Note this post has been updated and extended as of 10/12/2025.
Something was irritating me about
the trackage alignment
but I am having problems with my blogger/blogspot hosted blog pages uploading photos from my hard drive.
Some new AI feature seems to be getting in the way. I may have to revert to hosting on my own website smadanek.com thus justifying the fees I have been paying to keep the domain. (This is not happening just yet).
In the meantime I will write this blog up in Open Office Writer. Maybe I will add the doc as a file in blogspot and let google be darned.
this is the aerial photo I was trying to add showing the locations of what I call the roundhouse outbuildings for workshops and locomotive maintenance supplies along with the blacksmith shop and the grounded coach used as the roundhouse employee washup and locker room.
The white blips in the photo are parked cars of SP employees. The big building in the center of the photo is McNears warehouse.
Okay I solved the photo upload problem. I have to allow third party cookies when editing or writing a blog post in Chrome/Blogger/Blogspot. I am exposed while doing so for that authorship episode.
After creating or updating the blog I will turn 3rd party cookies off again. Stuff that up your google googlemeister.
I'll finish this blog when I have re-aligned the turntable approach tracks from the east and west along with a re-alignment of the house track in front of the station, freight house and the stores unloading dock. At this point I doubt McNears warehouse was still being serviced.
Something was irritating me about the
Trackage on my tiny layout for the last year as I focused on the
outbuildings in back of the Port Costa roundhouse. I could not get
the alignments right with the way I had set up the western approach
track to the turntable I am using analysis of my collection of
photos of Port Costa including a very small crop the 1957 aerial
photo of the Carquinez strait area from the USC collection
I
wish I had a better resolution photo but
have not found one so I must interpret the fuzzy images and account
for shadow and reflection from shiny cars. I can't get Blogspot
to upload the jpg crop I am using due to some Chrome problem probably
my Google analytics opt out.
A before picture
As of 10/12/2025, I am still working on the basic ground scenery for the re-aligned trackage. New 2 mm thick foam in a tan color is the basic scenery for most areas as it is tie height for Peco and ME code 83 and 70 ties. A previous test of using 2 mm foam as an inlay between ties and tie ends hs proved to be too much work so I am going back to fine grout in an ivory color as the ballast for ties on the turntable approaches, the freight house track and the roundhouse garden tracks. I can also use this material as a coating on the 2 mm foam to resemble the hardened rough clay surface.
This is the work in progress still as of 10/12/2025.
The area in front of you is the station, freight house, elevated buildings including the section house, water treatment and signal/telegraph maintenance building module.
These are photos of the station area module sitting atop the staging/fiddle yard area. Building it as a module allows it to be removed for work on large areas of the layout.
Another photo from the side you cannot see when the station module is in place showing the completed freight house and the mockup for the station building:
Back to work on my townhouse after an interlude on the layout. The downstairs master bedroom and hall has brand new floors and much of my stuff is still in a storage locker to be sorted disposed of or returned to storage in the closet that runs besides and under the stairs between the two floors. I have lots of medical issues and have to work on stuff rather slowly.
