Fall 2022 layout update

This month marks the 8th anniversary of the layout.  A lot has been completed over that time but still plenty more to do.  Over this past year or so most of the attention has been on the 11+ feet of Carlin over two bench work sections.  I have also been operating the layout and developing an operating scheme using car cards and waybills.  Recently I have added car card holders to all of the spurs as well as for the arrival / departure track in Carlin yard.

The scenery is continuing with the back edge of the Carlin section has being finished and blended in with the back drop shown in the photo below.  The area around the river between Carlin and the Palisade tunnels is in progress now.

With all of the track work in Carlin now done, next will come finishing industries, structures, and adding details.   Recently I added some 3D printed wheel stops to the ends of all of the spur tracks in Carlin.

 

Home made uncoupling tool

This is another post in what seems unintentionally to be a series of "home made" posts.  As I work with the layout these things just come to me.  In this one I will show how I made an uncoupling tool from scraps of styrene.

Over the years I have purchased a few packages of the RIX uncoupling tool.  They come two to the package and do the job.  The tips are a bit fragile and I have broken several off.  I was down to my last one and about to buy another package when it occurred to me that I might be able to make something similar and perhaps sturdier. 

Shown below is one of the ones I built next to my last RIX tool.

Here is a list of the materials used:

• Evergreen 214  (.125" OD rod) 
• Evergreen 226  (.131" ID / .197 OD tube)

One end of the rod was shaped into a flat point with sandpaper.  A short section of tube was glued to the rod to act as a stopper when the tool was placed in a holder and a larger section was glued to the other end of the rod to be a handle.  I also make holders for the uncoupling tools from the same size tube.  These are simply glued into position with E6000 adhesive.

 

Home made car card holders

As the Carlin section with it's small division point yard is now part of the layout, I have become more interested on operations.  In a previous post I explained how I made up car cards and waybills for the industries at Battle Mountain.  At that time I was just clipping them to the lighting valance above the location of a particular industry.

 

With the Carlin Yard being operational I was ready to take the next step and arrange the cards into holders along the fascia near each industry. Also I wanted to have card holders that represent the arrival / departure track in Carlin.

There are some nice car card holders available on line but I decided to make my own with plastic materials I already had on hand.  I had this old control panel that I had made almost 30 years ago for a friend's large layout.  When he moved into a retirement home and tore the layout down about 20 years ago he gave the panel back to me and I have been salvaging things from it ever since.  The panel is made from a 1/4 inch plastic material that is really nice to work with.  With all the holes from switches and LED's there's not much in the way any large areas left.  But cutting it into strips gave me the material I needed to make the side and bottom walls of the car card holders.

The front and back of each holder is made from .030 Evergreen styrene.  The strips are glued onto them using ZAP super glue on edge which is 1/4 inch.  By cutting the strips in several different widths, the depths of the car card holder could be sized for the expected amount of cards it will be required to hold.  For example, a track that can only hold 2 cars gets a 1/4 inch deep holder.

After evening up the edges and rounding the bottom corner with a belt sander, the holders were painted with Krylon smoke gray spray paint to match the color of the fascia before being glued in place using E6000 adhesive. 

Home made mini track level tool

This is a small level that I keep in my train show tool box to check the front to back level on modules during set up and also on the home layout. There is usually room to place this across the tracks but sometimes there is not.

One day the frame fell apart and I could see that the individual bubbles could be removed.  The 45 degree bubble served no purpose in my application so I removed it to make a special tool.

Attaching a small strip of styrene to this with adhesive keeps it from rolling.  Now this can be placed across the rails anywhere along the line to check for level even in those places where the spaces is tight.

Turnout controls for Carlin

At Battle Mountain I used manual push-pull controls for all of the turnouts, with each having a small panel with a simple track diagram and and bi-color LED showing the status.  The photo below shows what these look like.

At Carlin I had wanted to use the same type of setup but there were just too many turnouts so I made up similar panels but with just the knob and a simple designation for each turnout.  These are spread along the edge of the layout with signals being sent to a central display panel with a track diagram and LED's to show status.  Using the same type knobs help to keep the same look as the controls in Battle Mountain.  

At some locations where a pair of turnout controls are close together double panels were used.

 

This is the display panel which is in the middle of the Carlin section.  The designations used are E for East 1-5, W for West 1-5, and S for Spur 1-5.  The spur locations have only a single LED which is bi-color with green being aligned and red being diverging just like at Battle Mountain.  The remaining turnouts each have a pair of green LED's to show turnout position.  Turnout W5 was in a place where the manual controls were not practical so it got an MP5 turnout motor and a toggle switch on this panel.

 

Grade crossing in Carlin

In the real Carlin, there are a pair of multi track grade crossings, one at 4th street and another at 10th street.  I wanted to keep my small modeled yard clear of any grade crossings but did find a spot where Main street crosses the Western Pacific line to include one of these interesting features.

The grade crossing that I had set up in Battle Mountain a few years ago was no longer working correctly but the signals themselves were OK so I transplanted them to Carlin.  These NJ International signals have lights on both sides and as this crossing would be visible from both sides I wanted to use them here.  When I rebuild the crossing at Battle Mountain I plan to scratch build some signals that will only have lights on one side as they can only be seen from the front.   In Carlin I am using the crossing controller from Azatrax with the IR transmitter and receiver being in between the ties using the reflective mode.  For the sound I am using the ITT Products grade crossing module.  These circuits are mounted under the bench work.

 

The instructions that same with the sound module recommends a speaker with an 8 ohm input impedance.  For about $5.00 each on Amazon I found some 2 inch, 8 ohm speakers.  I am impressed with the sound quality from these.

These speakers are also small enough to hide in a small structure.  This one will be in a 3D printed house that is nearby the crossing.  I still need to get the part between the rails done and also some markings on the road.

When I set up this signal, this section of bench work was still on the saw horses and everything worked great.  After installing the section into the layout the sensors started to get false triggers.  What was happening was that the invisible IR beam was reflecting off the bottom of the cabinets which are 17 inches above the track.  I taped up some of the same black craft foam that I used on the roads and that seems to have solved the problem.  So I may need to either attached these foam sheets more permanently or paint the bottoms of the cabinets a flat black in this area.

Trying a different road building method

Over the years and various layouts and modules, I have tried several different methods for modeling asphalt roads.  Just before I was about to start the roads in Carlin, I saw this YouTube video.   The modeler presenting this video uses thin, black craft foam sheets as the basis for this roads on his HO scale layout with great results.  I wanted to try this myself and adapt it to N scale.  So I purchased these on Amazon and they were quite inexpensive when you consider how much N scale roads and parking lots can be made from this one package.

 

 

 

The thickness of these is about .070 inches thick and was quite easy to cut with a sharp x-acto blade.  When I have used the styrene sheet or drywall mud methods of road making I have used .040 as a thickness and made any needed styrene strip edges to match that thickness.  So one of the things done differently was to use .080 as the thickness for any edges where a sidewalk or building would be placed.

Another adjustment I needed to make for using this in N scale was at a grade crossing.  This material is too thick for the height of the rail so a transition was made to .030 styrene on the approach to the grade crossing. 

For painting I used the recommended colors of artist acrylics and techniques from the video.  This was the first time I have used sponge brushes in this application and do like using them for painting larger surfaces on the layout. The first pass seemed to absorb into the foam and I was not sure of the results but got better results with the followup coat.

With some weathering and detailing I think these are going to be the best roads I've made and plan to use this technique in the future.

Summer 2022 layout construction update

Over the past few months both the 3-1/2 foot section with the east portals of the Palisade tunnels and the 8 foot Carlin section have been completed to the point that they were ready to be installed into the layout.  So more photo backdrops were ordered and installed and about 2 weeks ago the smaller section was put in and the connections to the lift bridge were re-done.  After everything was tested then the larger section was added.  This has been done within the past week and work is now going on to install connecting tracks, wiring, and fascia.  Having the air conditioner has made it possible for me to spend more time working in the train room during the summer months.

Welcomed addition to the train room.

We have had our photovoltaic solar system on our house for a year now.  And although we have been home every day except for 2 in that year, we made quite a bit more power than we used and have a credit with the utility company.

Feeling assured that it was not going to cost anything to run, I purchased a portable air conditioning unit for the train room.  The local big box hardware store had a sale on them.  I had already installed a discharge vent through the wall when I built the room so it was an easy install.   It sits under the Wesso area of the layout.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Right away I noticed a difference in the comfort level.  This unit has a dehumidifier built into it and I was surprised at how much moisture was draining out.  I had to rig up a bottle to catch it so I didn't have puddles all over the floor.  This portable unit will also be a back up for one room in case our main unit in the house ever has a problem.