Building a Tunnel from a Chimney

First step cut a hole, then cut another hole. There you have it! A tunnel through a chimney! easy huh?

Well if you want to stop there that's your call BUT now you have a big gnarly hole that quite frankly looks pretty sucky. Guess we have to give it some sort of portal. But why stop there? We were planing on scenicing the whole railroad and a tunnel portal just sorta hang there on the side of the wall does look kinda silly. So I installed some Foam rockwork around it to give it some ZING. Yep that works but i still have this big gaping hole you can see into an d it doesn't look like a tunnel. Time to pull out those model mags again. Eureka they tell me I need a tunnel liner! But how to put in a tunnel liner on the other side of a wall? I can barely put my arm in to retrieve a lost car let alone do any actual work inside? Hum maybe if I bribe my 7 year old son with candy he can install the liner. No that wont work he's too short to even reach into the tunnel when standing on the scaffolding. guess i could form a 2 part liner. after all you can only see one side and the roof when on the ground. So that's what I did, at least on that side.

Now the other side was a little trickier. The hole we cut was smaller and i couldn't even put my arm into that one had to come up with a different idea. So I thought if I cant put a liner in this side I would just have to come up with a way to hide the tunnel. Model Railroader to the rescue again. There was a article about camouflaging the entrance to a tunnel by using trees. Well in O scale that's alot of trees but if i combined the trees with some sort of scenery like a hillside the viewer wouldn't see the tunnels hole. So I fabricated up some more of my foam mountains and extended them about 9" from the wall and walla NO more hole! Now i better start painting this thing.

Ok got it figured. The "S" curve was causing the rear of the Forney to swing radically left then right causing anything behind it to snap off the track like the old game crack the whip. So I figured out by just placing a straight section between the curves would smooth out the curves. It worked great so now the tunnel could be nailed down and we could move on to the shelves.

Decisions, decisions. Sectional Track or Flex? Why not both? Sectional is pretty PRICEY even the CFO who don't know a track bolt from a track spike wouldn't go for the cost of doing the whole layout in sectional pieces. Plus the vary nature of the layout dictates that sectional track wont have exactly every piece I would need. So part of the layout will be sectional and the rest will be flex track. it will be covered in ballast anyway so the observer will be hard pressed to see the difference. Rolling on.

This subject will be... NOISE. Not the chuff of cylinders and the ding of a bell. This noise is the trains running on the shelf and its pretty loud even when the trains where going slow. So I decided to run the track on a 1" piece of foam. Boy that kills the noise BUT cutting all that foam is going to be a messy proposition but I'm up for it. The family may not be ready for it but ya gotta do what ya gotta do, Right? That's when the CFO has a brain storm lets go to Ontario, Ca to the Big Train Show!

If you haven't been to it you definitely need to go once. its not just G scale its got something in all scales. This year there was a booth for The Hot Wire Foam Factory. They sold hot wire tools for carving foam for many uses including building the railroad. Now i had a great tool for cutting up all this foam with a lot less mess. Time to try it out and see what we had.

Well the PG&YV even got its first rail fan!

First off to be able to build a layout of this size you need to drive everyone nuts with track laid all over the house and then act like a fool whenever anyone steps on it. Then take over the dining room table and get mad when someone wants to eat at it. Sooner or Later the wife will allow you to build that shelf layout you been asking for!

NOW you need someone who can actually build a shelf. I suggest a Father in Law with a wood shop and possibly a lifetime of building in wood and LOTS of power tools. Now you may have to give in a little at this point. Your CFO may want some painting done or woodwork like crown molding or baseboards. Do this with a cheerful grin because it instills goodwill and the opportunity to get to the store to get needed supplies that said goodwill will allow for less complaining from your CFO of the costs! Its a win / win situation! You should also use this breathing period to finalize your plans like how wide of a shelf, minimum radius curves, and what kind of control your going to use. For this layout we will be using DCC with 22" radius curves and a 5 1/2" shelf for most locations.



After the goodwill tour is completed is time for the shelf to go up! The idea my Father in Law came up with is really classy and looks really complicated BUT its not really just a little time consuming

Now while figuring out the layout we found a location that was going to be a real bear to make an outside shelf! It was where the chimney was so we cut a tunnel through it. We got real LUCKY when we had the tunnel cut we found it already had a shelf right at the same level as the track was going to be! there was just one problem though. the location of the flu required a dogleg to get around it. So with the use of sectional track we laid it out. I then hooked up some power and ran one of the locomotives through the tunnel. It worked great! But then I remembered I still had my 2-4-4T Forney that had a little different running profile. I ran that through the tunnel. It would make it through but it sounded like it was binding up so I put a rail car hooked up to it. PROBLEM it was derailing the car at slow speeds and at higher speeds it would toss the car completely OFF the track! Is my railroad already derailed? I love that Forney and want to be able to run it what am I going to do?

Is This a Phules Erand

Starting this blog to inform whomever that I (with ALOT of help from my Father in Law) have started building a On30 model railroad that when completed will circle around the family room, dining room and the kitchen. It will have approximately 105 feet of main line run a few bridges and some tunnels one that goes through the fireplace.

The name we've (that's my CFO and I) chosen is...

Phules Gold & Yensid Valley Rwy

Only a Real Phule Would of Built a Railroad Here

This is going to be a running account of what we do to transform the vertically challenged location into a functioning Model Railroad. Well we will see how it goes.

Now for those of you out there who live for Christmas to come around so they can turn the floor under the Christmas Tree into their own version of a winter wonderland. For those who have to get by with a quick circle of track on the kitchen table and for those who spend boo koo bucks on model railroad magazines and just dream this might just be your ticket to getting the railroad you know you deserve... as long as the accounting dept will cut the dang checks!