Swat. Swat. Cough. Oh! Hey there! Don’t mind me, I’m just dusting a little and sweeping away the cobwebs.

I see my last post was in June? Huh. Well, anyone that knows me at all shouldn’t really be surprised by this. I have too many hobbies, and my interests tend to ebb and flow like the tides. I lost interest in trains for a while—partly because I just wasn’t sure where to go next. Partly because Roswell reared its head and I got into VWs again for a bit. And partly because that’s just the way it is.

Anyway, in December, Baylor’s Mayborn Museum hosted their annual layout setup (mainly composed of Temple’s excellent “Centra-Mod” modular group). On one of the last weekends before Christmas, I made the trek out—camera in tow—and I’ll be damned if the bug didn’t bite me again.

(You can see my pictures from that event here. )

Reading over my older blog posts, I see that the last challenge I was concerned with was legs for the layout. That problem was solved thanks to my parents, who brought down the last remaining piece of my Dad’s old bedroom furniture, a triple dresser (solid maple). So now the layout rests on that, and I have storage in the drawers below for modeling junk and other assorted odds and ends.

So now that problem is solved, and I find myself wondering where to go next. All I have right now is a basic loop of track—the roundiest of “roundy-rounds.” I’ve debated for several months what I want the inside of the track plan to look like (track-planning in advance is certainly not my forte).

I’ve decided that I really want the ability to run two trains at one time, so there will have be an inner oval. I’ll likely have to use almost all 11 inch radius curves here—maybe a 19 in here or there. I think I have worked out that there will be an industry on the left side of the layout, and a city (possibly with a small yard) on the right. I don’t want to get too much going on in the middle to avoid the “spaghetti bowl” effect of having track everywhere.

So what’s next then? Saving money until I can afford to buy more turnouts. I think I’ll need another four for the inner loop, so that’s $60 right there. This is an expensive hobby.

In the meantime, I can work on structure kits that have been festering over the years. I’ve gotten half-way on a number of buildings, but I still don’t have any that I would call “complete.” Time to change that.

Finally, I went to the Waco Winter Wonderland trainshow this weekend. This show is always something of a crap-shoot. Sometimes they have tons of stuff. Other times, nothing. One year I didn’t make it back in town until Sunday, and the vendors had already packed up and gone!

This year I am happy to report that there was a good selection of vendors (for a Waco show, anyhow), and an excellent N scale modular setup all the way from Houston. Please visit Flickr to see my pictures.

I was really happy that the vendors were there. As I have recounted before on this blog, Waco’s model railroading selection just plain sucks. So very rarely do I get a chance to look at things in person. I was hoping to spend no more than $40. In particular, I was looking for laser-cut wood building kits. Unfortunately, no one had any of these. So I began looking at the other items available and walked away with some rolling stock and a locomotive for about $60.



First up: Micro-Trains 33’ Peaked-end hoppers, lettered for N&W. N&W had thousands upon thousands of these, and they are essential for anyone modeling the area/era. Unfortunately, not many manufacturers are making them. I bought a three-pack of Micro-Trains cars for $35, which I think is a very fair price (didn’t I tell you this was an expensive hobby?). I do wish the hoppers had coal loads, but what can you do? I’ll just have a string of empties.

I wish I could find a source for these that wasn’t so expensive. I’d like to have at least 20 on the roster. That’s $240. Go take a look at some of the coal trains running on the modular layouts at the train show. That probably represents $1000 or more. Crazy, isn’t it?

My second purchase was a Life-Like GP-18 for the low, low price of $27 after tax.





Some background here: I’ve wanted a small diesel for a number of years. I love steam, but it’s nice to have some variety. The N&W was the last Class One railroad to diselize, in 1960. They used mainly Alco RS-11s and EMD GP7s and GP9s. (the family of which the GP18 is a slightly later model).

So I’ve been looking for some time for GP9 or GP7. The models I found were too expensive (that money could go to turnouts!), or in a much later paint scheme than what I was looking for. So I was elated when I found the little GP18 sitting at the dealer’s booth for only $24.95, in black liverly. I was skeptical, of course. $24 for a locomotive? Loco’s in N Scale are usually in the $70-$120 range. Still, I thought I remembered reading posts on the Atlas forum praising this cheap locomotive. So I bit the bullet.

Arriving home, I sat the loco on the track and slowly turned up the juice. Nothing. So I cranked up the power a little more, and suddenly she started forward. I think part of the problem is that this is a fairly old unit—likely made in 1993 or 1994, and thus it might have been sitting in the box for a long, long time. After several hours of break-in (both forward and reverse) I am very impressed by how she runs. For $27, it sure is a winner. There is a slight wobble at times, but slow speed performance is pretty good (good enough for me, anyway), and it goes around the track very smoothly. If this is what a cheap diesel will do, I can’t imagine a nicer Atlas or Kato unit. As a steam guy who is used to finicky steam locomotives, you diesel guys sure do have it nice!

One final little note on these: N&W used “High-Nose” GP-x models, which means the nose in front of the cab (the short side) extends all the way to the roof. Engineers often complained about visibility, so most railroads got the short nose versions. However, the N&W, being “different” as they always were, ran these locos with the long hood in the front! That’s right, the cab would be at the very back of the locomotive, with the extremely long hood sticking out towards the oncoming track. Supposedly, the reason this was done was that the N&W brass thought it would offer more protection in a crash. Personally, I think it was just another case of being stubbornly stuck on steam. With the long hood forward, the locomotive almost looks like some futuristic steamer, with a long boiler in front.

Anyhow, that’s where things stand today. I don’t make any promise of regular updates (I’m too smart to promise that!) but I will try to not let it go another 6 months!

A whole lot 'o nuthin.

My apologies for the lack of updates, which is in direct proportion to the lack of progress, which is directly proportional to my lack of funds.

Well, sort of. Here’s the situation as it is now:

As I may have reported previously here (I’m far too lazy to reread my updates!), the ½ in. PVC pipes that I got to form legs simply won’t cut it. The whole rig is far too wobbly to be of use. So it’s back to the drawing board. My new I idea is to construct a table-like uh…construction using PVC. Of course, this time, I will use a larger diameter of PVC pipe—perhaps even two inches. I should be able to build a fairly strong frame using this method that the layout will simply sit on.

If that method fails, I guess I’m going to buy a portable table. But right now, I can’t do anything, because I simply don’t have the funds to purchase either a table or the PVC. Other things have to come first. You know. Like….eating. And Air Conditioning.

In the meantime, I still haven’t figured out a track plan for the interior of the loop that I have completed. I have a few general ideas, but nothing concrete. I’ve kind of been holding off on working on anything until I get the base built. So it will be awhile. But hey, Rome wasn’t built in a day, as the cool kids say.

Anyway, I’m not too concerned about the lack of progress. Model Railroading is a long-term hobby. If you’re looking for instant gratification, this isn’t the hobby for you. It takes planning, time, effort, and money to build a model railroad. So when these are lacking, it’s time to sit back, read the most recent copy of MR, and dream.

Some ramblings

Well, there hasn’t really been any construction progress recently. I haven’t had any time or money, so I’ve just been watching trains go round and round. I have added two more sets of feeders, and plan to add two more. Everything runs pretty smoothly, save for a few trouble spots that I continue to work on. I think my steam locomotives are just a bit cantankerous. Which makes sense…a steam locomotive isn’t a machine, it’s a woman. And as we all know, they can be finicky creatures.

Anyhow, I though I would write down some thoughts about various things.

On the subject of DCC:

Earlier in the blog I mentioned that I was considering switching to DCC. Sense then, I think I’ve decided against it. But I thought it would be worth writing about exactly why.

I suppose I should begin by explaining just what the heck “DCC” is, for those not in the know. Essentially, DCC is another method of powering a model railroad. Our models are much too small to contain real boilers, fires, steam, etc. (at least in N scale—there is such a thing as live steam in HO!). So to make the train go, we use a conventional motor controlled by DC current. Turn the knob on your powerpack, the voltage rises, and the motor spins faster. Simple.

So what’s wrong with DC? Well, it’s great if you have one train on one piece of track. But what if you want to control two trains? Then things get a little tricky. All of the track has to be separated into multiple “blocks” of electricity. You can then use two powerpacks to control two trains. But of course you have to make sure you have the block switched to the right powerpack. And of course your trains can only be as close as your power blocks are. Not to mention that following the train and flipping all the correct blocks can be quite tedious. And as you can imagine the resulting rat’s nest of wires is quite a pain to deal with. Ne’ertheless, DC has worked well for decades. It’s fairly easy in that it doesn’t require a huge understanding of technical knowledge to do. And if you just have a power pack and some wires, it’s easy to set up.

But in a model railroad, we strive for realism. And DC operation just isn’t very prototypical. You can’t run locomotives right up next to each other as you can in the “real world.” And switching operations require a lot of fiddling of blocks that simply doesn’t exist in the real world. So although DC works well, it’s not the best solution.

Enter DCC. DCC stands for Digital Command Control. The idea has been around since the 70s, but it’s not until the last decade that it has really taken off. The basic idea is this: every locomotive has “decoder” placed in it, that’s essentially a computer chip. Instead of merely controlling the voltage to the rails, your handheld throttle sends a bunch of zeros and ones (computer code) through the rails. The Decoder decodes these bits and interprets them into signals: run forward at half speed, ring the bell, and so on.

With DCC it’s possible to control each locomotive individually, just like the prototype. It’s a far more realistic way of operating a model railroad. And it makes wiring much easier, too; there are no blocks to worry about and all rails are hooked up to one single power source.

So why am I not jumping on the bandwagon?

Two primary reasons: Cost, and decoder installation.

First of all, I would have to buy a DCC system, which would run about $150 right now. Then each locomotive would require its own decoder, which would be about $15 per locomotive.

That’s money that I simply don’t have to spend right now. So far I’ve spent about $200 or more just on layout building materials and track. So I’ve got to lay off the spending for awhile. Damn this economy.

But even if I had the money, I’d still be wary of converting. The decoders are not simple drop in installations—at least not for steam locomotives. They require lots of fiddling/soldering, etc. And since I run steam, they are all a pain in the butt to install. And that’s not something that I’m interested in.

If I were starting out for the first time with no legacy equipment, You can bet I’d go DCC in a heartbeat. But it’s pretty hard to consider spending all that time, effort, and money to convert right now.

In any case, what did you expect? I’m an old-fashioned romantic who’s stuck in his ways. Change!? Bah!

Speaking of romance, I wanted to touch upon another subject that I’ve been thinking about.

Last week I came upon this website: http://www.terrastories.com/bearings/

It chronicles an “urban adventurer’s” journey through the abandoned world. He breaks into abandoned properties and photographs them as they lie, dormant and untouched save for the ravages of time. There are some stunning photographs on his site of abandoned amusement parts, mansions, and even a Titan missile silo. I found it fascinating, and it made me think about model railroading and why I desire to create in miniature a world that is long gone.

I never got to see the golden age of railroading. By the time I was born in 1983, steam was long gone (at least in the United States) save for tourist railroads. Where I grew up, there wasn’t a huge rail presence. Sure, I’d see long Santa Fe (and later BNSF) Autorack trains on trips, but that was about it. My exposure to trains was strictly through the LGB Large scale trains that we had, and visits to tourist railroads (The earliest of which was a trip on the Durango and Silverton on which I have been told I acted like a complete ass).

So why am I drawn to model railroading, then?

I think the romance has a lot to do with it. A steam locomotive is by definition an element of romance. A steam locomotive isn’t a machine; it’s a living, breathing organism that requires tender care to keep her running well. In the early days, the railroad wasn’t just some nameless transporter of freight. It was the lifeblood of the community. The entire town revolved around it. Passengers coming and going, goods bought and sold. The friendly engineer giving the neighborhood boys a tour of the cab and bringing the younger ones a lollipop once a week, like clockwork. The wife of the conductor baking fresh pies for her husband’s crew, hot and ready-to-eat when they returned from a long and grueling day hauling coal over the Appalachians. And so on, and so on.

These scenes are gone from the visage of American History. The number of people living that now remember these times dwindles every year. I think this plays a large part of why I’m drawn to the idea of recreating these idyllic times in a miniature world of my own design. It’s a chance to not only remember and pay tribute to these bygone eras, but perhaps to somehow vicariously experience the very feelings and emotions of them, too.

So right now, I can only watch my trains rolling around the pink foam plains. But if I squint my eyes, I can see the green mountains, the black soot of coal; I can hear the chimes of the end-of-shift bell at the mine. I can smell the ocean air blowing in from the coast, the salt tickling my nostrils. The world that was once dead is summoned to life once again. As long as it exists in my own miniature world, it will never truly be gone.

I suppose this entry has gone on long enough, so lets call it the end for now…

Pictures!

Here are a few pictures from the "Golden Spike. See Flickr for more.

Golden Spike

Well, I don’t have any pictures uploaded yet, but I thought I should report that I’ve had the “Golden Spike” and have begin running some trains for the first time in three—almost four, actually—years.

Saturday morning dawned grey and rainy—a perfect day for staying inside and working on projects. I spent part of the morning working on a structure kit. It’s nearly finished now—just needs a roof and some figures and it will be done. After lunch, I ventured outside to go get wire at the local Radio Shack. I picked up some spools of 22 gauge solid, and 18 gauge stranded. I also got a new tip for my soldering iron.

When I got back, I had to figure out exactly how I was going to wire the thing. Right now, I just have one loop of track. Since that was the case, I decided to forego any sort of cab control and just wire it as one block. (I’m also toying with the idea of converting to DCC, in which case everything would be wired as one “block” anyway). When I get some more track, it will be easy to convert to cab control without having to tear everything out.

I decided to attach four sets of feeders to the rails. I dug out holes with a screwdriver (foam is great…no powertools here!) and fed pairs of red/black 22 gauge solid through them. The Solid core copper wire is much easier to solder to the sides of the rail than the stranded stuff. I had my first set of feeders fed through, so I plugged in the soldering iron and POP there was a flash of light. I cursed as I realized I had shorted out the soldering iron. Which meant yet another trip to Radio Shack!

I finally made it back with a new 40 watt iron, and set about the process of soldering the feeders to the rail. Essentially, you coat the rail and the wire with flux paste, then tin them (which means coating with a thin layer of solder), and then attach the wire to the rail without using additional solder. It’s a little more difficult than it sounds, because you have to get the wire positioned correctly whilst holding a 40 watt soldering iron. Have to watch your fingers.

Anyway, the process is fairly straight-forward. My feeders won’t win any awards for neatness but they get the job done, and after ballasting the track they’ll be nearly invisible, anyway.

Once my four sets of feeders were in place, I flipped the layout up and leaned it against the couch, then screwed and glued on three terminal strips to the bottom—one on each end and one in the middle. I used 18 gauge stranded wire to connect everything together, meeting at the terminal strip in the middle, to which I attached a longer cord that has a cinch-jones connector on it (think of a miniature normal wall plug and you’ll get the idea). This makes it easy to hook up the power pack.

Once the wiring was completed, I turned the layout back over, cleaned the rails once with a track-cleaning block, hooked up the ancient MRC Tech-II throttle, and set the Kato Mikado on the rails.

And wouldn’t you know it, it actually worked?

I ran the locomotive back and forth for a few moments, and then I could not help but gleefully tear into my storage box and open up every single piece of rolling stock I have. I’ve got a bunch of stuff that hasn’t been run in years. To my great joy, every locomotive I have actually runs (though some are better than others…the K4 Pacific from the 70s has to go at warp speed to do anything…). Even the Bachmann 4-4-0 does well; I certainly made the right decision about the Electro-frog turnouts, because I haven’t had any stalling on turnouts whatsoever.

I’ve spent the last week simply running trains. There are still some track issues to be addressed, and I need to add some more feeders (which will involve cutting gaps in the rail…more on that another time). But it certainly is a joy to see the Mike pull my set of Pennsy passenger cars, which I haven’t been able to run since at least 2001 (probably before that…)

This blog post wasn’t quite as detailed as I wanted it to be, but I’m exhausted and it’s past my bedtime already. I’ll try to get some pictures put up soon!

The Circle is Complete

Sorry for the lack of updates; it has been a busy week and I haven’t found much time to write.

When we last left off, I had completed a basic outside loop of track. The geometry is a little iffy, so I hope it all works well. It’s a little hard to tell. It would have been much easier to do using flex track, but given my past history of flex track, I really didn’t want to mess with it. Not to mention I can’t GET any without waiting at least a week or driving 200 miles.

In any case, once I had this basic loop, I made a paper template (1:1 scale) of the track and divided it into four basic sections. I took these four templates and laid them out on the spare pieces of 1” thick foam that I had, and traced around them with a sharpie. I placed the foam on a cardboard table, and then took a heavy sharp kitchen knife and cut out the lines. It wasn’t necessary to cut all the way through the foam—just to cut most of the way. Once the lines were cut, I was able to carefully snap the pieces off, just like using the “score and snap” method of cutting styrene.

Side note: I later found that putting my index finger on the top edge of the knife had bored a hole in my skin. Nothing major, but I will certainly cover the knife with a thick towel or something beforehand the next time I cut the foam.

I now laid the foam pieces out in the general shape of the track plan, and attached them to the bottom sheet of foam with Liquid Nails. Once again, thank you Norton Anthologies for finally pulling your weight!

If you’ve never built a layout before, you may be asking, “why elevate the track with another layer of foam?”

Take a look outside. Unless you’re one of the poor souls that live in Lubbock, chances are you can see some chances of elevation in the lay of the land. The “1:1” world is not built on top of plywood. There’s rolling hills, dips and valleys, gorges, mountains, waterfalls, and all kinds of things. In fact, the world is pretty damn bumpy.

Elevating the track up another level makes it much easier to model all these geographic features. Combined with being able to cut out the foam, it’s much easier than trying to build up everything from plywood. This is the first time I’ve actually built a layout like this, so time will tell how it goes.

I let the new pieces of foam dry with the weights on them for a good three days. Two would have probably sufficed, but I had company so I wasn’t able to do anything. The next step was to once again lay out all the track and ensure that it fit. It’s a good thing that I made myself a detailed track plan so there was no doubt as to which pieces went where!



After this track had been laid out and I was reasonably happy with how it looked, I took a sharpie and drew out the plan onto the foam. Working a section at a time, I glued down Woodland Scenics Foam Roadbed. Now, the traditional roadbed material is cork, but I used the foam stuff on my last layout and I really like working with it. It’s very easy to cut, and much easier to curve than cork is. Not to mention cheaper.

The roadbed was held in place with some cheap push-pins that I got at office depot. By the way, I used my 8 year old bottle of foam tack glue, and it still works great. Good stuff. I let the roadbed dry for a few more days. It had to conform to some tight curves, so I wanted to be sure it would stay in the correct spot.



In retrospect, I went about this all wrong. I have several spots where the roadbed simply doesn’t conform to the final position of the track, even though I test-laid the track as I was gluing the roadbed. Next time, I’ll probably lay everything all at once.

While the roadbed was drying, I decided to break out the soldering iron and solder some track together. It’s pretty much the only way to ensure a good electrical connection. I’ve gotten a little better at soldering over the years, but I’m still very much a novice. But I’ve discovered the one great secret to soldering rails: Rosin Paste. The paste is a gooey, yellow substance that helps the solder flow where you want it. It only takes a tiny amount, so a toothpick is the perfect applicator. After that, I simply hold the soldering iron to the railjoiner for a few seconds, and the solder flows freely. Much easier than I thought it would be. I can’t even imagine soldering without the paste now.

I decided to only solder the straight sections, as I was worried about soldering the curves and then having them not join up right. So with the roadbed down, I decided I might as well go ahead and glue down the track. Once again, I spread out the foam tack glue, then held the track in place with pins. I also took great care to let the turnouts “float” (in other words, they are NOT glued down). To my surprise/relief, everything seems to fit well, and two days later I took out the pins and rolled some cars around. It seems very smooth at this point, but rolling some cars around can’t match actually pulling a train.





Next: it’s time to get some power to the rails. Wiring can be fun! (It can’t be fun.)

Also, in case you haven't figured out, all the photos (and more photos) are on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cameron_talley/sets/72157616587278989/

Back on Track.

Last Thursday I finally got my second shipment of track in, so this weekend I was able to “finish” the track planning and finally make some progress beyond rolling pink foam plains.

Let’s talk about track planning. I’ve never been very good at it. Over the years I’ve gazed at hundreds of plans in Model Railroader and various books. I’ve ogled at basement empires with a double track main, broad curves, and huge industries and yards. I’ve looked at clever plans that cram a lot of action, including operation, in a small space. And yet, for all the hundreds of plans that I’ve seen over the years, when I put my pencil to the paper and try to sketch out something, I just can’t seem to come up with anything decent.

I don’t know what the problem is. As has been recounted previously, the last layout I did, I got an Atlas paper track planning template kit, and laid it all out on the floor and rearranged until I came up with something I liked. Well, that works great, in theory, but in practice it wasn’t so good. Paper and track do not align exactly the same, so I ended up having to make a huge compromise in the plan that I was never very happy with.

This time around, I thought I would just “wing it,” so-to-speak. Well, not exactly. I am torn between the desire to come up with a good plan and the desire to actually see some trains roll. So I decided to complete one outer loop, with some switches thrown in for future expansion. I’m limited on funds and can’t afford all the turnouts that I would need for a yard yet, as it is.

I spent about an hour on Friday night playing around with different track configurations to come up with something that I really liked. I did have to cut one 11 in. radius curve to fit. Hopefully I won’t regret that. I used all sectional track, as my past experience with flex track was not very positive. Flex track sounds great, until you have to lay it on a curve. If you’re not familiar with the stuff, it’s a 3-foot long section of track that has one fixed rail, and one that moves freely. This allows you to curve it easily.

The problem with flex track is that you have to use a large compass to draw out the curves beforehand in order to get their radii consistent. And then you’ll have to cut it, as one end will extent far beyond the other. Finally, you to have ensure that the rails remain in gauge on tight curves and joints. Basically it’s a major pain in the butt. So sectional track it is.

On Saturday morning, I put rail joiners on all of the track and formed a complete loop for the first time. I then took a couple of heavyweight passenger cars (they have a long wheelbase—about 85’ I think) and pushed them around, looking for any obvious issues. I didn’t find anything particularly glaring, so I decided to call it “done.”

Next time: More Pink Stuff and Liquid Nails.