Free-moN: At Home & On The Road

MC, amazing work on these modules. The speed you create new modules and their quality is stunning. Looking forward to setting up my first module this weekend at the show. See you tomorrow afternoon!
http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?153147-FreeMo-N-My-first-module

 

Are you planning on installing the guard rails on the trestle bridge?

Some amazing work there!

 

Oh, I have plenty of room to move modules in the XJ, I however don't have room for a layout made of modules in my 7'x12' space unless I want a duckunder and all the modules fronts facing into the walls of the room. I may build up a single module at some point after I get my layout plans off the computer and into physical reality to some degree of completeness though. I joined the Yahoo group and hope to hear from some Atlantic state Free-moNsters in the area.

 

Thanks!
Turns out I have only a couple lengths of the C40 rail I use for guardrail, but will barter with a fellow Free-moNester tomorrow and hopefully have it all installed before the weekend is over.
It really does make a striking visual difference when the guard rails are installed: you really don't notice when they're there, but your eye definitely notices when they're not!

Back to the show prep:
Fortunately, it turns out I got a good 2-1 mixture on the Magic Water, so it's pretty much cured after 24 hours.
Also, using a toothbrush in weathering powder and dirt helps blend the grass and tufts [compare brushed left tuft to untouched right]:



But was a bit impatient: the toothbrush flings up blades that landed on the almost-cured water surface.
Careful tweezing and vacuuming takes care of most, though long fingernails and carelessness also scratches the surface:



So would have been better to fuss with the scenery the next day when the surface was totally smooth & solid.
So it goes.

Added a bunch o' bushes and some short trees found around the workbench:





So now "show presentable" (i.e. decent and basic scenery done but nothing wow).

The biggest plus is that the water is cured and we can use all four 45's tomorrow.
We have about 6 modules of 12'-16'-24' long, so will need all the 45' curved modules we can get to fold everything into the 35'x40' space.

Hoping the U.S. can come from behind 2-1 against Costa Rica with 30 minutes left to get that much closer to qualifying for the Brasil World Cup.
But will zonk out soon after the end of the game.
Gotta get down to Santa Clara (an hour away) before 8am so we can set everything up before the 10am showtime

Thanks for looking.

 

Trains are up and running at the Great Train Expo in Santa Clara, CA this weekend!
Getting to that point was a bit epic, and now that we have over 10 dudes (more like 15), 30 modules and abour 350 feet of mainline running, we're definitely learning loads.

First up, very long straight modules take up a lot of space and require moocho 45's and curved modules to fit everything in:



On Friday we just dumped a lot of modules in our space, as there's really no reason to try to plan something until we see which modules and modelers actually make it.

On Saturday morning, in 2 hours we were able to physically manhandle the modules into a plausable layout:



Some started leveling and clamping while the rest of us moved pieces into position to see what would work.
Part of the trick is to evenly spread out the longer modules with passing sidings.
The other part of the trick is to fit within the space allotted.
All made more tricky by the "actual" angles created by clamping as opposed to the "fantasy" angles fashioned when just eyeballing
And the fact that even with all the 10 new 45 deg. modules we still didn't have enough to make things easy: the last few feet of planning became a master Tetris match.

But soon after the doors opened, we had the whole layout laid out, wired up, skirted and ready to roll:



30 modules (many made up of multiple sections) to make up over 160 feet of mainline, which makes for a circuit of over 300 feet.

Here's a rough sketch of how it worked out (iPhone can't capture the immense final layout):



The shaded and lined modules have the long passing sidings.

Here's a more detailed triptych:







Everything set up and ready to run, then: NOTHING.
The DCC-In-A-Box seemed to go crazy all on it's own, which led to this scene for the next half hour:



Add your own audio track of choice colorful epithets.
Turned out the NCE command control box had a board that jiggled enough to touch something.
All things sorted out and trains started rolling!

The long expanses of single tracking and intense lack of any ops plan quickly clogged trains all over and revealed that we've reached the point where we need jobs--at least ONE central dispatcher giving verbal warrents when drivers reach certain key junction / passing siding modules--and we need to sit down and come up with some kind of ops plan.

Probably tomorrow!

[cont.]

 

The recently-scenicked Northern California slough/wetlands 45's turned out pretty well:





And wanted to get some video today but the model railroad gods-especially the Trickster figure "Loco"--had other plans for me today.
While setting up the modules this morning I went into a squat and heard a great RRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIPPPPP!!!!



A breezy style which I rocked until lunch when I visiting the nearby Ross for some fab $5 shorts of the plaid kind.

Then, after lunch, while soldering points that popped-off some turnouts, I got distracted and looked away while attempting to pass the soldering iron from right hand to left and grabbed the wrong part of the iron:



[You can also see the fab $5 shorts in the background].
Immediately grabbed an icepack from my snack cooler, but it got to the point where I thought there might be some serious damage in there, so drove the hour home (stopping to get another large soda with lotsa ice to hold while driving) to the local ER, where with lancing, burn cream and med all turned out okie dokie:



Funny thing is that I didn't scream nearly as loud as Rick did when some kid touched his SP Daylight

Good news is that it's only a 2nd-degree burn.
Bad news is that it's hard to type.
And unbuttoning my new fab $5 shorts is a pain in the bandage.

Been soldering for 5 years without a mishap.
Well, I guess I don't have "Fingers of Asbestos".
Yet.

But lots of great progress on many modules!
Definitely our "biggest" show so far.
Looking forward to running trains and working on ops plans tomorrow.

Will also get some video, I hope.
Unless my fab $5 shorts burst into flame.
And then I'm sure someone else will video that instead.

Thanks for looking.

 

Great to see you back on the boards M.C.! You also have nice things to contribute! I'm still jealous of you Californians and your danged FreemoN turnout. Wish we had a decent club round these parts.

 

Sorry to see your injured in all this great train fun and I do hope you heal up quick. As I said on another site looks like loads of fun. Gotta love self dispatching too aye. How many times did someone commit to single track sections without checking for oncoming traffic causing an awkward backing move? Unfortunately this happens often as we like to watch our trains travel through the scenery without looking ahead. We may start using a taser for these poor decisions in the future, oh and running up on a turnout causing a district to shut down too.

One of the guys in our group enjoys putting together a bunch of plans for us to vote on so upon arrival and unloading the modules are put in their rough position. He creates a file for each module and puts them together like dominoes and he does a great job. I was thinking of a quick and dirty dispatch set up using dry erase pens on a laminated trackplan, but people have to agree to follow the DS decisions. I am not sure what system he uses to make the plans, but maybe he could come on and explain. This requires commitments to showing up or providing transportation for the modules or these efforts are wasted. It also allows us to set up 50 modules in a few hours and start testing. I think we arrived at the Big Train Show this last time at 11ish and had power to the tracks in middle afternoon. Check out the link in my sig for more info. We now have a fairly regimented set up system that I was against in the beginning, but it works well. If one gets sore from doing a specific job like track alignment and module tightening a switch can be done easily as there are many members and jobs to be done.

Hopefully you or someone in your group made up some close up shots for us to go googly eyed over. I do like very much the way your modules flow rather than follow the sidelines expressly. This helps isolate scenes in my opinion.

 

Consider starting your own group. You may be surprised who may be interested. Create a yahoo group and put a link in your signature and talk it up.

Start here; http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Free-moN/conversations/messages

Looks like there is a guy named Chris on that group looking for other interested folks in your area.

 

So did your daughter say " after all you taught me" ?

 

Funny thing: both my wife and daughter were more worried and horrified by the plaid shorts than my burned, mangled hand.

Alrighty!
On Sunday brought my real camera and had time for videos.
Here's the overall:



Just realized it's kind of a heart shape, with Devil Mt. in the middle.

Ryan brought his kids down from Sacramento again (with a 4' module, too!) and they made sure the freight kept rolling:



You can see Effett Yard had to be flipped around to fit in our space, so the junction where we usually clamped on the Storage Yard O' Necessity faced into the aisle.

So we stuck it on the branchline of Murph's Murph Junction (16'):



Which also has a long stretch of double track which came in very handy with all the long trains rolling.

Other new modules joined the party, like Rick's 12'-long Silicon Valley CalTrains Station, with separate frieght bypass (on the left):



Built especialy to accomodate his uber long El Cap, COLA and Daylight passenger trains.
Too bad they fit in only a few other places on the layout.
The station lights up, too.

Youngster Patrick brought in a 45 deg module with an Asian Urban scene in progress:



The lack of scenery on the surrounding modules made it look like a section of Post-Apocalyptic Neo-Tokyo, which I guess made us Free-moNsters the Godzillas.

Nils took a break from his 24'-long Davenport Cement module to build a 2' bridge scene:



Complete with eagles and their nests, deer, lightning strikes at trunk bases, and some lovely fast-moving water.

And as Rick's CalTrains station module is made up of 3 sections, he took the 4th of the two pairs (matched for easier transport) and created a ghost town in a desert:



Many of the fab detailed structures are available at Showcase Miniatures http://www.showcaseminiatures.net/structures.html

[cont.]

 

Running trains-wise, we decided to try to develop an ops plan to combat the craziness from Saturday.
Here it is:



Most of the clogging was due to people leaving their trains on passing sidings (instead of the storage yard) and then wandering away, or not paying attention to their trains--got busy talking to people, etc.--or just not looking ahead to the next passing siding to see if there was space or a train coming.
So these two rules--physically (and mentally) stay with your train & LOOK AHEAD--helped moocho to keep things running smoothly.
Eventually we'll get to track warrents and specific "jobs" (both dispatcher and local switching), but that might take more organization that we're capable of at this point.

We'll see what happens for the November show!

And sometimes, if you can beat 'em, join 'em!
At every show there's a point where Nils strings together as many cars as he can into an Uber-Train and clogs up as much of the layout as he can:



The run ends when he can't get the train around the Wye Knott return loop.
(He actually took about 15 cars off by that point but it still wouldn't fit).

Soon after late Sunday lunch Rule G was tossed and the silliness really started.

My 2-6-0 Mogul decided to play chicken with Nils' Uber-Train and won:



And letting the chips fall where they may, SP gons had fun tumbling down the Shoofly slope:



For which everyone observed a moment of silence:



Or maybe they're just running trains.

At 4 o'clock it was time to pack up, which we did by 5:





And I was back home with the seats bolted back into my car by 6:30.

All-in-all a groovy weekend of running trains!

Even the hand is doing better:



A little Paint and it's looking good.
I'm just glad the pain scaled down to N as well.

And, of course, the video:

[video=youtube_share;3W-9KoroBMI]http://youtu.be/3W-9KoroBMI[/video]

I try to keep 'em short, but there were so many more modules this year!

Thanks for looking and hope to see you at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in November the weekend before Thanksgiving!

 

Looks like I missed a good show.

 

Carry a flyswatter with ya...keep them grubby little hands off the trains. Smack something close but not the kid. It will put the fear of god in em. It did my kids and my dogs when I do it...lol

 

That would be me.

I was thinking the same thing, but couldn't come up with a way of putting it into words that didn't sound wrong... "You model nothing great" is kinda where I was stuck at, haha.