Summer Shunting Shelf Project

[M.C. Fujiwara]

Thank, guy.
I appreciate the feedback from quality Asshats such as yourselves. 

If anyone has suggestions for further details around the yard shed and yard (like little scraps of paper for newspapers, a bicycle, some birds, etc.) I'm all ears.
Cheers!

[M.C. Fujiwara]

Finally got some signs up on the buildings, so everyone (especially the engineer) knows what is where.
 
Doolittle Freight & Bella Fonte Cannery:
 


(Jimmy Doolittle of WWII fame was from Alameda, while Bella Fonte sounds similar to the real Del Monte cannery and plus we all love Harry Bellafonte, especially on The Muppet Show)
 
Flotsam Brewery:
 


[motto: "First you flotsam, then you jetsam!"]
 
Rosie the Riveteer hangs out at Doolittle Freight waiting for the loco to finish the "Banana Boat" job at the Bella Fonte Cannery:
 


She's getting a little impatient because daylight comin', she wanna go home

We also finished the big building that covers the powerpack space (you can see a little of it behind Doolittle Freight in the first photo), but I'll need to get some photos of it tomorrow in some good light.
 Until then, thanks for looking.

[M.C. Fujiwara]

Hauled the layout out onto some tables in the sun, which was playing peek-a-boo behind some clouds, so somewhat iffy photos.
Continuing the sign-a-polooza, The Woodstock Warehouse and Morrison Pier got labeled:



[Woodstock is an early name for one end of Alameda, and Jim Morrison of the Doors went to high school in Alameda]

A closer look:



The motto of Morrison Pier is "Opening the Doors to the World".

A sunny day at the yard office in front of Flotsam Brewery:



And the completed cover for the now-defunct powerpack space:



[cont.]

[M.C. Fujiwara]

So this area was going to house the powerpack, but since we switched to the e-Z throttle, we don't need access to it during ops, so it became the throttle storage area.
 Since much of the layout is so flat, we wanted a little height and depth:
 


We stuck a cabinet magnet on the far side & gorillaglued a small plate under the styrene base, so it's firmly attached but also pops off easily.
 


So now there's a bit of "heft", and the layout moves from three-story left to pier/carfloat flat right, hopefully making things more interesting than straight across.
 
Here's the backside:
 


In terms of visual elements & composition, not too bad.
 But it does bring the total of structures to remove before transport up to 5.
 
[cont.]

[M.C. Fujiwara]

Model Railroading as History come to Life:

But what to make of this non-rail-served industry building?
 
My daughter is in the 4th grade which, in California, is the year students start to study California history in earnest.
 The layout is set in Alameda soon after WWII (1946-9).
 So we turned this project into a mini history lesson / tribute.
 
We large building we labeled "Fujiwara Trading Company" and tried to make it look older (with fire damage) and unoccupied:
 


[hmm... need more / grainier soot above fire-damaged windows...]
 
Then we found some U.S. wartime posters and put them on the walls of Doolittle Freight:
 


Left to right, the posters read: "Jap... You're Next! We'll Finish the Job," "Jap Hunting Licenses Sold Here Free" and "Remember Pearl Harbor: Buy War Bonds Now! Or Else...."
 
As this layout is after the end of the war, we wanted them to look older and faded, with the "Hunting License" posted scratched and torn.
 
Next to the Fujiwara Trading Company door we posted the U.S. Government "Executive Order 9066" sign declaring "Instructions to Persons of Japanese Ancestry" to be ready to be removed to Internment Camps within the week:
 




After Pearl Harbor, many Japanese-American citizens living in the Bay Area put up signs on their stores to remind others that "I am an American," so I had it painted on the door. Didn't matter to Roosevelt or the Supreme Court, many Americans were stripped of their rights, locked up, and then forced to fight for the U.S. in WWII (the 442nd).
 
[Here's more info on Japanese-American Internment, if you'd like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment ]
 
So instead of making the building another generic industry, we took the opportunity to do a little research and create something that has a lot of significance for us as a family:we have relatives who fought & died on both sides of the war, as well as friends who were born or lived in the Internment Camps.
 
The best moment was when my daughter realised that, if the same situation happened today, that she would be sent off to the camps with her brother and Mom (who'd actually be deported back to Japan) while Dad would be drafted into the army and out fighting against the Japanese (or Germans, which we're also part). She looked near tears and proclaimed "That's stupid."
 
Yes, yes it is.
 
And all this is next to the "Rosie the Riveteer" boxcar waiting to unload at Doolittle Frieght, which is next to the Bella Fonte Cannery, which is down the tracks from Morrison Pier, so I guess at the end there's a "Peace Frog."
 
Model Railroads are certainly teachable moments, well beyond the solder and plaster!
 Thanks for looking.

[wm3798]

A very thoughtful and well executed illustration.  And a fitting tribute to your family, past and present.  Someone on another forum was discussing modeling Jim Crow cars for his Southern Railway...  Maybe I should do a column on "Modeling Awkward Moments in American History"...

Imagine, a layout showing the Pullman Strike, or a string of troop sleepers headed for Birmingham or Little Rock...

As it happens, I'm currently reading a tome about the FDR Funeral Train...  There's a lot that goes on in that 4'8-1/2" between the rails...


Lee

[Bob Bufkin]

Her's something from the History Channel today.  Coincidence!

On this day in 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, initiating a controversial World War II policy with lasting consequences for Japanese Americans. The document ordered the removal of resident enemy aliens from parts of the West vaguely identified as military areas.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in 1941, Roosevelt came under increasing pressure by military and political advisors to address the nation's fears of further Japanese attack or sabotage, particularly on the West Coast, where naval ports, commercial shipping and agriculture were most vulnerable. Included in the off-limits military areas referred to in the order were ill-defined areas around West Coast cities, ports and industrial and agricultural regions. While 9066 also affected Italian and German Americans, the largest numbers of detainees were by far Japanese.
 
On the West Coast, long-standing racism against Japanese Americans, motivated in part by jealousy over their commercial success, erupted after Pearl Harbor into furious demands to remove them en masse to relocation camps for the duration of the war. Japanese immigrants and their descendants, regardless of American citizenship status or length of residence, were systematically rounded up and placed in detention centers. Evacuees, as they were sometimes called, could take only as many possessions as they could carry and were housed in crude, cramped quarters. In the western states, camps on remote and barren sites such as Manzanar and Tule Lake housed thousands of families whose lives were interrupted and in some cases destroyed by Executive Order 9066. Many lost businesses, farms and loved ones as a result.
 
Roosevelt delegated enforcement of 9066 to the War Department, telling Secretary of War Henry Stimson to be as reasonable as possible in executing the order. Attorney General Francis Biddle recalled Roosevelt's grim determination to do whatever he thought was necessary to win the war. Biddle observed that Roosevelt was [not] much concerned with the gravity or implications of issuing an order that essentially contradicted the Bill of Rights. In her memoirs, Eleanor Roosevelt recalled being completely floored by her husband's action. A fierce proponent of civil rights, Eleanor hoped to change Roosevelt's mind, but when she brought the subject up with him, he interrupted her and told her never to mention it again.
 
During the war, the U.S. Supreme Court heard two cases challenging the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066, upholding it both times. Finally, on February 19, 1976, decades after the war, Gerald Ford signed an order prohibiting the executive branch from reinstituting the notorious and tragic World War II order. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan issued a public apology on behalf of the government and authorized reparations for former Japanese internees or their descendants.

[M.C. Fujiwara]

The Summer Shunting Shelf Project finally gets a Shelf!

Well, the growing number of Free-moN modules and the desire to actually run trains prompted me to finally build a shelf for the "Alameda-Belt-in-a-Box" layout.
 I was going to put the shelf in the bedroom until my daughter reminded me that my wife goes in there too
 So out in the garage it goes!

 Rubbermaid shelving with 1"x4" framing top & bottom:



 Had to mount it tall enough to clear the Mt. Coffin & Columbia River layout (18" tall) on the table below, so I think the rail height is about 54".

 Added 4" of 1/8" hardboard fascia to the front and sides, painted everything flat black, then installed two packs of Ikea "Inreda" LED pucks along the underside of the valence framework:



 I got some 0.06" styrene in a 18" x 8' strip from Tap Plastics, then cut it down to 76" to fit behind the shelves.
 After notching out the spaces for the upper supports, I spray painted it grey primer, then slate blue, then mist with flat white (all at once).
 Came out a bit greyer than I wanted, but easy thing to pop out it out and paint it again.

 Just the LED's make an interesting lighting situation:



 But here it is with the "house" lights on as well:
 


So it gets plenty o' light, and photo spots can take up the rest.
 
I'm thinking the valence is a few inches too high for such an "intimate" layout.
 I'll sit with it for a couple days, but I'll probably cut the styrene backdrop down 2-3" and then lower the valence brackets the same.

 Might look odd in the pull-back pick, but it's plenty of light for operating the layout, and even for some photography (with a real camera, which this is not):





 As you can see, there's a little gap between the front fascia and the actual fold-up layout benchwork.
 There's a little wiggle-room, so I can push the layout right up next to the fascia if I want, which leaves more room at the back.
 I want to create a removable low-city backdrop that I can slip in between the 3" layout backdrop and the grey sky to help break up the flat skyline (though Alameda is pretty low, especially in the late 40's).

 But it's nice to have the layout up & out & ready to go & play with.
 And, if I want to take it anywhere, like outside to photo or to a show, I can just pick it up, fold it up and away we go!

 Thanks for looking.

[DKS]

Nice to see it has a permanent home such that it can remain unfolded in all its glory--and basking in custom lighting to boot. Well done.

[M.C. Fujiwara]

Thanks, DKS.

For anyone that's interested, here's the poop on the lighting:

The lights are two sets of (4) "Inreda" LED pucks from Ikea:
 


They put out no heat whatsoever (which is good, since my garage already gets up over 100 deg. F in the summer!) and can rotate and adjust some to direct the light.
 
The puck lights at Lowes & Home Depot I've seen are only halogen / Xenon pucks that put out a lot of heat.  Just make sure you get LEDs or you might melt something on your layout.
 
I spaced mine out about 10", with the first about 3-4" from the end:
 


The light itself I think is pretty good, though I'm a big fan of incandescent lighting.
 I think the lighting will be better when I lower the backdrop and the valence a couple inches (looks too high right now).
 
Here's just the layout LEDs on in the garage (though the door's open):
 


And here's a close up of just LED on the layout:
 


For photography, I'll add some CFL spots to increase the front lighting and get some sharper shadows (or just pick it up and take the layout outside), but I think the 8 puck LED lights are great for just running trains on the layout.
 Which is the whole reason I put up the shelf to begin with

[Blazeman]

MC, if you ever are able to move to a larger residence with space dedicated to a layout, this group would be speechless with what you would create.

Your details and scenery modelling are superb but what really blows me away is  you seemingly accomplish all this is very little time.

[M.C. Fujiwara]

Thanks, Blazeman.
I hope to have the room and resources one day to blow you away and make you speachless 

To give a better idea of how the Ikea "Inredia" LEDs look, here's some shots with only the LED's on (no garage lights / door open / etc.).
 Just LED's and the layout, surrounded by darkness:
 






In person, operating just under the LED's is pretty cool.
 Gives it a Ray Harryhausen kind of feel to the layout.
 But having the LED's an inch or so set back in the valence plus angled towards the back does create shadows up front.
 Here's pretty much the same shot with the house lights on plus a CFL spot:
 


So for everyday operating purposes, the LEDs plus the regular garage lights do the trick.
 Now I can reposition one of the overhead garage lights away from the wall, which will better light the layout from a further angle (and better light my workbench).
 
Fun to run trains again!
 Thanks for looking.

[DKS]

I'm a big fan of LED lighting these days, and most of them tend to be a pleasant, if ambiguous, "warm white" color. I've found that images taken with the white balance set to "tungsten" tend to render colors in a most pleasing way. Something you might want to try for fun sometime.

CFLs, by the way, I've found tend to introduce a little UV into the spectrum, which can sometimes make the color rendition go a little wonky. Your actual mileage, however, may vary.

[M.C. Fujiwara]

Thanks for the "tungsten" tip: I'll try it out!
(I'm still playing around with the White Balance and the 20-kabillion other buttons on the camera as well  )

As a last detail on the shelf construction, here's probably the most important addition:
 


A small right-angle bracket securing the shelf to the wall!
 There's another on top of the valance.
 The fascia on the shelf sticks up a couple inches to come even with the layout, so that should keep the layout on the shelf, and the right-angle should keep the shelf on the brackets.
 
California occasionally has an earthquake or two    so I want to make sure the shelf, which is just sitting on the brackets, doesn't slide off.
 Will it hold during "The Big One"?
 Probably not, but during that time I'll probably be more worried about other things (like my family, or whether the house is still standing, fires, or availability of potable water, etc.).
 But it should help out during anything up to a 5 or 6 on the Rock 'n' Roll scale.
 (Anything under 6 is "meh" here in the Bay Area  )
 
Now onto the other projects (right after I run some trains) 

[M.C. Fujiwara]

Ok, maybe not the last detail.
 As I was making some angled shelves for the Free-moN staging loop module, I stopped, slapped my head, and said, "D'oh!"
 What was missing from the shelf layout?
 How about a place to put the throttle, bamboo skewers for uncoupling, and any future car cards?
 
So I whipped up some hardboard angled shelves for this, too, using some 45 deg wood triangles as braces and moulding as the lip:
 




Why are they both 30" long?
 Because that's what length hardboard I had lying around.
 I actually attached both units to the fascia using Gorilla "Super" Glue (as opposed to the regular GG I keep pontificating about).
 Squirted some on the three triangle supports, and held the unit against the fascia: 30 seconds later it was stuck.
 As is, not going anywhere for a looooong time.
 That stuff rocks!
 Even still, I put a 2" screw through the hardboard, triangle support, and into the shelf framing itself.
 Pretty sturdy.
 
I dunno: the shelves seem to take away from some of the simple framing that was nice before.
 Maybe filling in the holes with some spackle and repainting will help.
 Or maybe gold sequins.
 
But it is nice to have a place to put things!
 
A couple more picts?
 Why not?
 




Now to start making some car cards with photos on them!
 
Thanks for looking.