Gibbon, Cozad & Western - "The 100th Meridian Line"

[C855B]

No, my memory is fine. Found the picture of DDs on an ore train I recalled, and you're going to laugh. I did:



 

I cannot know if this actually happened (as executed from a company photo) or was a flight of fancy by Fogg at the request of UP's marketing department for the 1969 calendar. There was another Fogg painting in the calendar of C855s through Wasatch, and it is unlikely that ever happened, as well.

One photo that surprised me was four C630s on the point of an Atlantic City ore job, on the inside back cover of the Winter 2009 UPHS journal. Photo date is 1967. Interesting observation is these Alcos were sold to DM&IR for, yes, ore service. The C630s were 70' long and coupled to the ore jennies without an idler. Now I'll have to test how this does or doesn't work on the layout with the TSC. 24" curves even with easements may not be enough.

[learmoia]

I'm not arguing locomotives, I'm arguing 85'+ freight cars being coupled to Ore cars..

I believe locomotives have different coupler mechanisms, more swing (in your era.. no alignment control)..  that allow them to couple to anything safely. (Within reason)




~Ian

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Coming back to the recent question though... when I have questions like this, I always look for prototype inspiration. Is there anything like your situation you can point to in real life?

[C855B]

I don't think that would ever be the case in 1:1 either, and not something I would do other than for testing. I can't find anything about car lengths in a 1972 Operating Rules, however. Would it be in Special Instructions?

Coming back to the recent question though... when I have questions like this, I always look for prototype inspiration. Is there anything like your situation you can point to in real life?

I know of a 1:1 scenario moderately close to what I'm doing on the former SP at the east end of West Colton yard where two mainlines merge. There's a flyover and and reverse loop, a significant grade change for the flyover off a wye junction, an elevation change on the original main out of a slight depression ("old Colton"), and a bunch of crossovers sorting things out from a major yard. The issue relative to my situation is modeling compression. I think moving the points a few inches away from all but one of the curve easements as @jagged ben suggested is going to alleviate my concerns.

[Lemosteam]

Coming back to the recent question though... when I have questions like this, I always look for prototype inspiration. Is there anything like your situation you can point to in real life?

Oooh, lookie, Ed's law in sentence form!

[learmoia]

I don't think that would ever be the case in 1:1 either, and not something I would do other than for testing. I can't find anything about car lengths in a 1972 Operating Rules, however. Would it be in Special Instructions?

I know of a 1:1 scenario moderately close to what I'm doing on the former SP at the east end of West Colton yard where two mainlines merge. There's a flyover and and reverse loop, a significant grade change for the flyover off a wye junction, an elevation change on the original main out of a slight depression ("old Colton"), and a bunch of crossovers sorting things out from a major yard. The issue relative to my situation is modeling compression. I think moving the points a few inches away from all but one of the curve easements as @jagged ben suggested is going to alleviate my concerns.

Currently it's contained in special instructions (for the UP), train makeup.. train length, tonnage distributton and long car/short car are the biggest issues.

You also have shiftable loads next to hazmat, loaded open top cars next to autoracks, ect..

Anyways the issue that needs to be addressed is locomotives coupled to ore cars using TCS couplers..

I had send Joe some designs to work around the stuliffness issues including drop ins for 1015s. (if they get adopted.. who knows)..

Until then.. you might have to settle with a transition car regular coupler between the Loco and first car.

Or use a modified TCS fused without centering.

Either would work without the 40' buffer.

~Ian

[C855B]

... Until then.. you might have to settle with a transition car regular coupler between the Loco and first car. ...

Doesn't work well, at least when pushing up a grade, part of my track QC regimen. As with all truck-mounted couplers, it wants to go sideways while pushing into that much pressure.

But that might be the end game, or like you say, modified coupler without the side pressure of the centering spring. I just tested a C630 - wheel lift below 24" radius with everything in the curve. I suspect a long-shank on the loco might help (less lateral pressure), but mounting correctly is a bit of work. I might put one in the pocket later today and let it extend out past the pilot just to see.

Sort of surprised that the unmodified C630 pulled 28 cars up 2%. Under wheel-slip protest of course, but it conquered the hill.

[learmoia]

The root cause involves the design choices made for the TCS.. that gave it basically zero couper swing. 

If you did a long shank -fussed with no centering wiskers on the locomotive you should be fine..

~Ian

[C855B]

Surveyor has been busy. It looks like the junction situation we were discussing will be OK:

[C855B]

At the opposite corner of the layout, the curve at Rubidoux is in the process of being realigned, increasing radius from 24" (supposedly) to 28":



The center of the old curve was the suspected pinch point causing issues we just discussed with True Scale Couplers. Much incentive to get this done, this is the bottleneck into the reversing loop that makes the layout somewhat runnable.

[C855B]

Just had an amusing repartee with my wife about the upcoming backdrops project. I'm guessing from the context - we were in our office each at our computer - she's been corresponding with a friend, another artist, about the work ahead, and there was earlier chatter about a specific scene. Conversation went something like:

  "How many feet of backdrop are we talking about?"

...pause for arithmetic...

  "Oh, about 140 feet."

  "Four feet high, right?"

  "Yeah, that's the plan. I figure on getting the foamcore once we pick up the new van."

...reaches for calculator...

  "That's 560 square feet. That's a lot of paint! I'd better get that arm [shoulder pain] fixed!"

  "No kidding."

In the five years on this project, it's the first time she's grasped the magnitude. Wait 'til we get her started on trees! Heh heh heh!

[pdx1955]

In the five years on this project, it's the first time she's grasped the magnitude. Wait 'til we get her started on trees! Heh heh heh!

You might need more than one tree a night!

[C855B]

I'm playing with lighting again. Like all technologies it is a moving target. Getting the color flexibility I wanted after finally arriving at the design committed three years ago, it's been bugging me that it is too "spotty", with not enough beam spread to "wash" the room with color. I could add more lights, but as discussed previously the model of light settled on was discontinued, with the next equivalent bigger and more expensive. In the interim, a new model with "chip-on-board" technology was released, brighter with a much better beam spread. It is strictly RGB, versus the RGB+white+amber+UV of what I have up now. New vs. previous:



I had seriously disliked previous generations of RGB-only lights because they simply couldn't produce decent yellows and oranges. Technically, the RGB gamut should work, but the convergence (primary color blending) of the older tech was so poor your eye saw the component primaries, red and green, and "white" - RG&B all at 100% - was decidedly pink. The white and amber in the older lights was to address that. This new light fixes the problem. (My phone camera won't resolve it, but I get a decent sunset orange from the new light, matching the blends of the old lights with the amber.)

Plan is to eBay the old lights to finance replacement. Shouldn't have much problem with that because the old lights were quite popular with the DJ crowd and will go fast.

Main "gotcha" is having to light UV separately. The blue in the new light has enough UV in it to make things glow, but if I want to pursue special effects such as lighting structures with UV-painted windows and that switchstand lantern idea, it'll take additional fixtures. We'll see how that goes.

[learmoia]

You might need more than one tree a night!

Had you been doing 1 tree a night since day 1, you'd have 1,825 trees..

~Ian

[C855B]

Had you been doing 1 tree a night since day 1, you'd have 1,825 trees..

Har har.   Robyn's trying to be the tree artist, but results to date haven't been promising (don't tell 'er I said that). I've been trying to coach her on wire armature trees and have sent her a bunch of how-to links, but distractions intervene.

AAAANYway... trees are not just trees, not where we're modeling. Western desert foliage is strange. Right now I have her figuring out how to do "smoke trees" (Psorothamnus spinosus), which are wispy large perennial shrubs found in the southern reaches of the Mojave. They're prominent around the railroad frontage in Daggett, here's a stand of them next to the UP junction:



Definitely not "lichen on a stick". Certainly open to "how to" ideas to throw her way.

We'll be studying them in person in a couple of months.