Building a low wood trestle

In the foreground of the scene on the Wesso section where the WP tracks are crossing a dry creek I want to use a wood trestle.  It will  not have to be very tall and will need to curve to match the 18 inch radius of the track.  Also, I want to make it a ballasted deck.

Since the last post the WP right of way re-alignment has been completed and a coat of tan paint seals all of the Wesso section except for the area where the wood trestle will be.  The creek bed may require further modification to accommodate the trestle.

Here is a prototype example of the type of trestle I am describing.  This particular straight trestle is in Arizona.

After looking at various options I chose a kit that I had used before as the starting point for this project, the Bar Mills Models Low Boy Trestle. I had two of them on the California Northwestern layout. The box shown in the photo was holding left over parts from the old layout, it now comes in a bag.



These are great kits right out of the box with options to build it as a straight or curved trestle.  For this project I am using almost all of the parts plus some left over from before.  I am also using some strip wood that I had on hand. The deck is made from .020 stryene sheet with a pair of curved .125 brass tubes bonded to the center to give it some extra support.

Crossing small creeks and drainages

I have been feeling kind of stuck lately on exactly what I was doing with the area on the east or left end of the Wesso section.  In the recent post Land contours for the Wesso section I had shown how I created an area for a river bed.  I had thought of using some bridges to make this the first crossing of the Humboldt River but because this is on a curve I realized that would not work so well so I came up with another idea.

Besides using various types of trestles and bridges to cross the larger rivers, the railroads use several types of culverts to cross smaller creeks or other types of low laying areas that provide seasonal drainage.  With the tracks of both the SP and WP built up as they are there are in this location there are many places that use these culverts.

Several model kits are available in N scale to model a box type concrete culvert.  I was drawn to this one by Blair Line because I like the year of construction being part of the structure.  I plan to use this for the SP track in the background and then perhaps use a low wood trestle for the WP track in the foreground.

In this photo I am partially filling in the riverbed with insulation board scraps.  The assembled box culvert kit and some track are temporarily in position while the Liquid Nails holding the insulation board scraps in place is drying.  In the foreground the WP right of way is in the process of being re-aligned and will cross this area on a low wood trestle.

March weathering madness

This month TrainBoard.com has been having another weathering contest.  I had sat out the February contest but this month I am in.   Between doing some DCC decoder installations and working on my contest entry I have not done much with the layout this month.

The theme for this months weathering contest is runner packs which was defined as any group of 3 to 4 cars, they don't necessarily have to be the same type.

My entry is going to be this 3 car set of Trainworx 46 ft general service drop bottom gondolas.  I heated and dented the side panels prior to the other standard weathering processes.


This months contest is particularly interesting because everyone seems to be entering different types of cars.  Here is a direct link to the thread for this weathering contest, it's worth a look.

Controlling power to staging yard tracks

Back in September in the post Control center for the staging yard I briefly mentioned  the circuit I built to turn each of the sidings in the staging yard ON and OFF simultaneously with the routing of the turnouts.  In the post I want to give more details on this.  I'm running DCC so why do I need to do this ?  At this point I've not really gotten my head around the JMRI / Panel Pro stuff and I would like to do some automation of some parts of the layout in the future.

This is the pair of circuit boards I made to switch power between each of the tracks of the yard.

The smaller board is a diode matrix and the larger one contains the latching circuits and relays.

This is the schematic drawing for the larger board, the 5 track power routing board  I realize this is 1970's technology but it works.  It's a larger version of one I built for the Peninsula Ntrak staging yard several years ago.  More recently I have written some code and successfully bench tested with LED's the same function with an Arduino Uno micro controller.

To make this work with an Arduino I will need to build a special shield board with the necessary relays, circuits to drive the relays, and terminal strip connections.  When I get a chance to work on that, I'll be sure to share it in a post.

The diode matrix is something that also is worthy of more explanation and that will be another future post.

Starting the bench work for Carlin

I have been waiting for the arrival of some materials for the Wesso section before I could proceed with it any further so I decided to get started building the bench work for the Carlin section.

This section is 91 inches long and meets the next section to it's right between wall brackets.  When both sections are both ready to be installed, they will be bolted together.

This section will have removable bottom plates with LED lights mounted on them to light up the staging yard and the display case.

This photo shows the difference in elevation between leaving the lower helix at Winnemucca on the west end of the layout and the east end of Carlin.  The climb around the entire room will be gradual.  Most of it will be in the canyon at the opposite end of the room.

Lower helix conclusion

1/8 inch hard board was used to wrap around the outer parts of the helix.  This will eventually be painted to blend in with the walls of the room.

Another piece of old 2 x 2 Ntrak module leg was installed on the outer edge of the "Winnemucca" section on the top,  this is grey in the photo.

In last October's Helix Progress post I had mentioned that there seemed to be a bit of a twist occurring in the helix sections causing there to be a slight difference in the spacing in some places.  I was able to solve this by making 4 spacing strips that hold the outer edge at a spacing the 2-/14 inches between levels.  One of these was mounted on the outer edge between each all thread rod.

Each loop of the helix has a pair of 22 gauge feeder wires which are connected to a 2 position terminal strip.  Then that terminal strip is connected to the output of a PSX-1 under the helix.

This photo shows the connections for the inner or WP tracks.  The connections for the outer or SP tracks are on the opposite side of the helix.





While this marks the completion of this lower helix, there will eventually be another helix stacked on top of this one that will connect the other end of the layout to a return loop and siding that will be above Wesso after the layout goes all the way around the room.

Land contours for the Wesso section

Been working on creating the land contours for the Wesso section of the layout.  Both the SP and WP lines follow the route of the Humboldt River and both lines cross the river many times.  I'm sure in the long history of the river and railroad co-existing the tracks have been washed out when the river has risen and the railroad has learned to build up the level of the tracks.  This is a type of scene I want re-create on parts of the layout including on this section.

This view of the prototype is typical of the type of what I want to represent on this module with the tracks built up in anticipation of the river possibility rising.

On this section I am using a combination of Woodland Scenics plaster cloth over cardboard webbing for the river bed and insulation board and drywall joint compound for the sides of the built up areas that the tracks are on.

I'll talk more about the river in the next post.

Bench work for Wesso

Here is an overall view of the Wesso section bench work.  It is 24 inches deep at the widest parts and about 80 inches long.

I built this section of bench work very much like a module for a portable layout.  The side railings  beams are 1/2 inch plywood and the deck is 1/4 inch.

The path for the rail lines was raised above the surface with blocks of 5/8 inch plywood.  This section is set 5/8 inch lower than the adjoining section so the level for the tracks on both is the same.

Land contours will be done with insulation board but I wanted solid wood under the road bed.

A river bed was cut into the flat surface were a pair of bridges will carry both the east and west bound lines over this first of several crossings of the Humboldt river.

As I did when working on the yard, this section will be resting on wall ledgers so it can be easily removed to work on.

Starting the Wesso section

Once the tracks from the staging yards reach the top of the helix they will enter the western end of the paired track at a point the railroads call Wesso.  From here the SP would go to the southwest toward Sparks and Reno and the WP in a more directly western direction.  The general alignment of both railroads at Wesso is in a Northeast to Southwest direction.

Here is a screen shot from Googlemaps with my notes added to illustrate.  Besides the railroads the most noticeable feature is what appears to be a trap shooting range. I don't know if this was here in my 1970's to 1996 modeling era so mostly I plan to concentrate on the features related to the railroad such as the signals and dirt access roads.

Whenever modeling a prototype scene there are always some compromises to be made.  This drawing helps  illustrate what I will try to explain below.



Because I only have just under 7 ft to model this scene and on one end there is a 90 degree turn I  had to reverse the position of crossovers relative to how they are on the prototype.  On the prototype the two crossovers  meet on the SP side but in my model scene they will meet on the WP side.  This does not effect the operation.

One goal in my modeled scene will be to create the illusion of the two lines moving off in slightly different directions from one another as they enter the helix.  I plan to use a few hills and the Interstate 80 overpass to terminate the view of the SP line before it begins it turn into the helix.  This actually happens on the prototype in Winnemucca about a mile to the west of the scene.  The WP line will be in the open while it makes a gentle turn and go behind some hills or structures on the outskirts of Winnemucca which again is only a mile or so west of the scene.  So using scene compression to an advantage here.  Another way the scene will be compressed is the space between the tracks.  On the prototype the tracks are about 300 feet apart but I plan to model them at about 100 feet apart.

As mentioned in the last post, I've been working on the turnouts that will be used on this section of the layout and plan to start the bench work soon.