species. Dipped into equal parts of white glue and water and then sprinkled with various colors and textures of ground foam and/or colored sawdust, these weeds are turned into fairly respectable HO Scale trees.
Zac is the master "sprinkler" and I (Grandpa) do the "dipping" and also act as the secondary sprinkler.
This is a small sample of the several hundred trees Zac and I "dipped & sprinkled" in a single afternoon. In fact most of the trees on the Z Z & G RR are a product of this D & S session.
Like most, if not all model Railroads, the ZZ&G is not finished. But we've got all the trackwork laid down and it all works fine. Just a one train at a time layout even though Zac has discovered that he can actually get 4 engines running all at once. Since all the engines run at different speeds this can get really exciting in a hurry.
We've got a lot of scenery in, including the trees that Zac and I made, and ground cover of one kind or another on most of the flat surfaces and mountains. There is still a lot more to do but for the time being "playing with trains" seems to be the order of the day. Even though these pictures just show Zac enjoying the layout I can honestly report that Grandpa spends more time than he cares to admit to playing with trains too.
The ZZ&G sports three different types of couplers and some really beat up motive and rolling stock. I thought about standardizing the couplers and then thought again and left them alone. Since Zac changes rolling stock quicker than a stripper sheds garments it really dosen't matter anyhow.
When I was in the hobby shop checking out N-Scale stuff, Grandma Judy bought some cows, pigs, horses, deer and such. She figured, correctly, that Zac would like them. I pretty much spread them out all over the Layout before Zac saw them. Didn't take Zac long to find them all and rearange each and every one. He especially likes the pigs.
The baby pigs are almost too small for my old eyes to see. I used tweasers to put them on the layout.
Zac doesn't bother with tweasers and such. Heck he doesn't even need reading glasses to see which side the legs are on.
Zac stays busy on the railrod. I have no clue what he's thinking most of the time and since he's having a good time it really dosen't matter. It's just my evil plan working out.
Zac, after extensive research and experimentation, has proclaimed this the fastest engine on the pike.
But his favorite is Percy I think as I see it on the mainline more often then any other engine. And why not because, as everyone already knows, Percy is a very useful engine.
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Well ... Thanks for visiting the ZZ&G ... it's been a lot of fun building it and playing with it. I'll put a link to some photos I've taken of the pike near the top just in case anyone is interested.
I think I'm going to play around with N-Scale stuff now. Actually I have to, because I can't rip out the ZZ&G until the Grandkids totally lose interest ... sooooooo ... all I have room for is a table top N-Scale pike.
hehe ... nothing at all down here ...
I just use this extra space to make editing up above easier
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