The Carolina Sandhills Lines in HO Scale

[pedro]

I remapped the numberboards functions on the trailing units.  They’re now off.



DFF

Awesome! The road foreman will be pleased! I love that this is even possible via DCC. Control of lighting effects is even more important to me personally than sound. I get it that most people don’t think much about it. In “DC days” I used to pull the light boards out of trailing units, it bugged me so much.
Now about those sun shades and mirrors…


Funny thing about vintage rule books…They’re usually pretty thin compared to a modern rule book. The five primary books I have to carry (thank god it’s all on a company-issued iPad) total almost 500 pages, not counting general orders, notices etc; the Chicago CORA book adds 600 pages more. It’ll be interesting to see what the SBD one you got has to say. You can probably put it in your shirt pocket.

[davefoxx]

@pedro,

I'm not a rivet counter, so I won't likely address minor issues.  That said, what's wrong with the sunshades and mirrors?  I actually thought the mirrors were wind deflectors, assuming we're talking about the same detail parts.

DFF

[pedro]

Lol, nothing’s wrong with them; I was joking. I just like them tucked in on the trailing motors when I’m working. They can block your view down the side of the train otherwise. It’s just a silly OCD thing… carry on!

[Point353]

Lol, nothing’s wrong with them; I was joking. I just like them tucked in on the trailing motors when I’m working. They can block your view down the side of the train otherwise. It’s just a silly OCD thing… carry on!

Like this, right?

http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/sbd/sbd5855swa.jpg

[davefoxx]

Lol, nothing’s wrong with them; I was joking. I just like them tucked in on the trailing motors when I’m working. They can block your view down the side of the train otherwise. It’s just a silly OCD thing… carry on!

Doesn’t seem like an OCD thing to me.  I can see the practical side of that.  However, those detail parts on these very expensive models wouldn’t be easily modified by these clumsy hands, so they’ll stay as is.

DFF

[davefoxx]

Funny thing about vintage rule books…They’re usually pretty thin compared to a modern rule book. The five primary books I have to carry (thank god it’s all on a company-issued iPad) total almost 500 pages, not counting general orders, notices etc; the Chicago CORA book adds 600 pages more. It’ll be interesting to see what the SBD one you got has to say. You can probably put it in your shirt pocket.

Not quite in the shirt pocket at 5-1/2” x 7”, but much smaller then your present day rule books at 226 pages.



Whistle/horn signals:



Headlights:



Class lights:



DFF

[C855B]

Interesting that a 1982 rule book is still specifying green "section following" markers. Was SBD still running TT/TO operations somewhere?

It's the late date that surprises me. F'rinstance, I have a 1972 UP rule book that makes no mention of classification markers other than white must be displayed for all "extra" trains. In 1972 all UP trains were "extra", as declared by a special instruction (or something like that) that took effect in the 1960s, with the exception of passenger trains. By the same token, I recall no longer seeing green markers on SP in roughly '68-69 in what was still TO territory.

[davefoxx]

My layout needs more capacity.  Whose doesn’t, right?  Here’s the brainstorm, and I’m open to feedback.  This double-track folding shelf has been great!  The original thought was to only extend the two tracks that are supposed to be the SBD mainline and a passing siding.  Now, I wish I had extended all five tracks.



The solution?  Replace the double-track folding shelf with a rolling cart capped with a five-track extension.  By eliminating the folding shelf, I can not only have five long staging tracks, but I may be able to extend the tracks beyond the folding shelf’s end (maybe even up to 18” past).  The folding shelf is limited in length by how much it can hinge down without hitting the floor.

I built a rolling staging yard on the N scale Seaboard Central 2.0, and it worked well.  The rolling cart was one of these shelves that I can buy at the home center.  A simple pipe cutter takes care of customizing the height of the cart, and the casters would allow me to roll it away, if I need the floor space temporarily.



DFF

[Chris333]

ChrisInLA

[Hawghead]

The other thing you could do is hinge the new wider/longer "fiddle yard" to swing up instead of down.  I'm assuming, of course, that you have more overhead room than you do distance to the floor.

Scott

[Point353]

My layout needs more capacity.  Whose doesn’t, right?  Here’s the brainstorm, and I’m open to feedback.  This double-track folding shelf has been great!  The original thought was to only extend the two tracks that are supposed to be the SBD mainline and a passing siding.  Now, I wish I had extended all five tracks.



The solution?  Replace the double-track folding shelf with a rolling cart capped with a five-track extension.  By eliminating the folding shelf, I can not only have five long staging tracks, but I may be able to extend the tracks beyond the folding shelf’s end (maybe even up to 18” past).  The folding shelf is limited in length by how much it can hinge down without hitting the floor.

I built a rolling staging yard on the N scale Seaboard Central 2.0, and it worked well.  The rolling cart was one of these shelves that I can buy at the home center.  A simple pipe cutter takes care of customizing the height of the cart, and the casters would allow me to roll it away, if I need the floor space temporarily.



DFF

Presumably an advantage of the rolling staging yard is that it can be moved away from the layout while the trains are still on it.

The folding shelf could be made longer by adding a hinge somewhere along its length.
The section nearer the layout would pivot either up/down and be about as long as the distance from the layout to the ceiling/floor, as it is now.
The new/second section/extension could then be about as long as the height from floor to ceiling, as space permits when it's in the horizontal position.

[Chris333]

[Steveruger45]

My layout needs more capacity.  Whose doesn’t, right?  Here’s the brainstorm, and I’m open to feedback.  This double-track folding shelf has been great!  The original thought was to only extend the two tracks that are supposed to be the SBD mainline and a passing siding.  Now, I wish I had extended all five tracks.



The solution?  Replace the double-track folding shelf with a rolling cart capped with a five-track extension.  By eliminating the folding shelf, I can not only have five long staging tracks, but I may be able to extend the tracks beyond the folding shelf’s end (maybe even up to 18” past).  The folding shelf is limited in length by how much it can hinge down without hitting the floor.

I built a rolling staging yard on the N scale Seaboard Central 2.0, and it worked well.  The rolling cart was one of these shelves that I can buy at the home center.  A simple pipe cutter takes care of customizing the height of the cart, and the casters would allow me to roll it away, if I need the floor space temporarily.



DFF

Dave, I’m guessing a fixed extension is out of the question for some reason.  Would it be possible to extend with a fixed extension that has an opening section in it?

[davefoxx]

The other thing you could do is hinge the new wider/longer "fiddle yard" to swing up instead of down.  I'm assuming, of course, that you have more overhead room than you do distance to the floor.

Scott

Presumably an advantage of the rolling staging yard is that it can be moved away from the layout while the trains are still on it.

The folding shelf could be made longer by adding a hinge somewhere along its length.
The section nearer the layout would pivot either up/down and be about as long as the distance from the layout to the ceiling/floor, as it is now.
The new/second section/extension could then be about as long as the height from floor to ceiling, as space permits when it's in the horizontal position.

Dave, I’m guessing a fixed extension is out of the question for some reason.  Would it be possible to extend with a fixed extension that has an opening section in it?

These are all great ideas, and I appreciate your feedback.  The reason that I would prefer not to just add a fixed extension is because that's taking valuable floor space when I need some room for a home improvement project or even something for the layout.  The cart gives the convenience of merely disconnecting and rolling it out of the way and even out of the room. 

Folding a shelf up or down would work- no doubt about it.  My guess, without putting a measuring tape on it, is that the shelf could be longer if it drops rather than raises, because of the ceiling height and the layout height.  Building a folding shelf could be done, but I think that's adding unnecessary complexity.  I'm most likely set on the rolling cart, because I did this on the Seaboard Central 2.0, and it worked surprisingly well.  That was disconnected/reconnected number of time and always lined right back up.

The real kicker is that I wish I had the room for a reverse loop in lieu of the existing folding shelf, so that SBD trains could exit the layout and enter a double- or triple-track staging loop.  I don't think I have the room for that without a duckunder to the back of the layout and eating that floor space I wanted to preserve.  If I could do a reverse loop, I could probably get by without adding length to those three yard tracks.

DFF

[Point353]

The real kicker is that I wish I had the room for a reverse loop in lieu of the existing folding shelf, so that SBD trains could exit the layout and enter a double- or triple-track staging loop.  I don't think I have the room for that without a duckunder to the back of the layout and eating that floor space I wanted to preserve.  If I could do a reverse loop, I could probably get by without adding length to those three yard tracks.

DFF

Do you have enough width in the room for (at least) a single-track helix 180° curve that would descend to reach a multi-track staging return loop underneath the layout?
The curved section could be made detachable for those occasions when you need extra space to work on home improvement projects.