Weekend Update 5/12/24

[John]

It's railroad station weekend

It's been a while since I posted any progress on my attempt at modeling .. my hobby time was limited in April and May due to traveling and grandkid sports ..

The Glyndon station 20' wide, 60' long, is a 3D print that is just about ready for final finish. The design is based on some limited measurements, and a lot of counting bricks for dimensions  - I've had 5 or 6 different versions each of which had a flaw I just couldn't live with but I finally settled on this version. I changed the windows and doors to be removable to allow better painting and printing etc.

The roof line gave me fits in getting it to look "about right" .. Measuring the angles, depending on the image ended up with a 30 degree angle for the upper roof, and 20 degree for the lower half .. I created a mock up of the roof line out of card stock. It just didn't have the proportions I wanted.  I built two additional mockups, 35 degrees and 40 degrees -- the 40 looked "right" .. this is a personal preference, so I will stick with it .. I need to get this project done and hope to do that this week.

The two images are where we are so far.






There is a great website www.blocklayer.com that will come in handy for lots of scratch build projects, especially roofs ..

[chuck geiger]

Workbench revamp:

[mplsjct]

Short BN transfer about to duck under Broadway and Central NE Minneapolis…

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Thanks to @EL3632 for the starting point for this.

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[EL3632]

Thanks to @EL3632 for the starting point for this.

That looks amazing @Ed Kapuscinski. I love it. Glad it went to a good home!

[Ed Kapuscinski]

That looks amazing @Ed Kapuscinski. I love it. Glad it went to a good home!

Thank you! The entire time I've been working on it I've been thinking "Don't let Ken down".

[Philip H]

I spent time this weekend wrapping up the sorting, packing and pricing of items from my uncle's estate, ahead of having two vendor tables at next weekend's Pennsacola Model Railroad Club Railfest.

[wm3798]

The tinkering paid off!


I was dealing with the time honored tradition of my Minitrix 0-6-0 fleet stalling on insulated frogs.  I found I had several sets of truck wipers and screw sets from Trix K4s in a box of parts I had gotten from Ryan Lamm last year, so I set about the task of running wires between engine and tender.  Apart from modifying the tender weights to clear the new "hot" bolster screws, the went very smoothly.



The secret sauce was picking up some 30 AWG wire to have enough flex for my small radius loop of Trix snap track.

Lee

[crrcoal]

I remember when you bought this from Ken. You said you were gonna be good and not buy anything. 
Nice job and the blue horns are a nice touch too!

Thanks to @EL3632 for the starting point for this.

(Attachment Link)

[spr1955]

Added rocks and blending to the right side of the new viewblock. I am using rock castings from my last layout.  They are cast resin so I can reheat them and mold them to new positions. As long as I don't overheat them the paint from the first install remains intact, making it faster installation.

[mu26aeh]

Sharks basking in the sunlight after initial decal applications.  These are for The Reading And Lehigh, more info can be found on his Facebook page.

[brokemoto]

BLI Pennsy P4a electrics. 

I just got mine to-day.  How do you raise the pantographs?  I tried to raise them but something appears to be holding them in the DOWN position.  I did not want to force anything lest I break it.  Neither the instruction sheet in the box nor the on line instructions were of any help.

[peteski]

I just got mine to-day.  How do you raise the pantographs?  I tried to raise them but something appears to be holding them in the DOWN position.  I did not want to force anything lest I break it.  Neither the instruction sheet in the box nor the on line instructions were of any help.

There is a post with a little ball at the end in the center of the pantograph, and the pickup shoe is held by it.  Just grab the pickup shoe and lift it straight up to unsnap it from that post.  Pull the pickup shoe by its center section, not by the ends. Use the fingernails of your thumb and index fingers (if they are long enough). The shoe is snapped on fairly tight - will take surprising amount of pull to unsnap it.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I remember when you bought this from Ken. You said you were gonna be good and not buy anything. 
Nice job and the blue horns are a nice touch too!

Lol, well I WAS going to be good, but one of these has been on the list for a long time.

I DIDmanage to avoid the U23b though, so I’ll consider that a partial victory.

[brokemoto]

There is a post with a little ball at the end in the center of the pantograph, and the pickup shoe is held by it.  Just grab the pickup shoe and lift it straight up to unsnap it from that post.  Pull the pickup shoe by its center section, not by the ends. Use the fingernails of your thumb and index fingers (if they are long enough). The shoe is snapped on fairly tight - will take surprising amount of pull to unsnap it.

Thank you, that worked.  I was careful enough not to pull of the whole thing but as you so accurately stated, it took more than you'dda' thunk.

Other than that, this thing is just as finicky as the Centipede. It stalls even on freshly cleaned straight and level.  I do not know if Keep Alive works on DC (I am not a DCC user) but if it does, perhaps I should look into that.  Failing that, perhaps there is a way to wire around the decoder.  I have had to do that on B-manns and MP/MRC power as the factory decoders on those do not stand up well to DC; especially the B-mann.

Thank you for the tip.