OK, this may be a bit self-promoting, but by golly, I’m proud of the fact that my wife has her book published and I want to tell you about it. About 15 years ago, she started on a book about her early life, growing up in a large, very poor family with an alcoholic father in upstate New York. The book is called, “Mama’s Diamonds”. She finished it and put it away, where it sat for 11 years until I was able to convince her that it was worthy of getting published and offering to help her take that last step. From Sept. through Nov. last year, we did the final edit together. Our oldest son (aka: “Hobbs” on the old Gauge) designed the cover while I put the book in its final form for printing. It was released for publication in Dec. Although there’s a steam engine on the cover, the book is not about trains. If you look, there is a single light in the baggage car, and that’s significant to the story.

You can preview the book at her publisher’s site: http://www.lulu.com/content/4942425 If you click on the “>” above the cover you can read several pages of two of the chapters, plus a poem she wrote that is also significant to the book. We are waiting to see if some of the booksellers like Amazon.com and Borders pick it up, we should know sometime in Feb. But in the meantime, the book is available from either the publisher or us. The list price of the book is $21.95, but I’m going to make a special offer to members of this forum that they should find hard to refuse. Send us a check in the amount of $18.00US and we will send you a personally autographed copy by the author. No sales tax and we pay the shipping to the continental US. Just PM me and I will send you our address and who to make the check or money order out to. We will only charge the difference in shipping to countries other than the US. I can let you know what that will be when I PM you back so you can decide if it’s worth it. Amazon will surely discount the book, but they’ll charge for shipping, and their books won’t be personally autographed either.

Oh, before anyone asks, Emcie Day is her pen name, or nom de plum, and is derived from the her first two initials, M and C. Look, you don’t argue with some crazy writer who wants anonymity. Just so you know, all the stories in the book are true, some are funny when you see what the kids go through to help make ends meet, then there are a few parts that will tug at your heartstrings. I love the book, but I also love the woman who wrote it, so I’m kind of biased. You’ll have to decide for yourself.

if you think you have bad working conductions how bout 30 inch coal .

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In the essence of bringing something fresh to the new forum rather than bringing over all my old stuff, may I introduce you to what will someday be Scorpion Bend.
I most certainly have nowhere near the amount of space that some of you do and I my funding department is meager at best. Despite these two limitations, I've rather conservatively stepped off into the shallows and begun construction on our first, serious, G scale layout! I say serious because I've done G scale before but it's never amounted to anything more than an oval around the Christmas tree!

While this is still going to start out as a glorified dog bone around a pine tree, it will help get my foot in the door for future expansion. The railroad will also begin life as a DC system but later switch over to battery power. Let's take a look at the backyard.
Front and center, I envision a simple dogbone loop around the pine tree. It will then extend back to the wall turning right to the town of Saguaro (Phase 2). To the left, it will hug the wall all the way around behind the shed to bulge out from the left wall at Needle junction (Phase 3).



To the left of Needle Junction, the track will again cling to the wall behind some Oleanders and then pop out into Pine falls (Phase 4). In this area, I plan to build up a large mountain against the fence and have some sort of a waterfall cascading down into a pool at the bottom with the track running through the mountain and across the pool on a long girder bridge. Imagination is required when looking at the picture!



The next thing we did was picked out a starter train. I know.... we bought the train before the track was even installed. Doesn't everybody do it that way? Here you can see my two little engineers testing it out. The older boy runs it very realistically. However, the younger one likes to see how many G's it'll pull around corners .



Next step was deciding how the railroad would be constructed. We knew that we wanted it up off the ground (above the level of the yard) and so discussed some kind of containment and backfill. I started looking into RR ties and discovered they were priced atrociously. Later that week, my whole family was riding the train at McCormick RR park in Scottsdale, AZ when I happened to glance into a back corner and saw piles and piles of treated, 4x4, RR ties. The next day, I inquired and was told that they were changing over to a composite ties and I could help myself to as many as I could carry off... new or used! BINGO!!!! JACKPOT!!!! Several days later, I took my truck and trailer back and loaded up until my tires all looked squishy! I figure I got about 400 in that trip.





I know it doesn't look like much but 400, treated, 4x4, RR ties is a pretty heavy load for a half ton and a lightweight trailer!!!!!

I've now dug a trench down about 12" (except where there's roots), buried the 4x4's end down, side by side, leaving approximately 18" above ground. I've then tied them together with some pallet banding strap to make things a little stronger and unify it as a whole.



Since I don’t have any fancy tools, I was cutting each 4x4 with my chain saw until it crapped out. Now I need to take it apart and do some saw maintenance (spark plug, sharpen the chain, etc. etc. etc.). Since my saw was now out of commission, I figured I could use some exercise and used my hand saw for a while. That took a REALLY LOOOOOOOOONG time. My wife felt sorry for me and approved the purchase of a new toy! Now it's coming along MUCH faster!!!!



At this point, some friends of mine voiced concern for my tree. It was their opinion that what I was doing was... going to kill it . I love the tree, as shade is very important here in Phoenix. However, my wife hates it because it grows straight up for about 12' and then takes off at an angle over the neighbors wall. Likewise, the neighbor hates it because it hovers over his yard and drops pine needles all over his golf course lawn. With that said, if the tree lives... great! If it dies, by the by.
When I installed the ties, or rather when I dug the trench, I severed very few roots. Most were left intact and I cut the ties at random lengths to sit above the roots and maintain a somewhat uniform height above ground. Some of the RR ties are only buried by an inch or two, others go down in between the roots up to 15".



I completed the majority of this project early summer before it got hot and I have not noticed any change in the tree during the last 5 months. True, I have not added the fill yet. I have asked several nurseries about what I have been doing and have of course gotten the the whole range of answers from, "Ain't gonna hurt it" to, "Oh yeh, certain death." In hopes of minimizing my impact, I think I will still fill but only half as much as I had previously planned.

After some further thought, I've decided to cut the 4x4's down 8" to only 10" above ground. Since the ground slopes up towards the tree naturally, this should not impact the tree much as I won't be piling new dirt up against the trunk, just adding about 6" above the roots in an 8' diameter circle. Cutting the 4x4's down will also significantly reduce the amount of fill I will need to bring in. To keep the track a little higher, there is talk of putting it on a trestle around the tree now to maintain the 18" above ground. Anybody got a template for a G scale trestle?



Today, my two boys and I laid out our track for a test fit and ran our first train. Why is it that the track never goes together like it’s been drawn? I drew it up in AutoCAD to exact dimensions and for some reason, it’s way off. Regardless, I took some installation liberties and made it fit! Some of my joints aren’t butt to butt and it’s driving me nuts but it will do for now.





Keep in mind that ALL of the track will be raised with fill by another 8-10”. This is just to give me a rough idea of how things will lay out. Since my layout will probably change and evolve, I’m going to use treated 4x4’s for the subroadbed and screw the track to that as opposed to a concrete roadbed.

Like I said, this is a first for me. I've done lots of layouts but never one outside or in G scale. If you see that I'm making other glaring mistakes (such as possibly killing the trees ) please speak up! I've located some free fill and also some free boulders so it seems more exercise will be the next step!

I built it about 1 year ago for a teamtrack on my N scale microlayout.
It was made using barbecue sticks and .030 " styrene sheet
It was weathered with a very diluted wash of India ink.
That's my 1st scratchbuilding project and I had a good time doing it.
The wood planks were made by lightly scribing the 2 styrene sheets with an Xacto blade

Jacques

I'm looking to elevate one cruved track from 0" to about 4" to meet with a bridge over other tracks. I have about 20 feet to work with and have been looking into the Woodland Scenics 2% Incline Set (#ST1410). It's made of white foam in a zig-zag design which allows it to be very flexible (I would assume). The set comes in eight 2' sections and will raise the track to 4" in 16 feet. It looks good on the internet but I was wondering if any of you out there have use one of these incline sets yet. If so, how do you like it? Did it install easily and does it form a smooth grade? They're only about $20 so I thought it might be worth buying rather than messing around with other metahonds I've used in the past, which were a pain in the A$$. Any advice or info would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Kevin

I want to add Sound to some of my HO steam locomotives and I would like to have a nice tiny wire connector between the locomotive and tender so they can be unpluged and boxed to transport. BLI and PCM have a nice little 7 and 8 wire plug with a receptacle that is very small but they are not available that I'm aware of.
I have searched the web with no luck. Does anyone know where I could by these? it would be nice if you could get them with 6 inch leads on either side of the connector like the trailer wiring plugs from the auto parts store.
Thanks
Charlie

Don't know whether this will help anyone or not, but

WHYY Arts is running The Daylight: Most Beautiful Train tonight (1-17-09) at 10 PM Eastern

I really missed that thread from the other place, and I just recieved a new (actually really old :-) ) Union Pacific switcher, so I thought I would start it here. Plus I really like seeing other people's fleets.

Here's my new HO engine:

I am still posting pictures the same way I have always done it. I'm using the 800X X size.
When I post, it shows a very large thumbnail, but it is not the full picture. When you click on the picture, you get the rest of the picture.
When I first started posting (the same way) the pictures didn't do this. The whole picture was in the large thumb, and by clicking the picture, it got bigger.
These early posts were still working the old way the other day.
You shouldn't have to click to see the whole picture.
Perhaps it is because the thumbnail size is too large?
Charlie

Lately I have been working on the backside of the layout having finished installing the roads on the front side.
The first couple of shots are of the newly installed parking lot for the freight handling area.It is made of .020 styrene. I scribed expansion joints,sprayed it with concrete color and then weathered it.




The next pictures are of the road I recently installed. It too is .020 styrene. It wraps around the cafe and has two exit points-one for normal traffic and one for vehicles entering railroad property. I also allowed some room in front of the cafe for parking.
You will also notice that at this location the road does not cross the tracks. It would have come too close to guard rails and switches.The one road crossing the tracks is in the freight area.Some imagination has to be used to envision how traffic exits the top area and re-enters the lower area.





Well,that's all I have for now.Next up will be ballasting the tracks.Not exactly my favorite thing to do. Bob