The Carolina Sandhills Lines in HO Scale

[Vince P]

Looking cool Dave.

Liking the n scale siding idea.

Sitting on a box of n scale cork waiting to be used on my layout when I get to that stage.

Has a more proto look with the siding lower.

[davefoxx]

This morning I hope to update this thread by migrating in posts that were missed here, so to keep all of the information more conveniently in one place.  I will clearly mark each post with the date and time of its original entry elsewhere.  So, to start:

JANUARY 11, 2020 at 4:17 P.M.:

I began working on the fascia early this morning when I couldn't sleep.  I managed to temporarily fit a piece of 1/8" Masonite to the layout to trace its outline.  I was quickly reminded why I always used 1/4" Masonite in the past.  I managed to crack the 1/8" Masonite when I bent it in an inside corner.  Oh well, I'll use that piece as the template and cut another piece to install later this weekend.

I also quickly determined that I needed a little more organization in the layout room, so I bought another set of wire shelving and built it this afternoon.  Because I modified the first set several years ago to have a reverse loop on top for the N scale Seaboard Central 2.0, I modified this shelving unit to match for height.  Fortunately, I still have a pipe cutter, so cutting the vertical tubes for height was a piece of cake. 

I finally have all of my HO rolling stock boxes in one place.  There's also a little better organization of scenic supplies and paint.  The best part is that I cleaned off a shelf behind these shelves and put some tools that I don't use regularly back there.  These shelves easily roll out of the way.  Much better:



DFF

[davefoxx]

JANUARY 11, 2020 at 6:54 P.M.:

Before the fascia can go up permanently, I need to build up around the turnout throws, so there's sufficient backing for the recesses:



I also installed a block on the angled piece to minimize the inside corner where I broke the 1/8" Masonite on the first attempt this morning:



The first large piece of fascia is roughed into place and trimmed for scenery.  Aly approves.  This piece of fascia will have to come back off once I figure out the holes for the three turnout throws.  Because, once it's clear, I'll drill the larger holes for the recesses.  I've already started installing some foam (not visible here) to fill in behind the fascia at the inside corner to complete the terraforming against the fascia.



DFF

[davefoxx]

JANUARY 11, 2020 at 9:07 P.M.:

The first three affected turnout controls are all put back together.  It took more than just removing the pull rod, because the rod fits into a sleeve that runs from the fascia back to the switch machine.  I went under the layout and removed those, too.  Then, using a piece of wire coat hanger as a drill bit, I was able to fish around the switch machine and drill a small hole from under the layout through the fascia.  Where that punched through the fascia, I drilled a 3/16" centering hole and took a hole saw to it.

This fascia is hopefully not coming off again.  I will take my router and a straight cutting bit to the corner at right in the picture below to make a nice flush corner.  The result:



DFF

[davefoxx]

JANUARY 12, 2020 at 2:11 P.M.:

The next piece of fascia is roughed in:



The view from the workbench end of the room.  The seam between the two sheets worked out nice.  I have no intention of hiding the seams.  On previous layouts, where I used 1/4" Masonite, I would recess the screws and patch the screwheads and seams.  I can't countersink the heads in 1/8" Masonite without the risk of the screwheads blowing through the back.  The screws I'm using are for metal lath, so they have a built-in washer on the screwhead.  Please ignore the four screws around the turnout throw at far left in the picture below.  They're solely being used as clamps until the glue dries.  Because that throw is in the curve of the fascia, there's no benchwork immediately behind the fascia.  I glued a 3" x 3" piece of Masonite as a backer.  Worked out well.  Once the glue dries, I'll pull those four screws, and those holes (and a few other small defects) will be patched.



The view from the entry door.  I'm looking forward to the next time I enter the room after a few days away and being pleasantly surprised by the finished look of fascia:



DFF

[davefoxx]

JANUARY 12, 2020 at 5:03 P.M.:

It was tasks like the turnout controls that caused me so much procrastination on this project.  What I ended up doing was pulling out the turnout rods and using a piece of wire coat hanger from the backside to drill a hole through the existing hole in the benchwork to punch through the fascia.  I couldn't miss!  Then, I took a 3/16" bit to open up the hole made by the coat hanger to create the centering hole for the hole saw.  It actually ended up being way easier than I expected.

Now, I've got the last two pieces of fascia on the Southern Pines side of the layout finished.  I haven't started the Aberdeen side yet, but you can't see that from the side of the room where the entry door is.  I'm also out of Masonite, so I calculated what I needed for this portion fairly well.



I left the fascia tall near the A&BP staging yard as protection, to hopefully keep rolling stock from falling to the floor if and when I get clumsy.  I did, however, cut a small notch to provide better access to reach the pivoting sector plate:



DFF

[davefoxx]

JANUARY 19, 2020 at 7:19 A.M.:

Up early this morning, so I finally began applying lightweight spackling to the gap between the existing landforms and the fascia:



You may be saying to yourself, "Oh, no!  He got spackling in the applied static grass!"  But, that's really not a problem.  As on the Seaboard Central 2.0, I plan to add a group of trees to that outside corner on top of the hill, so the static grass needs to be transitioned into underbrush and deadfall anyway:





I also began applying wood patch to the fascia to fix holes and defects.

DFF

[davefoxx]

FEBRUARY 8, 2020 at 2:00 P.M.:

I’m in seventh heaven, because I just received this RF&P GP40 shell in the mail from Atlas.  I have a Soo Line GP38-2 that will be used as a donor for the mechanism, which was once used under my A&R GP38, until I got a good deal on a newer unit with ESU LokSound DCC and sound.  This Soo Line Geep was put back together to be sold on eBay, but procrastination once again saves the day.  I’ve had enough success in gutting the QSI DCC parts out of other locomotives, so I’ll save and upgrade this mechanism to a LokSound decoder.

Back story: I am a big fan of the RF&P, having railfanned it for a few years in college, before it merged into CSX.  This shell is the perfect RF&P paint scheme for my era.  RF&P power going south out of Richmond, Virginia on the Seaboard System was not unheard of.  Sweet!



DFF

[davefoxx]

FEBRUARY 9, 2020 at 2:12 P.M.:

It took some finagling and sanding, but I got the shell to fit the frame.  I’ll probably end up gluing the hood to the walkway, as there’s a small gap that I don’t think will be pulled together when the shell is fully installed.



DFF

[davefoxx]

FEBRUARY 17, 2020 at 12:12 P.M.:

This weekend, I used canopy glue to secure the walkway to the hood of my new RF&P GP40, to eliminate the unsightly gaps (including under the cab) that were occurring because of a slight bow in the walkway.  I also installed the front and rear handrails, pilot details, and sunshades (although the prototype didn't have sunshades, I didn't want to leave the two exposed holes over the cab side windows).  Unless you're a fan of the RF&P, who would know, right?  Since I use canopy glue, I can always easily remove them, if I change my mind.

I also removed the QSI DCC guts and installed a Decoder Buddy (motherboard) and an ESU 21-pin Loksound V5.0 decoder and got that up and running without any issue.  Whew.  I downloaded the proper sound file and hope tonight to start tweaking the settings to get the correct sounds and to set this Geep up for control by the ProtoThrottle.  I also need to reinstall the LED headlights and install a Keep-Alive.

DFF

[davefoxx]

FEBRUARY 18, 2020 at 4:11 P.M.:

I reprogrammed the decoder last night to (a) turn down the freakin' volume, and (b) to remap the functions to work with the ProtoThrottle.  It's not surprising that some guys are anti-sound, considering the volume the manufacturers set for the factory defaults.  Thankfully, it's easy for me to fix this with the LokProgrammer.  I literally drop the volume to approximately 30% of the maximum volume and bring it down to a much more comfortable setting.

I just need to go in and tweak the settings to the proper bell and horn.  This is where YouTube really can be helpful.  It's possible to find videos of the very locomotive, or at least the series of locomotives on your particular prototype, to match sounds.  I did this with my A&R GP38 and have just about nailed the actual sounds.  That's pretty cool.

DFF

[davefoxx]

FEBRUARY 22, 2020 at 8:30 P.M.:

It's a crappy video, but it shows the end result of the work that I've put into this old locomotive, with a new shell and replacing the DCC/sound guts with a Decoder Buddy motherboard and an ESU LokSound V5.0 decoder to get my RF&P Geep running.  I just need to get the ESU Power Pack installation finished, so it will have a keep-alive onboard.

DFF

[davefoxx]

MARCH 1, 2020 at 2:03 P.M.:

You ever have a problem nagging you for a long time and, suddenly, out of nowhere, you're hit with a brainstormed solution?  Well, I have one powered turnout on my layout.  It controls a turnout to the furniture manufacturing warehouse on the Aberdeen & Briar Patch Ry. (the branchline that runs up the hill).  Since I switched the layout's DCC system from NCE to ESU about a year ago, I lost control of the Smail (a Tortoise with a decoder in it) and could not get my ESU system to reprogram the Smail.  The brainiac idea?  Rip out the Smail and install a BullFrog manual turnout control, like all of the others on the layout.  That may not seem so surprising, but the Smail is mounted up inside a hole in the benchwork, due to the turnout being "up the hill."  Here's the Smail before I removed it:



Removing the wiring was a snap, because I used NCE quick connectors/wire taps to power the Smail from the DCC bus.  I just unplugged these two wires:



Here was the dilemma: how to get the turnout control rod up into the hole.  Well, I just cut back the 1/4" lauan plywood and 2" foam that tops my table creating clearance to divert the control rod up into the hole where the BullFrog turnout control now resides.  I probably could have cut the notch longer, but it works.  I had glued a scrap of lauan up in that hole to mount the turnout motor when I installed the Smail.  I was able to use that scrap to also mount the BullFrog up in the recess.  It was easy getting the BullFrog in the right place to control the turnout's throw, because I had drawn a centerline on the scrap lauan when I installed the Smail.



A close-up of the BullFrog turnout control:



Because this turnout is in the center of the layout, I had to splice the turnout rod together and install this wood bracket to hold the rod.  I also used one staple (see the third picture above) to hold the rod in place.  Otherwise, it sort of flops around when the switch is thrown.  Thankfully, I had some parts left over from the installation of the other BullFrogs on my layout, plus I had a few extra BullFrogs left over when I tore out a crossover and moved it out onto the folding staging shelf.  I scrounged enough parts to build this BullFrog and the control rod.



I carefully measured and cut a new hole in the fascia for a new throw.  The knob on the right is the new control:



The BullFrog's piano wire to connect to the throwbar was too short, but I found some pieces of phosphor bronze wire in my inventory.  It's a little less springy, but it worked fine.  In fact, if I had my way, I would wish that the standard wires in the other BullFrogs were a little less springy, so the turnouts could be spring switches, instead of derailing a train.  Here's the "normal" throw:



"Reverse":



The final step was to trim off the phosphor bronze wire, and now this NS boxcar is no longer marooned.  Success!  It's a small improvement to the layout, but it does wonders for ops.  And, all turnouts are now controlled by BullFrogs with control rods through the fascia.



DFF

[davefoxx]

MARCH 15, 2020 at 12:19 A.M.:

Got these GP40-2s MUed together successfully today.  The former Family Lines unit is an Athearn with a LokSound V4.0 decoder installed, and the two Atlas Seaboard System GP40-2s have factory installed LokSound Select decoders.  On my layout, I have converted solely to ESU decoders and DCC system.  With the use of a LokProgrammer, I consisted these units and was able to not only get them running together on my ProtoThrottle, but I went into the function mapping of each decoder to control the lights, bell, and horn.  I was able to make the headlights work non-directionally and function within the consist properly, i.e., the lead units lights only work on the nose, the middle unit has no lights, the trailing unit has lights only on the other end of the consist.  The horn and bell only work on the lead unit running forward and only on the trailing unit when the consist is running in reverse.  Nice!  The horn and bell do not function on the middle unit ever.  When it comes time to break up the set, a quick reflash of these locomotives individually on the LokProgrammer would de-consist them and revert them to individual locomotives with functioning lights and sound.



A close-up of the roof of one of the SBD GP40-2s.  Many months ago, I bought both of these Atlas GP40-2s, which were damaged on arrival from the online merchant and would not run.  Ultimately, I sent the locomotives back to Atlas, who contacted me to state that it would repair the damage and that it was clear that both units had been dropped.  Atlas also noted a couple of detail parts (firecracker antenna and bell) that had been damaged or were missing.  Atlas replaced the parts, but admitted that it did not have any parts in the matching paint.  I was so happy that Atlas was willing to fix these locomotives under warranty, considering it was not at fault for the damage and there was no manufactural defect.  I believe that someone damaged these locomotives and returned them to the retailer, without saying a word.   It's obvious that the retailer never would have sold these units, had they realized the damage,  A special thanks to Atlas for incredible customer service.  The following picture shows the firecracker antenna and bell (mounted near the dynamic brake blister) that I finally got around to touching up the paint today.  Because I'm colorblind, I really hesitated to do this, and hand-painting always makes me nervous.  But, I figured that it's just small detail parts, and any mismatch would not be obvious.  I used TruColor SP Dark Lark Gray, and, out of sheer laziness, I tried the paint straight out of the bottle.  It actually was a pretty good match out of the bottle.  Sure beats these detail parts in primer gray!



DFF

[davefoxx]

MARCH 15, 2020 at 7:37 P.M.:

I want to get at least a base coat of scenery around the lake, because it's the first scene you see as you enter the layout room.  But, that requires me to install the trestle, which, of course, first needs me to complete the terraforming under the bridge.

So, tonight, I did some carving around the trestle bents, marked the bents for length, cut them off, and applied the magic lightweight spackling that makes terraforming so much easier.  The challenge is the massive relief holes that remained from when I constructed the bridge to allow me to build the bents without the hills complicating the construction.  I have now filled those humongous holes with spackling and "planted" the bridge.  When the spackling begins to set, I'll try to pop the bridge back out, leaving just small indents where the individual timbers contact the slope.  I can then apply the base coat of ground cover under the bridge before putting the bridge back in place.  But, it could take days for that spackling to dry, because those were some huge holes.  The dehumidfier is running!



And, once all of this is complete, then comes the kudzu!

DFF