I’ve bit the bullet, Jan. 15, 2011

[princessclyne69]

Spent eight days in Wichita, one day more than planned due to UAL’s inability to get us out of Dodge even on standby. Now that I’m back, I did what I said in the last post and bought what I call a gundrill (that’s not precisely what it is, just an 1/8″ drill bit a foot long with about three inches of flutes). This allowed me to drill a bunch of holes, a half-inch apart, through the Homabed right at its interface with the plywood subroadbed. I was then able to gently raise the Homabed with a couple of chisels and a putty knife, shimming it at the center of the dip with some 1/8″ plywood and with some cardboard at each end. (Curvable Homabed comes with a cardboard backing under each piece which has the same slits as the roadbed does.)

So far, it has seemed to work. I’ve pried up a couple more inches of roadbed to get it level all the way through, and both the flextrack on one end and the spiked tie strip at the other have seemed to survive. Shot it full of glue and put some weights on it, so we’ll see tomorrow how level it is.

My time in Wichita actually was somewhat productive, since I have a few resin kits up there that I’m gradually adding grabirons to.

Ron Merrick

[princessclyne69]

I’ve installed and leveled the subroadbed for the extension along the other side of the corridor (opposite to the single-track extension on the other side), laid the roadbed, laid the flextrack, and built the turnouts at each end. Will still need power, but since it will connect directly to module 1 it can draw some track power directly from there.

I used the Homabed branchline roadbed for the first time, looks good except for the hump I just noticed in one rail of the siding. Oh well, it’s a siding.

Plans are to scenic this with maybe a grade crossing and some scrubby trees, but otherwise it’s just sixteen feet of straight track. I plan on extending it another six feet at the north end, which will have a couple of curves and some hilly scenery to disguise the fact that the track will be going through another wall. The grade is steep enough that cars left on either the main or the siding will definitely roll.

So since last fall I’ve added twenty feet of new track on the Conway sub and rehabbed another twenty, and now added a total of about thirty track-feet more. Main advantage of this extension is that the siding can act as a staging track, so I could actually run a train out, run around it and return. Could, that is, once I close two other major gaps in the mainline.

Ron Merrick

[princessclyne69]

No new track or wiring, but a lot of scenery development. Several modules have had foam substrate added, which is a long process because I think about it too much. Modules 1 and 2 have a highway substructure, which is 3-1/4″ wide and about 1/2″ deep (two layers of that 1/4″ plywood that I use everywhere for the decks) and a large embankment for the US 54 highway overpass south of Durand. Once I got that done, interrupted by a couple of weeks in the land of red trains, there has been frenzy of plastering.

I use the Woodland Scenics plaster gauze material, which comes in 8″ widths and, I’ve recently discovered, a 4″ width which suits my needs more in some places. My first attempts didn’t cover the end plates, and in some places didn’t cover the side plates, which I’ve been slowly correcting. I generally burn through slightly more than one roll of the gauze per module. Once that’s down, I cover it with a random mix of green and earth undercoat to hide as much of the white as possible. That at least gets me away from the Plywood Pacific look (as Richard Hendrickson used to call it). That’s usually where I have left off, but several modules now also have the lightweight hydrocal coating on top of that, with track ballast and some coloring of ravines and other relief, and some experimental electrostatic grass that I’m not entirely happy with. No weeds, bushes or trees yet. And yes, there are a few holes in the ground, or shallow spots significantly below rail level. For some reason, that’s been hard for me.

Wherever possible, I’ve been trying to disguise the module ends to make everything more seamless. That’s been easier said than done so far, but I think things will improve shortly. There is now more green than plywood color, so at least I’ve come that far.

Ron Merrick

[princessclyne69]

I had previously built a main track and siding through the corridor that connects the new layout room to the older part of the upstairs. Now for the first time, I’ve built new roadbed in the place of old.

Originally, there was a storage room that was unclimatized, L-shaped, five feet wide at the top of the stairs. I’d cut a hole through the wall to bring the railroad into this room and connect at the opposite end with another hole in the wall that led back to the rest of the layout. I had gotten as far as L-girder benchwork and Homasote on this portion of the layout, and there was track on part of it. When we did the expansion, about four feet of L-girder at the very corner was demolished to make room for the doorway into the new train room. This is where I’ve cut through the wall to make a connection on the opposite side.

Now I have replaced the old heavy 3/4″ plywood with 1/2″ solid Homasote with a construction similar to the modules, namely 1/4″ plywood with 1×2 at the edges for stiffness, but resting on the old risers and L-girder framework. I’ve laid Homabed directly on this surface, which is how the connection extension is laid, and tied it in at the south end (railroad west). There is a nice pair of 36″ radius reverse curves to line up with the roadbed outside the wall. Track will be coming soon.

Outside the wall will be a challenge. This roadbed exists, but there has never been track on it. I added a ceiling fan to this area, which is the upstairs landing for the ‘interior’ stairway, so that made it slightly less unbearably hot here and reduced the spider growth somewhat. But I’m inclined to think I really ought to enclose this section with Plexiglas or something. The reason this area is important is that it’s the last gap between the new railroad and the old. The old railroad is frankly nothing more than a place to store cars now, but it will fulfill my original plans to tie the new in with the old — in a totally different way than I had envisioned when I started this project.

Ron Merrick

[princessclyne69]

I’ve shifted focus back to module 7, which is Eureka or at least most of it. This module had scenery supplies on it for a couple years, but those have been displaced and I have laid the track for Eureka. There is the main, with #6 turnouts at each end of the module for the siding, and at the eas end just inside the #6 turnout is a #5 for the house track. This track is far enough south of the main to (I hope) have room for the station. There were two grain-related facilities to the south of the tracks, one being something like a feed mill, and just to the west a small elevator with no outlying grain bins. This structure was just destroyed last month in a tornado that also did major damage to the rest home that had been built across the right of way after abandonment. Also on the south side was an oil dealer and probably some business that was done from the team track (I use this term interchangeably with ‘house track’. On the north side of the tracks was another elevator, basically served from what I’ve been calling the siding.

Back to the house track, in order to add some interest I deployed modeler’s license because I took the Santa Fe interchange track off from the house track. It actually came off the main several hundred yards to the east, but this way I have a place to spot two more cars.

If I ever have more room I’ll expand this scene onto another module, because I didn’t have room to bring the house track back to the main line. But in the towns I’ve done, I’m trying to lay the foundations, literally, by building up the street alignments and laying pads for the crossing signals. The Condensed Profile shows only one set of flashing lights, no gates, at Eureka which would have been Main St. just west of the depot. There is also one wig-wag shown, which is correct because it was in the middle of the street. Right now I don’t have room to model this one, I don’t think.

I’ve clamped this module to the one just to the east of it, which is out of order but it was the best way to arrange things. That module 6 represents Sallyards which is actually way to the west of Eureka. Test runs of the alignment are in progress.

In the near future, I’ll move module 8 from the other room and clamp it into place. It has that three-foot hole in the middle representing the Fall River bridge, so I’m thinking about sticking a piece of flextrack in there so I can finish wiring this part of the layout, and more importantly I want to fix the alignment between the island consisting of modules 9-15, and the island consisting of modules 4-7, and the island consisting of modules 1-3, plus twenty feet of main track hanging from the wall, into one slightly coherent piece. The construction of the jumpover or mini-mo between 3 and 4 depends on the alignment of the portion of the track from 4 on through the other wall to 15.

I already have sketches for three modules in north Wichita that I’m itching to build, so I;m trying to make myself finish all this before I go on. Can’t really do any fabrication of modules right now anyway, due to the temperature.

Ron Merrick

[princessclyne69]

The railroad has coalesced into three disconnected segments, one of about 41 feet of track from the train room door to the entrance to the storage room, one of about 28 feet of track on four modules, and a third one of about forty feet of main track plus sidings plus a mini-mo connecting it to the 16′ storage yard.

Over the weekend I finished another mini-mo of 45 inches long incorporating about an 18 degree curve, connecting modules 3 and 4 and bridging the entrance to the storage room (which happens to be where the construction started, on either side of the storage room door). I used 3/4″ plywood for this, which I ended up splicing with some judicious reinforcement. It’s not the most stable arrangement, but it works. The 18 degree change of direction plus the length allowed me to use 42″ radius in the curve with plenty of tangent at each end.

This mini-mo plus a power wiring jumper has made it possible to run a train through this whole length, albeit with a few derailments, from one end up to module 7 which is still lacking track power on the main. I’m going to put a fakey section of track across the river location soon, so as to be able to claim I can run from one end to the other.

Soon I’ll have more track than the total length of cars that are on the layout, if I persist.

Ron Merrick

[princessclyne69]

WHAT was it the Engines said,
Pilots touching,—head to head
Facing on the single track,
Half a world behind each back?

— Bret Harte, 1869, on the occasion of a more momentous golden spike

Not wanting to be overly melodramatic, but today I completed the main line at Module 8, at the future location of the Fall River bridge. Right now it’s a piece of flextrack held up by plywood, but I have successfully run an engine and several cars back and forth over it. There is spiked rail at each end, with the lucky circumstance that a single piece of flextrack was exactly the right length to bridge the gap.

There’s a horrible, derailment-quality hump at one end that I need to work on, by cutting into the roadbed on module 7 and lowering it for an inch or so, and I need some better gapping. But now there is 138 feet of continuous rail on the main line, plus about 60 feet of branchline that doesn’t connect, which itself needs major work. But at least it’s in place.

In other news, this week we bought another house in Wichita which may be the permanent one. It’s in a location, College Hill, where there can’t be a railroad building adjacent to the house. It’s also older than the previous one, but it was built after the Cubs won the World Series the last time. When this house was new, you could have taken the streetcar down Douglas to the MoPac station and sailed to Germany to meet the Kaiser.

So, yet another challenge…..

Watch this space.

Ron Merrick

[princessclyne69]

Had the usual assortment of non-rail relatives over today, so had a tour of the layout. They do recognize that every time they come over, there’s more railroad to be seen. I ran a train, or rather I had a locomotive pull cuts of cars back and forth, on sections of it. Kind of hard to do, since the bridge is still poorly supported. I glued a couple of pieces of plywood in the places where piers would be. Worked OK with a switcher, but I ran two F units onto the piece of flextrack and one end of the bridge, the flextrack bowed downward and popped out of the rail joiners at the other end, and the engines did not fall all the way because the couplers held them together when the tops of the ends hit. Fortunately, there were no witnesses. I’m betting that it’s not a common occurrence to have one end of a piece of flextrack get flipped a couple of feet in the air.

Then there’s a spot where the train parts, or at least the Athearn geeps lose their train, right at the end of a module so I have a height difference I hadn’t seen before, or probably a low coupler on the geep.

Somewhat off topic, but I have a Life-Like SW7 which has probably run more miles than any other engine on the railroad. It regularly pulls 20 or more cars. I put an Athearn GP9 in its place, and it didn’t come close. With finger assist, it still bogged down. Added a second unit, not much better.

I have Kadee 5s on most cars built before the introduction of the 58, and 58s on pretty much everything since plus anything older that’s been through the shop. But a few of the Athearn cars, notably the three-bay PS2s, have defied coupler change by having a little coupler box mounting screw which is probably a Phillips #0 or #00, that is driven in so tight I can not get it out. So those cars still have those gross plastic couplers made by somebody, and the plastic knuckle springs frequently fail during slack run-ins or backing, or just plain will not stay closed. So those cars are coming real close to an across-the-board recall. Athearn Airslides aren’t much better, but I usually can get the screws out of those without damaging any detail.

Oh yeah, the new part.

I threw some plywood on the fabrication platform and started drawing three new modules, or what Free-mo would call a module set, for the stretch of MoPac main line in Wichita between and including the Santa Fe and Rock Island crossings. This is arguably the most complex stretch of track on the railroad, other than maybe the yard throat. There’s the MoP, of course, which was double track at the time, a three-track Santa Fe line (It seems to have been three tracks during my era of interest, later it was four), the Wreck Island single-track main line, and the WTA (Wichita Terminal Association, which still exists). The poor Frisco, which also crossed the MoPac, just didn’t make the cut as far as the trackage I was able to lay out.

Previously I built the module frames with a pretty good idea of where the track centerline would be, then added the plywood on top. Here, the only way I could do that was to lay out the tracks first and I’ll figure out where the frame will go. Two of these modules stray pretty far from the idea of 24″ width with the track centered on it, but let’s just say that form will have to follow function here. It helps that I’ve built enough modules that I know how all the parts are supposed to fit. I wish I had more distance to play with, but 18 feet is as much as I can go with a turnback loop at each end, in the present train room. I’m trying to lay out the track centers so that I can stick a mini-mo in there and there to add a couple of feet, if I’m ever in the position to do that.

The challenge is that even during my period of interest, the track layout changed. From the aerial photos dated 1950 to 1960, there were a lot of new tracks added, and one track actually rerouted, shifted sideways. I’d love to know why. The arrangement I’m settling on is somewhat of a compromise between the two.

RG7

[princessclyne69]

Over the weekend I built the basic frame of the first module for the Wichita section. This is a simple rectangular one, the standard 24 inch wide by 6 feet long, but it will have complicated ones on either side.

This is part of a ‘module set’ as Free-mo would call it, with five or six tracks spanning three modules but just two tracks on either end. It fits in a space 18 feet long, which is as long a straight run as I can get and still have room for turnback loops at each end. So the frame so far is literally just that, two ends and two sides, plus the top which I’ve already marked track centerlines on. I’m not positive how these will line up so I’d rather not take it any farther until I have all three frames built. The two at the outer ends are the Santa Fe and Rock Island interchanges. Sorry to report there’s no room for the Frisco. I might still buy a Proto SW9 and letter it for Frisco 261, which spent its entire career in Wichita and is still there to this day in the GPTM, painted as BN something, which is how it came to the museum.

I like to do a lot of pre-fabrication, so I have at least six pre-made legs, several 24″ end plates, and other various components so assembling this one went quickly, if not well. The two sides were the same length to within 1/16″, but there’s some lack of squareness due to the sides being slightly bowed. I normally put about two 1×3 intermediate braces in, so that’ll be solved. One of the end plates is slightly twisted end to end, so I brought in the top slightly inward from the end of the side, and I’ll laminate some cardboard on it and sand it flush, so it’ll square up fine when assembled. I didn’t try to add leg clips or any of the other detail components since I’ll be out for a few days, but I prefer to add those on the bench, at a comfortable working height, so I’ll bring the frame back down later. I’m not real concerned with end-to-end parallel alignment, because the fabrication platform is flat enough that the screw adjustment on the legs will make everything work out. A bigger issue concerning tolerances is that the top of the frame sections need to align within perceptible limits by feel, something less than 1/16″, but the tolerance on the width of the frame sections is greater than that. This happens because I buy the Baltic Birch in larger sheets and rip it to about 5-7/8″ width, but the repeatability of my cutting, over time, isn’t that great. (Bear in mind that the sheets are furnished in exact metric sizes with a couple mm tolerance, but aiming for 6″ nominal brings it closer to the 5-7/8″ minimum.)

Laying out the plywood top with track centerlines makes it a lot easier to design the frame geometry, as opposed to the sections of the layout that are just track crossing open country with an occasional scenic feature. (I’m not playing up to the stereotype that Kansas is relatively free of scenic features, but I’ll just say that most of them are fairly uncomplicated.) As it is, I have several #5 turnouts in the interchange tracks and the WTA industry trackage that I’m not entirely confident as to them all fitting, so it’ll be interesting in the coming months.

Ron Merrick

[princessclyne69]

I’m finishing today the laying of roadbed on the three new modules that represent the WTA (Wichita Terminal Association). The double-track MoPac main line runs down the center, being crossed by the Rock Island single-track main and the Santa Fe double main track and one parallel industry track, which is part of the WTA and interchanges with the MoPac and the Rock Island. There’s 60 feet of main track and 55 or so feet of industry track to lay. I’ve tried not to think about the ten crossings I’ll have to build.

I ran out of some types of Homabed roadbed, and discovered the original manufacturer is officially out of business. However, there is now Cascade Rail Supply, cascaderailsupply.com or homabed.com, who has acquired the rights to the Homabed name. They claim that the product isn’t completely compatible with the old stuff, however I’ve laid some straight and curved roadbed and several turnout sections and it’s close enough for me to consider it completely interchangeable. Bear in mind that, after learning my lesson on the first module I built, I hit all of the roadbed with a sander to take down the high spots and add some cardstock, if necessary, to fill low spots. Wear a mask for this if you try it.

Next up is probably building two turnback loops. On the south end the turnback loop will definitely be a 180. On the north end there’s an issue of whether I design the turnback to mate with the existing fakey storage yard, which may require a mini-mo to actually connect. Doing this will allow me to be working on module construction outside while at the same time laying track upstairs. Only drawback to this schedule is that I really would prefer not to be fabricating modules in Houston in July and August.

Ron Merrick

[princessclyne69]

The turnback loops referred to in the last post are now well underway. A turnback is nothing more than a 180 degree turn, with the appropriate 6″ tangent at each end. These go at either end of the three-module set that covers the north Wichita industrial area, so they’re both double track, and they should be module numbers 19 and 23. One was definitely going to be 180 degrees, and the other seemed to need to be a little less but I determined that the 180 degree angle would work, which vastly simplified the construction.

Building the turnback in two halves, with the joint at the halfway point consisting of the same end plate that any module would have, allows for future changes. These intermediate end plates are actually bolted together with enough give to allow a little elevation change if needed. Earlier turnbacks had a 12″ width at this joint, but these have a 15″ width (aided by the fact that I cut some end plates wrong so had some salvage material to work with). This should look better with city scenery, of which there is none now.

The inside side plates are the standard 1/2″ birch, mitered into roughly 40 degree and 50 degree angles. This connects the end plates rigidly with the intermediate end plates, and allows for the outer plate construction which has short 3/8″ segments at the end, with 1/8″ laminated over it and bent in a continuous curve. This was a bit of a challenge since the circumference of each quadrant is about 67″, requiring splices. The cross section of the outer edge of the module includes a horizontal plywood reinforcement, cut to 42″ approximate radius, which gives the finished fabrication enough stiffness. Intermediate braces are 1×3 like any other module, with 5/8″ holes bored in them for the wiring.

The next stage of construction will be to add the tops, followed by subroadbed.

[princessclyne69]

My last post was at the beginning of August, and I was continuing with construction of the second turnback (180 degree direction change) module. Then we went on vacation as the end of August approached, and we thought a hurricane might come in so I moved all the components upstairs.

Well, boy howdy, as they say, we got not exactly a hurricane in metro Houston but just fifty inches of rain. We were on the other side of the country, watching those green and orange trains along with a few mountains. We got back to Houston a day later than planned, had no water in the house and hadn’t even ever lost power. But the module construction sort of got deferred.

There was lots of freight car construction in the interim, but now I’m back to getting that first module stood up. I have enough legs in inventory, I’m doing the wiring now, so it should go up tomorrow. The other module is back on the fabrication platform, to do the outer curved sides.

The cabinet-grade birch I use comes from Woodcraft or Rockler. Lately, neither one has had inventory of the 5′ long wood, so I ordered some. I got, shall we say, a lot of comments from the wife when this stuff arrived, 80 lbs worth. But today I cut it up into nominal 6″ panels for module sides, so I’m good to go for awhile.

I bought a property in Wichita in August, closed on it in October, and I’ve had my first meeting with the Wichita zoning board. It backs up on what I would refer to as the Orient, or maybe the Santa Fe, although the present company that operates on it is the K&O. About a mile west of there it becomes former MP Hardtner branch trackage, and it’s a pretty active railroad today although not exactly a main line.

Ron Merrick

[princessclyne69]

I’m finally getting the plywood top on the second turnback loop, and it may be ready to go upstairs by the end of this weekend.

I moved everything inside before we left on vacation that fateful last week of August, and some time later I got the 50% complete module out of the storage room. Had it propped on one end, the wind knocked it over and broke a couple of pieces loose as well as bruising some of the corners. Then the Gulf Coast “winter” caused me to make very little progress for weeks, now I’m trying to wrap it up.

Discovered a design flaw when I tried to set the first turnback loop. It had six legs, four on the inside and two on the outside curve, about 2′ away from centerline. That was ok for weight balance and stability when being turned upright, but definitely not ok for supporting the outer corners. Without clamping to the next module, I had about 1/4″ of droop. So I’ll have to turn that module upside down, cut into the curve bracing and add two more leg clips on the train room floor. Oh well, there’s so much sawdust up there now a little more will only incrementally add to the mess.

I have two “air-suckers” (HEPA filter units), the old cylindrical Honeywell ones, up there and I think that does help keep down construction dust. Only thing is, the soft plastic wheels under those units are disintegrating so they no longer roll, but there’s a handle on top so no big deal except the disintegrating plastic smears a little on the floor. I don’t see an easy way of replacing the wheels, so I may just take them off.

One thing that helped with wiring the underside of the first turnback loop, and later with uprighting it, is I set it on 4x4s so it was a little ways off the floor, so I wasn’t kneeling so far. Then I raised the outer radius with more wood until it was at about a 20 degree angle before I tried lifting it.

RG7

[princessclyne69]

Got the second turnback loop upright this weekend, on its own (eight) feet. The other one I built to match only had six feet and it drooped at the outer sides. If I’d had the feet positioned better I could have done with six, so I guess my off-the-cuff load analysis wasn’t very accurate.

This track configuration does fit in the room, but just barely. Currently there are three modules end-to-end, with a turnback at each end. There is roadbed, some tie strip, no rail yet. I’m working on painting the tie strip before I lay it.

There’s a 23 inch gap between my temporary yard and the first turnback, so I’ll build a mini-mo to span it. This will have a turnout since the outlet of the yard is single track flextrack and the modules will be double track. Alignment is close enough, after a bit of bumping. I use Pony clamps to hold modules together, so they push but their ability to pull each other is limited. Not nonexistent, but limited. On the other end of the second turnback is empty space, for now. I may build a couple of 7 foot straight modules, just because I have the wood, but I want to hold off on the third because I’m not sure whether to build it or not now.

The move is starting to come together. Zoning change application was filed last week. The most that will happen this calendar year, probably, will only be dirt work.

RG7

[princessclyne69]

I’d used Central Valley (CVT) tie strip for a long time. This strip was molded in black, like everything else CV produced. Then I ordered more this spring, and it came in as brown, actually like milk chocolate brown. CVT told me this was a permanent change, so live with it. Actually, she was very polite, but definite. So I experimented with painting, using light sprays of black, railroad tie brown and different weathering colors, and I have to admit this stuff actually looks better than the old. So I learned something. I’m keeping some of the old for use with matching in specific places, but it looks like some of the last old stuff that I put down needs to come up, since there’s a hump I didn’t see before. Fortunately there’s no rail on any of this.

I ran out of the old matte varnish that I was using, and that particular brand has also been discontinued, so I tried Woodland Scenics Scenic Glue (the heavy stuff, not Scenic Cement). I think I like this better, since it’s stickier than the old stuff. It’s also fairly viscous, so it’s harder to spread, but it works.

In order to connect these modules to the temporary yard, I need another jumpover. This one will have a turnout on it, since the temporary yard only has one track in and out on each end. Once this is in place, and I get some rail laid in the new modules, it’ll be possible to run through (to the next dead end, anyway).

Ron Merrick

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