Bench work for the Lovelock expansion

This new section of the layout which will represent Lovelock, Nevada will be 76 inches in length and 20 inches deep with the far-left end angling out to a 24-inch depth.  This time I used 2 ft x 4 ft panels of 1/4 in and 1/2-inch plywood from Lowes as they are much easier for me to handle by myself than a full 4 ft x 8 ft sheet.  This worked out very well and was strong enough as I doubled the frame where there was a seam.

The floor of the train room is the flattest surface I have so after cutting the pieces in the garage they were brought into the train room for assembly.

This new section will need to be removable.  It will be 20 inches deep at the end where it connects to the helix so just over 20 inches of the fascia on the helix base was removed.  A ledge from a piece of 3/4 inch plywood was mounted under the helix base so that it sticks out 1 inch.  The end of the new section will rest on this. 

Strips 3/4 inch and 1/2-inch plywood were added to the 20-inch-deep end of the bench work section with the 1/4-inch deck then attached to the entire frame.  This created a little lip on the end of the section that will rest on the ledge.

Several methods were used to make this section removable but still be secure when it's in place.  On the left end I mounted a 2-inch-wide strip of 3/4 inch plywood on the wall that the bench work section will rest on and used a cabinet latch to hold the bench work section to it.

On the end where this new section meets the helix base, I used a long 1/4-20 bolt with a wing nut to secure the lip of this section to the ledge built onto the helix base.

And in the middle, I installed a shelf bracket with a single 8-32 thumb screw going into a tee nut that is on a horizontal cross piece on the bench work. 

So here is the completed bench work for the new Lovelock section.  Next step is to seal the whole thing with paint, and it will be ready for track layout planning.  At some point a tempered hard board fascia will be attached along the front and painted the gloss gray color.

Learning about static grass - Part 1

One of the wonderful things about this hobby is that there is always something new to learn and new techniques to try out.  Static Grass has been around for a few years now and I have admired the appearance of it on layouts and wanted to try it out from myself.

Of course the expensive part of this technique is acquiring the static grass applicator.  At an open house a couple of years ago I picked up what I thought was a great deal on a Noch static grass applicator that appeared to be brand new but found out after bringing it home that is was apparently burned out.

More recently I made a second attempt by acquiring a brand new Woodland Scenics Static King version of the static grass applicator along with some 2mm and 4mm static grass in different colors.  The Static King feels like it is well made and is compact.

I had been watching a number of how to type videos on YouTube and one of the suggestions I heard in the videos was that the Static King works better with the 12 volt adapter than it does on the 9 volt battery.  I was disappointed with my first attempts using the battery and also found out that the fit of the battery into the battery compartment was quite tight.  Using my multi-meter I found that the Static King was drawing close to 150ma from the battery.  At that rate a 9 volt battery might not last very long and as the voltage drops, so would the performance.

I did not buy the Woodland Scenics 12 volt power adapter when I bought the Static King as I had a whole box of similar items and I was sure one of them would work.  When I first tried it, I got nothing and also noticed that the blue light strip on the Static King was not lighted.  Using my DC power supply, I connected a scrap plug with the polarity reversed and that worked.  So, the Power adapter that Woodland Scenics sells for the Static King has the positive polarity on the outside of the plug which is a bit unusual as most have the positive in the center.  I modified my adapter by cutting the cord and reversing the wires.

After trying it out on some scraps of cardboard and satisfied it was working, it was time to try it out on an actual model.  I got out a photo diorama I had made years ago to experiment on.  This diorama is a simple single track on a raised embankment with one side being more green and the other side being more dry.  They already had some ground foam scenery material on them and I added the static grass over that in uneven patches.  Here is the dry side after I had applied some straw colored 4mm static grass..

And here is the results from the green side.

So far I am encouraged by the results.  I'll continue to experiment with some techniques and make a follow-up part 2 post sometime in the future.

Expanding sounds around the layout

I had received another Soundtraxx decoder and got it all installed as the sound for the road switcher in Carlin but was trouble programming it.  I would get a "No Ack" error message on the DT402 throttle I was using to program.

After viewing a YouTube video presented by George at Soundtraxx I learned that programming voltage is half of what track voltage is and that Soundtraxx decoders in particular are sensitive to this issue.  Soundtraxx had made a booster circuit for programming but it seemed to be out of stock and perhaps was no longer being made.

What I had not considered was how all this extra wiring running around the layout would degrade the programming signal so I decided to abandon the programming bus idea and instead use a jumper cord to program the sound decoders.  

I found these great 3D printed panel mounts for Power Pole connectors on ebay and installed them on the fascia next to each of the sound control panels.

A 1 inch diameter hole was drilled through the fascia next to each of the sound control panels.

The panel mounts fit neatly into the hole.  The wires from this connection are connected to the program position on the switch.

Then another connector replaced the existing Cinch Jones connector that my bench programming track plugs into and I made a long enough jumper cord to reach from the programming track output to anywhere on the layout.   The lead for the programming track also got it's Cinch Jones connector replaced.

Summer 2025 Layout update

Here's what I've been up to for the past few months that has not been other posts.  During our road trip in May I re-visited the old Santa Fe depot in Needles, California.  As a kid in the mid 1960's I had ridden both the Super Chief and El Capitan several times between the Needles station and Los Angeles Union Station.  This visit rekindled an interest I have add for some time to acquire a model of one of these trains so when we got home, I bid on a set and won. I already had an ABA set of F7's and am working on getting another B unit.

One of the reasons I decided on the El Capitan because I had always liked this transition car.  I had not realized it before, but the step down in actually in the car behind this one.  The flaring was just to streamline the look.

In June the first signal detection circuit I had installed over 5 years ago stopped working.  Both the SP and WP loops in the lower helix were stuck on red.  The problem turned out to be the pair of NCE detectors I was using.  It seemed odd that both would fail at the same time but they got replaced with a new Azatrax dual detector circuit.  As the current limiting resistors for the signals were part of the relay board that I had made for this circuit, I left that in place having the output relays from the Azatrax unit trigger it.

And away from the layout I spent a Sunday in mid-July at the annual ETE Eurowest meet at the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, helping a friend operate his Swiss narrow-gauge layout and then packing it up at the end of the event.  This year I ran some different sections of the layout than last year.  This is one of my favorite scenes on this layout. 

Sound comes to Battle Mountain

Following the addition of locomotive sounds for the Carlin yard switcher, I have now added sound for the Lovelock local road switcher in Battle Mountain.

The Halliburton Barite processing building was the perfect place to install one of the 8 ohm, 3 watt speakers that I have been using on the layout.  It is in about the center of the Battle Mountain industrial district.

The decoder used was a Soundtraxx Econami designed for an HO Scale Atlas Diesel.  I glued an empty plastic prescription bottle under the bench work to hold the decoder in place.  The sound quality and volume from this decoder is quite impressive and it has more choices for programming to match the type of locomotive being modeled so I've been fine tuning those settings.

A control panel similar to the one in Carlin was created for this new decoder in Battle Mountain.   An additional decoder has been ordered and that one will be for road switcher sounds in Carlin where the speaker and control panel are already installed.

Turnout to a possible layout expansion

For some time now I have been simulating a couple of industries in the Southern Pacific west staging yard.  This started when I learned of an actual industry called EP Minerals in Lovelock which was the west end terminus of the local that ran out of Carlin.  This was covered in this post from October of 2022.  https://palisadecanyonrr.blogspot.com/2022/10/whats-in-lovelock.html

Then later, I added a made up a grocery distribution warehouse to virtual Lovelock to add some refrigerator cars and more box cars to the interchange traffic.

Recently I realized that it could be possible to use a space under the Weso section for an actual model representation of these industries.  This would be accessed by a turnout at the bottom of the lower helix.  While this would physically a branch line, conceptually it would be a continuation of the Southern Pacific main line to the town of Lovelock, Nevada.  The location of this potential new section is outlined in green in the photo below.

Several things will need to be worked out to make this expansion possible.  Rearranging some of the items that are currently stored in this area, and how to light the new area with only 9 inches of vertical space.  But the first obstacle to overcome was to install a curved turnout at the bottom of the helix in a tight space.   In the photo below the track on the right is what goes to the staging yard and the track on the left will go to the new section.

The next step was to clear the space under the Weso section.  This was done by consolidating things that were stored in those boxes into other locations, to move the pair of Japanese modules to a different part of the room, and to make a rack to hold the legs to the Japanese modules.

As for the lighting, there was enough room within the bench work of the Weso section to fit in several of the A19 LED bulbs that I have been using to light much of the rest of the layout.  So just like that, it's time to get serious about this expansion.

On the road again - Ely, Nevada

In May during an RV trip that included parts of Arizona, Utah, and Nevada I was able to visit a rail museum that I had been wanting to visit for a long time, The Nevada Northern Railway in Ely, Nevada.  Ely is located along US 50 which has been labeled "the loneliest road in America".  We had passed through Ely once about 30 years ago and at that time visited the abandoned Kennecott copper pit which was why this railroad was built back in the early 1900's.

One of the impressive things about this particular museum how much property and buildings it includes.  This was all donated to the museum foundation when Kennecott closed down the copper pit.  It is amazing to me all the facilities that were required to run what is not a very big railroad in the steam era.  This first photo is of the passenger station which included the railroad headquarters on the second floor.  The second floor is maintained just as it was when it last operated.

This is just one of the upstairs rooms in the station building.  With the bay window, this room could have been used as a yard tower. 

Within the really large shop building, they let visitors wander throughout all long as you don't climb onto any of the equipment.  When I was there, repair or restoration work was happening on several pieces of equipment.

The yard area was also quite large with all the facilities a steam railroad would need.  There were also quite a few examples of freight cars parked in the yard.  Mostly box cars, open hoppers, and gondolas, all letters for the Nevada Northern.

While there I went for a train ride up Robinson Canyon to the site of the now closed copper pit that the railroad had served.  The train was pulled by a VO-1000 and had two heavyweight coaches, an open car and a caboose.  The caboose was not accessible to the passengers but we could wander the other three cars.  I spent most of the ride on the open car.

Michael was our conductor for this trip.  He is very knowledgeable about the history of this railroad and is also an Z scale modeler and we had some good conservation about modeling and the prototype.

I did a short YouTube video on my visit, here's the link to it: Visit to the Northern Nevada Railway Museum.  The Nevada Northern Railway is a bit out of the way but definitely worth a visit. They have things going on year round.   Here's a link to their website:  https://nnry.com/

Old box cars live on

When visiting the caboose motel that was featured a couple of posts ago, I noticed a pair of box cars that were sitting off to the side of the cluster of cabooses and other restored cars.  The first one was this Cotton Belt plug door type box car with road number SSW 23811.

The second car was this Golden West Services plug door box car.  

A zoom in of the above image shows this car had a road number of SSW 23587.  This had been a patch over the original Golden West Services road number.  By playing around with this image further in Photoshop I was able to determine the original road number was GSVR 768X22 with the X being either a 3 or a 9. 

In the weeds near the two box cars were 4 railcar trucks.  It can be assumed that these came from these two box cars.

On the Cotton Belt car I was able to find and photograph the placard indicating that the vintage of this car was 1974 making it 51 years old.

After returning home I got to wondering about the history of these particular box cars and did some researching on the internet.  I did find a few photos of the Golden West car on rrpicturearchives.net.  Those placed this car in Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah between 2009 and 2015.  They didn't have any photos of the Cotton Belt car on that site but I found photos of both on Flicker.  Both photographed on the same day in 2018 and at the same location which was described as the Ironton scrap line which is in Provo, Utah.

So it appears that both of these box cars reached the end of their active railroad life in Provo, Utah and were purchased by someone and brought by truck to the site they are at now.  Glad they escaped the scrapper and hopefully they will restored and converted to a new use.

A morning in Carlin, Nevada in 1992

We are spending a morning in the spring of 1992 at the Southern Pacific Yard in Carlin, Nevada watching the action.  The first train in is a westbound Ogden to San Jose coal loads being pulled by an SD40 and a C44-9W, both painted in the speed lettering scheme.

Carlin is a crew change point for the Southern Pacific with east bound trains also taking on fuel here.  Turnouts have been aligned to give this train the path shown with a red line in the photo below.

No fuel is needed for this westbound going downgrade.   The new head end crew is walking out to their train as it reaches the west end of the yard.  On this layout we still have full crews and the new rear end crew has been taken down to the other end of the yard by one of the yard's motor vehicles.  This crew is based in Sparks and had brought an eastbound train here late yesterday and spent the night here at the railroad rooming house.  The crew getting off is based in Ogden and will spend the night here and take another train back to Ogden tomorrow.

About 20 minutes after the coal train left, another westbound freight entered the yard.  This one was an Ogden to Roseville manifest that will exchange a few cars here.  The power on this train is a GP35 in Kodachrome paint and a B23-7.  The yard's MP-15 switch engine has gotten into position to do the switching work.

The yard switcher is pulling the caboose and the last two covered hoppers from the rear of the train.  The SP covered hopper is an empty bound for the EP Minerals plant in Lovelock and the leased unit is a load of plastic pellets bound for the Diamond Plastics plant in Battle Mountain.

After setting the two covered hoppers out on the siding, the switcher picks up two empty tank cars from the storage track.  These two empty tank cars are bound for the Chevron refinery in Richmond, California.

The two empty tank cars and the caboose are then coupled to the rear of the train.

After the manifest train departs, the switcher grabs the empty D&RGW covered hopper that had been on the storage track with the tank cars and with it moves the two covered hoppers from the siding to the storage track.  The D&RGW car is a load from the Halliburton facility in Battle Mountain that will be picked on on the next West Colton bound train and placing it at the east end of the storage track will make that transfer easier.  The other two cars will go out on the next Lovelock local.

With it's work done for now, the yard crew parks the switcher on the siding and heads out for lunch.

On the road again - Marysvale, UT

While visiting Utah recently, we noticed a group of cabooses and freight cars alongside US Highway 89 north of Marysvale so we pulled in to take a closer look.

Turns out that what we spotted was a caboose motel called Caboose Village.  This is the LINK to their website. There is detailed information on each of the cabooses and that is where I got the information presented here.

There were at least 8 cabooses of the bay window or wide vision type.  Most are former Southern Pacific or Denver and Rio Grande equipment that have been painted to represent various railroads and set on short sections of track.

There was also a passenger coach that originally came from the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad before eventually finding it's way to being a motel accommodation.  There are also a pair of grade crossing signals in the collection.

And there were also several box cars on the site with at least one of those converted into accommodations.   The other side of this box car has windows and entry door. 

A bicycle trail had been visible as we drove along and I assumed that there had at one time been a railroad line here.  When we got back to camp, I did a little research and found that the Denver and Rio Grand had a branch line here that was called the Marysvale Branch and was abandoned in the 1980's.  The bicycle trail is built on about 16 miles of the abandoned right of way through the Sevier River Canyon and passes nearby this caboose village.

Even if they are not painted in their authentic original paint schemes, it is great to see this old railroad equipment escape the scrappers.