The panel has arrived!

A week ago, I picked up a section of steel that will eventually become the CTC panel for the railroad. Mt good friend Bill Ford, who is modeling the Cabin Creek branch of the C&O in O-scale, picked up two of these a number of years ago. He will only need one for the junction at Cabin Creek, so he offered to sell me the other one. And here it is:

Bill purchased these originally from Mike Burgett whose company, Control Train Components, manufactures and distributes a wide array of CTC panel parts. Here's a link to his website: http://www.ctcparts.com/. Mike is also the owner of the museum quality C&O's 1965 Alleghany and James River Subdivisions layout. 

The panel has a small amount of surface rust which will need to be cleaned up prior to painting. And it will need a primer coat before the US&S green is applied. Fortunately for me, another good friend specializes in metal work. Randy Seiler has agreed to clean, trim and paint the panel for me in exchange for a hand-laid curved turnout (or two, as I found out last night) on his B&O/PC West layout. You can see his track plan and follow his progress on his blog on the MRH Forum. Here's a link: http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/17997. The close-up photo below shows the surface rust.

The daunting task of acquiring all of the necessary hardware now looms before me. Fortunately, several local modelers have built similar US&S panels and have offered up a number of different suppliers for the various switches and LED's. An initial order has been placed with Rail Logic Technologies in order to test fit a number of their parts. And Bill Ford has also done some research on possible sources. So onward!

The next step will be to design and build the track diagram along with the cabinet. Stay tuned!