Return Loop Modules

I've finished up the return loop modules. These are 4" wide double and quad length modules that complete the return loop on the home layout. They probably won't be sceniced at all, their only purpose is to allow continuous running. If some day backdrops get put up on the rest of the layout you won't see them anyway. I'm thinking there could also be some staging sidings put on them, actually, there probably will be, because as it stands, there is nowhere to park anything.

CNW Hopper Fleet: Status Update

Nearly four years ago I started on a fleet of CNW covered hoppers. Circling back around to it now, it's grown from the original desire for 12 to about 16. Here's how it breaks down:

• 2x PS 4427 low side (1 green, 1 Continental patch) (Exact Rail)
• 2x ACF 4650 (green) (Intermountain)
• 2x PS 4750 (1 green, 1 pea green) (Intermountain)
• 1x FMC 4700 (green) (Precision Masters)
• 1x PS 4427 high side (green) (Micro Trains)
• 1x Ingalls 4750 (gray) (Precision Masters)
• 1x Thrall 4750 (blue CRIP patch) (Atlas)

Given the ratios I talked about earlier, this is pretty heavy on the oddball stuff and light on the ubiquitous PS 4750. As such, I'm on the lookout for some of the old Precision Masters cars to fill in. A guy can only paint and decal so many hoppers. I've seen scads of them in CNW livery so it shouldn't be had to find 3-4 of them in green. Also would like to do another high side 4427, and of course the Marine Ind. cylindrical hoppers need to get done yet...

I did manage to slob some more dirt on the things that are on the roster already and take a group photo on the bench.

FDDM 411 GE 70 Ton

Starting the railroad season off with a quick (and dirty) project. I need Diesel for the Kate Shelley Division fall swap meet contest. Needing an engine for shoving cars under the loader at the elevator, I took this opportunity to build a Fort Dodge, Des Moines, and Southern GE 70T. Bachmann makes a superb little engine with DCC that is pretty inexpensive. It also comes from Bachmann in the GE orange and cream paint scheme that some of the FDDM units used making this a simple decal and dirt job. Decals were printed myself on Testors paper. I also added a teeny (non functional) beacon and a radio antenna.The final plan is to install a sound bug in the elevator with a good size speaker rather than try to cram sound inside the shell.

Cutting T-Trak Boxes

Here are some dimensions used for a few of the modules. The big quad I have planned and the two singles that are already done are standard widths and depths. Shown in the picture is an inside corner that is also pretty standard as is the double.Also in the drawing is the proposed modification to my end caps, knocking the corners off. I have no idea how you'd scenic those corners so I just eliminated them.

The real variance from typical T-Trak specs are the polygons for the s curve and the s curve with a couple of spur extensions. These ought to be a real challenge to get glued up...

To make the boxes I'm ripping 1/4" sanded plywood into 2 1/4" strips. This will allow a 2" piece of foam to slip in and have 1/4" of clearance for wires and the mounting pads for feet. I screwed up several cuts, but all modules on the proposed arrangement were cut from two 2'x4' panels.

CNW Condolas: PRIDE

I managed to get just one of the CNW Gondola Fleet finished in time for the KSD contest. It was a fairly basic job, simply stripped, built the bulkheads from Evergreen channel and brass sheet, paint,
apply decals, weather, done.

This is my first model with Micro Trains' new True-Scale couplers. Honestly, They look very nice. The air hose is a nice touch. They appear to couple easily, and decouple with a tool like a toothpick just as easily. They are TINY and somewhat fragile. Honestly, I probably won't be converting anything though. They're not compatible with anything else and don't see the necessity. These will get swapped out for standard 1015's. I will definitely use them on display models though, they look great.

River Valley Central: T-Trak Division

Gosh it seems like only yesterday I abandoned my permanent layout plans and embarked on some t-trak to satisfy my railroad bug. My how things have changed in the past year. My family has moved into our 2nd home, which is much more suited to our needs, including a magnificent 10'x10' layout space.

I still really like the t-trak method, and intend to build my home layout one section at a time using t-track sections setup on top of the benchwork with scenes that can be mix and matched. Here's a peek at a first set of modules for a complete layout. There are some nonstandard shapes in here, but they follow the standard length dimensions either single, double, or quad. The two end caps connect to a permanent return loop behind the backdrop. The intention is to add passing sidings back there for staging.

CNW Gondolas: Let's Get Going

I took the summer off from ndecisive. We moved to a different house, family changes, lots to do. Now that the weather is starting to turn and it's getting close to the NMRA Kate Shelley Division's fall swap meet I've got the urge to do some railroading again.

First up this season is a couple simple gondola builds. The BN and PC will both be patched into CNW letters and numbers, the big CNW one is getting a strip, bulkheads added, and PRIDE lettering for crushed auto service like this 134000 series car. All 3 will be pretty well beaten and weathered.

DME T-Trak Action

Long time no update! Here's a brief video I shot on an old cell phone this evening. It's choppy and fuzzy and there's quite a lot of noise, but it's action!

Farm Site: Trees and Grass

This weekend I hit the Farm Site module hard and got quite a lot done. I started with ballasting the tracks (yuck) to get that out of the way, then moved on to the rest.

outlines of the buildings and driveway were drawn on the base first, then I moved through each type of ground cover one at a time until all the pink was covered up. I've got roughly half of the Landscape Learning Kit left after the next module I'll probably need to replenish some of the ground foam.

The trees are built from the Woodland Scenics Trees learning kit. They're ok, but they look like foam clumps stuck to two dimensional trees that have been cranked around to 3 dimensions. I don't know if that's just what a WS tree is or if I need to practice a bit more. They were pretty simple to do I guess.

The general idea is coming together. The potential exists for a ton of details, this module may never be "finished". Old cars are needed under the windbreak trees, these people need a burn barrel and maybe a dumpster, a mailbox, some farmy utility looking junk by the bins, maybe a lilac bush in the yard, maybe a cloths line, a path from the front step to the driveway, more weeds and bushes around the tracks, and on and on and on...

DME 2nd Hand Diesels: Decals!

I was able to finish the artwork for some custom decals and sent them off to Highball Graphics to be printed. Jim @ Highball was great, he answered a couple questions and the decals arrived about a week later. The print quality was outstanding, the price was very inexpensive (I sent artwork that was more or less ready to go so no setup or design fees). None of it was very complex artwork, mostly just letters and numbers. I'll show you the fun stuff later, but here are the 3 DME units lettered and ready for finishing.

DME 2nd Hand Diesels: 2nd Gen Joins the Roster

This week a 2nd Gen EMD joined my DM&E roster. Received as an undercoated Kato SD40-2, I went right to work on it getting ready to replicate the 6360 City of Mankato.

I started by grinding away the inside of the shell behind the radiator grilles. This is a model car trick to open up the radiator grille, and worked really well here. There was quite a lot of meat on this part of the shell so it should still be plenty strong. Why am I cutting the radiator grille open? Sound of course! I've got an MRC 1806 decoder on order, and the way the shell is designed girding open the radiator grilles to let the sound out made logical sense.

For paint I headed back to the acrylic craft paint aisle and came back with some Craft Smart Dark Yellow and Bright Blue. DM&E used several different shades of blue and gold over the years, these two struck me as close enough for the look of 6360 after a few years of service.

Here is the City of Mankato with it's running mates, all waiting for decals, decoders, and dirt.

Farm Site: Lights and Stuff

A mock up of the farm site scene tonight, lighting finished in the farm house, the shop, and on the yard light pole.

Here is a cutaway of the house showing how the upstairs bedroom is lit, the kitchen on the back of the house is done similarly. All of the fiber optic pipes are bundled together under the house and epoxied to a warm white LED. I plan to use a 5v lighting bus, so a 100Ω resistor is wired in series with each LED. A hole was drilled in the lens of the LED to help gather the light pipes and hold them in. I also wrapped aluminum foil around the LED to block light from leaking out the sides and hopefully reflect more of it down the pipes. The pipes themselves are painted black to block light from escaping and hide them inside the house. The shop is lit similarly with light pipes and a cool white LED.

 The yard light is a warm white SMD LED chopped off a holiday light set that had very fine enamel coated wire attached and a gob of glue for a lens. I trimmed the enamel wire on one lead very short and soldered it to a brass rod, the other lead was super glued down the length of the rod to simulate a mounting arm and conduit on the pole. Wires were then added to the bottom of the conduit and the pole for connecting to the 5v bus. I painted the lens of the LED with transparent orange paint to give it a high pressure sodium look, then painted the rest of the LED glue blob black to block unnecessary light out the top and sides. The pole will be painted brown and the conduit gray.

I planted all the buildings and some trees to mock up the scene and draw some guide lines for the driveway and outlines of each building. Since it was all in place I wired up the lights to a power source and was more than pleased with the result!

Farm Site: Farm House Remodel

Originally I had planed for this module to be just a driveway and bins, the house having been torn down years ago. This Bachmann farm house is somewhat special to me, I've had it since I was a kid with a train set. When I rediscovered it in a box of old train stuff I had to use it.

It's a pre-built, and the build quality is ok but it is a bit of a fixer upper. It was pretty easy to take apart, there was very little glue. Most of the joints were just heat melted together.

While it is apart I've started installing lights. I wanted a yard light on a post for this module, it only makes sense to add a couple of porch lights and a few lights on inside the house too. There is one warm white LED swiped from a string of Christmas lights under the house with fiber optic light pipes from www.thefiberopticstore.com. There is a hole drilled in the LED and all the light pipes are stuck together and shoved in the hole. I have a little more work to do with it but so far it is turning out well.

End of the Bean Field, Begin the Farm Site

I "finished" the bean field this week. By finished, I mean added a fence and road markings. I'm sure there will be other little bits added now and then but I'm calling this done for all intensive purposes.

The fence was made using Micheal Whiteman's method, simple posts with no actual fence. I used HO 3x3 strip wood painted with Americana Asphaltum brown craft paint and planted them just like Micheal describes in the nscale.net post.

Road markings were done with Sharpie Oil Paint Pens in Yellow and White. These were the ultra-fine variant and I could not be more pleased with the result. Using a straight edge for a guide I zipped two white lines and a yellow center line in about 30 seconds. Then I added some cracks with a black ultra-fine Sharpie marker. I'll be getting a black oil paint pen because I really really like the way the yellow and white worked, and the permanent ink has a weird purple sheen in some light.

I also started working on the base for a second module, the Farm Site. I picked up a couple Rix grain bins from a friend on nscale.net and a Woodland Scenics Trees learning kit from the hobby shop old as well as a Deluxe Innovations shed. I also plan to recycle a Bachmann farm house that was part of my first N scale layout when I was around 10 years. This module is going to take quite a lot of time I suspect because of the number of features, the house, bins, trees, etc. I'm hoping to light the house and shed, and also install a post light to illuminate the driveway. Just how to go about that remains to be figured out. These two modules should complement each other well, and can be arranged in any order.

Bean Field Module: Beans and Weeds

This weekend I was able to get some more work done on the bean field module. All of the scenery bits came from a Woodland Scenics Landscape Learning Kit, except the gravel shoulders on the road which were made from Buff Gravel and the weed clumps that are grass sifted out of some Scenic Express Farm Pasture Blend/

The bean field was done by squirting stripes of white glue on the top of the ribs created earlier and then dumping a bag of medium green coarse ground foam on. After the glue setup I knocked all the loose foam off and viola! a bean field (kind of). I'm not totally pleased with it but its ok for now. I'd really like to get a whole bunch of Blueford Shops corn to try, but this is an awful big area and would be quite expensive.

All of the ditch ground cover is blended fine ground foam, with some clump foliage bushes stick on here and there. It was much too uniform so I also dusted on some burnt grass and yellow grass ground foam to break it up. The tufts were made by putting dollops of white glue on a piece of aluminum foil and then sifting the grass out of the pasture mix onto them. It worked pretty well but not great.

I test ran a little, and posed for a few photos. The operation was pretty lame but photos turned out good. By far the most complete railroad I've ever done, and it's only 12" long! Looking forward to getting another single started, hopefully this week.

Bean Field Module: I Hate Ballast

Unitrack is no easier to ballast than anything else. I thought it might be a little easier to do since the road bed has some texture to it. Maybe it would grab the ballast and keep it on the slopes and between the ties better? Nope. Ballasting just sucks. Now that I've ballasted one module, I'll have to do them all. Blech.

I used Arizona Rock and Mineral ballast, Mauve on the main line and Pink Lady on the secondary. No matter how much ballast you put between the rails, it's too much. It takes so very little to get coverage and not over flow onto the ties and get swept up the sides of the rail that you'll 2nd guess yourself. Don't. If you think you have enough ballast between the rails to start spreading and shaping, you have too much.

The entire track area was sprayed with Rustoleum Camo Brown. A random few of the ties were painted with Asphaltum, Black, and Pavement craft paints. It is very hard to tell in the pictures but the effect in person is very nice.

Also this weekend the dirt and earth ground foam went on the bean field. I painted the field black first, then sprayed on some water/glue and sprinkled on the foam with a tea strainer. After I was satisfied with coverage I spritzed on some Windex and hit it with another shot of glue.

Bean Field Module: Terrain

The landscape work is mostly complete on the Bean Field module. The roadbed for the 2nd track was buried in drywall compound to try and give it a secondary look. The ballast will be slightly different, and less of it along with grassy shoulders and weeds. Drywall compound was also used to build up the shoulders of the highway to prepare them for gravel and weeds.

For making the furrows in the field, I used a home made scraper cutout of a for sale sign on my wife's Silhouette cutter. It worked very well. First I smeared a fairly even layer of drywall compound on the foam and then drug the scraper through it as evenly as my shaky hands could. It worked very well I think.

The foreground terrain was done with Celluclay, a paper mache like goop. The pink foam is very very very flat, and even the flattest farmland is not that flat. The goopy mixture was troweled on with a spatula and patted down for a smooth but lumpy finish. I had some difficulty getting it to stick to the pink foam board, next time I will rough the surface to give it some tooth. Once dry it is stuck well, just the smearing and spreading was iffy. Celluclay was also used to give the drainage ditch between the highway and bean field some character.

Also at this point I mixed some black paint and plaster together to "pave" the highway. A very thin layer was used. It is a little light for asphalt, but in my experience (which is limited) it's easier to weather the crap out of stuff and make it darker than it is to make it lighter. This should be a good base for a blackwash, oil stains, and patches.

Bean Field Module: Track and Road

I was able to spend some more time on the Bean Field module this week. I rebuilt the frame with 1/4 sanded plywood instead of the MDF. MDF was to wobbly and didn't take nails or glue very well. It is just as light now but 10x sturdier.

The track sections are attached with clear latex caulk. Since I'm using foam for the base of the scenery there was nothing to pound nails into, and I find nail heads to be pretty ugly anyway. I had some concerns about the caulk being strong enough to withstand connecting modules together but it seems to be pretty solid. Spoiler alert: I'll be ballasting also so the white glue and rocks should also help hold it down, not that it really needs it.

I also used latex caulk to attach the Funky Foam highway. I smeared the caulk on the base foam and shaped it to have a slight crown, then laid the road material over and lightly pressed it in. The road width is 2" which should scale out to 12' lanes, with a little extra on the shoulders. The shoulders will be built up next to the road with spackle before applying some gravel.

Bean Field Module: Part 1

For my first foray into T-Trak I'm building a Single that will have the signature double track main, a stretch of highway, and a bean field. Very simple, very generic. Hopefully I'm thinking small and simple enough that I'll actually complete it.

I chose to use 1/4 MDF for the box, and pink foam for the base. The fascia box is 2" deep, which is not the RP for T-Track, but I read a compelling article on using a 2" fascia and it sounded like a good idea. There are 2"x2" square blocks of 3/4" plywood in each corner of the box for strength and mounting for the adjustable feet. Feet are 1/4" carriage bolts screwed into T nuts smashed into the plywood blocks.

Kind of at a stand still now until the track and a few scenic supplies arrive.

The Ndecisive Modeler

The need for more space in the house is upon us, and has required I rethink my layout plans. I no longer have space for a permanent layout and the River Valley Central has been abandon, the right of way turned back to the planning commission. I peeled up all the track, fortunately I had not ballasted much yet so most of it was salvageable. The pink foam was reclaimed, and the bench work sawed into fire pit size chunks.

I'm staying with N scale however. Throughout my layout planning I gradually moved from switching operations which turns out I am not at all interested in to a railfan type plan that is much more suited to my interests. I've also discovered that i really like building models, maybe more so than actually railroading. I like building structures, painting and weathering freight cars and locomotives. I do need some kind of layout though for the occasional therapy session and photography. The stark white work bench top is a great work surface but a terrible photo backdrop.

Armed with these "givens and druthers" and having seen some neat T-Trak modules from a couple of different clubs, it seems T-Trak might be a good way to feed my inner layout monster for a while. They're easily broken apart and stored, Kato Unitrack is bullet proof, each module can be it's own scene for photographing models or connected together for some railfanning, and each section can be completed independent of other sections helping relieve the "Oh god there's sooo much to do" procrastination.

All that said, I bring to you now the Ndecisive Modeler so you can follow along as I waffle between projects and ideas.