Progress is moving along nicely in the past few days! Enough of bridges, I really want to finish the track and start running trains. So track is what I'm focusing on right now. Started with the mine area. I received the Walther's Diamond Coal mine as a gift some time ago (still unbuilt), and what you see up above is the track layout I decided to use. I used a paper cutout of the mine's footprint for showing how it should look like. Near the bottom of the photo I'll have some random building served by a single track as well. The one issue is that I don't want a coal mine! There are no such mines in eastern Canada, and really what I want is to make a zinc mine. And silly me, when I didn't know better, I bought two packs (all different road numbers) of those CN rotary gondolas. At the time I didn't realize they only carried coal. Lucky I bought them on sale, but still. I do plan on modifying the Walther's mine to make it look closer to a zinc mine, and I already successfully 3D printed one covered gondola used in transporting zinc concentrate. So I'll have to figure out what to do with the rotary gondolas. It was getting a bit messy, after working on track, so cleaned up a bit and took a few photos. Besides the mine area, I glued down the track for the siding serving the mine, all the way to the far end of the layout and up to the control panel. Today I should be working on the rest. Other shots of the layout... And finally, I leave you with an image I forgot to include earlier, it's just showing the channel I built for the second remote turnout that sits above the tunnels. Again, I'll 3D print something that sits about the wiring hole. By the way, on another note. I used to cut all my flex track with a Xuron track cutter tool. Lately though my wife and kids got me a small cordless Dremel, and I added the EZ lock mandrel for the cutoff wheels. WOW. It makes cutting track sooo much easier, and the cuts are perfectly clean, no messing with files to clean up the cut! Plus, being cordless, I'm actually using the Dremel a lot more because of ease of use - though I do have another corded Dremel for heavier jobs. That one my wife also bought me as a gift 19 years ago in the first year when we were dating!
Could you add another spur to coal mine for a rotary facility, it would show the mine company is keeping up with the times. Joe
Looking great be nice when it's fully up and rail running. As the scenery allows you to get frustrated the running a train relax lol.
"How are the zinc trains loaded? What do the zinc cars look like? From what I can tell, they are small hoppers with round hatches. They probably can't be flood loaded, so is each car spotted individually? That industry is definitely not a common one to model, so it is exciting that you chose it." Well, I've seen some generic pictures of zinc mines on the web - there are a few in Canada. The underground ones are fairly simple, just a tower (headframe?) that leads to a processing building. But they are very very large - I'm gonna compress the heck outta this one However, we do have a zinc processing facility close to Montreal, where all all the zinc concentrate cars are taken. This is what they tend to be loaded into: I see them on the rails occasionally around Montreal (same reporting marks too). Though the ones in the picture above I believe carry copper concentrate. This is the 3D print I made of of the car... It's my first attempt, and eventually I need to fix quite a few things before printing more (i.e. the cover sides didn't print well, and there's a line in the top cover). But, at least the first attempt shows that it's possible. As for loading, I can't find the picture that shows it perfectly! The one picture I had found about a year ago shows that the car enters a small building/shed, open at both ends (rails pass right through). A mechanism automatically lifts the fiberglass cover out of the way, and the concentrate is dumped in from above. In the picture I had seen, there was a cloth "tube" attached to the dumping thing, I suppose to control the dust. I really wish I could find that silly picture again!
That car is a lot different than what I thought it was. PWRS looked like they had some slab-side hoppers in HO, but the cloth chute definitely sounds like a flood loader. That wouldn't have been possible with the HO cars I saw, but makes sense for these covered gons.
In any case, I wouldn't look to my layout as any indication of realism So long as it looks industrial enough, I'll be happy with it.
Some cool updates Stephane! I really like how that top cover looks on the gon. I know you said you needed to do more work on it so I get the finished product will look great! I really need to get a 3d printer so I can jump in to some projects like that.
BNSF FAN, you really should pull the trigger on a 3D printer. I don't even use mine all that much compared to some on the forums, but the times I do use it, it's like a whole new hobby! Oh, I missed your post Joe, but no, I don't want a rotary gon facility, honestly, I don't even want to the coalporters at all! I should not have bought them. Anyway, moving forward with track, here is the other side of the area laid out ready for glue... That paper template is one of the pikestuff buildings I kinda like. I'm thinking of making this a heavy machinery manufacturer (i.e. Caterpillar, or Hewitt, etc). The other spur (double) will be a chemical plant. Just enough space for 3-4 tank cars. I made a visit to the local train shop today and picked up another tank car. An Athearn 23K Ethanol tank car - white. I have a motley collection of tank cars now, and I don't have any real chemical plant planned, I'll just give it a vague name. My wife laughs at how close to the river the chemical plant will be. I think I may include some eco protesters at the gate And so this is where I'm at right now... The mainline and half the siding's been glued down (the engineer's gonna have nerves of steel rounding that curve ), and the pile of bricks is holding down the cork while the glue dries. I don't have fancy weights and all, but I have plenty of bricks - I just grabbed a few from outside and cleaned them up last summer. They sit in a cardboard box under the layout ready for use The track will be done tomorrow! well, nearly. I still have to do electrical, and then the most difficult part of all... notice that turnout just to the upper-right of the pile-o-bricks? I have to build a curving bridge that spans up above the yard throat. Gonna have to fire up Fusion 360 and the 3D printer again!
A tiny but significant update today... I finished laying down track! (whew - that's a lot of track!) Now I need to install track feeders and setup the auto-reversing gizmos (I have two reversing loops). This I will be doing concurrently with a major piece of engineering.... The above photo gives an idea of where the last bridge needs to go. It's a tricky one. 1. I don't know exactly the measurements, whether exact height, length, or radius of the curve (it may even be a non-regular curve!) 2. It's not simple to measure being in the middle of the table, 3. one end of the bridge is lower than the other, and 3. I'm not an engineer! Okay, so time to launch Fusion 360, measure a few things, and start seeing what I can come up with!
Don't know if it would help or not but you could tape a piece of paper to the top of the track. Then using a pencil rub lightly back and forth over the rails to make a tracing you could measure and work off of, Sumner
I would like to suggest cutting a piece of cardboard the length of your bridge and a little wider than track. Then draw where the track is and recut to give you the final size of bridge. Joe
Although I did not use your suggestions, I'm filing them away for future use! In my case, I decided to go with three measurements. First, I laid down two sticks on top of the tangent rails leading up to the actual bridge. From those two sticks, I then measured the distance from the cliff edge to the point where the two sticks crossed. That gave me a distance of 290 mm. Then, using a protractor, I measured the angle at which they crossed. 123 degrees. And finally, the elevation change from the cliff ends is about 2.3 mm. In Fusion 360, I just started by recreating the "sticks" using construction lines, and then from that created a plane with the correct elevation change. Then made a simple track stand-in by making a circle tangent to the sticks. If I break it apart into four individual bridge sections, that gives me sections roughly 132 mm long. The track itself will have about a 21 inch radius. I guess the sensible next step is to design the bare minimum bridge structure, print it out, and see if it fits, and check for clearances. Bridge footings will be tricky too, what with the tracks underneath.
I'm looking at picture online of various deck girder bridges to figure out how to design my own bridge. And I now realise that the underside of the bridge, the main structure is metal, and the top is basically wood beams... Now, being the first time I build this type of model, what would you suggest? Should I 3D print the deck itself, or use balsa sticks to make the deck? For reference, I'm basing my bridge loosely on this.
Nevermind the last post, found a bunch of pictures that show the rails need to be attached directly to the deck - without the conventional ties we already have on flex track. I'll be making it a ballasted deck instead.
Not sure what code and whose track you are using but have you looked at using bridge track if it is available in a form to fit what you are using. I'm probably going to use Micro-Engineering bridge track ( Micro- Engineering #11-112 BRIDGE FLEX-TRAK ) as I can get it to match their code 55 flex that I have. Sumner
