The Carolina Sandhills Lines in HO Scale

[davefoxx]

MARCH 20, 2020 at 6:00 P.M.:

Inner guardrails installed.  I carefully prebent a pair of Code 70 rails to run inside the Code 83 running rails.  By using each side of the Tracksetta 18" radius template that I used to form the radius of the bridge track, I was able to get the guardrails really close to their final shape, which eliminated me fighting with the rails as I was trying to secure them, including the far end of the bridge where there is a slight vertical curve at the crest of the grade.  I had an old tube of Pliobond that wasn't dried up, so I used that as a contact adhesive.  Once the rails were tacked into place, I used a soldering iron to "set" the Pliobond.  I touched the soldering iron to the rail, waited for a slight sizzle, moved the iron down the rail an inch or so, and repeated.  Instant, permanent bond.  I'll do the outer "wood" guardrails next.  This method beats using CA (as I did on the Seaboard Central 2.0's trestle) hands down.



DFF

[davefoxx]

MARCH 21, 2020 at 8:59 A.M.:

This morning, I played hooky from work and installed the outer guard timbers.  These were pieces that came with the trestle kit that I cut to length, sanded the miters at each joint, and glued in place with CA:





DFF

[davefoxx]

MARCH 21, 2020 at 1:14 P.M.:

A little terraforming on the west end of the trestle.  What you see is 1" foam roughed into place and hit with a skim coat of lightweight spackling:



DFF

[davefoxx]

MARCH 22, 2020 at 2:12 A.M.:

More terraforming.  I finally figured out the best way to get road access to the furniture warehouse on the hill, plus this gives a reason for the short side street in Aberdeen that represents a much-truncated West Main Street in the prototype town.  I'm not crazy about the hills coming down to the back of the buildings in Aberdeen, but the plan always was for a lot of trees and brush as a scenic divider in here anyway, as I did on the Seaboard Central 2.0:



DFF

[davefoxx]

MARCH 22, 2020 at 4:52 P.M.:

I wanted something else to work on today besides landforms, and I just happened to be studying the layout of Aberdeen, North Carolina on Google Maps, when I remembered the little stub track near the former SAL station.  Nowadays, you will find an Aberdeen & Rockfish RR caboose parked there.  A track project seemed like a good way to kill time on a chilly Sunday afternoon and keep myself out of trouble.



Below is the overhead shot of downtown, so you can see the stub running up to the station that remains there to this day.  The caboose is also still there.  This may also give you an idea of how my station will fit inside the wye on my layout.  I have also begun moving the buildings in Aberdeen around slightly to find their final position.  It was this task that lead to studying Google Maps yesterday.



So, I went digging in my box of leftover track and found this old wye turnout that I bought in the original order for track for this layout a few years ago, but it was left out when the track design evolved.  As I hoped, the radius of one side of the wye turnout came reeeeeeeal close to the radius of the curved leg of the wye.  A razor saw made quick work of cutting out the track to fit in the turnout.  I laid some new roadbed, cut in the spur, built an end-of-track bumper, and voila!  I have already re-dropped the feeders that just happened to be right where I cut the small piece of track out, and I have installed a surplus Bullfrog switch machine.  I just need to connect up the control rod to be able to throw the turnout from the fascia.  This, however, is complicated by some unfortunate L-girder benchwork framing in the way.  I'll get creative and find a way to fish that control rod through there.  Might take some chisels, saws, or drill bits to do it, though.



In the picture above, the three strips of cork roadbed represent S. Sycamore Street, which intersects with Main Street on the other side of the wye near the station.  Obviously, my track plan doesn't exactly match the prototype, but there are elements there that do.  The overall scheme of three railroads interchanging in a yard just south of town is matched.

Now, if I could only find that shrink-ray gun and put it in reverse; here's the N scale version of the former SAL station that I get to build again in HO:



DFF

[davefoxx]

MARCH 22, 2020 at 5:53 P.M.:

I got the control rod and knob installed.  It took some headscratching, sawing and chiseling to the top edge of an L-girder, a 1/2" hole through a riser, and a 3/16" hole in a scrap of Masonite glued to the backside of the fascia to provide a backer in the recess.  I'll remove the clamps later.  They're holding the scrap Masonite in place until the carpenter's glue dries.  Since there's no pressure on that scrap piece (other than the curved fascia that it's formed against), hopefully, it'll hold when the clamps are released.

This seems like a convenient place to park (and maybe even fuel) local power.  The prototype didn't do this, but, as they say, "Whatever, it's my railroad." 



DFF

[davefoxx]

MARCH 22, 2020 at 7:47 P.M.:

Oh, and I forgot to post the results of a weekend of terraforming.  I roughed in the rest of the 2" foam to build the cut behind the trestle.  It'll take a few days for the foam adhesive to set up, and then I'll do the final sculpting.



The next picture will give you a good idea of the cut.  Think kudzu over some of this:



DFF

[davefoxx]

MARCH 23, 2020 at 9:28 P.M.:

Here's the vignette within Aberdeen that I'm trying to capture, i.e., from the former SAL station along S. Sycamore Street to the group of buildings along N. Sycamore Street that parallels the ex-Seaboard Air Line main.

First, for orientation, here's the overhead Google Maps picture with street names:



The prototype looking northwest from E. Main Street towards the intersection with Sycamore Street:



The similar view on my layout.  You'll notice that I excluded E. Main Street and only included W. Main Street.  Sadly, to include E. Main Street would have put a road crossing through my yard ladder, which is not preferred.  This is the price I pay for having to selectively compress the area and move the yard south of Aberdeen on the prototype into Aberdeen on the layout. I can live with it:



The prototype looking southwest from N. Sycamore Street towards the intersection with Main Street and the former SAL station in the distance at left:



The similar view on my layout (I'm using my N scale station to give you an idea of where the HO version will be placed):



Not bad, for Walther's kits straight out of the box, huh?  I just need a couple more small buildings to fill in on W. Main Street.  The real question is what Aberdeen looked like between 1983 and 1986.  I haven't found any good pictures online yet, to see how these buildings were painted back then.

DFF

[davefoxx]

MARCH 28, 2020 at 3:47 P.M.:

I started piddling with the pavement and eventual sidewalks in Aberdeen.  A while back, I bought several sheets of 0.060" black styrene in 24" x 48" sheets.  This morning, I made a paper template of the area and transferred the shape to the styrene.  This let me cut the styrene out without cutting too much off and, at the same time, allowed me to accurately cut this complicated piece.  I'm going to have to seam that upper parking lot at the furniture warehouse, as well as the road that continues off to the upper right in the picture below.  I still need to make the final cut where the road will meet the rail at the bottom of the picture.



Once I've done the final whittling of this piece of styrene, I'll glue it into place and start cutting up some 0.080" styrene to build the sidewalks.

DFF

[davefoxx]

MARCH 29, 2020 at 4:54 P.M.:

I've been working on laying out the sidewalks in Aberdeen today.  As I wrote in a previous post, the street is made of 0.060" black styrene.  I went with 0.080" for the sidewalks to get just shy of a 7" curb.  Unfortunately, I only had black styrene in 0.080" sheets, so that's what I used.  I apologize for the lack of contrast between the street and the sidewalk in the picture below, but this will be fixed with paint to represent concrete sidewalks and asphalt streets.  If you look close, you can see how I tried to recreate the angles and corners of the sidewalks at this intersection (see the Google Maps picture in a previous post above):



I ordered a panel scriber from MicroMark today, to carve the sidewalk joints.  A panel scriber is supposed to be superior to an Xacto knife for this task, because the scriber doesn't raise an edge on each side of the cut like a blade does.  The panel scriber actually carves a small groove and removes a tiny sliver of styrene.  But, it's on backorder, which is stopping this project in its tracks.

DFF

[davefoxx]

APRIL 11, 2020 at 8:01 A.M.:

I've been having trouble sleeping, so, since I was up since 2:00 a.m., I decided to knock out some unfinished work to my fleet.  Yesterday, I rewired one of the Seaboard System GP40-2s in the picture below to reverse the headlight over the cab with the Gyralight in the nose. This matches the GP40-2 painted in the Family Lines scheme below.  Unfortunately, I discovered that I couldn't just fix the problem by remapping the lighting functions, because although I could remap the headlights to the nose, I couldn't make them dim with a separate function key.  This is because the Gyralight is through AUX3 on the decoder.  So, instead, I traced the wires, and pulled two pins out of an Atlas plug and swapped them.  In other words, I physically changed the lighting functions.  AUX3 now controls the light over the cab, which only needs to be on/off.  This way, I can turn the Gyralight on/off over the cab (F5), and I can independently turn on the headlights in the nose (F0) and dimmed (F3).  So, this morning, I completed the second GP40-2, and now, all three Geeps pictured have matching lighting functions.

Oh, and, after all of that work, I learned online that the prototype Seaboard System removed the Gyralights when they shopped the locomotives after the merger that created the road.  In fact, when I patched that Family Lines GP40-2 to the SBD, it turns out I created a foobie.  D'oh!  Oh, well, it's my railroad!  I could do as the prototype and remove the lights over the cab, plating over the fixture, but I like the Gyralights.



I also had a Rapido B36-7 that's been on the workbench for a couple of months, because it had a broken headlight out of the box.  Rapido offered to fix it or send me a replacement LED under warranty.  I didn't want to send this locomotive back to Canada, risking damage in shipping, so I chose to attempt to fix it myself.  Thankfully, Rapido's customer service is awesome, and they sent me two prewired LEDs.  They also gave me the instructions on how to tear this complex locomotive down to get to that LED.  Well, this morning, I finally finished the job, and, damn, if it didn't work on the first try!  My workbench looks funny without that disassembled locomotive on it.  I've been breaking the locomotive in this morning.  Runs and sounds great!

DFF

[davefoxx]

APRIL 11, 2020 at 8:49 A.M.:

I almost forgot!  I also built a new firecracker antenna out of a piece of small wire.  I stripped the wire for the different thicknesses of the antenna, tinned it (I only had stranded wire), and painted and installed the antenna.  I broke off the plastic antenna on my bicentennial unit, but this project cost practically nothing to make the necessary repair.  I already had everything that I needed, including a silver paint marker to finish it.





DFF

[davefoxx]

APRIL 12, 2020 at 10:17 P.M.:

I believe that this was the best looking bicentennial unit.  I've been waiting for the release of this U36B for decades.  This afternoon, I started adding some of the details that Atlas included in the box that are modeler-installed.  Although I've had the model for about a year-and-a-half, I was hesitant, because there's nothing like drilling holes into your favorite locomotive's shell!  I'm no DKS, but the damage is concealed.  You can see the bell added over the windshield and, if you look close, you'll see light fixtures mounted on the walkway. Two on the nose and three down the side over the lettering on the sill.  The lights are, obviously, non-functioning.



This evening, I started applied the base coat of paint to the landforms of my lake scene.  I added sanded grout around the perimeter of the lake as a sandy area that might be exposed after the kudzu is added on the hills.  I removed my trestle, so I could get under it.  A base coat of ground foam (if I have enough) is the next step.  Everyone always says my base paint is too light, but I model the Sandhills of North Carolina, and, since they were formerly sand dunes at the coastline in prehistoric times, the soil is very light and almost bleached white by the sun in some areas.



DFF

[davefoxx]

APRIL 13, 2020 at 4:48 P.M.:

I applied some ground foam around the trestle/lake scene, but DISCLAIMER:
1) It's only the base layer;
2) What's applied here will be covered by kudzu and/or trees;
3) It's only the base layer;
4) I'm colorblind;
5) It's only the base layer;
6) I want to model springtime, so I went bright; and
7) It's only the base layer.
Okay, okay, it's really light green.  Obviously, I wasn't able to run to the hobby shop for a color that might have suited me better, but this will be, for the most part, covered.  If not, I can apply other colors and textures, if necessary.  And, check out the marsh that I wanted to apply to the one end of the lake where the drainage ditch empties into the lake:



To get that marshy look, check out the cattails!  What you see is two packages, so I'm hoping that the purchase of two more packages should cover what I want to do.  Okay, I'm not sure the cattails should be on the stem in the spring like this, but, hey, they look cool and help people realize what they're supposed to be:



Once this dries, I will begin to apply kudzu (assuming I have enough materials left over from the Seaboard Central 2.0 to start the project) and paint the lake bottom.

DFF

[davefoxx]

APRIL 13, 2020 at 8:55 P.M.:

It may not look like much yet, but this is Step 1 of installing kudzu: Stretch out Woodland Scenics' Polyfiber (No. FP178 Green) and stick it to the hillside.  This becomes the vines. 



Step 2 will be to apply the leaves, which is what really gives the look of kudzu.  If I remember correctly, I use SuperLeaf Scale Leaves (No. SE6123 Spring Green).

DFF