New Alignments
Topic: Progress Reports

The track realignments which I mentioned in my January 6th post are now complete. Well sort of, there's a polarity bug which keeps coming back every time we think it has been eliminated. This is a bit baffling since the new alignments are less complex and there were no problems previously. But the bug can't hide forever! The only thing I fear is we may have unknowingly revealed a deeper wiring problem. We also made changes in the staging on the other side of the wall. We are waiting on the arrival of additional Unitrack turnouts to complete those changes. I am planning to add more stub ended tracks to the staging as well. This will give more operations possiblities for the terminal railroad. All of these changes are being made with the goal of smoother and better operations.

More recently, our efforts have shifted to rebuilding the Christmas layout. This was the fifth Christmas season for the display. If you're unfamiliar with our Christmas layout, it is a On30 layout featuring ceramic buildings from Studio 56 and similar collections. An addition had been made to it for the second season. The original portion of the display had been put together hurriedly for Augusta's Christmas Candlelight Walk in 2001. It has served well enough but there were problems with the original design. The "snow" is a fluffly fiber which has a nasty way of getting into locomotive mechanisms. One loop of track extended across two sections of the layout. Getting a level alignment between these sections has proved difficult and led to numerous derailments. There was also quite a bit of hidden track which  was uncomfortable to access. Neither was the layout design very imaginative. It seemed a good time to address these shortcomings and make the changes before the layout is put into storage. Thus the new display will be ready to go when we bring it out for Christmas 2007.

I thought the changes mostly would be limited to the one end of the layout. But you know how one thing seems to lead to another. Doug and I got the bright idea to modify the bench work for the layout so the tops could be removed and the bottoms could function as more universal pedestals for display layouts we hope to build in the future. And as we cleared off one portion of the layout the anticipated modifications there began to require modifications to more sections of the layout. And the foam structure I had built proved more sturdy and resistent to modification than I expected. And before we knew it, we were down to bare bench work

This is a design-as-you-go project. One goal is to give the city a more realistic appearance. Rather than a loop around the outside, the streetcar now will run back and forth on a line down the middle of the town. Dispensing with the loop will permit elimination of a tunnel and hidden trackage. Buildings are to be arranged in a more typical grid pattern with streets intersecting the main street where the trolley runs. On the other sections of the layout I intend to add a trestle and relocate the ski  and tobogganing area. Just how all this will be done isn't completely clear at this point, but not having the pressure of the Canlelight Walk day after tomorrow gives time for all to be worked out.

One additional project has been started, i.e., building a table top layout to demonstrate how foam construction can make building a small layout an easier task. The layout measures 32" x 72" and will feature a continuous run on a figure 8 which loops over itself.

 

 

Foiled Again!
Topic: Progress Reports

This is not the entry I had intended to be posting. Late last week I attempted to post a new entry I'd been working on for a couple of weeks. The entry was to detail the steps I have taken in coloring the rocks of the newest mountain area. I say "was" because it vanished into the black hole of Tripod's newest version of it's publishing software. All attempts to retrieve the entry have failed so I must start from scratch to recreate an entry on the topic. That will take some time. Until then here's a brief note about what we've been up to. 

Augusta Station is open only on Saturdays and Sundays in January. This has allowed Doug and I to take some mainline track out of service while we make alterations in the track alignments. We are working where the transit is made between the visible layout and staging. The project is made challenging by the fact that much of the track is inside a tunnel. Because of the redesign of other portions of the track plan, I decided to replace these tracks which were laid in the very early days of construction . The new design altered the operating patterns expected in the original plan. In the initial design all staging tracks were to be in the workshop area. As part of s major redesign of the track plan after the first year of construction I found I could add numerous staging tracks under the tall mountains at the opposite end of the layout. This shifted the primary staging for the mainline from the workshop to the new subterranean staging yard. What was to have been the main staging area in the workshop now primarily serves the Mound City area next to the workshop. The mainline currently uses a reverse loop in the workshop, but little else. The double track line in Mound City is now pretty much the domain of the Manufacturers' Terminal Railway and the eastern railroads, CSX and NS, which intersect the MKP/BNSF line from the west.

The new alignment will eliminate a turnout and a crossing. Removing the crossing allows closer track spacing and the number of tracks traversing between the layout and staging increase from three to four. Previously, the five approacing tracks have been required to merge into just three tracks. So this new alignment will improve traffic flow allowing for trains running simultaneously  and without conflict on both the mainline and the double tracked Mound City line. It also locates the remaining turnout wholly outside the tunnel for improved accessability. The turnouts were partially inside the tunnel. Long passenger cars have had some difficulties navigating this complex track. I am hoping a new, simpler track arrangement will eliminate those problems. Several adjustments and relocation of a crossover are being made in the staging area as well. We should never be reluctant to go back and make changes if they will result in better operations.

 

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
Topic: Progress Reports

The garden railroad is back in business! It has been a long and frustrating time coming, but with a new source for ballast finally found things moved ahead quickly. We put down new ballast on all 301 feet of track. We also replaced several of the rail joiners. The aluminum rail joiners didn't get along well with the crushed slag we used for roadbase and the original ballast. Most of the joiners looked like corroded battery terminals. A few of them were completely devoured but many could be cleaned and slavaged. Crushed slag works well as a roadbase, but in the future I'll avoid it as a ballast. When we first hooked up the power pack - nothing! But Doug replaced the GFI socket and the locomotive took off. Doug also found another way to mount the couplers on the passenger cars so they match up with the LGB 2-4-0. The 4-6-0 in the photo was used only for a set shot. It has a broken side rod which must be replaced before it can be run.

That brings up another repair item, i.e., my camera. I was all set to take a picture of some prototype switching action on the UP over in Alton, Illinois. I turned on the camera and all I saw was a magenta blur. Play-back was fine so it wasn't the LCD viewfinder. A trip over to the CSI repair center confirmed my suspicion; the CCD was fried! That was the bad news. The good news was that the chip was defective and the manufacturer is replacing them for free. Seems that laptop batteries aren't the only defective item Sony has been selling to go into other companies products. Now I must wait for the camera to come back from the service center.

Due to the lack of a camera, I have temporarily suspended work on the new mountain area. I plan to do a series of photos showing the process of adding color to the rocks. This will be something of a repeat of an earlier post, but this a larger area which I hope will demonstrate the method more clearly. It will also be another chapter in showing how I go about creating mountains. I did take the first step in coloring the rocks doing the shading with the black dry tempra paint. And I completed coloring the rock retaining walls along the tourist railroad route and in the mountain towns of Nighthawk and Buena Vista. All of the white plaster has disappeared from the mountains.

With the mountain on hold, I've turned my attention to other things. This morning I completed ballasting the last of the track in Mound City. This means all of our track finally has ballast. I still have to clean the track tomorrow and I left the turnouts un-ballasted until we can activate all of them and make sure they are functioning proerly. I also made  sketches of nearly all the remaining turnouts in yards and  on spurs. I will use these sketches to draw the diagrams for David to use in building the diode matrixes and control panels to operate all those turnouts. With what was left of today I began work on two more buildings for the soy bean oil processing plant. After that I'll have to come with sufficient confusing piping and do-dads to disguise the fact I don't know everthing there is to know about one of these plants.

IT'S BEEN AWHILE
Topic: Progress Reports

The lapse of nearly two months since my previous Journal entry is neither because we have been doing nothing nor because we have been too busy. It just hasn't seemed there has been anything which is news worthy. Let's face it, ballasting track is not that exiciting. Poking a hole and putting a tree in it is hardly an innovation. Nor is paving a bit of street or covering a parking lot with "crushed rock". Scratch building a simple silo for the cement plant is not a major undertaking. While not found on every layout, employing a diode matrix to control turnouts has been around for a long time. These are the things, however, which have been consuming our time. Still, when taken together, these efforts are having an impact upon the layout.

The first area to see a new growth of trees was behind the roundhouse in Jefferson. But immediately more trees sprouted across the tracks, on up the hill, and into  the Jefferson Heights residential area. These trees shortly were followed by more trees around the plastic foam factory. Additional trees popped up in front of and behind the yard tracks to the east.

 A few vehicles appeared on the steets of Jefferson and a couple people came to the station to await the arrival of Amtrak. (It will be a long wait of course.) Suddenly Jefferson is taking on the look of place where people might be living. It is really fun to watch a train disappear and then again emerge from behind trees as it passes through Jefferson. The movement of the train through town now is much more of an event.

The growth of trees spread beyond Jefferson to Osage Ridge. Of course there have been thousands of trees covering Osage Ridge for quite some time. But the trunks of these new trees can be seen; not just their tops. These new growth trees blend nicely with the older background ones.  Trees are not the only new additions. Ballasting track and surfacing parking lots had preceded the trees. Not so quickly evident perhaps as the trees, these ground covers are the literal foundation which divides the imagined world of our layouts from the reality of plaster, foam, and metal of which it is built. The new ground covers and new trees are much in evidence around the lead smelter.

The trees at the lower corner of the lead smelter separate it from the large yard on the right side of Osage Ridge. They also screen the edge of the layout and frame the scene helping to give this large complex new importance. Several structures in Mound City can still be seen rising above the trees, but they now seem more distant and don't compete with the smelter for attention.

Newly planted trees create a visual link between the tiny village of Anton and the tree-covered slopes of Osage Ridge. The "crushed rock" now covering the parking areas surrounding the buildings also makes the scene more complete.

 Not all of the activity has been restricted to trees and ballast. Just to the west of Jefferson I finally got around to working on the cllinker silo for the the cement factory. This silo (the gray structure to the right of the kiln) receives the hot clinker products from the rotating kiln. The clinkers cool and are stored in the silo. As needed, they move to the processing building where they are pulverized and additional materials added to produce the final cement powder.

Further west in the mountains, I colored the remaining rock castings which are located behind the town of Nighthawk. With that done I added grassy ground cover to the mountainside. I have also begun casting stone retaining walls since taking this picture. There are a number of these retaining walls forming the terraces which allow the buildings to cling to the steep mountainside.

 Below the mountains the first of our turnout control panels had appeared. Whereas the MK&P is a large and somewhat complex layout, it could be difficult for visiting operators to determine which turnouts might be required to navigate a particular route. Turnout controls are designed therefore to allow an operator to select a route rather than setting individual turnouts. This simple choice can move as many as four turnouts. Because it wouldn't be a good idea to have push buttons capable of redirecting turnouts accessable to all our visitors, operators will have detachable plugs to make the electrical contact controlling turnout functions.

Oh yes, one other thing we have been up to. We've made some changes in the non-layout areas of Augusta Station. A number of new products have been added in the gift shop and we didn't have anywhere to put them. We salvaged some shelving from another shop in town, made major modifications, and then painted the rebuilt shelfs. The new shelves are already filled, but  now we can dispaly all of our products.

 

One new product merited a special display. It is a new line of wooden trains compatible with the Thomas Tank Engine wooden railway. By employing Doug's excellent carpentry and my layout design skills, we produced a new play table for our smaller visitors in the exhibit area.

BITS & PIECES
Topic: Progress Reports

The cement factory's rotary kiln now rotates! Doug has concealed a slow motion motor inside the white styrene building at the end of the kiln closest to the camera. The kiln itself is a section of PVC pipe. The two pylons supporting the kiln were scratch built with styrene sheet. Small rollers are located inside the pylons permitting the kiln to rotate. Only one piece of the factory, the clinker silo, remains to be built. Guess I need to get going on that. I'm also considering adding more details to the tower at the far end of the kiln.

I have been working on structures for the plant which processes soy beans into vegetable oil. My inspiration for this is such a plant in Sioux City, Iowa. I took photographs of it when I had an interest in modeling the Chicago Central and Pacific. That was before the Illinois Central bought back it's spin-off, which was before CN purchased the IC. You can see how long ago I took those photos. Although the soy beans arrive by truck (no inbound rail shipments), it generates outbound shipments by tank cars and covered hoppers. The Sioux City plant is one of the smaller examples of these sorts of facilities in Iowa and thus seems a reasonable candidate for modeling. Even though it is small, it isn't quite small enough for the space I have for the oil processing plant. It isn't a simple factory either. Lots of pipes, and tanks, and unknown "things". Coming up with how to fabricate all of these "thingies" takes a little time. It also takes a bit of head scratching over how to fit it all in. Hence, my progress is slow.

Whenever tiring of all this pondering I have been working on other small projects. How about a change of scales. Well, actually is no "scale" to scenery but this is work on an HO layout, i.e., the coal transfer exhibit. Ever since the unhappy results with Woodland Scenics' "Realistic Water", I've wanted to replace it. I discovered that I could peel it up a little like you peel and orange. With that done I poured a watery mix of Hydrocal into the "riverbed". I'm now in the process of coloring the riverbed before adding Envirotex for the water. It is taking several applications of various color tints to arrive at a satisfactory appearance for a riverbed.

I am also doing the last bit of the rock work around Mound City. It seems a good idea to intersperse a few areas of natural rock cuts for relief from the significant runs of concrete retaining walls demanded by the seven levels on which Mound City rests. In the photograph work has progressed only so far as the shading stage, but I have since added several coats of color and should be able to finish up with the bleaching (or highlighting) tomorrow. These rock cuts are around the brewery and overlook the Mississippi riverfront. At the other end of the layout and in the Colorado Rockies I have a little bit of rocks to cast around the backside of the Nighthawk town site. Once the casting is done I'll color the new rocks and a few previous casts which weren't done when I was working on the front of the mountain. A bit of smoothing of lumpy hardshell is required on the building sites in Nighthawk to prevent some tilting buildings as if there had been some recent earthquake. Of course, there are those high canyon walls to the east of Nighthawk which are waiting on new rock molds . A very good reason for another trip to Colorado!

I have mostly completed scratch building the creosote treatment retort for the railroad tie and timbers mill. The two chambers still need doors on the front. I'm thinking of using steam locomotive boiler front detail parts for these doors. Of course, there is always the piping required by these sorts of things. I am coming to hate pipes! With animating the rotary kiln out of the way, Doug has turned his attention to the trestle and bridge needed to bring the tracks that last bit of the way into Nighthawk. These are quite a challenge! The trestle is on a side slope and is located at an angle to the slope. This requires each bent to be custom fitted. Cribbing around two mine sites are the only other structures remaining to built on the mountain. Now if I can just learn the technique for creating "bottle brush" pine trees all the pieces of the mountain should be in place. The yard in front of the mountains is going to be the first subject of turnout activation. I have given Dave diagrams of the various routes required through the yard and he has been work on the design for the electronics. Once this is done, our volunteers should have more opportunity to operate their own trains on the layout. I think the second area for activation will be in Mound City so those with an interest in switching can get a workout.

This is my first attempt with a new software for authoring the web log, I am not at all sure how this post will look when uploaded. It is a challenge for both me and my computer. The program seems to want more memory than is in my five year old computer and the computer chokes up at times. Whereas I don't know html, I must rely on the WYSIWYG function and the computer isn't too pleased to have to deal with that. I'm also working with new photo editing software which isn't all that happy with my computer either. And my hard drive that had seemed so large before is pretty puny in the face of the digital camera files it didn't have to contend with when I first purchased the computer. Too may bits for my little computer. Unfortunately, my budget is equally small and choking on the thought of a new computer. I don't know when a new piece of hardware will be in my future.

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