The Overland Hotel

The building that hides the speaker for the Carlin yard switcher sound is now finished.  This was a Design Preservations Models - Hayes Hardware kit.  The building itself was not modified as it fit nicely into the space I had for it.  

The theme of this building is that of an older hotel which has seen it's better days pass when the interstate highway was built.  It has been refurbished and has had a large neon sign installed on the roof that can been seen from the interstate highway in the hope of attracting business.

I had recently purchased a 3D printed set of 180 roof top details and used 9 of those on the roof of this building.  The animated sign if from Miller Engineering with the support structure being scratch built from styrene.  

The electronics for the sign clip into a plastic cap from a prescription bottle which is glued under the roof of the building.  The power wires for this go down through a hole in the bench work and are connected to a voltage regulator from Miller Engineer specifically for these signs.  The wires for the speaker also go through the same hole.

DCC Sound my way - Part 2

After doing a bunch of experimenting with DCC sound over several years I had decided that instead of installing sound decoders in my N scale locomotives I would use just a few as stationary sound decoders in choice locations addressed to the locomotive working in that area.

To start with, I wanted to have the sound for the yard switcher in Carlin yard.  One of the small speakers was placed inside of one of the buildings across the street from the yard about in the middle.  It was glued down to the base as shown here.

The building that will go here is a Design Preservation Models Hayes Hardware kit shown here half finished.  It will be a hotel when it's finished.  Look for a future post on that project. 

Because I sometimes change locomotives assigned to the Carlin yard, I would need to be able to program the sound decoder to an address matching the address of the locomotive.  I installed this control panel on the fascia which allows for this.  Thinking ahead, I also included control for the road switcher assigned to the Carlin yard as that will be a future step.  A cable for the programming output was run around the layout from the command station to this panel.

The Digitrax SFX0416 decoder is quite small and was placed within the bench work behind the control panel.  It is pointed out with a red arrow in the photo below.

DCC sound my way - Part 1

While I have DCC decoders installed in nearly all my locomotives only 1 has a sound decoder.  It's this Atlas SD7 which has an early MRC sound decoder.  The frame was milled to be able to get the speaker in.  Something I really did not like was how with any brief interruption of pickup from the track, the sound would cut out then start up again, plus the sound quality was not very good with the tiny speaker.  So this loco ended up sitting on a siding with it's idling sound running.  

At some point the technology of electrical capacitors developed into what are called a "super capacitor" which has a large amount of capacitance in a small size.  Adding such circuits to a DCC sound decoder installation eliminates this problem of the sound cutting out but it's still a challenge in N scale to find room for decoder, a speaker, and a super capacitor circuit.

For my next attempt at DCC sound, I chose to build a sound car.  This was built around an Atlas covered hopper car and used a Soundtraxx decoder and a "keep alive" super capacitor circuit from Train Control Systems.   Here is a LINK to a short Youtube video demonstrating this project.  And here is another LINK to this project on my DCC blog.

I ran this sound car as the first car behind the power after programming it to the same DCC address as the locomotive consists.  Sometimes when switching cars at either Battle Mountain or Carlin, I would park this car on a siding and with the address again programmed to match the locomotive doing the switching. This car worked well in both of these applications but the sound quality still left something to be desired.  An unexpected take away from the experience with this sound car was that I realized I got the most enjoyment from the locomotive sound when I was doing switching.

When I installed the grade crossing signals in Carlin, I used an 8 ohm, 3 watt speaker that I found on Amazon for about $6.00 and was small enough to fit into a house that was next to the grade crossing.  Here is a LINK to the post I made on that project.  I really liked the sound quality from this speaker.

About the time I had bought the Soundtraxx decoder I had also purchased a Digitrax SFX0416 sound only decoder with the idea to build a sound dummy locomotive with a Kato SD40.  I never got around to this project but one day was wondering if this decoder could drive one of the 3 watt speakers and how that would sound.   The decoder was able to drive this speaker and sounded better than anything I've heard from a speaker in an N Scale locomotive.  So it was decided that I would use this sound decoder and this speaker as a stationary setup to add sound to the Carlin yard switcher.  The next post will cover the details of how I did that.

Glitter Gulch moves to Carlin

Over 5 years ago I modeled a roadside casino in Winnemucca.  It was made from a kit bashed building kit and included a Miller Engineering animated sign.  Here is a photo from that post in February 2019.

Problem with that scene was that it is in an out of the way location and the sign was not very visible to operators and visitors to the layout.  My version of downtown Carlin is somewhat freelanced but based on some buildings that had been there at one time.  I decided that one building would be a casino and moved the sign to this new building.

The building is a Design Preservation Crestone Credit Union kit.  A hole was cut into the roof of the building and a scratch built rooftop structure was added for the electronics that run the sign.  The Miller Engineering sign was mounted on the front of the building over the center 2 second floor windows.

The sign's electronics were mounted to the inside of the roof of the rooftop structure.  The switch on the circuit board sticks out  of an opening on the back so is accessible to turn the sign on or off.

For now the ground floor is empty but the building and it's base are removable so in the future I plan to add lighting and details to the interior.

Spring 2024 layout update

After a long wet winter, spring is finally here.

Some of the layout projects that I've been working on have been presented here as posts of their own but here are a few other things I have been doing.

Finally finishing the GHQ crane kit for the scrap yard in January motivated me to add some final touches to the scrap yard and call it finished,  One of my friends from the Ntrak club I belong to sent me a weathered Golden West gondola to add to my fleet of cars that will service this industry.

After finishing the messy scenery work on the east end of Carlin, I gave the layout a good cleaning and have been returning to operations.  Some additional covered hoppers were purchased for the Halliburton barite processing plant in Battle Mountain including a pair of the new Micro-Trains PS2 models.

Additional car cards for these new cars and more freight waybills for the industries that have been recently added to the layout.

We have already had a couple of Ntrak layouts this year and I had modules in both of them.  The most recent one was at an air museum and included the AsiaNrail extension.  This layout was set up for 4 days. 

And I have been continuing to work on structures in Carlin and will be posting on some of that work individually in the near future.

A microwave communications tower

The Southern Pacific Railroad was an early adopter of the use of Microwave communications in it's operations.  During my modeled eras this would have been in use with microwave relays on many mountain tops along the line and towers at important stations.  I wanted to include this on my layout and decided that the operations center at Carlin yard would be an ideal place to start.

To make the microwave antennas I punched a bunch of disks from .020 thick styrene scraps.  Then stacked them together until I got the thickness I wanted.

For the tower itself I had originally planned to use the kit from BLMA but those are no longer available. Then I remembered I had an old Miniatronics light tower from a past layout that had burned out lights and one of the shades missing so I used it.  This tower is about 40 scale feet tall.  The existing plug in structure on the bottom was used to secure the tower to a styrene tile base.

The tower actually looked better with the lights removed as the wires filled the inside and now the tower in more see through.  The middle two vertical supports at the top of the tower were cut off. The disk stacks got a .035 hole drilled into one side and a .035 styrene rod cemented into that hole.  That rod fit nicely into the existing holes on the remaining outer vertical supports and that is how the disks were mounted to the tower.  A small equipment cabin was scratch built out of styrene and glued to the base next to the tower.

Here is what the assembly looked like after a bit of painting and weathering.  I also added a radio antenna on the top of the tower.  This would be for the VHF radio communications between the operations center and road crews and MOW crews.  For antennas like this I use cat whiskers.  We have 4 cats and every once in a while, I find a fallen whisker on the floor while cleaning house.

And here is the Microwave relay tower installed on the layout next to the operations center building in Carlin.  I scraped away a bit of scenery and glued the tower base in place.  When the glue had dried, I touched up the scenery around the tower base. 

This was another one of those little scratch building projects where everything came from the scrap box that I enjoy doing.

Improving some Wiking VW models

A quick break from the structure building posts to work on some vehicles.

I have a bunch of old Wiking models of Volkswagen vehicles that were given to me by a friend years ago when he tore down his layout.  These models have great accurate bodies and solid clear plastic windows but lack any type of realistic paint detail, particularly on the tires.   Because of this I have never really used them on any of my layouts or modules.  The beetles and vans in particular were quite common in the 1960's and 70's so I decided to get some of them out and do something with them.

These models come apart easily.  There are just 3 parts: The chassis in a silver or gray color, the body in various colors, and a solid clear plastic part to represent the window glazing.  After getting these apart, I painted the tires black with Mission Models tire black acrylic paint.  When those had dried, I painted the bumpers with Model Master silver acrylic paint.

For things like hubcaps, headlights, tail lights, door handles, etc. I use Sharpie pens. These are available in an assortment of colors.  This can be done either before or after re-assembling the vehicle.  I store the pens in a zip lock bag in an effort to keep them from drying out.

These now look much more realistic and I am happy to have them on the layout.  I just did these two for now and still have quite a few more.  Next batch I want to try painting the bodies in some colors I remember seeing and with the van getting a two-tone paint job with the white on top which was common.

Finishing a 3D printed house

This 3D printed house is something I purchased a couple of years ago along with two others.  All three are based on the design of the Sears catalog houses of the early 1900's.  The one I am finishing here was the largest of the three and I intended to use it to house the speaker for the grade crossing in Carlin.  This particular house had a total of 5 pieces, there shown in the photo below after they had been sprayed with primer.  There was also a base and a small roof section not show here.

This is what it looked like after painting.  The small roof section is also present in this photo.  Painting these is similar to painting a Design Preservation Models (DPM) building.  I started by air brushing the base color then brush painting the trims and any details.  On this model I painted the chimney and the foundation walls a red brick color.  

There had already been a base prepared for this scene made from fiberglass reinforced plastic paneling.  Here is the completed house glued down to the base with a car port and other surrounding details being added.  The wire and plug sticking out on the right side of the base is for the grade crossing speaker. 

After installing the fences and more details at the work bench here is the completed scene installed on the layout into a recessed area that is surrounded by styrene strip with the scenery built up around the outer edges.  I still want to add a tree or two and that or other changes will be easy as this entire scene is removable. 

Finishing a re-cycled fire station

On my last layout which was from 2002 to 2013 I had a California Department of Forestry fire station which I built from a Rix Products kit.  If I had taken any photos of it on that layout I can't find them now.  When researching things for this layout I found that the fire station in Carlin was of a similar design but with an extra door.  Since I still had the old model, I decided to use it again on this layout but with some upgrades.

One of the things I wanted to be able to do with this structure was to pose each of the doors either as opened or closed.  The solution I came up with was to use Velcro on the back of each door and on the inside of the roof of the building to store the doors when they are open.  The fit of the doors into the wall is snug enough that they don't need any glue to stay in place.

The building sits on a removable base that has blocking of styrene strips around the inside of the walls that hold the building in place.  The building can be easily picked up to change the position of the doors or move around the fire engine models.

Some of the details added were rain downspouts made of .035 styrene rod added at each corner of the building and some signs that were made on the computer and printed on paper.  I only have a couple of fire engines right now representing different eras but plan to add more in the future.  As the layout is modeled in different eras from the mid 1970's to mid 1990's I plan to have at least 2 set of fire equipment that can reflect those different eras.