WM Western Lines Engineering Report

[Philip H]

Can you share a link to the signals in question?  Everything I see on ebay seems a tad above your "for a song" price point.

[wm3798]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/400248654467?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

For $40 you can get 10 signals.  Check the Other Items search, and you'll see he does 2 aspect (red/green) and 2 and 3 aspect dwarfs.

If you can live with the "plump" signal heads, they're a pretty good deal.
Lee

[GaryHinshaw]

The bridge looks great Lee.

-gfh

[wm3798]

Progress on several fronts.  The windows for the Cumberland Station arrived today, so I spent the better part of the evening figuring out the best way to install them.   I think I've succeeded, and they're looking great.  Thanks, Zox!

I also worked on un-warping the Plastruct walls so the building looked less like it was made out of overcooked pasta.  So far so good, look for photos in of progress here there and everywhere some time tomorrow.

Also got some more work done in Greenwood PA, location of my N scale version of the Hard Hat.  I built the facade of the concrete overpass to look more or less like the one over Burhans Boulevard at the east throat of Hagerstown Yard, and I think I pulled it off okay...  got the road work done around that, too.  Again, too late for pics at the moment, but they'll be up before the weekend gets away.

I also found an old green highway sign I had made years (decades!) ago with press type lettering...  I need to revise it to reflect the exits around Cumberland from US 48.  Anyone have a half cup of Futura medium font I can borrow?  I've got to hurry up and finish some of these projects... if the weather keeps being warm like this, the neighbors will wonder why I'm not painting the house... (especially the neighbor that lives with me!!)

Lee

[wm3798]

Burhans Blvd in Hagerstown...


Hard Hat Boulevard, Greenwood, PA.


Paper windows from Lord Zox


Gradually taking shape...

Lee

[wm3798]

Rob's Silhouette paper windows are the absolute bomb.  It was such a simple and effective solution, no wonder it took six years to figure it out!





The white strip is a .020 rod that ended up being the margin of error to get a tight seam on the corner.  Not bad considering this building has been in storage for about 6 years since I built the original walls.

Lee

[Philip H]

That scene is HAWT! Well done Lord Zox!

[wm3798]

Next we'll start peppering the thing with LED's... 

[Zox]

It was such a simple and effective solution, no wonder it took six years to figure it out!

You just had to wait for technology to catch up to your vision. It happens to Real Men of Genius all the time.

Of course, now that I've got my part of your project done, I don't have any excuse to procrastinate any longer on my own projects... 

[GaryHinshaw]

Very nice - both the Hard Hat and the station windows.  Where on the layout is the Hard Hat?

[wm3798]

It's there where it says "To West Staging" to the right of the window.  The overpass behind the Hard Hat is the west approach to the yard.  I've got to have David update the drawing for me.  That section was nothing but a concept when this was prepared, and the yard is completely revised over what's drawn too.



There's a more photographic reference.

Lee

[wm3798]

After dinner, I toggled back and forth between the road work at Greenwood and the Cumberland Station.  At Greenwood, I installed "the other side of the tracks" after striping and painting the roadway on a chunk of vertical blind slat.  After questioning MC's sanity over using Gorilla Glue for scenery installations, I gave it a whirl on the roadway, and dammit, if it's not the best thing since the snooze button on an alarm clock.  The approach from the Hard Hat dips down a bit, and I wanted to make sure the slope wasn't unrealistically steep, but it also had to nest in the web of the c55 rail...  I Gorilla Glued it, clamped it in place, and it makes a darn tidy installation.  You can see a corner of it in the most recent Hard Hat picture shown above.

I'll pop some pics in the morning once the new section on the aisle side is in place.

At the station, I worked on doing the detail painting on the building, doing the cornice, frieze board, window sills, and the runs of stone along the top of the foundation.  I also added a few more partitions in the foundation, which further stabilized and leveled the building.  Did I mention that I used still more vertical blind slats in this application?  It just keeps looking better and better.  When that's done, I'm going to need to have a cigarette, for sure...  Again, pics in the morning.

Lee

[mcjaco]

Careful with that Gorilla Glue.  It expands.   

[DKS]

Careful with that Gorilla Glue.  It expands.

I used the stuff exactly once, and even knowing it expanded, I found it to be far too much trouble than it was worth. Plenty of other non-expanding adhesives out there.

[wm3798]

I'm quite familiar with Gorilla Glue... remember, I have a 100+ year old house...

I found that if I screed it out to a thin coating and clamp it securely, it works just fine.  I had a little bit bubble out at the point where the highway meets the fascia at Greenwood, but other than that, I'm quite pleased with the results.  I don't think it will be my first line adhesive, but where it's needed for strength or durability, it can work.

Here's the situation on the Gorilla Glue...


Note the slope from the intersection down to the grade crossing.   The slope down actually begins in the middle of the intersection, accomplished by cutting successive layers of corrugated cardboard in a sort of contour map sort of way.  I think there are 3 or 4 layers under there.  The first layer compensates for the cork roadbed, the next is cut back a bit to get the distance to the top of the rail, then the next two layers are cut back into the intersection to keep it from being silly looking.

As you can see, the clearance for plow pilots, low hanging ladders and so forth is a potential hazard here, so I wanted to make sure that the road surface and the timber crossing were tight, and permanently affixed.  The Gorilla Glue and a couple of clamps worked just so, and I'm pretty pleased with the result.  I have yet to run a train through it (I checked clearances with the SD40 pictured, and a couple of various freight cars, but no "real world" tests have been done yet.) which may lead to some minor adjustments, but the appearance is just what I was looking for.

Given the geography of the area I'm modeling, the idea of a "plywood plains" effect, even for this small town vignette, is anathema to me.

I also needed to provide a location for the local teenagers to bottom out their moms' station wagons.

Lee