The N Scale Modeler

Not really “natural”.  We had a sewer line problem which backed up and flooded our 1st floor powder room which of course leaked down into the basement.  The picture is after the water damage guys were done tearing out carpet, setting up to dry the subfloor above and such.

Needless to say this throws a wrench into my build schedule.  I am working with the insurance company to recover those items that got destroyed in the process (and there were a bunch) on top of trying to dry out and save what I can.  These kinds of things happen but they definitely give you a hit to your morale.  I was so close to being done with the trackwork and now I have to spend my time figuring our what can be saved.  Luckily most of the benchwork and existing trackwork wasn’t damaged – it was some of the electronics and stuff I had stacked up outside the layout that really took a hit.  Yay me.

I’ve been talking about it a lot but I finally got around to taking a couple of pictures of the layout.  This first one is the yard at Cressona.

Cressona 2010-12-01

Pardon the mess, it is still an active construction zone.  In the picture you can see all the yard tracks and the ladder with the runaround as well.  Sticking out the side you can see the pulls for the BluePoint switch machines I have installed throughout the yard.  While a lot of the turnouts are controlled by Tortoise motors with Hare or Wabbit stationary decoders, the yard I wanted to be manual, so I used BluePoint machines.  They work great and are easy as pie to install (especially if you use hot glue).

This second picture is more for me.  I finally finished my first structure – a plastic kit from Rix of a 2 stall diesel enginehouse.  Since I have two tracks for service this worked out perfectly.  I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.  Next up I have to weather it but that is going to wait for more construction to be completed before I get to that.

The next bit for me is to finish an industry area.  I have to decide if I want to finish up the Tredegar trackwork, run up to Yuengling or the mine up at Minersville.  I am leaning towards Minersville since, well, it’s coal!  So I just have to buckle down and get it done.  It shouldn’t be too much work since I’ve already got the trackwork up to the ramp that heads to Minersville.

Oh – and I have to clean up.  A lot.  And redo some wiring.  And label things better.  And hang the facia (although I am waiting to get all the switch machines in and wiring before I do that.  And then I can start on stuff like, oh, terrain and ballasting and structures… it never ends.

A major milestone today, one which I will write more about later.  This afternoon I tacked in the last piece of track in the main loop which allows me to run continuous!  As I write this I have a test loco going in circles on the layout, varying the direction every 5 loops or so.  Man this is a big thing for me.

Next up is to finish tacking down a couple of loose pieces of track, and then running again at low speed in both directions to make sure everything is working ok.  The track definitely needs to be cleaned but with major construction still going on that’s kind of pointless.

So far, so good.

There’s actually been a lot of progress on the model but more on that later (with pictures).

Me standing at the Kalmbach sign outside

This past Monday, my friend Kevin and I went on a pilgrimage to the Model Railroader offices at Kalmbach.  We drove up in the morning, checked in and were taken on the tour by Eric the Editorial Assistant.  He took us upstairs and was showing us some of the old issues, artwork, historical stuff and the Library.  Wow – the Library.  What a fantastic resource that is.  I could have spent a couple of days in there going through books, magazines and pictures.  They even have all the competitor publications there too (for example, did you know there was a NZ Model Railroad publication?  New Zealand!).

After the Library we were walking through the halls and I asked if I could say hello to David Popp.  David and I had met last year during a talk he gave about MR to our local NMRA division.  I went to his house afterwards to check out his layout and had been pestering him for a year to be able to go to an operating session.  I finally did just before the NMRA convention.

Regardless, we walked over to David’s office but he wasn’t there.  We were about to leave when he appeared and said he’d take us on the rest of the tour.  Apparently he thought I’d ask for him at the front desk but I didn’t want to bother him since it was his workplace!  He wanted to show us around so off we went (how cool is that)?

The Beer Line Layout

We checked out the workshop, the photo lab, distribution, etc.  Pretty wild stuff seeing everything in person that you see in the magazine.  We even got the full tour of the MR&T “club” layout.  Plus the added bonus of seeing all the project layouts outside the workplace like last year’s Beer Line and this year’s Salt Lake Route.

Overall it was a very successful trip.  He even gave us a special “sneak peek” issue of something coming out soon so we’re grateful!  Very grateful!  Now to get back to the layout here .. if I can just find the stupid short circuit I’ve got now …

So now that I’ve survived the NMRA 75th convention up in Milwaukee I’ve had time to get home and work with some of my purchases and try out some new things.

After the convention I bought a few of FastTracks Bullfrog turnout controls to see how well they fit and how they worked.  They arrived yesterday and I immediately went to work putting one together.  It took me about 20 minutes but the darn thing works as advertised.  It’s actually a pretty ingenious design and I can see these become a fixture on manual turnout controls.  My only concern is price – all told it’s about $9 per control when you add the rod in — and a tortoise in bulk is only about $12-13.  Or you can build your own turnout control for about $2-3 so I’m not sold on them from a cost perspective.  But they are pretty neat.

The other things I’ve started working on – and will post a lot more about – is RFID.  My thought was to have a RFID reader mounted under the subroadbed at the entrance to the yard and have it scan the cars as they enter the yard and then print out a list of what’s arriving immediately.  This way a yardmaster knows exactly what rolled in without having to match numbers and whatnot.   Modern railroads basically do the same thing now so why not?  The tough part is finding tags I can use on N scale.  I’m working with a couple of people to try to get some so we’ll see.  The optimum tags would be about 5mm x 5mm and very flexible.  The concern of course is range – in the best circumstances a 125 kHz hobbyist reader has a range of about 4″ max which is reduced based on the tag to be read and any interference between the reader and the tag.  Plus the size of the tag (and its associated  antenna) is a factor.  So a smaller tag has a smaller range.  Some testing will have to occur obviously but I think it’s a workable idea.

Longer term I would like to work with other software/hardware developers to come up with an XML standard for maintaining car inventories – this would allow people to mix & match their software controls (inventory, car forwarding, layout control, etc) and only have to enter all their inventory once.  Right now it’s a mishmash.

So now it’s back to building turnouts so I can lay more track!

It’s been a while since I posted and I need to fix that.  I’ve been up at the NMRA convention in Milwaukee this week and learning a lot.  If you get a chance to go to it I highly recommend it!!

One thing I need to mention is that the RBMN is a full NORAC member so the SHRR is also a member.  What this means is they operate under NORAC rules for both signal aspects and when using DCS (Form D).  I actually found the full 8th release of the NORAC rules so will be reposting that on the wiki.

Also coming soon will be a lot more pictures, there’s actually been progress so I need to reflect that.  And some possible upcoming plan changes!

So over this past weekend I got the upper deck over staging rough-cut and fitted and also started tweaking some of the roadbed around it.  Ever so slowly things are beginning to come together.  Unfortunately, I realized that I’m going to be just a tad short of wood which didn’t make my wife too enthusiastic.  So I’ll have to make another quick trip to Home Depot in the near future to pick up some things.

One thing I will say for sure is that I need a lot more risers than I figured I would!  I’m seeing where the ply could easily sag/flex and am installing more risers as quickly as I can.  Luckily another item I picked up this past weekend is a table saw which is making cutting risers and such much faster/easier.  I had to decide between a table saw or a miter and the added flexibility on the table saw won out.

Another item that was completed (pretty much) is installing all the electronics under the staging piece.  The wiring needs to be tied down a little more, and the blue/white wires are currently just temporary and need to be replaced but everything is in place and works.  The blue/white wires go to the IR detectors to show when a train has reached the end of the loop on the staging yard.  There’s also a NCE Switch-8 to handle the turnouts down there and a autoreverser module (not shown I believe) to handle switching the polarity on the tracks when they hit the loops.  Everything works and is tested although I do need to clean some track – I ran some low-speed locos through yesterday and noticed a couple points where they had problems.  I’ll clean all that up and test again – plus I’ll have a “minimum speed” for entering staging since it is hidden — people don’t need to creep along down there which will help.

For the staging area I just need to hook up the NCE mini panel and wire it up so that people can just press a button to align all the points for their specific staging track.  That won’t happen until the facia goes up though so for now I’ll just be programming the macros that can be executed from the cab.

Another doohickey I recently picked up which is actually really helping me is a digital level from MicroMark.  Yes I know you can build your own grade tools but this was very convenient and quick.  Turn it on, sit it on the track and voila – the grade is indicated out to 2 decimal places.  It’s already forced me to clean up some of my crappy “measure once, cut twice” carpentry.  The grade coming out of staging was a total disaster getting up to 6+% at one point and being down to 1% at another.  Now it’s a pretty even 2.5% exit from staging which is acceptable.  Since I have so many grades on this layout I felt that investing in a good digital level would serve me well and so far, it has.

A couple days ago I got my Fox Valley Models metal wheelsets.  I bought a bulk pack of 100 of them along with some Micro Trains trucks.  I can not believe the difference the wheels make in how the cars roll. Is it expensive?  Sure – it’s about $75 for a bulk pack of 100 wheels (enough for 25 cars) but my goodness!

I strongly recommend that anyone out there rolling with plastic wheels give some metal wheels a try.  These things are phenomenal.  I took some pictures but they are a little blurry so I’ll take some more later.

Not only do these roll much more smoothly, but they look better too.  And they make a satisfying “click” sound when they roll over joints in the track.  Overall just a far far superior experience.

I just hung the last bit of the backdrop last night and, I have to admit, it really looks good!  It gives the whole area a much more “finished” look.  If I had to do it again I’d use a lighter blue than I did but overall I really like it.  I’ll airbrush in some clouds sooner or later and it’ll be complete.

Next up is to finish the track and wiring in the staging area so I can start laying the upper deck.

It’s been a couple of months since my last post and it’s been a busy time in the Oberfield house.  Unfortunately, it hasn’t been busy on the railroad!

I’ve gotten some more work done – many of the risers on the Cressona side of the layout are cut, level and installed.  I’ve started installing the backdrop and test-fitting other sheets of styrene.  Unlike a lot of folks I’m using large sheets of 0.060 styrene for the backdrop.  After running tests it takes latex paint just fine (although it does scratch off easily as I found and had to touch up) and is easy to fit into the space provided.  Plus you just bend it to corners.  Overall it’s pretty nice.  It costs a little bit more than hardboard but not much when you buy it in industrial sheets like I did.  I’d buy thinner sheets if they sold them so I didn’t have to pay the Evergreen or Plastruct tax!  I got all of mine from US Plastics Corp and they were VERY nice and pretty inexpensive.

So as soon as I finish the backdrop I need to add a couple more risers and then I might actually try to put the top layer in on the Cressona side – after I finish the hidden trackwork and wiring of course.

Without further ado – here’s where I’m at.  Please excuse the horrible mess all over the place – my wife hounds me about that all the time.  I’m not always the neatest person in the room but this is a bit much even for me.