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Been a while since I posted an update. I now have modules 10 to 14 lined up, connected and leveled. Still have one missing set of bridge rails, between modules 12 and 13, consisting of one main track and four yard tracks. Yard tracks are code 55, glued down with Barge. The rail joiners on the side I’ve finished do not move, so I have some testing to do. Must have inadvertently glued them with the Barge. BTW that stuff sticks, but not that well, in that a good yank dislodges the rails. They do need to be laid with a track gauge, since the 55 has a narrower rail base so it does not precisely auto-gauge like the code 70 mainline rail does. This yard is the storage yard at Tolerville, which needed to span two modules.
Once this is sorted out, I’ll have a continuous run of about 32 feet. I’m waiting for this to be done before I build modules 7 to 9, which will be Eureka and the Fall River bridge and more curvy track. Just as a refresher, I have modules 1 to 3 connected, and 4 to 6 connected, for roughly 20+ feet in each of those segments. Still need to bridge the gap between 3 and 4, which is where the door is. Only an engineer would start building a railroad at the precise point where the ingress / egress to the room is located.
Scenery work has now progressed beyond the experimental stage. I’ve been using plaster gauze over the plywood, and over the carved Woodland Scenics foam. Most of the landforms are above the track level, other than the one creek with a concrete trestle, and a couple of gullies with culverts in them. Correction, one gully has a culvert, and the other one will once I build it. I set the culvert with a block of foam under it and surrounded it with WS foam putty.
Around Sallyards on module 6 there is a low hill, and I’m trying to plot out how much flat space to leave for the stock pens. Module 10 has a cut higher than the loading gauge, and the area on modules 1 and 2 has a partially finished hill. This represents the area between Durand and Yates Center, and although it is pretty hilly there, I may have overdone it a bit. I’m considering a US 54 overpass which might hide the forced compression a bit.
For roads, I’m trying a subroadbed of strips of 1/4″ plywood, with another 1/4″ or so layer over that. This should match the track height, which is on 1/4″ plywood with Homabed roadbed over that. The top of the plywood is 1/4″ below the module edge, to give room for scenery, and that allows me to jigsaw out parts of it and to add some to the edge so as to follow major changes in the contour. I do this after the foam is in place, and after I whack chunks out of the module to represent low points. Yates Center will be my first town scene, but most of the buildings will be seen from the rear since the town is only visible from the north side.
This spring I’ve been delayed a bit by interruptions such as buying a (prototype) house in Wichita. I’m happy to report that you can hear trains on the consolidated north-south main line through town from the house, just like I can hear the Sufferin’ Pathetic from my Houston house.
I already am planning in my head how to build the Wichita portions of the railroad, but really should try to restrain myself until I get the rest of the Wichita Division finished. I’d like to at least hint at the Garvey Grain and Frontier complexes on the Hardtner line, but I definitely don’t have room to do more than hint. I’ve had the Conway Springs scene about 70% finished for two years, and haven’t been back to that for a while since I haven’t cut the holes in the wall. Or rather, I haven’t finished the holes in the wall. The holes are there, but no roadbed and no lining. Started that during the “winter” when the temp was 40 degrees, but now that it’s 80 outside and probably 100 in the attic, I suppose it’s time to pay more attention. And I’ve been seeing wasps…….
Ron Merrick
I’m now making somewhat interrupted progress on the railroad. While I’d gotten module 14 up to the stage where the track is finished, I was working in late summer on module 10, a turnback loop. Module 10 got the track laid in short order, all eight plus feet of 30″ radius curve with tangents on each end. It has a raised edge on the outer radius for another of those Kansas hills. Module 12 is a straight configuration of 7 foot plus, which is becoming the east half of the Tolerville storage yard. It’s actually not quite at Tolerville, but a half mile east of the east end of 25th St. yard. BTW, the track still exists. Its purpose in life would have been to stick grain cars on while preparing for harvest, or otherwise to stick unwanted stuff on so as to not clutter up the yard tracks.
My modeling efforts are probably more aimed toward stuffing as much equipment on the railroad as possible, if I was honest, so a four-track storage yard is right up my alley. Module 13, then, will be the west half of this yard and have a slight curve to mate with Module 14 which is about a 60 degree curve. Module 11 will have a jog, and probably a grain elevator siding like the one near what is now the Bel Aire development or perhaps at Greenwich. I’d like to work in the KG&E pole yard spur also.
(Author’s note: the spur that ultimately went in on this module is oriented like the Greenwich elevator spur, facing points if coming from Wichita, but it is being scenicked as the KG&E pole yard which is trailing points if coming from Wichita. Maybe after I move in a few years I can splice in another module and correct this little misjudgment.)
Modelwise, the four tracks of the yard are CV branchline tie strip with code 55 rail. I’ve been laying this using the technique of applying Barge to the bottom of the rail, letting it dry, then wetting it with MEK and weighting it. I did some several years ago like this, and it’s still down although I tried to shove some of it sideways and it let go without any damage. If nothing else, I might be able to spike it in a few places if it looks loose. Seems to stay in gauge OK, if I put a couple of gauges on it in between the weights as it cures.
Whenever I get to the 25th St. yard itself, which may be the last section I do, I’m probably willing to do the glue thing with code 55. I don’t think I want to lay the Conway Springs line in code 55, even though that would be the most close to correct size. Lots of other stuff to do before I have to decide that.
Oh, yes, the corrosion experiment. This probably belongs on the handlaidtrack group….
I have two number 6 turnouts coming off the main, one right and one left. Ain’t no fancy three-way turnouts needed when you have all of Kansas real estate to play with. So then, each of those diverging tracks then has a number 5 turnout, with the diverging routes of these being the inside tracks on each side of the main. I took four CV turnout bases, two 6 and two 5, and lightly sprayed them with Instant Weathering (a Floquil color). Then I glued all four of them on the module, starting about four inches in from the end. Then I started laying the tie strip for the yard tracks. Uh-oh.
Turns out one of the 6 turnouts got into its correct position, the second one. The first one actually was a 5. So that 6 turnout ended up as one of the yard turnouts, and was the second one that I laid tie strip up against. No wonder it didn’t look like the first one. BTW, there are exactly two ties’ difference in length between a 6 and a 5. I had actually spiked a couple of the frogs already — now I knew why those didn’t look right either. Fortunately the Proto87 frogs have a 5 marked on their underside. But now I needed two more frogs, so I dropped a couple of them in the selenium bath aka Micro Engineering Weathering Solution. And forgot about them for two days.
One of the things I deal with in my professional life is corrosion, so sometimes I bring in examples of corroded things. Not these — these frogs were so far gone they looked like something you’d find in an ancient shipwreck. Of course, the solder fared the worst, so they went directly in the trash, wrapped in a paper towel. Didn’t even photograph these as evidence.
Fortunately, I have an inventory of turnout parts, so I did two more frogs and went on with spiking. But I hope to remember this lesson, and in future keep better track of my 6s and 5s.
And, now the points of the first yard turnout actually are about three inches shy of the end of the module. Not desirable, but I know it will still work because the end-of-module terminal strips have enough distance between them to fit the switch machine that I will someday get around to mounting.
Ron Merrick
total main track – about 55 feet
total unconnected segments – officially 3
longest connected run – about 20 feet
most cars on the new sections of layout – about 30 last monthMoved module 10 upstairs today. This is a turnback loop, or 180 degree curve, and I’ve added three inches of height to the outside for a hillside. The other side of the track probably will be mostly above track elevation also, since there were a few fairly good cuts along the line in some of the curviest stretches of Greenwood County.
I build these as two 90 degree curves, but with only a 12 inch width at the 90 degree point. There are two 1/4 inch bolts holding the two halves together, which allows a certain degree of pivoting to allow a grade change in the middle of the curve. The outer ends of each are 24 inch wide, since all the modules I’ve built so far hold to the 24 inch end width. This makes the module somewhat D-shaped, but it also gives me an extra six inch on each end, or a total of an extra foot, that I can allocate to the modules in between. I think I’ll be needing that.
On the first turnback loop I ran the wiring continuously between the two halves of the module, in other words without terminal strips. I’ll probably do that again, when I have the module upside down to install wiring and legs. This is so much better than the old way of crawling under the layout with soldering iron in hand, or worse yet with a screwdriver and watching the screws fall out and hit the floor when you’re trying to get one in overhead.
The modules between 6 and 10 will represent Eureka area, and there are some nasty curves I’m planning so the sideways spread of the track is of more concern right now, to be sure I can fit it into the room. Those will be the last to be built for the stretch from Durand to Wichita yard, and I may end up inserting a short stretch of backdrop.
Construction will be paused for a few weeks, due to circumstances relating to making a living.
Ron Merrick
Today I finished laying track on the ‘mini-mo’ (actually two very small modules, one about 20″ actual track length and one about 24″). This bridges the gap between Yates Center and Durand, and in layout terms this is the corner where track leaves the new train room, headed toward the existing railroad. What lies between are some feet of non-modular track which will be hanging from the wall, probably on 3/4″ plywood 4″ or so wide. I think I’ll find some clear acrylic or other plastic sheet to attach to the outside edge to prevent catastrophic hitting-the-floor moments.
I had one of those moments the other week. I shoved a couple boxcars, without crawling under to check, on the connection that I’ve temporarily made to the north end of Conway Springs. Unfortunately that connection snakes between some hanging Tortoise switch machines, and in the direction the cars were moving, one of those machines was angled so that it handily dumped the first car on the floor with resulting damage to stirrup steps and so forth. Oh well, should have used flatcars.
Root cause was that Conway is not tied down yet. It’s 3/4″ plywood on L-girders, and I’ve left it free to move so I can turn each half up sideways to do the wiring. These are not real modules, but they could be. So, it was out an inch from where it was supposed to be, but that (one inch out from the final location) was what the hidden track was designed for, several years ago when I installed it. So, some cutting is in order. Fortunately, that’s flextrack which is not yet glued down at the transition. And, if I take the Dremel to the offending switch machine, the clearance problems should be solved.
So now the new parts of the railroad are up to about 40′ of track length, in two disconnected segments of about 20′ each. (Author’s note: these would be modules 1-3 and 4-6.) Next up is the duckunder bridge to connect the two segments, plus I need to build a half-circle turnback module so as to be prepared for the Eureka and Tolerville segments.
The module frames are built outdoors, then taken upstairs to add legs. This time of year, most of the construction has to take place in the mornings due to the heat load, but at least it does keep a lot of sawdust out of the train room.
Ron Merrick
Latest in a series of occasional posts.
This afternoon I finished building the diamond at Durand. The prototype was something like a 75 degree angle, but I had to squash it to a little over 45, and there was a 3 degree curve immediately west of the diamond between it and the turnout for the KC-Wichita leg of the interchange track. I actually started the curve before the diamond, which of course makes the trackwork more difficult. After a fair bit of re-soldering, I can now push cars through the thing without (either one of the ones I’m using for test) derailing.
The east and south legs of the diamond are dummy, they just lead to the edge of the world. But I couldn’t very well model the interchange track without the diamond.
The Condensed Profile drawings I have show the site after the diamond was removed, and they show a second track which comes off the interchange track, parallel to the Coffeyville line on the west side of it, which would serve as the north lead to the yard. I don’t know if that track was there before the diamond was removed, in which case there would actually have been two diamonds. In any case I’m ignoring the existence of that yard since I don’t have room for it, so that second track doesn’t exist either.
For now this crossing will remain a dummy. I may eventually gap it so that I can power those tracks (all two or three carlengths of them) but for now it’s electrically isolated from the main track and that’s all I really care about. There is no main track and no turnouts in place now on this module, but I figured I should build the hardest part first for once. At least the tie strip is in place.
Ron Merrick
I built a couple module frames ‘on-spec’ last summer, which have come in handy to pile crap, er, construction supplies on. Then I did some measuring and realized that one of them is perfect to fit in a little corner between the new and old train room areas, to represent Durand.
It won’t be laid out in the standard way, since one end has to have the track leaving a few inches off center, and the other end has a track leaving from the side a few inches away from the end, at about a 30 degree angle. This will connect to the line leading railroad north, coming from Osawatomie. There will also be stubs representing the lines leading east, toward Fort Scott, and south toward Coffeyville. Fortunately, today, that land has trees that obscure the view. Since there was a creek crossing both lines, the trees very likely were there in my era also. I had to fudge the angles of the track layout to get it to fit, but it may look convincing.
Next to this will be a right-angle module connecting this one with the Yates Center module, which will be a standard end with single track centered on 24″ end. And, it avoids cutting a hole in the wall, but it just barely clears the door jamb. It actually can be done with 30″ radius, which frankly surprised me. These three modules, when assembled, will more less lock into place against the wall but I’d like to build them out so they could be viewed from all sides free-standing.
Author’s note: Those two modules that wrap around the door jamb became modules 2a and 2b. They fit precisely against module 3, Yates Center, effectively locking it in place lengthwise, and against module 1, Durand, effectively locking it in place lengthwise also, except that the track orientation changes 90 degrees in between.
Ron Merrick
I don’t know much more about it than that, other than that the line was built from Ft. Scott which was the origin of the Ft. Scott, Wichita and Western. Ft. Scott was one of the early development points for Kansas in general, being just across the border from Missouri and of course having the fort proper as its economic base early on. The line’s last hurrah would have been the special train operated from Pittsburg in January 1932 for the inauguration in Topeka of Gov. Alf Landon.
The book Rails, Rivalry and Romance by Don Banwart has some coverage of it.
Ron Merrick
One year ago yesterday, on Christmas Eve, I finished applying the second coat of wax to the floor of the expanded railroad room, which marked the official end of construction on the facility and the beginning of railroad construction.
Today, there are four more or less completed modules, four more framed out with wiring, one under construction, but only about 20 feet of completed track. Meanwhile the Conway Springs trackage, which is in the non-modular section, has almost all the track down and I’m slowly building out the turnouts. I’m using plastic tie strip, which is the CVMW stuff, with turnout parts from Proto:87 stores. So far, so good. It’s not exactly proto:87, but I can run the .088 wheels with no trouble.
You can guess how I’m spending Christmas vacation.
Ron Merrick
Started on module 14, the first place where track will go through a wall. This one is actually in two pieces, and I’ll use bolts to hold them together on the two sides of the wall like I did module 6, the first turnback loop which represents Sallyards. That module was intended to be in two pieces for handling but once I got it upstairs, that proved unnecessary. There are six legs but it isn’t the most stable tipping-wise, which will be OK because the direction it would tip will be anchored to adjoining modules.
My wife says ‘those beautiful walls, you’re going to cut holes in them?’
Many of the modules are/will be exercises in geometry, where I calculate angles and curve radii to meet some specific need. This layout doesn’t meet Free-Mo rules in so many ways, but the framing for sure is based on those design practices. And it really will fit together in only one way. One compromise already — the Sallyards siding is being located between Yates Center and Eureka, not between Eureka and Summit. Oh well — El Dorado, which will be modified from the existing Wichita 25th St. scene, isn’t even in the right room.
I have connected modules 4 and 5 and run locomotives across the joint. Only after I did that did I see the hump at the joint, but at least now I know what to look for when installing the fitter rails.
Ron Merrick
Milestone today — laid the first rail on module 4 (a big curve around one of those Woodson/Greenwood county hills). Only one rail so far, so couldn’t put any equipment on it. But, just looking at it from the back side shows a big hump where one of the vertical curves should be. Doing the sanding of the Homabed surface didn’t reveal the presence of this hump. Even better, the other side of the track doesn’t show as much evidence of humping so I might have a nice roll there of cars moving from side to side.
I know how it got there — going around the hill, I raised the elevation by a foot or so by shimming the subroadbed. Obviously didn’t transition that end as well as I thought.
I might have a saw blade for my Dremel — maybe I could saw partway through the Homabed and force it down. I’ve already put that lightweight plaster stuff in next to the roadbed to make ditches, though. Maybe I’ll drive shims under the tie strip next to it to make the profile smoother.
At least there are no turnouts in this module or the one next to it, so tracklaying should go pretty fast except for that pesky bridge.
(Author’s note follows)
During the several months between the last post and this one, I researched the Free-Mo standards and adopted the basic principles, with major variations. Rail height above the floor varies all over the place, but in the vicinity of 42 to 46 inch. Modules are baltic birch sides and ends, 24″ nominal width with 3/4″ end plates and 1/2″ sides, which may or may not be straight — some have one or two changes of direction. Sides are almost always perpendicular to the ends, up to 6″ or so back from each end, and the track is normally tangent at the ends but not always. Modules where the track isn’t tangent at the ends are really part of a double module. Power wiring under the railroad is 14 gauge green and white, with jumpers in 16 gauge. Three-conductor walkaround throttle is yellow, orange and green. There are thus five Anderson Powerpole connectors at each end.
Ron Merrick
I declared the construction complete last month, when the floor was finished. There are still loose ends like doorknobs not installed, but I’m moving in. I have 13-1/2 feet of new shelves for the kits, and I’m working on sorting un-climatized stuff from things I want to keep climatized.
I’ve moved several boxes of completed cars back onto the railroad, but taking this opportunity to overhaul things like couplers that stick (replaced with 158s) or painting wheels on cars that just arrived, and a limited number of locomotives. I had to lift the whole railroad, almost, and that is worthy of a separate discussion.
Ron Merrick
Major milestone today, I finished disassembling and moving the storage shelves that were in the original train room. This is a set of wooden shelving that I bought somewhere, three meters long (just about ten feet) that held a hundred or so kits and lots of boxes and some tools and lots of just plain crap. It’s been reassembled in the non-AC storage room off the new train room, and my wife’s plainly stated objective is to move lots of non-railroad stuff up there, so we’ll see how this goes. I still intend to build built-in shelves in the air-conditioned storage room, for the kits and other railroad stuff.
Painting of the new rooms is done, and the floors are next. Not quite ready to pull the trigger on that one, since I still need to paint in the original train room and a few other places. I had the paint electronically color-matched to a sample that I took to the paint store — not. It’s several shades darker, sort of like approaching twilight or like cloud cover, rather than a good sky blue. Still need to deal with that, since the two colors actually meet in a couple places.
Floors are going to be vinyl tile, since I can’t take the dust that accumulates on carpet nor its other problems. We pulled out the 44-year-old rotten carpet from the original train room while the contractor’s dumpster was still here, and let me tell you, that was a mess. At least no one died by falling down the stairs trying to tug on wadded-up chunks of rotten carpet that got stuck in the stair rail. I still have a bajillion staples in the floor, and rotten padding chunks trapped under the staples, but the floor guy assured me that the existing 44-year-old plywood wasn’t good enough to lay tile on so he was just going to cover it with new plywood. Thank goodness I’d finished ripping out the baseboards myself. Curiously, some non-railroad owner of this house had painted the room bright blue to go with the red carpet, maybe during the time when there was a pool table in the room.
Because there are some filthy monsters of the feline variety that occasionally sneak into the train room, the carpet was even more a bad idea than just being a dust catcher. I’m sure you catch my drift.
The floor guy was totally ok with my idea of jacking up some of the legs of the layout and slipping tile under them. He was also totally ok with moving the workbench around to stay out of the way of the tile layers. This is a workbench I built from an article in MR in 1975-76 and weighs a couple hundred pounds, not counting the railroad crap in it. We’ll see. I also want to see if he can slip plywood under some of self-same legs. Wonder if he thought of that.
Ron Merrick
Eleven gallons of Kilz 2 went on the walls and ceiling. Masking around fifteen four-foot ceiling fixtures and several other appliances took almost as much time as the rest of the surface.
This weekend will be ceiling white, on the ceilings. I think I’ll paint everything before I start cutting holes in the walls. There’s also the little matter of fifteen route-feet of track (maybe 25 track-feet) of track to lay to connect the existing West Wichita to the place where new benchwork will start. This area has CVT tie strips, and CVT turnouts with frogs and other stuff from Proto:87 stores. I’ve been experimenting here — I cut out the plastic frogs I had originally laid from the stock CVT turnouts since I like the metal frogs better.
Has anybody noticed that the selection of investment-cast frogs, in terms of the combinations of frog style, size and angle, is pretty limited? The Proto:87 stuff is the best I’ve found, and it colors pretty well when you drop the frog into Micro Engineering’s blue selenium rail-weathering solution. Here, I’m beginning to install Blue Point turnout controls. Maybe when I get more experience, I’ll summarize it on the handlaidtrack Yahoo group.
Ron Merrick
The original house construction has a mansard roof, in which there is a vertical stud wall upstairs, two feet inside the positions of the first floor stud walls. There are angled studs, attached at the bottom to the first floor stud walls and attached at the top to the upstairs stud walls, forming a dead space about two feet wide at the bottom and about shoulder-width at five feet above the second floor level. That means I can stoop slightly and walk along the joists, if I have enough hands to hold a light, drag an extension cord, manipulate pieces of plywood, as necessary to build out parts of the railroad and work on some of the house utilities.
The mansard was very useful in construction, because my old a/c ducts for the downstairs could be re-routed entirely through the two-foot space. I am aware that this could be a maintenance nightmare later, but I’m not planning to attach the railroad to the walls in this area. I’m planning on building Free-mo style modules, in terms of structure and geometry. This includes having the scenery visible from both sides.
The original train room was over a two-car garage, but it had those mansards on all sides, so it was possible for me to cut holes in the wall so that the main line could go in on a curve and re-emerge three feet farther over. I also was able to go through the wall into the annex next door, although that track currently ends in empty space on either end.
My plan is to extend the railroad on two fronts, along the corridor on either side, into the new area. Those will be attached to the wall, maybe 6″ wide. At a couple of points, these will go through walls, if for no other reason that I may need to gain some elevation. My exact track plans once I get into the new area are completely lacking in detail.
Here’s the interesting part: I really like the Free-mo concept, and I’m trying to start out right building to the standard. But, I have one big exception — I am DC and plan to remain so. Yes, I know I can’t be interchangeable with those display guys, but I’m not in that market. We’ll see how this works out.
Ron Merrick
The train room expansion is now mechanically complete. The last leftover plywood was hauled away yesterday. Complete, in this case, means the sheetrock is finished. I started painting during the week and yesterday started a coat of Kilz on the ceilings. A few items like the stools and my Santa Fe paint can wastebasket have moved upstairs. This paint can is one I liberated from the (abandoned) Santa Fe West Wichita shop in about 1969. The color of paint it contained is marked as AS&SF Suede Gray, which means it’s entirely possible this could have been a MoPac paint also, for the interiors of locomotive cabs.
In the original train room and what I call the annex, which is an L-shaped storage room, I had put up Masonite backdrop with curves of about 16″ radius. To connect with the new area, we had to cut through this and now I have to terminate the backdrop, which I think I’ll do by using spackling to blend it into the sheetrock surface. This cut edge is right past another place where I’ll cut a hole in the wall to make a decent radius curve, so it may not be very noticeable.
In other places where I didn’t have room for a radiused backdrop, I had used cove molding. This was 1-5/8″ stock, and the edges are about 1/4″ deep so, when I butted the Masonite up to it, there was a small step which is noticeable but at least it’s not a square corner. I probably bought mine from Home Despot but when I googled it just now, the first hit I got was from Lowe’s and it shows one that I like better, which seems to have no edge. There’s a Lowe’s about five miles east of me, and I’ve come to notice that they have better stuff on average than Home Despot does (which I think lots of people seem to think is true). At the time I was bringing stuff home for the previous construction, Home Despot was my best option.
Back to the railroad, I’m doing background stuff like collecting all the wood inventory in one convenient place. Not much modelbuilding going on. My next big challenge is getting a floor guy to want to lay vinyl tile around the legs of the existing layout, which is bolted to the walls with 3/8″ carriage bolts. I solved that by building a lifter which consists of an automotive scissor jack bolted on top of a structure consisting of vertical 2x4s with some stability bracing. This allows me to lift parts of the layout so that a leg or two comes up off the floor. I proved that it works by removing the last of the 44-year-old carpet that had been trapped under said legs. By the way, a few of the railroad’s legs naturally don’t touch the underfloor since the framing is so rigid and I installed them on top of the carpet.
Ron Merrick
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