Lights for Carlin Yard

For some time I have been wanting to add some yard lights to Carlin Yard.  I had seen some interesting ones on ebay but they were all shipping from China and I am reluctant to buy directly from China.  So I checked on Amazon and found the same ones that shipped from the US.

There were 3 light towers in a pack for about $20.00 including tax.  They each have two LED's and have plastic towers similar to what is on some of the Miniatronics products.  The set comes with 1000 ohm current limiting resistors for each tower.

While I liked the green color of the towers, I felt they were too shiny and plastic looking.  So I sprayed the towers with Dullcoate and that made a big improvement.  As Dullcoat is clear, no need to mask off the LED's.  I also painted the bases a primer gray to represent concrete.  I found that Evergreen #423 3/32 plastic tube fit inside the base of the tower with no adhesive needed.  This creates a stem to secure the tower to the layout.

To mount these, I drilled a  hole through the 1/4 inch thick deck that was just a bit larger than the plastic tube.  Then applied a small amount of canopy glue to the tube and pushed it into the hole.

To connect each of the yard lights to the 12 volt DC power, I made some small circuit boards with the resistor and a 2 position terminal block that the small wires from the light tower can be easily connected to under the bench work.  The larger 22 gauge wires were then connected to one of the 12 volt terminal strips.

And this is the result I was looking for. 

Learning about static grass - Part 2

Last year I finally got around to seriously working with static grass and documented what I had learned so far in THIS POST.

Since then I have done a few projects and have gotten better results with each attempt.  On this layout I have been using various shades of brown and dark green Buffalo Grass products from Scenic Express to represent the many scrub bushes seen in desert areas.  While I like the results it can get rather expensive to cover a large area.  That's why my deserts have been somewhat sparsely populated with these.

At a convention a few years ago, I attended a clinic where the method of how to make similar types of scenery with static grass was demonstrated.  So, I gave that a try using some 4mm straw colored static grass from Woodland Scenics purchased at my local hobby shop. This was actually lighter than I wanted but the selection of colors in the Woodland Scenics line of static grass is somewhat limited.  I put dots of Woodland Scenics static tac out on a piece of wax paper then applied the static grass.

After vacuuming up the excess I had this batch of bushes. They seemed good but again a little lighter in color than what I wanted.

After installing a few of these straw-colored static grass bushes on this layout, they seemed to be almost invisible against the base scenery.  So before removing the rest of them from the wax paper I gave them a light spray of Vallejo burnt umber.

After planting a few of these on the layout I was happy with the results.  Shown here is one of my home-made ones next to one of the Buffalo grass products that was purchased.  Scenic Express has a greater variety of static grass colors than does Woodland Scenics so at my next opportunity I will pick up some of their static grass in some darker brown shades.

Operations - an eastbound transfer

I've been enjoying operating this layout and plan to make more operations posts like this on in the future.  Would also like to get some videos going too.  The layout is currently set for the 1983 - 1988 time period.

An eastbound Roseville to Odgen manifest (RVOGM) is due in and the Carlin yard switcher is standing by to make some transfers to and from this train.  Here the eastbound freight is taking the crossover from the eastbound UP track into Carlin yard.

There will be 4 empty covered hoppers that need to be set out from the eastbound train while it's being refueled and the crew is being changed.  2 of these are bound for the Halliburton facility in Battle Mountain and 2 are going to the EP Minerals plant in Lovelock.

Once the eastbound has entered the yard and come to a stop, the yard switcher moves in and pulls the 4 cars to be set out from the rear of the train.  The rear end crew has already exited the caboose and the off going and on coming conductors are exchanging notes in the operations office.

The 4 empty covered hoppers along with the caboose are pulled back far enough to clear the turnouts then pushed into the siding for now.  They will be moved again later.

Today there are 4 loads and 1 empty to be picked up by the eastbound train, all covered hoppers.  These have been sitting on the storage track.  Again, these are all covered hoppers this time.

With the caboose from the eastbound still with the yard switcher, these 5 cars are now pulled out of the storage track.  With some of these longer cuts of cars, the switcher ends up being on the bridge when pulling the cut clear of the turnout.

These five cars are coupled to the end of the train.  By now the re-fueling is done and once the train is coupled and the new crew is aboard, and the air brake pressure is built up they will be ready to leave.

The eastbound has now left and the yard switcher has gone back over to the siding and pull the 4 empty covered hoppers out and then pushed them onto the storage track.  Here they are coupled to 2 other cars that were already there.  These 6 cars will make up tomorrows Lovelock local.

With their work done for now, the yard crew ties up the switcher and calls it a day.