Weekend Update - 12-23-2008

[Skip]

Martin,

I'd like to hear more about your Thomas project.  Where did you get it, what decoder, what other modifications did you make.  I'm assuming that it is N scale?  I'd like to do it for my layout.  My grandkids would love it.

Happy Holidays to all.

[mmyers]

Skip,

Thomas and friends are available here:
http://stores.ebay.com/Plaza-Japan_Thomas-the-Tank-Engine_W0QQcolZ4QQdirZ1QQfsubZ15QQftidZ2QQtZkm

I've purchased a couple of times from Plaza Japan. Reliable and very fast. This set was ordered on Saturday 12/15. Post office showe up with the package on Wed 12/18.


Most of the online decoder installations are out of date now. These latest versions from Tomix have all metal split frame construction.
Thomas has an M1 decoder mounted in the cab. I added a pair of surface mount led's in the eyes. That was the tedious part. I'd more instruction but I think you will have no trouble figuring this one out.

James is similar construction but has a tender. I had acouple of Lenz LE077 in the drawer and used one for James. Didn't get time to work up the lights. Project for later.

Percy is a larger loco with a large tender.  Unlike James, this tender has electrical pickup with drawbar connections to the loco. He's dissassembled on the bench and will get back to him later this week. Cab mount installation would be the simplest way to go but there's room in the tender for a sound decoder and speaker. Wonder if the proper sounds are downloadable?

Henry is the smallest/tightest loco. I'm saving him for last.

Merry Christmas,
Martin

[Ian MacMillan]

I laid another 20' of track down on the layout and started to install some scenery. I ran out of stock rail so that is on hold until I can get some delivered next week.

Spent about 7-8hrs on Saturday over on New England Southern cleaning switches, crossings, and moving a boxcar for a historical society. We moved the car from its resting spot at Capital Plumbing where it has sat for the last 30 years. Due to a pin that was so rusted that it would not drop to lock the coupler, we had to use the backhoe to move it after slams with the spike maul did nothing. Tom (guy in the backhoe) then decided that he would give the coupler one more wack after we could move the car no further with the backhoe, and the pin dropped (Must of been all the beating I gave it first to loosen it up for him!  ) We then brought up the 2370 and spotted the car for storage until we move it north next week.

Since we have a caboose train next week we needed to clear the line of the snow since we hadn't run north in 3 weeks. There was about 40" of snow on the line and while they worked north in the 2370 I went up to the our normal problem crossings and chipped them out with a lining bar and other tools to break what in some spots was 4"thick ice. For some of the switches we used a makeshift snow blower that attaches to the air line, and I'd blow all of the switches clean

Paul tells Pete in the cab that the coupler is not securing.


CO-2 the backhoe special moves the car down the team track until we got stuck.


Pete backs up the train to make a hitch as Tom magically gets the coupler pin to drop


Heading north, the long nose seems to be having no real issues inspite the lack of a snow plow on the long end


With the worst crossing clear of ice and snow in the flangeways, the 2370 drops the clay cars and makes a running attempt to blow through the snowbanks on the grade. You can see a just a small amount of the tools in the snow bank that I carry in my truck when out doing trackwork stuff.

[SquirrelHollow]

With the trains packed away; I've been trying to take on other projects that are not model-dependent.

This weekend's attempt was an automatic reverse loop controller for DCC (and later, DC).
I had a plan. 
I had the parts. 
I had the time.

I had it finished.

I had 3 exploding transistors.

I had a forgotten jumper wire.

As the laws of electronics state, DC and AC dont like to play well when let loose down the same turnpike.  After another trip to Radio Shack for replacement parts, probably wednesday...  We'll see if the circuit works with no cross-current shorts.  If so, I'll post the schematic. 


Looks like the rest of you are making some good progress.  Keep it up!

[chuck geiger]

I had orginally used digital photos as the backdrop on this section of the layout. After reading the new MR and how Bruce Perry easily painted Southern California backdrop monuntains, I tried the process.

[Lucas in Alaska]

Chuck,
 I love looking at photo's of your layout. Do you have a web site with your layout info, track plan and more photos?

Lucas
Sitka, Alaska

[chuck geiger]

Thank Lucas, website and pics coming this week.

[lashedup]

Nice stuff everyone!

Worked on structures for our Mod-U-Trak stuff. I bought an American Model Builders laser kit (Springfield Depot) a while back as I figured it would make a good temporary stand-in for a depot that used to be in Caledonia, Wisconsin. I left the extra trim details off of the model so it more closely represents the prototype.



I need to weather it and finish the chimney and take care of a few more details that bug me, but otherwise it is getting close to done.

I also worked on getting the brick colored on an old switching tower - Tower A68 - on the Milwaukee Road between Chicago and Milwaukee:



A few months back I went up to the location where the tower used to be and found a few of the old bricks and the foundation so I could get dimensions. This is the original brick color:



I wanted to try and find a way to try and match it more closely than just spraying the walls in some color that is close. The mottled finish is tough to duplicate and I tried a bunch of tests and finally found a technique using AIM powders and chalks that looks pretty decent (I need some real lighting to show detail and color correctly):



Next will be the wall assembly. Happy holidays!

-jamie

[atsf_arizona]

that GP B unit looks great - i need to do one up for PRR at some point.   

-steve

Hi, Steve,

FYI, the Pennsylvania Railroad Historical and Technical Society's "Keystone Modeler", issue 34, May 2006, had a very nice pair of writeups on doing PRR GP9B's - one article was an HO model, the other was an N scale model (which used the same Des Plaines kit that I'm using) . 

Worth getting that issue if you'd like to do one of the PRR GP9Bs.

Let me know if I can help with any questions about the process. 

I have a thread going on it (still needs to be updated with latest photos), at:

http://forum.atlasrr.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=40783

Happy Holidays!

[TiVoPrince]

Hi guys, I've been gone for a while but here is the beginning of my station area.  I'm the guy who was modeling the San Luis Obispo / Cuesta Pass area.

Looking forward
to the SLO station.  Care to build two?  No, I had to ask anyway...

[SquirrelHollow]

Just an update on my reverse loop controller...

I scrapped plans for it.  Radio Shack was out of NPN (-,+,-) transistors, and I don't feel like waiting for some to be delivered.
Should I ever attempt the project again, I'll post the success/failure. 

Until then, my mountain of LEDs will provide a few projects.  I'm going to try my hand at selling pre-wired LEDs to tweens with mommy's credit card.  While waiting for their bids to come in from ebay....
My next project is designing, wiring, and building an LED clock face for my 'Macintosh Plus!' case.  I'm planning for twelve 10mm blue LEDs to indicate hours and 48 multi-color, color-shifting 3(or 5)mm LEDs to indicate minutes.  Hopefully Texas Instruments will ship the chips I need within the next day or two.

[Chris333]

Jamie,
Did you "paint" those bricks with colored pencils over a concrete color?

[lashedup]

Jamie,
Did you "paint" those bricks with colored pencils over a concrete color?

I got some inspiration from John Pitts method discussed elsewhere, but I couldn't get the same results with colored pencils so I used AIM powder and some pastel chalks instead. I need to take photos of a how-to on this, but here is the gist of what I did:

1. This is N-scale Architects newer n-scale brick sheets and the detail is much better than the old ones, so that helps.

2. I primed the brick with Kilz latex primer with a little water added so it wasn't so thick. You'll need to tint the primer as this will be your mortar color so in my case I added a drop or two of grimy black to give it a grey color. The primer gives the powders and chalks something to bite into.

3. Next I put some AIM Products Light Rust powder on a sheet of paper. Then I took some yellow, beige and dark orange pastel chalks and rubbed them on some sandpaper to create some piles of chalk powder around the AIM rust color. I used a brush to mix the colors together in varying amounts till I got the tint I was looking for.

4. I rub my index finger in the powder and then rub my index finger and thumb together to reduce the powder on the tip of my finger to just a small amount. Then I rub my index finger with the chalk/powder residue lightly over the surface of the brick and repeat a few times till the coverage looks good. I work the powder across the surface in multiple directions and sometimes pull a little more yellow or orange into the mix to add some variation.

5. The next part I discovered by mistake. I somehow ended up with a black splotch on the surface of one of the bricks (I think it was black chalk powder the fell off the sandpaper from the last time I used it). So I tried to rub the black spot off and ended up having to scrape hard with my finger nail. Because the brick sheets come out of the mold with a roundness to them, I ended up stripping the top-most surface unevenly down to white. I thought I screwed it up and dipped my finger back in the red/yellow/orange powder and rubbed it on the bricks figuring I'd try and cover the white and discovered it left a great looking mottled color variation. So I went back and scratched at the brick with my finger nail randomly and reapplied the powder/chalk with my finger.

Being critical I think it still looks like it need some tuck point work with more mortar added to it and I may play around with that. I'm not sure how to add the mortar back in without pushing lots of chalk into the cavities (which won't always stay in place) or using a wash (which is likely to destroy the mottled powders) But overall it looks very close to what I wanted and captures that orange weathered brick look pretty well. Some of the walls look better than others and I think if you just lightly brush layers of powder residue on with your finger being careful not to mound any powder on the surface (or more importantly in the mortar lines), you'll get the original mortar/Kilz primer to show through better.

I'll try and take some better light-corrected photos. I've started to assemble the structure and it is coming together nicely.

Hope that helps.

-jamie