More Distractions

This week's distraction is one that has been in the works for a while. The Phoenix area layout owners are hosting Desert Ops 2016. This is our third Desert Ops event. We host the event the fourth weekend of even numbered years: www.desertops.org

This year I will be hosting three scheduled sessions and two extra sessions. The first extra session was set up exclusively because I had more folks select the SP Exeter Branch as their first choice than I'm able to accommodate with the three regular Desert Ops sessions. The other extra session is set up at the request of layout owners who have hosted me many times on their great railroads: Steve Hayes and John Zach. 

During the last few regular operating sessions on the Exeter Branch, I have been busy cleaning wheels on the rolling stock. My method is a bit archaic, but it seems to work well. I use a Q-tip dipped in isopropyl alcohol to remove that dark gray crud that builds up on the wheels. Each wheel is cleaned with the wet Q-tip and then wiped with the dry end. It takes one Q-tip per car if the wheels are really bad. I then put a mark on the back of the car card indicating that the wheels have been cleaned. With over 300 cars on the railroad, it takes a while to get this done. Now the push is on to complete this week prior to Desert Ops.

A couple of points to note here. First, I'm running the railroad nearly twice a month for 7 years (153 sessions so far), I have yet to clean the track. The track is nearly 100% Atlas code 83, with six Walthers code 83 curved turnouts mixed in. I'm on my fifth round of cleaning wheels which is roughly once a year with new cars added to the railroad on occasion. The loco wheels have only been cleaned once. I'm not sure what the working combination is here, but I'm not complaining. The railroad is in a finished basement. However, I live in Arizona and it's dusty. 

Once I wrap up the wheel cleaning, I'll move on to dusting the railroad. Most folks think dust is okay for weathering, but I don't think it scales well. Also, the spots from finger tips on the top of black tank cars and gray or brown decks of flat cars is annoying to me. I'll dust. I use a Swiffer duster which works pretty well. I've been very happy with the results from the two other times I've dusted. The final step will be to vacuum the railroad. I haven't done this since I started operating the railroad. I'm sure it will make a positive difference. I'll be hitting up my wife for a nylon stocking to use over the vacuum nozzle as a filter to keep any small parts from going into the vacuum. The small parts I'm expecting to find are stirrups, Kadee coupler springs, and other miscellaneous items. An obscure treasure hunt if you will. 

Staging for the first session will occur Thursday afternoon with the first session starting at 6pm. I'll be changing the jobs slightly for the guest operators. My goal is for everyone to have fun running my railroad and hopefully finish their jobs. After the session, I'll be staging for the Friday morning session and so on. 

Finally, I know that once the last session on Saturday night is complete, Sunday will be a 'day of rest' for me. I'll be worn out and will relax the day away with NFL regular season football and MLB playoff baseball. Oh...and a beer or two.

Distractions

I seem to have plenty of distractions which impede my progress on the new railroad. Some could be viewed as procrastination, but most are just conflicting priorities. I also must balance my home life with my model railroad life. 

I already wrote about the weather impacting my progress on welding. Now that the weather is better, my progress is resuming. I expect to have more steel on hand in a week or so which will help me accelerate again. 

I was distracted earlier this month with modular club activities. Because apparently building a new railroad and running an existing railroad isn't enough, I'm in a modular club too. Actually, our modular club, Arizona Modular Railroaders, started about 5 years ago when five of us splintered off from another club to form our own. We really only set up 2 or 3 times a year, so it's not a huge burden. 


However, I do like to show some level of improvement to my modules each show. This time around I added asphalt roads and dirt. My buddy Kevin did some laser cut grade crossing inserts for between the rails. Those turned out really great. I just need to do some staining. I added a lemon orchard using lemon trees I had made previously. Buildings were added from a collection I purchased. They are pretty rough (way too much glue), but work as stand ins. My buddy Tim, painted one of them and it made a tremendous difference.

The modular club allows me to run very long trains with multiple locos. Much of what gets run is out of era for either layout I have at home. It also gives me a good excuse for that out of era equipment.

We were set up on grass under a 40'x40' canopy at an annual event called Rail Fair held at McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park in Scottsdale. The event is Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 5pm. We set up on Friday afternoon and had trains running before 5pm. Set up went quickly despite being on grass. We ran trains all day Saturday and Sunday. We were fortunate and had no issues with DCC, trackwork, electrical or rain! We did have a dust devil come thru (a mini cyclone) and it blew all the buildings off of my modules into the center. There was only minimal damage. It did blow over some trains and some rolling stock hit the grass. Fortunately nothing was damaged. 

It was windy on Saturday, so my stack train ran as single stacks. For those of you who saw the video of the UP stack train being blow over in Louisiana, I didn't want that to happen in HO scale. 

You may also notice that weathering is non-existent on most equipment. Some of the members want to keep their equipment pristine. Myself, I just haven't made it a priority with all the projects. 

We tore everything down quickly on Sunday at 5pm and were out of there by 6pm. I made it home to watch much of Sunday night football and part of the debate. Football was better...

We had two guest operators join us for the event. It's great to have others running. 

You can see more pix and some videos on our Facebook site: https://www.facebook.com/groups/597715570275343/

It looks like our next show is going to be in February and indoors. That means we'll be set up in about 2.5 hours. 

That was one of the distractions.

And now for the main level - Part 2

Once the benchwork sections were moved upstairs, it was time to attach them to the walls. 

I did have a change in plans. I originally had planned to start in one corner, but due to the fact that a 20' piece of steel tubing is usually 1-2" over length, i ended up starting in a different corner because my benchwork section was a little too long for the opening. It's not a big deal, I had just planned to have a connected corner. That will not come later.

My method for attaching to the walls is to drill thru the steel and use 3" lag bolts to attach to the wall. Each lag bolt is going into a stud. For efficiency purposes, I have two cordless drills with a pilot bit and 1/4" bit. I use a cordless impact wrench to install the lag bolts. when I bought the Ryobi cordless tool set, I figured there would be little opportunity to use the impact wrench. It's now providing to be a very useful tool!

You can see my method for raising the benchwork section. I raise is using extra legs. I slowly raise the benchwork up by lengthening the legs and reclamping as I go. In the picture you can see the first section going in. To the left in the corner, that's where I had originally planned to start. This section of benchwork was the most tenuous to install as it is over the staging track. Fortunately, I didn't have any issues. 

In this view you can see the first main level benchwork section installed. The legs are temporarily attached. I'll be hauling the welder upstairs to permanently attach them.








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The second section is being installed in this view. 


























The last two views show both sections installed. Note: that's a total of 40' of benchwork. 

 At this point, benchwork construction stopped. I had planned to install a section on the angled wall to the left of the second section, but I ran out of legs. Probably not the best planning on my part... 

Up next will be to build more legs. Also, I'm nearly out of steel tubing. I'll be placing an order for another 500' soon and progress will resume. Interestingly, a 20' x 30" section of benchwork consumes about 80' of material. I haven't done the math regarding cost, but i'm happy with the results. 

I hope you're enjoying the posts. I'm expecting to post monthly now that I'm making progress again. . 

And now for the main level! - Part 1

I finally started welding the benchwork for the main level. 

My design is 20' x 30" sections. Weld them together down on the driveway. Since I've decided to use drywall for the sub roadbed, I decided to put risers every foot. It may be a bit of overkill, but I want it to be strong and well supported. So, I add cross members every foot. Legs will be every five feet. 

I started welding the frames as the weather became more accommodating. For those who don't know, steel comes with a coating of oil on it. The first step of my process is to clean the 20' sticks with lacquer thinner to remove most of the oil. This makes it much easier for handling as well. Next is to cut the cross members. I use heavier gauge steel for the outside frame and the cross members where legs will be attached. 

This is what 80' of benchwork looks like in it's assembled form. There are 4 sections stacked there. It takes me about 1.5 hours or so to build the sections. That includes the time to clean the steel, cut the steel, and do the welding. 

The next challenge is getting the 20' sections of benchwork upstairs into the layout room. My original plan was to lift the sections up through the window as I had done with staging. The difference with staging was is that I passed up the frame without all the cross members up through the window. Once in place, I welded the 60" cross members on top of the frame. This time around, the cross members are inside of the frame make is MUCH heavier. 

The window in the center of the picture is my target. I need to be able to move the benchwork up through that and NOT break the glass. That is another aspect of the challenge. 

I decided that I would make a rack where I could use a a lever for moving the pieces up stairs. So I broke out the scrap lumber and made frame. The white bag is full of packing peanuts and provides a cushion.

With the frame built, it was time to tip it up. the construction is 2x6s and heavy. i was able to stand it up myself. Not an easy task.

Where are the helpers you ask? Well, I was working solo and decided that I'd give it a shot. I was on vacation and trying to get work done, before I left for the Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society annual convention. 

Well, it was a great idea when it started, but a failure in execution. You can see the frame tilted up, but it wasn't going to work. Not to mention the unwieldy 20'x30" steel frame that I was trying to maneuver. Suffice it to say, this was not a success. Now it was time to create a Plan B. 

I did a Plan B design revision and found that Plan B wasn't going to be successful either. 

I skipped Plan C and went right to Plan D. 'D' in this case stands for desperation. I went with a new option. I have side windows on the building, so I carried the frames over to the patio cover. Carried each up a ladder and put on the top of the cover. Once those were up, I carried each across the tile roof (no broken tiles) and passed them in through the side window. 

In this picture, you can see the frame coming through the window. And other frames on the right on top of the patio cover, just before the lawn 

You can see the cart I used to help relieve the weight of the frame as I moved the frame through the window. Good thing the cart is sturdy!

I finally got all four frames into the room. Success! Now time to mount them to the walls!

Laser surgery

It's finally time to start the main level.

First up is to to get the benchwork up. In order to do that, I need to get the same measurement around the room. The big benchwork sections will go in a 20'x30" sections. I need to account for the risers and sub-roadbed which will account for about 3" . With a main level benchwork height of 42", I need to set the height for the steel at 39". 

Now for the challenge of projecting the correct height around the room so I can be consistent. This isn't as critical for the benchwork, but I want to ensure it's as accurate as possible. I plan to weld the 20' sections together making the benchwork as contiguous as possible. 

In order to set an even line around the room, I went with laser leveling. I fellow layout owner loaned me his equipment. It consists of a self leveling beam laser and a manual leveling rotary laser. 

While this works pretty well, it took me forever to get the rotary level. And, that ended up being 'close' or good on 3 walls, but off 1/4" on the fourth. That was after about a hour of working on it. While I appreciate the loan of the equipment, I needed to find something faster. 

The next decision was should I rent one at Home Depot or buy my own. Renting meant I 'potentially' spent less money. Trying to mark up all the walls as quickly as possible. But, there were a couple of drawbacks: 1) If it's a rental, how accurate is it? I know how people handle rental cars and I'm sure rental tools don't get good treatment either. 2) How many times will I need to rent it? There will inevitably be those occasions I need to revalidate or worse, need to get something I missed. I would likely need to do that at least 2 more times for the peninsulas. 

So, I settled on buying my own rotary laser. The self leveling model. And, I found a green laser at Home Depot online for a significant discount. So, I rolled the dice. I also have 'justified' it for other projects beyond the railroad. :)

The green laser is move visible in non-dark lighting. It came with an AC adapter in addition to the batteries. So I ran on AC power rather than batteries giving me unlimited use. And the best part is the remote control. That seemed novel until the first time I didn't have to walk around the peninsula to turn it on. 

Time for risers

Another project that happened over the summer is the construction of risers. 

I decided to continue the use of drywall on the main level. However after some conversations with fellow model railroaders, I determined it would be in my best interest to provide more vertical support on the main level. Thus I've decided to add risers every 12". That's more work, but should make it more bullet proof. 

The main level benchwork is going to be 30" deep. I determined that the best thing to do would be to make the horizontal piece of the riser 30" long. This will provide a good surface for mounting fascia. I'm using 3/4" plywood to make the risers. The horizontal pieces are 2" wide. I then made the vertical pieces 3". 

I bought 2 sheets of plywood at my local Home Depot. About $25 a sheet. I then started ripping. I worked on optimizing/maximizing my output. I ended up with 142 horizontal pieces and the rest was used to make verticals. 

That should be enough for a while. It has to be since I ended up burning out the motor on my DeWalt portable table saw. I called the local DeWalt service center. They said to bring it in an they would analyze what the problem is. There are two parts of the motor that can fail. One they have the replacement available, the other they don't make any longer. I'm pretty sure the one that failed will be the 'no longer available' part. The guy at DeWalt said that they would give me credit toward a new saw. ...I'm sure they will. If I end up needing a new saw, it won't be a DeWalt again. Rigid, Bosch, or Makita. I've had the saw for over 15 years. It's in excellent shape except for the motor. I read a recommendation a forum to find an electric motor repair shop as they will be more economical. I'll likely give that a whirl. 

I made a gluing jig which spaces the verticals a 6", 15" and 24". Glue is applied and then clamped until dry. I originally tried using brad nails, but found the clams provide a better joint. I'm able to glue 10 at a time, as I only have 30 clamps. So, my progress is gated by my clamp supply. 

At this point, I've built over 60 risers. That will give me a good start. 

The summer hiatus is over...

It's been awhile since i've updated my blog. 3 months to be exact. So, what have I been doing? Well, some may say procrastinating. I tend to think of it as doing other projects. 

This summer was really hot outside. That makes if difficult to weld. And that's where I stopped. Soldering of feeders on the East Staging yard is done. Test trains have been run and I'm pretty confident with the trackwork. Next up was to weld more benchwork. But it was too hot to don the welding gear.

So what have I been doing then? 

The SP Exeter Branch is still going strong. I'm running 2 sessions a month. We have our third Desert Ops event coming up in October and I'll be hosting three scheduled sessions and two extra sessions. I had so many folks choose the Exeter Branch as their first choice, I added an extra session just to satisfy the demand. Many are repeat visitors. I'm flattered that folks enjoy the railroad that much. 

My modular club, the Arizona Modular Railroaders, will be set up a Rail Fair in Scottsdale the second weekend of October. i try to improve my modules for each show. That ate up time adding roads and dirt to my 24' of modules. My technique is fairly simple. I use sanded tile grout. I have had great success with it. I use an earth color of brown for the dirt. First is to add some drywall mud to the surface to break up the flat plane of the plywood. I then sprinkle the grout everywhere I want the dirt. I then spray it with wetted water and then apply a 20% glue to water mixture. Once it dries it turns out great. For roads, I use charcoal gray grout. I makes fantastic asphalt, I'm very happy with the result. The wood boards and lane stripes still need to be added to the asphalt in upcoming weeks.

I addition, I have been working thru my boxes of rolling stock. I apply my quality control process to both kits and RTR equipment. The key elements of my process are: 

1) Adding of Kadee #5 couplers. Yes, I'm still using #5s as I already have a major amount invested. I'm not a fan of mixing 5s and 58s, so I'm staying with the 5s. I have added the new whisker couplers, but for the most part still use the standard 5s. I modify the centering springs for better and more reliable centering. as well as modify the spring to better fit into the draft gear. That'll be in a future blog post. 

2) Add metal wheels where needed. I always check my wheelsets with the NMRA gauge. Whether they are the wheels that come from the factory or are aftermarket I still check. I've traditionally used P2k wheelsets, but have now moved to Intermountain exclusively. Thus far, the Intermountain wheelsets have been all in gauge. For the P2ks, I found about 3-5% needed to be adjusted. Atlas and Athearn factory metal wheelsets are around 5% out of gauge as well. In the past, I found JayBee wheelsets 20% or more required the gauge to be adjusted. 

3) I make sure the wheelsets are free rolling. If not, I get the reamer out and ream all four journals on each truck. My test is to ensure the once spun, the wheel comes to a natural stop to spinning, not an abrupt one.

4) I ensure the car height is correct using my Kadee coupler height gauge. If the couplers are low, I add metal washers to adjust to the proper height. 

5) I make sure that each truck is free moving and that one of the trucks has some vertical flexibility as well.

6) Last is to ensure the cars are properly weighted. I use the NMRA standard weight. Although I think it's a bit heavy, I use it for consistency. I measure the weight in grams and have a reference chart available based on car lenghts: 40' cars are 108g, 50' are 128g, etc.I try to hit the weight as close as possible, +/- 2 grams. I use a variety of weights, but my favorites are pennies. 50 cents a roll. :) I also use lead shot where needed usually on the underside of sealed cars. 

All of the items above have been used for equipment on the Exeter Branch which operates very reliably. I do get the occasional 'weird' derailment. But, most derailments are the result of operator error rather than equipment or trackwork. 

Time for a break from soldering

I can only install so much wiring at a time. I'm not ADD, but wiring has very little obvious results.

So, after a few hours of wiring, it was time to run more test trains.

I ran the same test train that I used on the east end of East Staging. The results were excellent!

Next up will be to get a 20 car train running thru to further test the trackwork.

As another part of a series of diversions, I attended SoCalOps in Southern California. I operated on three excellent railroads. Although only one was SP. That was Jon Cure's Inyo Sub. Ironically, what job did me, the SP guy draw? Santa Fe! Regardless, I had a great time. Jon is a wonderful host and has a very fun railroad.

I also met my best friend and his family in Ventura for dinner while I was there. I've known my friend Scott since I was three. That's over 50 years. Ugghhh...

I also took the opportunity to do some rail fanning and some research. The city of Ventura has three railroad bridges. On the south end, in the middle, and on the north end. I will be modeling the south end and middle bridges on my railroad. The middle bridge goes over the CA Hwy 101. Uniquely, the truss bridge is offset by 20 degrees or so (that's a guess). So as I arrived in Ventura early, I used the extra time to shoot pix of the bridge. Here are a few pix

 While I won't model all sections of the bridge, I will model the character of the bridge as it's a great reference point for Ventura.

Now, back to soldering!

And the wiring continues...

After my last post, I received some good feedback from folks. As I continue the wiring, I decided that in addition to the jumpers I will add feeders to every other piece of track. The wiring I did on the Exeter Branch used the same process with jumpers. However, since the East staging tracks will be covered by the main level, I've opted to be more cautious.

As I mentioned in my last post, what I did realize that I neglected to get track bus wire. So...off to the internet. I have planned to use 12 AWG stranded wire. I wanted to use automotive primary wire as opposed to the THHN wire available at Home Depot. Two differences exist: 1) Primary wire has more strands 2) the case on primary wire is soft and pliable versus the hard plastic on THHN. Thus, it's much easier so strip the wire for adding feeders. I ordered 1000' of white and 1000' of blue. Yes, I like that better then red and black

. I use the lighter colored wire on the aisle side. My feeders are red/green or white/blue. Why? Because those are the colors on the spool. I used the same color combination on the Exeter Branch. 

Feeder wiring continues. As I mentioned previously, it's a thank less job as you don't see any significant results. But, it's critical for a well running railroad. 

Wiring - the tedious task - part 1 of many

Now that the East Staging yards trackage is complete, it's now time to do wiring. While I don't mind doing the wiring, it's just so tedious and there is little to no visible result! However, electrical reliability is key to a well running DCC railroad. Dead Rail friends, you don't need to provide input here.

I'm a firm believer in not depending on rail joiners to provide any electrical connectivity. Frankly, in my world, they are only for track alignment. In the same manner as the Exeter Branch, I will ensure each piece of track has feeders. No matter how small.

For staging I've adjusted that just a bit. I'm using one set of feeders for every 3 sections of track. To connect the sections I solder jumpers on each side of the rail joiners. Staging has less use and I'm not as concerned about the wiring being 'pretty'. I will attach the feeders to the track bus below staging. I want to minimize my time under the lowest level of staging.

I'm pretty sure I have enough feeder and jumper wire for the railroad, but I still need to pick up stranded 12 AWG wire for all my track bus wires. That is poor planning on my part as I should have already had it on hand.

Once all the feeders are done and connected to the track bus, I will resume testing of staging. 

East staging, west end.

I finally found the time to work on the railroad....

Time to build the west end of the East staging yards. Each yard is 9 tracks. The east end was connected previously with the loop at the end connecting each yard.  The goal is to make it easy to turn trains without using the 0-5-0. 

First up was to finish sub roadbed to allow me to build the ladders and route the lines toward the helix.

As you can see, the track will go to the left. That will basically be double track to the helix. The helix will be a 2 track helix with a separate line connecting to each staging yard.

Next up was to layout out the ladder. As is my normal process, I end up deviating from the original design. The drawing gets me close, but as track is put down the design evolves. Also, I decided to changed to #6 turnouts when I ordered all my track. Thus I have some adjustments to make as I install the track. 

As I build out the west end of staging, I'm a bit more focused on how and where switch machines will be placed. For staging I don't know that it's necessary to install the switch machines under the sub roadbed. 

Progress continued on the ladders. I'm trying to be slow and deliberate as I'm very focused on reliability. 

The body track is all Atlas track. I connect it to the Peco turnouts by crimping the Atlas rail joiners slightly with pliers. Connections between the ladder turnouts is all Peco flex.











With the first yard complete, I brought the track out toward the helix. I don't have a specific radius, but it's broader that the curved piece of plywood, which is about a 46" radius.

The second ladder was constructed faster than the first. The are not identical as I was trying to accommodate the sweep toward the helix. I don't see an issue with the difference. It will only bother me. The far end is identical. 

The last views are of the track coming out of each staging yard going to the helix. 

Overall, I'm very happy with the results. As noted in a previous post, I ran test trains successfully on the east end. Now I'll need to test the west end. Then it's time to start wiring. 

Wiring is the thankless job that shows very little visible progress, but it's critically important. I'm likely going to isolate each of the staging tracks electrically, so I'm considering how I want to accomplish that. It will likely be either be a toggle switch for each track or a rotary switch to designate which track will get power. And I need to determine where I want to install an auto-reverser. Of course, that's a little further out in the project. Also, once testing and wiring are complete, I can begin working on the main level along the wall.