- rrinker

My new basement, or, how to fill it

Tue, 16 Sep 2014 01:15:54 +0000

So if you happened to catch my "I'm still alive and I'm back" post in the Lower Berth, you'll know that I now have a basement to work in, maybe not as ideal as I wanted, but the rest of the house that goes with it makes up for a lot. So it's what I have to work with, and I plan to make the best of it. Probably going to need two decks to get what I really want.

Some things have not changed: still modeling the Reading, era mid-50's. I do not plan to make this layout in any way duplicate exact Reading trackage anywhere, more of a "Reading feel" to locations and operating practices. Switching to Peco Code 83 track this time around, in my down time I picked up some samples of different stuff (used Atlas lat 2 times) and I prefer the Peco, plus they have a decent variety of turnouts. Plan is for #6 for yards, #8's for any mainline crossovers, #5 in industrial sidings. 28" minimum radius - I don't run long cars, don't currently have any passenger cars but even those were shorties on the Reading. Mostly first generation diesel, have a couple of T-1 Northerns, and they handle 28" radius with no problems at all, even with the drawbar in the close notch.

The tricky part is the stairs - they come down from the top center, and then split left and right at the middle wall, with a landing and 2 steps down to either side to get to the floor level. I was trying to avoid duckunders, but this arrangement let me fit more track with the penalty of a liftup section right at the stairs to the right.

I made up a few variations before I hit on this one. It's by far not complete, just the lower level so far, and a lot of tweaking is needed. I've been gradually refining it to fit. One thing I worry about is that maybe I'm stuck on this arrangement and am just trying to make it work, and a different one would fit the space better and I'm just not seeing it. Best place I can see for a yard with engine facilities would be in the upper right, around the curve.

Without further ado - this is what I've come up with so far.

So, blast away...

--Randy

I'm still alive!

Tue, 16 Sep 2014 01:00:43 +0000

haha. Haven't been over here to visit for a LONG time. Lots new - new house, basement to build in - all sorts of goodies. Figured it's time to get some expert advice on my new goings on and see what people have to say. Maybe keep a running thread of my progress. Yes, I now have my very own basement to work in, or rather most of one. Needs a lot of work. It's already finished - badly. So step one will be tons of demolition. The ugly paneling will have to come out. Because of the way they installed the paneling all the way tot he top of the 9 foot ceiling and THEN installed the drop ceiling grid, at the 8 foot level, the ceiling will have to come out too. Lighting was pretty poor. The carpet is horrible. So out it all comes. Walls and floors sealed, new wall covering, with a thin later of foam insulation. Couple of silly walls (all non-load bearing) to come out. New subpanel put in near the garage, so I can then run whatever I need for the layout.
The good, it's dry and not too humid. The stairs come down about in the middle, and the mechanicals are all off in one corner, already walled off in their own utility room.
The bad, the horrible finish job, it's broken up into 4 sections. Laundry is still downstairs (future plans call for making a master suite upstairs out of 2 of the 4 bedrooms and the existing master bath which is just a shower stall, sink, and toilet. There will be plenty of room for a bedroom, walkthrough closet, nice bathroom, with space left over (and en extra door) which is where the laundry will end up). So for now, I have use of about 3/4 of the basement, though plans I've come up with so far put staging and a helix in the laundry area, which really doesn't interfere with the washer, dryer, or sink. Also, since the house is a raised ranch, the garage sucks a LOT of potential layout space. 2 cars+ wide and almost deep enough for 2 cars front to back as well. I guess if I am dreaming, I could do a Tony Koester and build a new half high firewall in the garage that extends out at hood height and that would give me a good 13x20 extra space, but it would also be off the laundry. ANd expensive to do.
The other good (at least in summer, although not for model railroading) is this place came with a pool. All summer I've been living in it, when I'm home. Drifting around the pool is relaxing and makes it easy to visualize possible track plans. Now that it's getting cold, time to close the pool and start on the railroad. I'll expect I'll be back here frequently, little more 'high level' that the other place I usually hang out.

--Randy

Woohooo! Cab ride today!

Sun, 16 Oct 2011 23:27:07 +0000

Still too excited to get the pics off my camera and start uploading, it was a blast. RBNM SD50M 5014 on the point for the ride out, SD50M 5049 trailing, 6 passenger cars, generator car, dome car, Pullman, and two private cars. Most track was run at 30mph, but there is a section not owned by the R&N between Haucks and Nesquehoning Junction that had a 10mph slow order. Ran in to a classic no permissions, no one moving scenario meeting the LGSR trip to High Bridge - we were cleared to just before a iding the LGSR train was goign to wait in, they had permission to enter the siding and get clear. They reported in the clear but we were all in a radio dead spot and no one could reach the DS to get a new order copied allowing us to proceed. Eventually our engineer was able to reach the DS office via cell phone and suddenly the radio started working again - all along we could talk to the other train and they could talk to us, but no one could get the dispatcher. Once we reached Jim Thorpe I got to stay onboard while the trainset was switched for the return trip, a task involving multiple moves on a signle siding to rearrancge the train with the generator car again just behind the engines and the dome car and pullman on the rear, with the coaches in between. The private cars had already been left off back at the station and put on a siding with a switcher. A great experience, the first time I've ever been in the cab of a moving locomotive. I'm still excited about it.

--Randy

Wow, those geniuses at that 'other' site have really done it

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 15:30:05 +0000

In an attempt to let everyone see what they are missing, no one can log in, which means no posting in the forums. All weekend. LOL. Great job, guys. SO I can view static content, which I already can see since I actually am a subscriber, but no participating in the forums until Monday. And yes, I was logged in as of last night, so it's not a failure to set a cookie prior to them flipping the switch.

In the immortal words of Jack Lemmon: Moron!

--Randy

Bought myself the best birthday present EVER!

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 16:58:37 +0000

I'm getting a cab ride. Diesel, not steam, but still.. I feel like I'm 8 years old all over again. This is gonna be so awesome.
The bad news, it's not til October. I will be sure to get plenty of pictures.

--Randy

Some videos from the RCT&HS Modular at Strasburg

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 18:58:16 +0000

Freight at CP Gilbert

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1aDxRyQsQg

Coal extra at Phoenixville bridge

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I07oUSkyk4k

Coal extra through Fleetwood

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_ccVLJVKQA

Rail Ramble passes coal extra at Saucon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PUvE8HUKOY

Crusader through Saucon under the control of a student engineer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un1hmt_pozQ

T1 steam powered freight through Saucon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krSVh-PBoX8

T1 steam powered freight gets underway at Prescott

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG72wRsx-2A

--Randy

OK here's a how-to question

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 19:56:42 +0000

My layout is buuilt flat, with 2 layers of 2" foam (4" total) so I have plenty of room to carve down below track level. There's this bridge I want to stick in, not even close to any of the other bridge projects as far as a fancy bridge. Here's a Bing Maps bird's eye view of the thing:
http://www.bing.com/maps/#JnE9LnRyZXhsZX...Q0OTE1NzY1

It's not even a full 2 lanes wide, and it's also very low, 12'9" clearance I think. I have a very tight space to squeeze this in - to the right is a turnout, to the left starts a curve in one corner of the room. I have two issues.

One, I am absolutely TERRIFIED at the prospect of starting to cut under the track I guess at some point I will have to bite the bullet unless I want perfectly flat scenery everywhere - but I do have another one where the street passes over the tracks that I plan to use foam scraps to build up the terrain - that one I'm only worried about getting it al fit in, which it will, I just have to plan how to shape the stacked pieces.

Two - not rue it will look right. I can't continue the track on a fill like is seen in the actual view, I only have space for a short bit of that to either side of the bridge abutments. To the right I could theoretically slice the foam at the frotn edge so that the main AND the siding behind it are up on a 'higher' level - which would then transition back to base level and then rise for the street overpass.

Mostly though I am scared to take that step of hackign up the terrain and hopign it will turn out looking ok. The bridge should be interesting, it's a short plate girder that I shoudl eb able to cut down a commerical bridge and use, the abutments are square concrete posts, I'll have to go measure but the seem to be about 12x12, stacked like timber cribbing and backfilled. Crazy thing is there's a big industrial park back there and about once a month or so some truck driver thinks he can take a short cut and gets stuck under the bridge. My viewing direction on the layout is actually 180 degrees flipped from the way I linked the map, oops.

--Randy

Hypothetical design problem

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 01:11:20 +0000

I like to dream of havign the space for 'the big one' so I'm kicking around how to do what I envision as the ultimate layout for me.

The basic concept is a two track main with two branchlines. For those who want the details, I want to model from Reading to East Penn Junction, and have branchign off, well,a ctually 3 branches - the Allentown RR to Kutztown, the C&F to West Catty, and a portion of the Perk branch. Reading end would include the yard, and the Outer Station (goal to shoot for - be good enough at structure building to build a model of the Outer Station). Main line and Lebenon Valley sides would loop around on each other as staging - number of tracks needed for staging not determined at this point. There would be double track here to the other end except the Blandon Low Grade line - but in the mid 50's when it opened the old Hill track was still used as well. At TOpton we have the branch to Kutztown. At Alburtis we come off for the C&F. Emaus Junction for the Perk, and the end of visible track would be East Penn Junction (no Allentown yard). Past East Penn it would loop around to the Perk, like at the other end, with a staging yard connecting the ends. If possible, even connect the staging yards but that wouldn;t be a requirement of the design. I can draw up a schematic if the words don;t get the idea across.

Problem is - I can't think of how I can have someone follow a train along the 'main' AND have those various branch lines come out without having the mainline engineers have to duck under the branches, OR walk all the way around a pennisula to get to the other side to continue on with their train. Or, of they stay on the opposite side (works for all but the Perk), then the branch engineers have to duck under the main to get to the branch as their train heads off. I'm not a fan of duckunders, and not really a fan of a liftout that would have to be opened int he middle of an operating session.

ALl this is, natually, hypothetical as I don;t even have an idea of how much space I might need to get a reasonable representation of all this in, let alone if I will ever have such a space. But I like drawing and designing plans liek this.

--Randy

Ballasting and painting track

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 02:53:47 +0000

So I stopped by the local Michael's to pick up some craft paints and matte medium. I sure hope matte medium is 10x better than white glue, because for the price of a small bottle of matte medium I can buy a gallon jug of Elmer's. Unless there's a REALLY good reason not to, I'm going back to much more affordable Elmer's for the rest of this project.

I can see this taking, oh maybe a year or so to finish - ok maybe not that long, but I am not a super patient person, and painting the rails is incredibly tedious, so I will only be doing short sections at a time. I am being picky and getting even the back side of the back rail - the one you's have to have your head inside the wall to see, but I'd know it wasn't painted the same as the others so I do it. I did manage to keep it off the railhead, but the downside of the small brush is I get about 3-4 ties distance per load of paint on th brush, after that it's like I'm drybrushing the rails. So it goes slow. I did about 6 feet plus a short siding in 2 hours - got a LONG way to go. That's about my limit before I start trying to rush adn then I'll mess it up for sure.

Ballasting too - definitely NOT somethign I find 'fun'. Shaping it, trying to get every grain off the ties - a small foam brush seems to work well, but sometimes it picks up too much. I only got a short section groomed to my liking so I tried to glue that much down. I previously had ballasted with 50/50 white glue and 70% isopropyl alcohol. It soaked in no problem, no puddles, no runoff paths. I started with 50/50 alcohol and matte medium - it just puddled on top. I added more alcohol, about 70/30 now, and it soaked in, but slowly. Maybe that will make the matte medium not as expensive, if I need somewhere around an 80/20 alcogol to medium mix for it to soak in properly. I couldn't find dropper bottles at Michael's so I got a small bottle of mustard at the grocery store that has a nice twity to open pointy spout for easy control. That worked out well. We shall see tomorrow after it all dries. It did soak in to the ballast so I don't think I'll have a crust on top problem. And I'll add even more alcohol for next time.

--Randy

Track painting questions

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 17:10:17 +0000

I've reached that point - or maybe I have.

FIrst q: paint then ballast, or ballast then paint? I've seen it both ways, the ballast first group usually says the little bit of paint that gets on the ballast makes it better. What says Big Blue?

Second q: rust/rail brown first, then grimy black, or grimy black then rust? Intuition says rust first for texture. Or I could just be nuts.

--Randy

Well that'll teach me to test first...

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 21:06:19 +0000

SO I want to get my test track thingy all set for two weeks from now for the show in Timonium. It's a piece of Rubbermade laminated shelving with some track, Kadee coupler guages at each end, and a PR3 for decoder programming. All I really needed to do was mark off NMRA weights from the end (actual recommended weights rather than inches, no need for a lookup table then). So I marked it off and lettered it as neatly as I could with a sharpie (which isn;t all that neat because my writing is horrible, good thing there are typrewriters and computers), not the greatest lettering but serviceable, I thinkj other peopel would be able to read it. But the sharpie seemed to smudge easily, so I wanted to spray a protective coat on it so it wouldn;t get smudged away. Well I tried some Dullcote and - all the ink ran, the first 4 inches were absolutely useless so was able to wipe it clean down tot he plain white of the shelf before the Dullcote dried. The rest might still be acceptable, but now that it's dry, no, it's not. It's a mess.

So - what should I use to clean it off back down to the plain white finish? Some laquer thinner? In the meantime, I experimented with my label maker and darn if I didn't get it to print an 8 inch section perfectly spaced (largest it can do in one shot), So once I get the test board cleaned off, my plan is to make two pieces of label in my label maker, stick it on, and cover over with a thin coat of Modge Podge, which won't hurt the paper of the label, and the lettering is thermal transfer so there's no ink to affect. I want to seal the label down because verywhere else I've put them, on my plastic drawers and my train show tub, they have a tendency to peel off. I figure sticking it down with Modge Podge will seal it to the surface.

Next time - no DullCote without testing on some scrap first. Never had a problem using it for toning down painted plastic, but it does sem to react with the ink in a sharpie.

--Randy

India ink weathering

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:41:17 +0000

Referring to Lance Mindheim's drop of india ink in a bottle of alcohol general weathering solution - would this also work on locos and cars to just generally tone down the shine? Not goign for the superdetailed dirt here, mud here, rust there, grease down here weathering, just somethign to kill the shine a bit and also have that basic overall 'washed down the sides' look. Anyone tried it on rolling stock, or just structures?

--Randy

Woohoo! Got my main completed around the room!

Wed, 12 Jan 2011 02:51:42 +0000

Finished up the last piece of track and immediately ran a train all teh way around, even with the pushpins still holding the track. Finally!

--Randy

Paint help

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 03:50:46 +0000

So I have these Stewart AS16's that need the handrails painted Pullman Green. Pollyscale Pullman Green is way too light, it matched P2K but definitely not Stewart. I understand Stewart is best matched with Scalecoat paints. So I ordered some Scalecoat II Pullman Green, both a bottle and a spray can to do the undec Atlas RS-3's I have as well.
Seems to me that even to brush this stuff it will need to be thinned. I tried paiting a handrail and the Scalecoat went on thick and was hard to smooth out. That's issue #1 - unless I'm missing something, I'll need to thin this down even for brushing.
Issue 2 - it didn;t really match that well after drying. In fact, it looks nearly the same as the unpainted black handrails. It doesn't look nearly that dark in the bottle. But then given Stewart's tendency to not paint portions of the shell covered by equipment boxes or the cab sides, I took a chance and put a small patch of paint on one of those unpainted areas. When that dried, it seemed to match pretty closely. Not sure why the handrails came out so dark - as did a small piece of .010x.030 styrene I painted to use as drip rails on the cab roof. It all looks black. Just the patch on the shell actually loosk green. I had no problem with the Pollyscale right from the bottle, it made a nice thin even coat, it just comes out too light a green and it really stands out against the Stewart body shell. I'd try the spray and see if it's any better but it's much too cold and windy to go outside and paint right now. What the heck is going on?

--Randy

Project help

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 04:27:23 +0000

I am repainting Bachmann 44-tonner to be a plant switcher in my cement plant, which ws a Lehigh Portland Cement Co plant. I found a few pictures of smaller GE boxcabs that they owned (never had a 44 tonner, oh well - mine does!) and even the B&W ones look like they very well could be this shade of blue. I also have to go throught he signs that have been posted in the Layout and Building section to see if there are any Lehigh Cement logos such as the ones shown applied to this loco so I can get decals made - unless someone knows about some decals that have already been produced.

A line drawing on the site this picture comes from shows a smaller unit as just having the words "Lehigh Portland Cement Company" without the use of the logo. Also, this one appears awfully shiny considering a)it's in a cement plant and b)it's no longer even on rails - a least, I see no rails under there.It is a 70's picute, and I model the 50's, but the small 20 and 23 ton units were purchased in the late 30's. Seems reasonable for there to be a 44-tonner in 1956.

--Randy