York B Yard Scale..

With the Ma & Pa only having 2 scheduled freights a day, I figure the yard crew would never be too stressed out in York, even with increased war traffic.  There are a few industries within yard limits that would have to be switched by the crew, but I have been worried the job wouldn't be challenging enough for someone who likes to work yard jobs.

One of the tracks in my B Yard is a gauntlet scale track, just like the one that existed there.  You can see how I built mine here: 

http://maparr1943.blogspot.com/2012/07/laying-down-gauntlet.html  

To give the crew some extra work I plan on having them "weigh cars" as part of the job.  Awhile back there was a discussion about the scale track on the Ma & Pa Yahoo list and someone who's name escapes me right now,  said they worked B Yard in the late 60's, early 70's and explained they would weigh every single car that came into York B Yard.  I'm not sure if this was just a practice during his time on the railroad or if this is something that was always done.  In any case, I'm going to try and see if this will work on the layout. 

I purchased one of the Boulder Creek Engineering Weigh Station Track Scales: 

http://www.bouldercreekengineering.com/weighstation.php 

and started installing it this week.  I wanted the scale readout module to be placed in B Yard, close to where the conductor of the crew would be working.  But with throttle holders, signage, track schematics, shelves etc, taking up space, I had to come up with a way to mount the readout module in that area and make it fit.  I found my solution at my friend Ted Pamperin's C&O layout while working my usual job on the west end of Hinton Yard. 

Ted made this control panel to tuck into the fascia in Hinton, right above the staging yard deck.  I realized using something like this, maybe hanging just below the fascia at B Yard, could be the answer to my problem.

Using the faceplate template that came with my Weigh Station, I cut Masonite slightly bigger than the plate.  I glued 2 square pieces of Masonite to the ends  with the faceplate section angled at 45 degrees to make seeing the Weigh Station easier.  

I marked the fascia using the Masonite holder as a guide, then used my RotoZip to cut 2 notches to slip the holder into the fascia.  After a test fit, I painted the holder black and after it dried, I remounted and glued it onto the fascia.  The next day I installed the weigh Station module.

This is how it looks on the layout after installation.  All that's left to do is install and hook up the infrared detector on the scale track, and we'll be ready to add weighing freight cars to the yard crew's responsibility.