MILW car barge & tug takes shape

Our neighbor Bob Wickham is a skilled ship model builder, and he recently volunteered to assemble the Walthers tugboat kit and customize it for the MILW tug that once plied the waters of Puget Sound. I had already built the car float kit many years ago, although it's not an exact replica of the ones the MILW used in Seattle, and as you can see it is too long for the "water" available for it. As you can see, he did a great job on the tug, adding a steam engine style stack and building brass hand rails to replace the silly-looking square plastic handrails that come with kits like that. We haven't gotten it tied up to either the apron (built by Dave Enger a few months ago (just in time!)) or the car barge, but as you can see from the ropes draped on the aft deck, it won't be long.

While he was at it, he also painted the barge a dark grey, and then I put some pan pastel on the rails and vents, and some yellow Floquil on the cleats and bollards. It's amazing how much better it looks now than the original bare plastic did!

As you can see from the second photo, I didn't have room for the Walthers apron (which was based on a NYC prototype anyway), so I built a flexible section of track and attached it to an O scale Caboose Industries ground throw, which has enough movement to switch between tracks left and center. But one of these days I'll rip that out and install switchpoints instead, a much more prototypical and elegant solution. This was just easier and quicker. The famous wooden overhead infrastructure of the MILW slip at Pier 27 would be cool to have here, too, but I don't see where I have room for it, so far. Maybe some year someone will 3D print this and I'll figure a way to modify the front fascia to make room for it.

The capacity of this car float is something like 16 cars, practically a full trainload, but so far in op sessions we've only managed to move half that amount back and forth to the pier. Partly there aren't  enough waybills sending cars to Port Angeles, and partly the layout is mainly a BN affair, so getting someone to operate the MILW switcher is sometimes a low priority if we don't have enough operators. Also, my model of Argo yard is so small that 16 car would overwhelm it anyways.

The next phase of the car barge project will be building another, shorter, float to carry cars to Victoria BC, something that the MILW also did from Seattle. Cal Sexsmith wrote a wonderful article about this in one of last year's OPSIG "The Dispatcher's Office" journals, and I am really looking forward to figuring out how to integrate that into our operations. Argo's small size notwithstanding.

Here's another overview shot of the scene so far. Notice how well the see-through water effect in front of the tug works, and this is even before I try coloring or texturing it. The bronze propellor load was also contributed by neighbor Bob - he didn't need these props, so he put them on a surplus flat car with some tie down chains, and voila!:

This post would not be complete without a peek underwater. Eric Vannice recently completed installing a mermaid down there, guarding a couple of large treasure chests from some interested divers groping around between some derelict cars that had fallen off the barge. It's hard to see in the dark, but it's there...

the locomotive braking saga continues

In earlier posts I've described how, about 18 months ago, I took delivery of my first ProtoThrottle and found out that in order to use it, I would have to re-program all 100 of my operating locomotives to activate their braking function(s). After that, it took me a surprising six months to get it accomplished, at the expense of most other progress on the railroad. This post is about how it's been going since then, and what I've learned that caused me to head into yet again re-programming the fleet to improve operations.

Here's the situation the Burrlington Northern finds itself in. When we last discussed this, I had (finally) learned how to adjust the braking rate on Tsunami decoders by setting CV 117 to a value (which is almost impossible to describe how to figure out what it should be) of 169, which gives a braking rate of full speed to zero in about 15 seconds. On the ESU Loksound decoders, I used a LokProgrammer and the PC (not Mac, so I have to run it on a PC emulator on my Mac) software to discover that a setting of CV179=60 provided the same 15 second braking rate as the Tsunami's CV177=169. We adjusted the full speeds to about 50 scale miles per hour, the settings for which varied with each locomotive type.

Momentum matters too, so after some experiments we decided on a coasting deceleration rate of full speed to zero in 54 seconds, which equates to CV4=60 in Tsunami's and CV4=215 in ESU's. This was a deliberate compromise between maximum momentum versus slowing down at a rate that would allow a beginning operator to manage their train even if they forgot about the braking feature.

So, after reprogramming all the locos accordingly, we had a few operating sessions. In general, people seemed to like the braking feature, and felt that it added realism. We standardized on using F9 on all the NCE throttles to activate the brake, and put a "brake" label next to F9 on each throttle, so people seemed to learn it pretty quickly. One problem we found is that the ESU Select and V4 decoders will not brake unless the throttle is turned to zero, whereas the Tsunami's will brake even with the throttle turned up. Once people learned this, it was ok, but this discrepancy between the braking behavior of ESU's and Tsunami's is irritating. The Tsunami's behavior is prototypically correct, and ESU has recently fixed this defect in its new V5 decoders.

Then, I operated a few times on Joe Green's excellent layout in Sequim, WA. He had all his locomotives set to a maximum full speed of 30 scale miles per hour. The effect was great. It made the layout seem larger, the trains seem heavier, and the engine sounds changed more as you increased speed. On my layout I had found that I almost never ran faster than speed step 12 (out of 28), while on his layout I used the full throttle range, depending on the situation.

So, I made the dubious decision to reprogram all the locos again, this time to reduce the max speed to 30 scale miles per hour. Groan. But to make sure, I just reprogrammed one and played with it for a while. You can already guess what I found out. The brake settings no longer made sense at the slower max speed. Taking 15 seconds to slow down from 50 to 0 MPH is one thing, but taking 15 seconds to slow down from 30 to 0 MPH is an eternity. On a model railroad, at least.

After testing a while, I decided that a 10 second max to zero braking rate is just about right. (Ironically, this is the value that ESU puts in their braking rate by default, before I started this whole mess!) So the new CV values are, for Tsunami's CV117=175 and for ESU's CV179=40. Now I'm off to the basement to reprogram the rest of the fleet.

One footnote to all this - I found out from Doug Paasch that in fact some of the QSI decoders also have a programmable braking function. I had taken the QSI's off the layout, but as soon as I figure out how to get them adjusted to a 10 second braking rate (and re-mapped to have F9 trigger the brakes, if possible), I will bring them back on the layout.

A second footnote - to keep things simple I've just set up one function key to control one braking rate. A real locomotive has three types of brakes: train brake, independent brake and (sometimes) dynamic brake. Tsunami has CV's for all three of these, and if there were enough digits between 0 and 9 (an no other functions you cared about) you could have function keys for all of them all on the face of your NCE throttles. But it's complicated enough to get people to use a single brake without bogging down in multiple brake types. I want my layout to be easily accessible for people with varying levels of knowledge about railroads. So I'm just sticking to one brake for now. Who knows what will happen in the future?

A third footnote - I didn't change the CV4 (deceleration) values. I think this will be ok, but it's true that, relatively speaking, the deceleration will now seem slower that it did before. This of course makes the brake more important and more fun! (Another way to look at this is, with 30 as a maximum speed, you won't be in the next town by the time your deceleration finishes, even if you forget to use the brake.)

hand laid dual gage turnouts

The Weyerhaeuser Mill B complex in Everett on the Burrlington Northern is now served by both narrow and standard gage spurs, thanks to some recently-completed partial-dual-gage hand laid turnouts. A standard gage Micro-Engineering #6 turnout is visible below the three new turnouts, for comparison:

It always sounded scary to me to hand lay dual gage turnouts, so for decades I made do with buying the old Shinohara dual gage turnouts and using them. But there was an area on the Burrlington Northern, called Weyerhaeuser Mill B that "needed" both standard and narrow gage service, and the only way to get to it would be for the dual gage track in Delta yard to cross the (curved) mainline on a hand-made standard/dual gage diamond crossing. I thought about this for about 15 years, and then several months ago bit the bullet and constructed it. It wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be, as covered in an earlier blog post.

So, suddenly the Mill B area was opened up to dual gage service. Since it's a freelanced railroad, and I was still afraid of making a fully dual-gage turnout, I decided to peel off the narrow and standard gage tracks in separate turnouts, so we would be able to spot and pick up cars using the appropriate gage locomotives. This seems easier to build than a full-on dual gage turnout, so that's what I did. The photo above shows the three partial dual gage turnouts - two with the narrow gage peeling off to the left, and one with the standard gage peeling off to the left. The dual gage branch line is still available through the complex, and (sometime) in the future I plan to run it around to Bayside yard to provide service to the freight house, the ice house, and a produce company. We all need someplace to spot those nice new Blackstone reefers, right? :)

Here's a shot of one of the partial turnouts under construction:

You start by building a regular narrow gage turnout, and then add the standard gage rail on the side. For peeling off the standard gage track, it's little more complicated, because of needing a second frog, 

so here's a shot of that one under construction:

Then, you cut gaps in the printed circuit board ties, wire the now-isolated frogs up to "frog juicers", paint the ties and rail, install ground throws, polish the rail and vacuum the whole mess, test it one more time, and voila:

I couldn't be more proud of this, since these are the first track switches I've ever scratch-built. The nominal minimum radius of the curve is 20", but with the frogs it seems sharper than that in spots. So far, though, the Blackstone K-27's make it through the complex without derailing, as well as a 60' standard gage flat car that I tested. I haven't tried an Alco C-636 yet, and am not optimistic, but fortunately this is not mainline track and there would be no reason to put a six-axle diesel in there.

Here's an overview of the track complex from the other side, and how the dual gage crosses over the standard gage BN mainline. Those Thrall-door boxcars on the siding are just itching to get spotted at the mill!:

Now all we need is ballast, ground cover and roads, and the scene will be complete. Not to mention replacing the "stand-in" Mill B building with something that looks more like the real thing. Another time - the important thing is that now Mill B can supply the narrow gage mines with timber, as well as receive logs from the narrow gage logging camps! Let the fun begin! Let's not wait another 15 years! :(

the telephones are in!

The installation of wired telephones for communications between the dispatcher and all the main yards and OS points is now completed. I guess it took about 20 hours. The most difficult part was reading and understand the manuals that came with the PBX and the phones. I was finally able to reset the addresses of the phones so that a single digit press will give you any of the 7 "phone booths" on the layout.

It ends up to be pretty simple. The PBX is a box with 8 sockets for phone lines (about $70). The phones are simple AT&T "Trimline" push-button phones (about $14 apiece new). I put the PBX in the middle of the room underneath the Everett peninsula, and then ran telephone cables underneath the floor in every direction (easy to do, since the floor is covered with sectional foam squares that are easy to pull up.). The phones are mounted to short pieces of 4" wide 3/8" plywood attached to L brackets behind the front fascia in the best spots for them. It will be fun to see how this improves future operating sessions. I suspect it will. Here are some photos:

The PBX box with all the phone cables plugged in:

A typical installation, this one at Argo Yard at the approach to South Staging (note the rotary switch for setting which track in the staging yard you are going into or out of):

A close-up of the directory of phone numbers:

And, finally, shots of the mounting setups, at Stacy, followed by two views of the phone serving both Skykomish (East Staging) on the upper level, and the Shoreline between Ballard and Mukilteo on the lower level:

quick pan pastel weathering for black cars & locos

(1) As a teenager growing up in Providence, RI in the late '60's, I saw many Penn Central locos that were all kinds of grimy black and dirty looking. (2) Now, I am modeling the BN in the Seattle area in the early 70's, far away from the Penn Central's territory, and need to stay focused on that. (3) The way retailing has evolved, if you don't grab something as soon as you hear about it, it's gone - regardless of if you won't need it for many years, if ever.

In other words, Rapido just came out with a super cool Penn Central black RS-11, and Bowser came out with my favorite short ore cars in PC black, and so I had to have some. But shiny black didn't look right, so one day Tim Taylor was over here and in about 2 hours he used just 3 shades of Pan Pastels to weather 8 ore jennies, and the next day I spent about 30 minutes on the RS-11, and now they both look great! Photos below, and here's a video of them all in action. It's amazing how easy and quick it is, and how good it looks!