Some little improvements

Last club session was an occasion to improve some very little details.

One of them was adding a frame around the woodchip unloader foundation. This kind of building with large open bays are always at risk of warping and this one was no exception. I added everything I could inside to brace it correctly, but it was not enough. Some thing strips of 1/8" masonite were glued and nailed aroung the building perimeter. Later, this frame will be buried in scenery and not visible. At least, the building is now much more straight.

Another thing that was fixed up was Clermont's team track. I used to part away from the right of way with an angle. The initial thought behind it was to make it easier to unload for truck. However, it didn't look realistic and made scenery there a little bit awkward. On the prototype, this track is parallel to the small yard and nested against the hill. I think the new arrangement is much more pleasing and feel less contrived. The hill slope will be also less dramatic and caricatural.

In D'Estimauville, we also talked about changing some track arrangement to better reflect our operation pattern and the prototype. Right now, we have a hidden staging area located on a reversing loop inside a closet. At first, it sound like a good idea. But in fact, you never what's staged, there's a risk of collision, getting there require to crawl under a duckunder and we never use the reversing loop. A little bit overkill. Worst, the rolling stock cabinet is located on the layout room, not inside the staging area... Not the greatest idea ever.

The original design called for all track to be visible on the layout with no reversing loop. The track would end at the wall, under a highway overpass. We had a discussion about it and it seems a logical decision that could be implemented in the future. To better follow the prototype, the loop diverging track would run parallell to the main track up to the overpass, just like the prototype. Having a storage siding would be much more useful than a reversing loop.

Finally, the last improvement was adding small metal card holders on the rolling stock cabinet. Each will be identified with a customer name to make staging and storing a little bit easier.

MLW RS18 Madness - Part 3

Work on my two MLW RS18 kitbashes has resumed. Lettering is underprocess and with the help of Louis-Marie, it was possible to install TCS keep alive KA2 in each loco. The model were running flawlessly, but since they will be the most important part of the fleet, it was wise to make them bullet proof.

To install the KA2, we had to find some spare room inside the shell. The only option was to remove some weight over the front truck. Never a great idea to remove weight on a locomotive, but it was a trade off between pulling power and reliability. Anyway, our consist are rarely over 12 cars and both RS18 will be permanently paired during operation.

Removing some weight was a very easy task. In this hobby, most people would tell you how you need a Dremel or a milling machine to do that kind of stuff. But in fact, the task was far easier that I first thought. I tried with my Dremel but it was evident the result would take a lot of time and wouldn't be stellar. Thus, a good old metal saw was used instead. In less than 10 minutes, the weight was neatly reshaped and some filing ensured everything was square and neat.

Now, the mechanical aspect of this project is done. It's only a matter of decalling, assembling and weathering... it's already under process!

Planner's Christmas Musings

To me, Christmas has always equated with introspection. It is the time of the year when you look at what you have accomplished during the year and try to find sense in all that mess… you try to find out the true essence of things while you try to complete your RS18 project.

When I restarted my Quebec South Shore project, I had a lot of ideas on my mind. Particularly, a sight of small mixed and freight trains running in open countryside and serving very small rural towns. I could see the team track, the cattle pen, the freight shed and the depot. It was easy to envision cars of bagged grain, hopper delivering coal to locals and pulpwood being loaded. At this time, I knew I could have it all in a limited footprint because it is exactly what happened to thousands of North American communities for over a century.

Nailing the track plan wasn’t an easy task. I first started from scratch, adding a siding for pulpwood, adding a team track and adding a spur serving a mill. The result was a mess of track. In fact, the track density was so off it was hard to believe this was a rural station at all. Let’s be honest, most stations are nothing more than a runaround siding… often a stub siding… and once a while you get both. I know, I’ve studied hundreds of old photographs and maps.

As much as I’m open to freelancing, this isn’t a natural thing to me and at some point, if it doesn’t operate like the real thing, my interest dwindle. So I embarked in a journey to find suitable end of the line stations.

The big question was what could fit my available space… and defining the available space was in fact the real threatening issue. There is two ways to approach this problem and I think the twisted mentally of this hobby is embodied by the word “available” used a synonym for "must be used". We think about layout planning in terms of “available space”, but that’s the most insignificant aspect. We should think in term of enjoyable, realistic project size and resources. I find myself stupid - as a practicing architect - to never have used my own professional principles for layout design.

Now imagine you buy a 140 acres piece of land somewhere and plan to build a house on it. Would you seriously try to build a 140 acres home just because you have the available space for it? Even shrinking the project to 50% or 25% of the available space wouldn’t make any sense. In fact, the size of your new projected house will be determined by your needs (number of dwellers, their habits and occupations, etc.), your budget and the time you can commit to build and maintain the house. At some point, if you do your work correctly, you’ll find a sweet spot were most constraints are known and satisfied. It isn’t perfect, but realistic... and within the sweet spot, there are still a lot of possibilities to explore. In the end, you didn’t shrink you horizon but only cleared the unrealistic options that wouldn’t have answered what you are looking for. Now, you are ready to spend your effort on something that matters.

When I applied that to my home layout project, I quickly found out my available space was too large for my need… Yes, TOO large. It was clunky, eating a lot of real estate I already use for other purpose. Adding an extra inch here and there didn't make a decisive difference when compared to a slimmer footprint. Finally, I found out a 13” wide and 120” long shelf was the best for me in these conditions. Knowing that, I was ready to find a prototype that would suit my needs and ambitions.

I can’t say I found an answer yet, but I did discover many small branchlines that did a lot of stuff within very limited space. Temiscouata is a well-known case. Ontario’s Bruce branches are also very interesting prototypes that are about 120” long in HO. Finally, I found an article about a station in Frelighsburg, Quebec, initially operated by Central Vermont. This location was served by a mixed train and by regular freight trains. It was reported each consist was habitually a 2 to 5 cars affair. On each Tuesday, a special train affected to cattle would come to pick up animals ready to be sold on larger market. Shipping cream to Montreal and other large towns was also a profitable traffic on the line. Finally, a turntable, a water tank and an engine house serviced the locomotives. Add to this many colourful folks running this branchline and you get a good picture of this railway.

Now, can you imagine all of this happened on a single track mainline with a runaround and a diverging siding serving the turntable? Yes, Frelighsburg was a three turnout affair yet handled a variety of traffic. I even found a fire insurance map of the area and it scale down to HO scale. I call this a lesson of humility. It also means you can model this railway in limited space and still have enough scenery only zones to believe this is part of a larger world.

*****

We can also apply this train of thoughts to Hedley-Junction. I’ve said it often over the last months, but I’m not the only one to consider the real operation core on our layout to be Donohue. The paper mill complex is 16” x 120”. Within this minimal space, one can work for an hour and half at a relaxed pace. Operation is fun to do there because you feel you are truly accomplishing something meaningful and realistically, not just switching cars for the sake of moving them. Funny isn’t? A basement filling layout can be summed up to nothing more than a shelf layout at the end of the day… 

If you take in account the fiddling area (Clermont’s yard), you find out this layout would occupy a 8’ x 10’ room. Rest assured this small portion of the larger layout keeps 3 club members occupied enought to neglect other parts of the layout! If I were asked to build a club layout again, I would kindly decline and do something much more realistic. I’ve learn over this process Jérôme is a hardcore operator loving industrial settings, Louis-Marie is a builder in the true sense of the word and I’m nothing more than a model railfan loving to watch other operate realistically. Oh, and take in account the total time you can pour into the project doesn't equal the sum of each members free time.

I don’t know when we started to assume in this hobby the more people on a project meant it had to be large and oppressive, but I feel it makes no sense to most people. There are a few select people, often natural leaders, which have what it needs to bring large scale projects to fruition. But most of us aren’t them. They make us dream and inspire us… That’s a great thing, but we should also recognize there’s a thin line between inspiration and mindless worship. I never entered this hobby to follow trends or a recipe that should bring me happiness. My happiness with train is very simple and can be described as my irrational admiration for the sheer spectacle of brute force and industrial beauty trains embody.

And let me conclude that by saying I feel the Hedley Junction adventure is far to reach its conclusion. Refining a vision is a never ending process that have little to do with step by step.

Improving Donohue's GE 44 -on Performances

Bachmann's GE 44-ton locomotives are a classic in model railroading as much as they are in real life. However, with the short wheel base, you can't expect stellar performances over very long turnouts. Since this switcher is going to perform regularly in the next months, we decided to install a TCS Keep Alive (K2) to make it bullet proof  over Donohue's complex trackage.

As simplistic the keep alive concept can be easy to understand, implementing it can be a real headache. I took a good 5 hours to Louis-Marie figuring out how to wire it! Online help and instructions are scarce; let's be honest the learning curve is quite steep depending which decoder you use (in our case, a N-scale NCE decoder).

The good thing is that I feared there wasn't enough place for it under the GE 44-ton diminutive shell, but the KA2 found room without any effort at milling the frame or altering the model. A good thing because installing KA2 in our RS18 and GP9 will require to remove a certain amount of weight from the engine.

Anyway, the final result is excellent and the GE 44-ton now crawls on our track flawlessly which is the most important aspect for doing slow switching operations. Now, if I could only add sound to it, it would be great, but I'll keep that for another time because it will require modifying the model frame at some point. Fortunately, this time there's a lot of info online.

Pictures or not?

Many of you must wonder why I no longer post good pictures on my blog. The reason is simple, my camera met its fate recently. It is still working, but it's out of focus most of the time. I don't know when I'll be able to take good pictures, but bear in mind it's not intentional.

Adding Lighting

We recently improved the level of lighting in both layout rooms. Many corner's were left in shadow and taking pictures was sometimes tricky.

Donohue: Lighting conditions before

In the largest room, new surface fulorescent were added to improve the scenes. The amount of light is now much more adequate. But I must admit it took some time to get accustomed to it. By the way, each fixture has only one tube since two was overkill.

Donohue: Lighting conditions after

In the smaller and low ceiling room, we had to use concealed fixtures for clearance concern. Four were added and the spacing between them rectified. The improvement is dramatic and we now can see what were are doing in some places.

D'Estimauville after the improvements

The only downside is that we should have done that before building the layout. It generated a sizeable amount of dust. The cleaning is under progress, but I'm happy the scenery work isn't done yet. It would have been a real mess to get rid of.