Idaho Belt Freelanced plan

[basementcalling]

More kiln. I need to get this finished and move on, but testing continues on grout coloring. I got my grassomatic toy, but am not too impressed with my skills yet on a TTRAK module test bed.

I did get one side of the kilns walkway installed, though it needs two posts still.

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Unfortunately a table bump pushed the tires off the rollers

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The big news was purely by chance, my lime house happens to be the same size as an old Alkem  Scale Models walkway. I happily added it and some controller thingies plus a few vents, and practiced some weathering techniques with acrylics. I like how they blended and tone each other down without obscuring the base color.

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As you can see, this complex comes off the backdrop at a 45 degree angle, so getting it right is important as it's also just about at eye level for many.

[Scottl]

I really like this kind of big industrial modeling.  It has such visual impact and fits in with railroads nicely.  The kiln is looking great!

[basementcalling]

I really like this kind of big industrial modeling.  It has such visual impact and fits in with railroads nicely.  The kiln is looking great!

Thanks , Scott. And I love big bridges, just never tackled one. Yours is one of a kind.

Got home earlier than expected. Had enough energy to play with some mesh, styrene, and Lego pieces. This pollution control house needs something else, but not too much.

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Not sure which version of the venting I like best.

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So I played with three different set ups. I managed to cut the mesh square, without stabbing my fingers, I even managed to trim the .060 I beam right. Serendipitously, the space needed around the LEGO creation is the circumference as a GMM handrail set.

Gonna stay away from Timonium this weekend and try to get some modeling done.

[basementcalling]

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Avoiding etched brass tonight, so I built a Walthers modular and worked weathering my road after masking and spreading the white lines.  I tried the Dave Foxx colored pencil trick but the lines were top thick and not terribly opaque. This worked, but consistent thicknesses was hard to achieve. Hard to see now that is weathered.  Will finish with an India ink overspray to add the traffic shadow.

Oil spots in parking spaces were fun to add. Not sure they look realistic.

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I also played with weathering am old UP 50 foot FEE to play with my new pan pastel set. A few tricks to learn but I think I will like them.

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[basementcalling]

I'm reaching the point in progress on the layout where I get to my major weakness: wiring and DCC.

I am the most clueless DCC modeler on the planet. I've operated a few times on layouts with it, but few and far between enough where the most basic of functions such as programming a decoder or consisting locomotives are foreign language.

I just discovered twist caps for wiring in fact, which is helping me solve the problem I posted a while back about having track feeders coming loose. Now, thanks to a trip to Lowes, I can twist the 16 gauge feeds onto 20 gauge wire to actually attach to the tracks. That's my level of electrical incompetence.

I'm hoping to add feeders to the paper mill section this weekend and connect them with suitcase connectors to the main bus feed.

My first question is if I am planning to use boosters to divide the layout into power districts, I assume the bus feed should not be continuous all around the layout.
Questions:,

Should I plan to locate my boosters in the same location as the control station, or spread them out so the wire run from booster is shorter?

When setting up a reversing section, of which I will have two thanks to two wye arrangements, I assume the feeders from the booster go to the AR thingamajiggy. Or should I plan on using a booster for the reversing section? Both are on a branch, so they will only see at most 2 2 unit consists of locomotives in operation at one time on the 30 feet of branchline.

More questions to come as I weave a web of entangled wire under the layout.

I've run feeders in one power district. I haven't cut the wires yet, so I can continue stringing continuous run wire if needed.

[basementcalling]

I think I will stop now on the rotary kilns before I mess them up. How do they look to your eyes? I was trying to get one looking lightly used and one obviously older, but not overly so. Subtle is hard to achieve.

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Thanks to some help, the stair tower kit is soldered together and the chip silos are weathered. Masking the seams and using acrylics was fun. I applied some new to me techniques to get the results shown below.

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I decided the first attempt was too weathered, and reluctantly resprayed with the default Railwire concrete color (Model Master Light Aircraft Grey), and have to say I like the second outcome much better.

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I played with a small tank of who knows what chemical - probably chlorine or something.

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[Erik aka Ngineer]

I think I will stop now on the rotary kilns before I mess them up. How do they look to your eyes? I was trying to get one looking lightly used and one obviously older, but not overly so. Subtle is hard to achieve.

They look stunning! They look real to me. Not just the kilns, the tanks look great with rust dripping from the seams.

[basementcalling]

Cleaned off the paper mill site. Placed buildings in locations and shot some pictures with cars on tracks. Next task I think is to get the backdrop photos sized and printed between the buildings and paint the sky.

Coming into the layout room.

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The boilers, tan kraft boiler and grey recovery boiler. This is the heart of the mill. The second shot is the reverse direction, including the old coal power plant. I like how the lines of the track draw the eye from here directly to the boiler and rotary kiln area, focusing attention on them.

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This is the warehouse and fourdrinier building. It still needs weathering and some dull coat treatment. The second image is the scene from the end of the peninsula. The original plan was to install a Bellinadrop style treatment to the blob, but that would eliminate the view of the hill slope and access to the recycled paper unloading which will be here.

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The last shot shows the mainline grade starting to drop as the line exits the scene. The multiple levels help break up the scene from here and add interest.

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[Scottl]

I really love how this complex is coming together.  I'm a sucker for modern industrial sites.  The new silos and staircase look fantastic.

[bdennis]

Awesome looking Mill.. Will be following with interest..

[mu26aeh]

Maybe you can come work on my paper mill.  That looks fantastic !!! 

[GaryHinshaw]

I really have trouble squaring these two recent posts:

I am the most clueless DCC modeler on the planet.

Surely if you can pull off a mill of this complexity (beautiful work!), you can manage to learn DCC with no trouble.  A few quick responses to your DCC questions below, because you need to make this mill come alive now.

My first question is if I am planning to use boosters to divide the layout into power districts, I assume the bus feed should not be continuous all around the layout.

The first thing to note is that a power district and a booster are two separate things.  The role of a booster is to add extra capacity to your layout.  A typical command station or booster will be able to supply 5 amps of current to your rails, while a typical loco will draw ~0.1-0.2 amps, so you can run 25-50 locos off of one command station or booster.  (You should allow some headroom here because locos that aren't running can draw small amounts of current from, e.g., lights, and sound-equipped locos will draw more.)   I'm pretty sure that your present needs could be met with a single command station.   Add a booster when you think you are nearing that limit.

Power districts are very much like circuits in your house wiring.  You can add circuit breakers to your DCC bus to break the power supply into separate circuits (power districts) so that if one of them shorts due to a derailment or such, only one section of the layout goes down.  You probably want to divide your pike into something like 5-10 power districts.  You can supply power to your districts from either the command station or the booster (but spread the load, of course).

As far as the bus configuration goes, you should have a separate bus radiating out from each circuit breaker that feeds a power district.  A bus run of 30-50' is fine as long as you use relatively heavy gauge wire (14 or 12 gauge) to minimize voltage drop along the line.  Also, do  not let a bus become a closed loop - just terminate each bus at the end of its run.  (Some people use "snubbers" at the end of a bus to avoid packet reflection which could confuse a decoder, but I have not found that to be necessary.)

The "On Guard Circuit Breaker" (OG-CB) boards from DCC Specialties are especially simple to use for setting up separate power districts, just two wires in (A and B track power) and two wires out (A and B track power).

Should I plan to locate my boosters in the same location as the control station, or spread them out so the wire run from booster is shorter?

It shouldn't matter too much if your booster is close to the command station or not. If you can reach all points of your layout from one spot with 30-50' runs, the booster and command station can be co-located.

When setting up a reversing section, of which I will have two thanks to two wye arrangements, I assume the feeders from the booster go to the AR thingamajiggy. Or should I plan on using a booster for the reversing section? Both are on a branch, so they will only see at most 2 2 unit consists of locomotives in operation at one time on the 30 feet of branchline.

You can use a booster as an auto-reverser, but that is overkill for a wye, because you'll never need to supply 5 amps to the leg of a wye.  There are numerous auto-reverse cards that will flip the polarity of the track power in the bus they feed when they sense a current rush caused by a loco crossing a block boundary with crossed polarity.  The auto-reversing cousin of the OG-CB card is the OG-AR card, and like the former, it is just two wires in and two out, so very simple to set up.

HTH,
Gary

[Santa Fe Guy]

Basementcalling your industrial area looks fantastic. The weathering on the buildings look super. Gary your description about setting up for DCC is very easy to follow so basementcalling should have no trouble getting this good looking RR converted to DCC. It will provide many more operating opportunities when done.

[basementcalling]

Maybe you can come work on my paper mill.  That looks fantastic !!!

For a DCC lesson? Sounds like a fair trade.

Electricity has always scared the crap out of me since a bad encounter as a little kid with exposed lamp cord plugs when I was 3 or 4. One of my earliest memories is getting a shock from pushing my Matchbox car along the wall and the metal car contacting the prongs. I still unplug lamps before changing bulbs in lights.

Thanks for the quick tutorial, Gary. Someone told me that using a booster is easier to control reversing sections because they have the capability built in. Although I believe I have a PM 42 downstairs, those OG-CB cards make things sound "Oh, Gee, that's simple.

I'm thinking I need two yard power districts and one for the branch. The main can be one, but the paper mill town should probably be a separate district so a short in the complex trackwork doesn't close down the entire main.

I am assuming the OG cards cannot daisy chain in series or each subsequent power district would be a subdivision of the prior one, and a short anywhere along the chain would impact everything after the district with the short?

So should the main bus run from command station to OG, and then the outgoing wires from the card to a terminal strip or something that can run multiple feeders to each piece of rail? Or can the OG output run under the layout like the main bus with feeders running off through suitcase connectors to track?

I've never wired a DCC layout before. Operated on a few, but still have trouble even programming locos consistently. I'm using Digitrax.   I'm running 12 gauge bus wire, with 16 gauge for feeders, but those will now go to twist connects so 20 gauge wires can run to the solder joint at the rail. I think that will solve the problem I was having earlier with the heavy feeders breaking loose from rail. There wasn't any shock absorption in the wire because of its stiffness if the tracks were moved.

Throw in turnouts - never wired up a Tortise or anything other than an Atlas snap switch on the turnout - and advetures under the layout await. I think I want main line turnouts controlled by electric motors. I am leery of slide switches for manual control on the industrial spurs because of the potential for reach in damage. The mill is 58 inches high, a tad higher than average for most operators, so I am experimenting with Bullfrogs and Blue Points.

[mu26aeh]

For a DCC lesson? Sounds like a fair trade.


I've never wired a DCC layout before. Operated on a few, but still have trouble even programming locos consistently. I'm using Digitrax.   I'm running 12 gauge bus wire, with 16 gauge for feeders, but those will now go to twist connects so 20 gauge wires can run to the solder joint at the rail. I think that will solve the problem I was having earlier with the heavy feeders breaking loose from rail. There wasn't any shock absorption in the wire because of its stiffness if the tracks were moved.

Works for me !  I'm newer to DCC as well, but know enough to get in trouble.  As far as programming etc, do yourself a favor and get a PR3 and download JMRI.  I also know enough to get in trouble with that as well (like programming 25 locos to same address by mistake  ) .  What you or I don't know, there are plenty on here to ask questions to.  I can thank @Ed Kapuscinski  for the jump to JMRI.  Very happy with the move though.