N scale demolition

The Covid-induced staying at home creates a lot of stress as well as opportunity to work on trains. In my case, I wanted to stay upstairs as much as possible to "help around the house," but I also noticed the N scale layout in our living room that has been begging to be worked on for decades. Having been inspired by (1) Mark Dance's amazing N scale pulp and paper mill, and (2) the Nucor steel mill in West Seattle that we toured last summer, I decided to create additional developable land on the N scale layout. This meant demolishing some ancient plaster-on-cardboard strips scenery and installing new pieces of (hopefully level) plywood sub-roadbed. What follows are some photos of the demolition.

This is a partial shot of demolition of the southwest corner of the layout, south of the main Seattle yard, in preparation for adding a shelf to house, among other things, some tracks to represent the Nucor steel mill in West Seattle.

And here's the shelf in place temporarily before final roadbed and track in that area.

Here are two shots of a huge hole in the old scenery, created with a loud and dusty application of a Dremel reciprocating tool, kind of like a miniature "Sawzall". You can see the resulting debris on the tracks below.

Before long there should be sufficient real estate available to build a convincing pulp and paper mill. Looking forward to it! Where would we be without saber saws and plywood?

operating session #24

The 24th operating session on the Burrlington Northern was held on March 13, 2020. Some video clips of the action are posted on YouTube here. We had been planning to host two full-day sessions that weekend as part of the bi-annual "SoundRails" event, but it was cancelled a week earlier due to Covid-19 virus concerns. However, three of the SoundRails travelers from out of town arrived anyway, so we gathered a few other local folks and had a small (10 person) op session anyway (thanks to Bill Sornsin for arranging this!).

Dirk Warwell, here from Germany for the second time in two years, worked the Everett/Bayside yardmaster job, while David Doiron from Phoenix was the Stacy St. yardmaster and David Cook and Dave Enger split the Interbay/Balmer yardmaster duties. Gordon Bliss from Houston worked locals all day, Tim Taylor ran Delta yard, Jim Betz from Burlington ran (appropriately) the Burlington yard, and Lee Marsh and Don Miholovich handled all the mainline traffic. Andy Dupree held down the fort as our dispatcher while I paced around looking quasi-managerial.

There were a number of improvements since the previous op sessions in December, all of which tested out fine (and most are covered in previous blog posts). The new phones were used frequently for communicating between yardmasters and between crews and the dispatcher, which cut down on congestion in the aisles. I had recently worked up a revised master train lineup, which reduced the total number of trains and modified the schedules so that the traffic flow in and out of the staging yards and between the operating yards was more even and predictable. The dispatcher's desk now included a laptop with crude JMRI panels, giving Andy the ability to line key switches for mainline moves. The locomotives had all been re-programmed to a maximum speed of 30mph, and lightly weathered, which gave all of us more time for railfanning between stations. And finally, for the first time, the Woodinville local was able to run correctly by starting in Everett and running to Woodinville and back, instead of the other way around.

The diagram below shows how we adapted to having fewer than normal operators for the session. The stations marked with an X we didn't staff or run, we just pretended they weren't there and/or ran through them. It seems that as long as we have at least a couple of yardmasters at work, we can have a good session.

Here are a few more photos of the action:

Andy hard at work at the dispatcher's desk

One of the new Walthers Proto switchers shoving one of my favorite shorty tank cars.

Dirk said that the momentum and braking settings on it were "perfect"!

Here you can see the advantage of 4-foot aisles.

And here you can see everyone practicing "social distancing"

And finally, David Doiron brought us a gift of this new 1 1/2 door boxcar he painted and lettered for his home road in Phoenix, called the "Lost Duchman". We put it in service right away, seen here headed south, passing through Interbay/Balmer yard. A real beauty!

new uncoupling pick holders

How's this for an arcane topic?: When you're at an operating session and need to uncouple a car, the last thing you need is to run around creation looking for an uncoupling pick. But the darn things are six inches long, so you don't really want them loose on the layout surface, or sticking up from car card boxes into the view of the layout. The solution (I think I read about it in one of the recent OPSIG issues of "The Dispatcher's Office" magazine) is a small tube with a fixed bottom, mounted to the layout low enough on the fascia that the picks inside won't stick up into the view of the layout. I was so excited about the upcoming operating sessions here as part of "SoundRails 2020" (cancelled now due to Coronavirus, oh, well) that I bit the bullet yesterday and built some and installed them on the layout. Will look forward to putting them to the test.

They're easy to build. I took some Evergreen Styrene 1/2" tube stock ($3.70), used a mitre box to cut them into equal lengths of about 3 1/2", cemented a piece of flat styrene on one end, trimmed it flush with a disc sander (carefully so as not to melt the plastic!), drilled a large hole in one side opposite a smaller hole in the other, and then attached them to the layout fascia with some #6 screws. (About two hours total for 8 holders, for a total cost of between 46 cents and 46 dollars, per holder, depending on what you consider the value of my time.) The important thing was mounting them low enough that the uncoupling picks don't stick up above the top of the layout fascia.

The question of "what's the best tool for uncoupling HO cars" is a good one. First of all is the debate about whether to use magnets (either fixed or movable or electromagnetic) between the rails or below the ties, in places where uncoupling is frequent, or whether uncoupling by hand is "more realistic" since that's the way railroaders do it in the field. A matter of personal preference (and the patience to install fixed uncouplers on your layout). Then, if you decide to uncouple by hand, what tool to use? I was happily using barbecue skewers like everyone else, until someplace I saw someone using a dental flossing brush, which seemed to work better - so I went out and bought a few dozen of them, drilled holes in the sides of my car card boxes to hold them in, and tried them out for a few op sessions. I liked the ergonomic feel of them in my fingers. But I noticed most people still liked using wooden picks, so I also made those available, and people would store them in the car card boxes, sticking up above the height of the layout and snagging on arms, clothes, etc.

Recently, I've noticed that the very slippery graphite surface of a sharp pencil makes a pretty good uncoupling tool, too. But one disadvantage of it is that the larger width of the pencil makes it more likely that you will damage car end details on your way down to reach the couplers, as you can see happening in the photo below (to the great concern of the conductor):

Some have said that if you put a flat chisel edge on the tip of the pick, a quick twist will improve its effectiveness during uncoupling. (Rix also makes a plastic tool like this, small enough for N scale) I'll try this, but have nothing to report on it so far. So, for the moment, we are sticking with good old barbecue skewers, and they now have a home at eight locations around the railroad. I thought about painting the holders green to match the fascia, but I think the visibility of the unpainted white tube may make them easier to find. You can decide what you think, from the photos below.

As you can see from these pictures, I seem to have issues with other sorts of detritus sticking up above the top of the fascia, but that's another subject for another time. The bottom line is, if you forget to bring a pick to the next op session here, now you won't have to look far for one!