AC&Y - Litchfield to Spencer OH

[Rich_S]

The space beneath the layout will hopefully be filled with more layout someday. 

Oops, I didn't see the area you had marked on your plan as Helix I guess it's a case of selective perception 

[SAH]

Quarterly update time.  I've not been idle and did manage to make it to the Roanoke event for a day and the NMRA in Cleveland for three.  We still have family in NE Ohio so the convention helped break up the week.  I gave a clinic in Cleveland about the AC&Y which seemed to be well received.  I also made it to the University of Akron Archives where the AC&Y collection now resides.  Great fun poking through the documents and station records.  I learned of some interesting traffic routings that will spice up and inform ops sessions.

The feeder wires and fill-in tie lengths have been installed for all the new sections.  The lighting valence is complete as well.  Here's a view of it in the "maintenance" position.  Lots of light for construction.


The Spencer Forge section with the valence in the operation position.  One track will be for coal, the other for sand.  I'm taking some liberties with the Spencer Forge concept.


The Wheeling (NKP) is closest to the backdrop.  The space in the corner will be the Spencer Forge office and some structure to suggest a larger manufacturing structure.


Here's the tie in to the main Spencer section.  I'm once again able to include the switch at both ends of the house track.  I think this will be a good looking scene.  Lotso of detailing opportunities.


Looking west from the same corner.  From end to end the Spencer section of the layout is now 23 ft in length.  Working Spencer will be an interesting job.


The Dunmore caboose posts on W/e Update struck the nostalgia nerve so I hauled out my foobie Dunmore for old times sake.  I'm not aware of the Erie using the AC&Y as a detour route but . . . .


Thanks for looking.

[Rich_S]

Steve, That EL Cab hop looks great. Looking forward to future updates of your layout.

[SAH]

Here is the three track AC&Y staging loop and the two track NKP staging yard.  For better or worse I can now do roundy on the AC&Y.  Probably not a bad thing.   I can now see why Unitrack has its fan base.  Given the "temporary" nature of my setups I think it will become the staging yard method of choice.  Again, thanks to the TRW community for the replies and good advice on the ins and outs of Unitrack.



Here's the west end entrance to staging.



The backdrop and valence is in place and painted.  Everything looks much more finished or at least not so jarring to the eye, which is important when family must view the layout everyday.



Here's the west end staging entrance from a long view. 



The NC Railrun ops event was held over the Labor Day weekend.  I had the folks over for burgers and bratwurst after one of the local sessions.  The layout was pretty much as shown except for the staging tracks.  A couple of the guys who had never seen the layout before ran an eastward #92 with no trouble, so I guess you can say the concept is working to this point.  I'll likely hold off on additional levels for a bit, work on more freight cars and motive power and use the layout as it stands as a ops lab to refine traffic routing methods and such.

Thanks for looking,

Steve

[Rich_S]

Steve, The layout is coming along very nicely. I'd say the Kato uni-track is the perfect answer for the staging section. One question, why not have the NKP follow the the AC&Y staging tracks? or are you already at a 9 3/4 radius on the inside AC&Y staging track?

[SAH]

The short answer is "simplicity" Rich.  The NKP staging is plenty long for the anticipated train length so I decided not to bother with figuring all the parts and pieces of unitrack required to nest the NKP staging into the ACY curve.  It IS staging after all.  You're not supposed to see it.   

[SAH]

I thought I'd put a few photos of the newly re-powered PhIII H16-44 on this thread and show a different photo angle too.
I am REALLY happy with the performance of these locos now.  I did ACY 208 too.  It now is a superb runner as well as a great puller.  207 is a bit balky but some tuning and DCC work may help with that.  Much better than with the Bachmann mechanism for certain.






Now I have to make a decision about color.  The stock Atlas model is on the left.  The legend about the AC&Y paint scheme is that UP had an order for the H20-44 on the shop floor when the AC&Y guys came to visit.  Perhaps to finalize their order.  The AC&Y guys decided to paint theirs like the UP scheme, as far as the yellow and silver trucks go anyway.  Just what color is "UP Armour Yellow" anyway?  I picked the Polly Scale bottle with the same name.  I've been concerned it was too pale of a yellow shade, especially compared to the Atlas model.  Now that it's weathered I think it's a better match to the AC&Y diesels in the photos I've seen than the yellow Atlas chose.  I'll probably paint the stock Atlas model to match my other three.  At least the black is already done.


Thanks for looking.
Steve

[SAH]

At long last, the Morning Sun AC&Y book has hit the street.  Mine is on order so I'll have to wait.  I've previewed a few of the chapters during the draft process.  It will be a good read about a very interesting road.  Of course, I'm somewhat biased.


I rescued a couple of old friends recently.  I've always liked the big BAR lettering.  Might be too late for my chosen era but that's OK.  BAR10048 was featured in the  N/D 97 N Scale magazine.  Hard to imagine it was that long ago.  It started as an old Life-Like shell.  BAR108 was done at the same time.  It's an Atlas 1st Gen reefer.  I had to reapply the running boards I removed to make the 1st go round a 70's era model.  The shells certainly don't stand up to today's tooling but for old friends, what the heck.  N scale certainly has come a long way.




The rest of the 70's stuff was sold off to pay for decoders and parts, shells and such that will become four DT&I units to handle the AC&Y / DT&I interchange traffic at Columbus Grove, OH.  This was a very important interchange and a modelers dream.  One of these days I might even get it built get.

Now get out there and get your AC&Y book!   

Steve

[Jesse6669]

Fantastic modelling, inspirational stuff.  I have a bunch of "scrap box" rolling stock that now I'm sure can be salvaged into something good.

[SAH]

Thank you Jesse6669.  It's a lot easier to take a saw, knife or whatever to a $7 freight car than it is when they're $25 a pop.  Especially if I'm not too sure it will work out as planned.  I still have some of my early RTR-bashes riding the rails and for the most part they stand up to the new stuff pretty well.

[Rich_S]

It's a lot easier to take a saw, knife or whatever to a $7 freight car than it is when they're $25 a pop.  Especially if I'm not too sure it will work out as planned.

Steve,
     Your not kidding there, I had no problem chopping up Athearn blue box cars and locomotives back in the day. Today I can't even bring myself to stripping a $25 Micro-Trains car 
     
     On another note, what is your opinion of the new AC&Y book?

     The layout and rolling stock look great, I really like the conversion on the H16-44, very nice.

[SAH]

Thanks Rich.  I can't even pretend to be objective about the AC&Y book.  It's different from many of the other Morning Sun releases but considering how small the road was and that the fan following was pretty local I'm surprised there are as many photos as there are.  Many photos I'd not seen before.  I'd say the Akron area fans, in order of popularity would go 1) B&O, 2) Erie, 3) PRR.  The AC&Y was an afterthought.  The Akron Barberton Belt is a bonus in the book.  You'd be hard pressed to find a better heavy industrial switching road to model.

[SAH]

IF you don't get it right the first time, try again.  The SD9 rebuild:


I didn't like the color of the first build.  Too gray.  I also raised the bell on the short hood nose to it's proper height too.  Here's the first go around.


It looks like I need a gunk wash to bing out the body details.  And why did I go to all this trouble?  I destroyed the first frame trying to install a wired DCC decoder.  A new frame was obtained from one of the NC ops guys.  It's an old Atlas Japan version.  But really, I bought a pair of Atlas RS3s with the intention of detailing them, but saving the factory paint as much as possible.  We'll see how THAT goes.  The body color of the RS3 made the SD9 color look pretty bad.  And so, here we are.  I kind of feel like I'm about to embark on something similar to a plumbing project where you begin thinking it's just a simple J-trap plug and wind up replacing the connection at the street.

[SAH]

My first attempt at masking itty -bitty stripes.  Fortunately I has the original paint to guide my effort but it was tough enough as it was.  I honestly don't know how the custom painting guys do it.  I used Tamiya masking tape for the first time.  A fine product. 


I began the project thinking I could free the stanchions from the handrail and drill a #80 hole to accept a 0.008" wire handrail.  I know others have done it but it didn't work out so well for me.  So now the plan is to use the plug from the bottom of the handrail casting, modified to accept a brass strap stanchion to which I'll solder the handrail.  I used a similar technique for the SD9. 


This project may take a while.

[Chris333]

Steve,

What bulbs are you using for lighting? And do you think it matters that you mounted them sideways?

I have CFLs mounted straight at the layout like this:
https://picasaweb.google.com/ErieChris333/NewLayoutSpace#5975366674338888594

I have since added a 12" wide aluminium flashing between the bulbs and ceiling. Just wondering if sideways is better.