I still haven't got to testing the more modern passenger equipment messing with the coupler heights and finally ended up junking one coach car that did not want to run well. Kept the car body to use as a building maybe and junked the underframe. Still have no idea why the 4-4-0 continues to drop the pony truck but it has three more times. Checked the pony truck on one and found the wheels just slightly out of gauge and adjusted those. Even with those tweaked still ended up with binding at the grade crossing that both my S-4 and 70 tonner are running through fine. May just junk the front pilot and replace it with a switcher pilot and run it as an 0-4-0 since it seems to run better that way. Meanwhile my passenger cars, older era, are running happily behind a 70 tonner. And since it has a timeline of 1946 to the mid 50s it fits my era perfectly. So now down to ten steam locos if I rework the 4-4-0 into a 0-4-0.
Reworked the 4-4-0 fairly successfully into a 0-4-0 switcher. Put the 2-6-0s ahead of the passenger and they run like a champ, so the other 4-4-0 goes into storage to maybe run as an excursion sometimes. And a shot of the new 0-4-0 in front of the station. It's days on the main are done and it will run it's remaining life out in either the sawmill yard or running a transfer cut of lumber to the car float docks. 100_4666-2 by John Moore posted Aug 27, 2015 at 5:07 PM And another short clip of the same 2-6-0 running a few notches slower.
About the only thing that hasn't happened today. Finally thought I had the dust settled and was testing some Athearn 50 foot wood coaches that I had adjusted the couplers on and I was using the Bmann S-4 as power. Suddenly things went dead in the water. Of course it was in the tunnel. Did I say again how much I hate tunnels. Fortunately the location wasn't that far in and I could reach in through the side access portal. Retrieved the two cars. Nothing wrong with the cars. Loco appeared to be sitting on the rails so tried the throttle again. Nothing. Hmm maybe a dead spot so sent another loco in to nudge it, and still nothing so reached in and retrieved that also. Reset it on the track in front of the station and tried the throttle, nothing again. Made sure I had current to the rails by using another loco, I did. To the workbench and a partial disassembly enough to reach the drive shafts thinking something is jamming the drive up. They turned freely. Nottafinga and a few more choice words. After some more testing the only thing left is that the board gave up the ghost as in fried. Why I don't know other than just another Chinese Lemon with about the same lifespan as some of their coffee makers. Couple of options are open to me. Put it back together and send it back to the Bmann. Two, direct wire the sucker and bypass the board as I run DC anyhow. However if that motor which is a small can type isn't 12 volts I fry the motor. Not my most popular loco anyhow as it doesn't play well with the others as far as double heading, but I was thinking about running it as a stand alone for passenger power only. So it sits in pieces on the bench while I ponder my next move. And if that wasn't enough the Wife comes in my room wanting to know what happened to her computer keyboard keys. Several are missing and she found one on the floor. After about an hour of searching everywhere in her room still missing a key. So looks like a visit to the puter store tomorrow while running my errands. Felines haven't touched the layout in weeks now although Deekus is very frustrated that I won't let her get to the mini meeces. But the puter keyboard? offered her the use of my puter while I fought with the S-4 but She declined. Something about the blue air in my room and damage to her ears.
Finally got the track just right so I can have nice slow speed operations. All of my recent operational issues have been due to trucks and couplers so I have been busy reworking most of my short passenger stock. Spent the last two days rebuilding my Bachmann 60 footers. The trucks on these thing is an abomination to decent operation and for the ones with illumination the wheel wiper system has enough drag for a 30 car train. So an MT installation was performed on almost all of them. In the short clip below they all have thei.r roofs off because a repaint is in store for my road. But the little 70 tonner is pulling six of them with ease at a nice slow speed. Still working on some of the 34 footers but close to being done there. This will be the last post on this thread for a long while and it has been a fun build. Still a few things to do like the Plexi-glass front shield and a little foliage here and there. Tried some new things here and there and relearned a few lost skills and of course there were the Feline adventures for some light humor. The Cat whisker car retaining system is working like a champ. So I will keep busy adjusting and tuning cars so they run right and that Class A Climax rebuild is staring at me with all the parts in several car boxes on the work bench. I looked at ways to rework the MT RPO cars so they could take a tighter curve but as of yet nothing has come to mind so I just may build a more modern one or keep my little Red RPOs bringing up the markers on the more modern varnish.
Had a visit from the Grandkids today and I finally got to run some trains for someone other than myself. And surprisingly it was my Granddaughter that took the most interest.
There you go! Another future model RR nut is birthed. Good work, John! Have enjoyed watching this module take shape and the bugs get worked out. Am looking forward to the next one! And not to mention the feline wars...........
Out of a batch of Grandkids so far the only one, now whether She goes home and sometime later asks about having a model train is another thing. If She does I have a surplus of locomotives to start her out. Hopefully this build has touched some points like the use of HC doors for a quick and easy base unit without all the cutting and building framework. And with them one is not confined to a length of 6 foot 6 inches if one has a good electric saw and some glue. Instead of 78 inches long mine is 55 inches long. That layout for now mounts on a set of easily folded and stored sawhorses and will later go on some used kitchen counter base units which will provide storage also. Plan and build for the future. This layout will eventually get incorporated into a larger layout so the track plan was designed for that. Eventually the incline and the tunnel tracks will go away. Any type of long tunnel needs lots of access portals and I added yet a few more afterward. And they need to be at least tall enough to reach your hand in sideways. Future tunnels on the rest of the layout will only be about a foot in length with double width portals even though it will be single track. Keep the wiring as simple as possible. My use of the manual Peco turnouts eliminated a lot of wiring. And because of their power routing feature I have block control without a panel and more wiring. For a small layout I have four power feeds to insure that adequate power is to all sections and again in keeping the wiring to a minimum all the power leads are off one end resulting in shorter wires. I can run up to six locos at a time without any power issues. The layout base has a .75 inch foam base with a single layer of plaster cloth. That lets me cut out for shallow streams easier taking the stream down to the door surface. The rest of the layout terrain is foam layered on foam. Uses more foam but my foam was cheap and lightweight. So rather than trying to build a structure that added more weight I layered foam and then trimmed it with my straight wand foam cutter from a craft store. With it's straight screwdriver shape I can cut more than with the conventional Woodland Scenic's bow cutter. My tunnel is simply a four by four inch foam box. No Masonite or plywood shapes for support, simply all foam. For glue for almost everything I used Elmer's All Purpose White Glue even the ballast. For scenic materials I used both Woodland's product and Arizona Stone. Fine foliage trees dominate my layout because I like the look and effect of the fine foliage much better than clump. Some clump foliage is used for bushes and on one type of Evergreen tree and some dark green Lichen is used on some rock out crop ledges. Most of my Pines are of the bottle brush construction that have a dusting of fine foliage glued on. I also grouped my trees by species varying the heights. Represents the natural spread of the trees by seeds. Every group of trees has a momma tree surrounded by it generations of offspring. Water is a mixture of Woodland Scenic Water effects and gloss Mod Podge on top for the moving water. I cast my Water Effects in strips on tinfoil and then cut it to shape to fit. For color I apply paints to the under surface and also use at least one layer of Water Effects that was slightly tinted using food coloring. Also Mod Podge can be poured on tinfoil the same way and also tinted with any water based color. Casting resin was used for the level areas of streams and the mill pond. Then in some areas a thin layer of either cast Water Effects or Mod Podge was applied for moving water. Observation has yield the fact the most water is not transparent except in shallow areas. Thus my pond and stream is slightly clouded in the deeper areas and in the case of the pond suspended leaves and debris are in the water. The Beavers that occupy my pond are made from HO scale cast metal rats that have had their tails trimmed and flattened. The Feral Hogs were done by painting N scale hogs brown and then adding fine earth to the coat to give the hairy appearance. The Sasquatch is a large standing N scale bear with a head from a HO scale figure. Rocks are from rubber molds in my collection and Hydrocal was used to cut weight. To get the colors and types of rock I researched the geological features of Washington State and the island area in the straits of Juan De Fuca. Water based cheap artist's acrylics were used and mixed for the colors with areas dry brushed with other colors over a base coat. I have found that the smaller structures do much better on smaller layouts and allow me to put a few more in the space that a large structure would take up. Also more switching opportunities. The bulk of my structures are laser cut kits with a number being wood. Some structures are scratch built styrene. Everything is mostly earth tones in color. Makes the entire layout blend better which is why I went back and ripped out all the much too bright clump foliage trees and replaced them with more subdued fine foliage colors. There are a total of 6 levels on this section of layout mostly blended and hidden by the scenery. Only two areas have structures, the upper meadow resort and the lower area junction. In terms of structures less has turned out to be more. I cut back the number of vehicle occupying the layout again less being more. And I kept the vehicles inside my operating era of the late 40s early 50s. Most are metal or resin castings, and one is a scratch built, the REA truck. Track is primarily Atlas with flex used in the tunnels and mains. One Atlas turnout is located on the upper main and all the rest of the turnouts are Peco ST5 and ST6. Two rerailers are in the tunnel and one is located in front of the station. Power wires are Atlas and the selector switch for the power routing is by Atlas. Minimum radius is 8 inches and maximum is 9.75. Maximum grade is 6% on the incline in one place with the rest of the incline at 4%. The incline was built using Woodland Scenic's incline kits that were modified to fit my layout. A lot of planning and thinking went into the building of this layout reflecting both my changes in modeling preferences, age and declining eyesight, and the disabilities caused by both a stroke and arthritis, and evolving likes and dislikes. Reach and my disabilities means that the layout depth had to be considered and a maximum depth of 30 inches was chosen. That leaves the farthest track at about 28 inch reach. I like narrow gauge but the costs of buying, and sometimes hard to find Z scale mechanisms and other cost associated with that would have put a severe strain on my budget. But the allure of narrow gauge was there along with the smaller power, often operating double and triple headed, appealed to me and still does. So I set out to explore if it could be done in N scale with a narrow gauge look and flavor. First thing was to determine what the minimum radius I could operate with. What got me thinking about using straight N scale was the fact that I had a small collection of European turnouts that had much tighter radius that the American stuff I had. What would put my American steam on the ties the smaller stuff sailed through. Then I discovered the Peco short radius turnouts that would give me a supply of those and like the older ones take far less real estate to install. I already knew that my cars with truck mounted couplers in 30, 40, and 50 foot lengths would transition those tight turnouts but what about power. So I set up some flex track in various radiuses under 9.75 and set out to test my small power I had on hand. I found that I had a nice assortment of small power that would take much tighter radius and I settled on 8 inch being my minimum. I actually have some locos that will take 7 inch and are advertised as accommodating that tight. So I set out to design the final layout both as a narrow gauge flavored layout using small power and cars, and being able to incorporate some tighter curvature meaning a lot of space saving in areas. In downsizing my retirement housing also that meant that there would be less space for modeling and an easier to maintain and build smaller layout that would be a point to point. I also could design much narrower, saving space, because the need for wide radius was gone. Now my widths needed to accommodate curvature is at a maximum of about 20 inches and allowing for a safety from the edge about 24 inches. A whole world of design possibilities opened up for me and some of that is reflected in this small module. The total layout is designed for a 10 by 10 foot room but because of the track radius the bench work could be narrowed down on multiple sides. So this build thread has been a research project for me to test out some of my ideas and for the most part has been very successful even with Feline participation at times. And of course the latest post would not be complete without at least one feline in the photo. My two constant companions no matter where I go in the house. Deekus the Cat and Wesa aka the Big Guy. His size is really evident here in that Deekus is a tall long legged female who is dwarfed alongside her "little" younger brother she raised as a kitten laying in the window above my workbench. Fortunately he has shown no interest in the layout since the meadow was filled in or I would be having Florida style sinkholes developing on the layout. 100_4677=1 by John Moore posted Aug 31, 2015 at 12:16 PM
Wesa is HUGE, even allowing for his proximity to the camera lens. Did Deekus mate with a Maine Coon Cat?
Deekus is his older sister not his mother. She just played surrogate mother when he came in. He was born feral and had the same mother as Deekus, thus the brother sister thing. I am not joking when I say he pulls my arm down to pet him. All of our cats are former feral cats that we adopted. I suspect both his and Deekus's daddy was a Tiger Tabby. And they get to be large. His feral mother is large for a female. Fortunately for me he has never shown any interest in the running trains. One crunch of those jaws would definitely ruin a car or loco. Deekus on the other hand requires constant watching when trains are running and she is in the room. And she has some serious speed. I am not sure which is faster a lightning bolt or her and I would be tempted to lay my money on her.
