Adding a second deck for the narrow gage - Part 1

 

There's going to be a new narrow gage town on the Burrlington Northern soon! This just shows a mock-up, but there is more to come. The square hole in the backdrop, in the upper right hand corner of the photo, shows the current "end of track" where the narrow gage winds up a helix between some heading ducts. A short stretch of trestles and bridges will get it over to this proposed shelf, made of 1" Gatorboard. At the moment I am mocking up the proposed new upper deck, to see how it will affect lighting on the deck below and other considerations of feasibility and desireability. Here's a photo of it from below:

Of course we will paint the bottom sky blue to increase reflected light on the lower deck, and give it a backdrop, but as you will see in the photos below, thanks to the low angle of the already existing track lights, the effect of this massive shelf on the lower deck is surprisingly minimal. Here's another shot, taken from even higher than my 70" eye level:

This deck, at about 68" above the (slightly sloping) floor, will be visible at eye level to tall people like me, and operable by anyone with a suitable stool. It's an important strategic addition because it gives the narrow gage line "someplace to go" beyond the already exising intermediate towns of Paradise and Hope. In addition to this new town, I also plan to wrap the line around the corner to the left and build a combination staging yard and stock pen(s). There couldn't be a better time to work on this, because in Sept 2022 the National Narrow Gauge Convention will be held in nearby Tacoma and people from around the world might want to come egg me on. Or, maybe I could take one of the removable modules down to the convention for viewing. But, I'm getting ahead of myself...

Here's a final shot (for today) of that further addition mocked up - note how little it interferes with the lower deck lighting. The next step is to finalize the supporting brackets. One of my goals for the project is to have each of these shelves easily removable so we can do most of the modeling at the workbench rather than up that close to the ceiling. Any comments or suggestions are appreciated! I am really liking the dimensional stability of these 1" Gatorboard panels, but this is the first time I've tried using them for a layout base. Will keep you posted...

Sand Towers at Interbay, Part 3

 Work continues on the Interbay Engine Terminal's sand tower project. Here is an overview from the south looking north, showing that I removed one of the existing tracks and replaced a number 6 switch with a wye switch, in order to make room for a concrete pad to support the sand towers. Dave Enger built the pads out of sheet styrene, which you can see are temporarily in position. The BN mainline is the track to the left of the construction site, with grey ballast and raised above the rest of the yard.

Here is a detail view of the approximate track alignment, showing that we'll have to cut part of the concrete pad to accommodate the curving track

And finally, here is a view from the north looking south, showing that we've added a new turnout to provide a short track for loading sand, oil and water to the various dispensers that will be on the locomotive service pad. I doubt this track was there on the prototype in this exact location, but it's where we have room for it, so there it is. It will be fun to spot cars there during op sessions. Especially since we have a model of Northwest Olivine on the Concrete Branch, which was the source for this high quality locomotive sand, making it one of those rare prototypical on-layout origin/destination pairs.

 

Sand Towers at Interbay, Part 2

 

Here's a better close-up of the Interbay sand towers that we're trying to model. One early design decision we had to make was how far north or south to located them in my condensed HO scale version of the Interbay Engine Terminal. Below are two photos, with the mocked up towers positioned to the right (south) and left (north). We didn't consider going all way to the north, because I wanted to allow room for a short spur for unloading sand cars. More on that in a later post.

Based on these mock-ups, we've decided to locate it to the right, as shown in the upper photo here. Next up will be to install the concrete pavement between the tracks and re-install the track.

The Sanding Towers at Interbay Engine Terminal

 

Here's a view of the (prototype) Interbay Engine Terminal, looking north, about 1995. I don't know when these towers were installed, but let's just assume that we "need" these on my model of the Interbay Engine Terminal. The only thing is, just a few weeks ago we "finally" got around to ballasting the tracks there, and there isn't a space between any of the tracks. You know what this means. Rip up something we just did a month earlier. Love it.

So, we decided there was room to move one track over and create the space for a model of this. Despite the obvious stupidity of this, I'm pretty excited about it. These sand towers are really going to add some excitement to the engine hostler job at Interbay! All I can report today is that Dave Enger is mocking up a scratch-built version of the towers, and I've removed the offending track. See photo below. Stay tuned...

Should we lengthen the siding at Everett's Bayside Yard?

 

The short answer is "no". Here you see the very skeptical Bill Messecar and Dave Enger having a discussion with me about moving the south turnout of Bayside yard from behind Bill's shoulder on the left to underneath Dave's hand on the right. While installing a turnout on the "squid bridge" is not "impossible", the larger question is whether it is "worth it". Fortunately, I build the main curve far enough away from the 6x6 column (which supports two stories of house above it!) to make such an extension possible. But after discussing the pros and cons, we decided that a better thing to do would be to install a working signal at the existing turnout (or even to the right of the squid bridge) to allow the Bayside yardmaster to hold any northbound trains out of the yard until the siding is clear. The siding is used for drilling all tracks in Bayside, so if a switcher needed to back out on the mainline, such a signal could at least provide some additional length for drilling.

I'm not not saying "never", just "not now". We plan to reconsider the decision in the year 2031...

The arrival of Nord Door in Everett

There was a long-standing woodworking company in Everett called E.A. Nord Co. (referred to as "Nord Door" by the locals) which shipped doors and other building supplies to contractors, sometimes by rail. Ray Wheeler told me that they used to spot boxcars there in the early '70's, and I believed him (as I usually do) and thought we should have a model of Nord Door near Bayside Yard in Everett. I mentioned this to Bill Messecar one day and he decided to scratch-build a representation of it for the tiny space I have for it up against a low section of backdrop on the north end of Bayside. The result is a great little removable piece of scenery with two doors to spot boxcars at. You can hear Bill describe how he made it on this brief video on YouTube, and here are a couple of pictures of the finished product:

And here's Bill with proof that it's removable...

 

Paving the Interbay Car Shed, Part 2

 

My first try at using EVA foam to model asphalt pavement between the tracks and rails in HO scale is progressing. As described in the previous post, I decided to try using black as the base color because it would take paint or pan pastels well, and any sort of unintentional blemish would not stand out like a sore thumb, like it does with plaster or other white materials. The one foot squares in the front of the photo are the 2mm thick pieces, for in between the tracks, and in the back is a roll of 1mm thick material, for fitting in between the rails. In truth, for the base layer, any material with about the same thickness as the height of the ties, such as balsa, styrene, cardstock, etc, would work - I just happened to have this material on hand and thought it would be easier to cut (which it was).

The first step was to prepare the surface between the tracks. In most cases it was bare cork ready-to-go, but along the front edges I had to use a putty knife and vacuum cleaner to remove some ballast and ground cover from next to the tracks, as shown below.

Then, I used a white chalk pencil to mark the edges of the 2mm thick black foam sheets, and a rotary knife to cut along the white pencil lines. The result was pieces of foam that fit between the track sections. I used white glue and various weights to glue these to the underlying cork roadbed:

The next layer was 1mm thick pieces to fit in between the rails. Similar process, same glue:

After removing the weights (again!) and testing the flangeways (they worked fine, thanks to the soft nature of the EVA foam), the next question was how to make it look like weathered asphalt instead of jet black foam. I decided to try blotching it with gray pan pastels using a make-up powder sponge. It turned out great!

I left the center part darker because it will be covered up by the car shops, in between the four square spacer blocks you can see glued on the foam. I thought about digging some inspection pits in there, but until I find out more prototype information about the actual building, I'm going to leave those details for a later time.

The last step (for now, anyway) was to pave the gravel areas on each side of the asphalt pavement, true to the prototype. This is the subject of a couple of YouTube videos you can watch, but in short, I applied Woodland Scenics fine grey ballast, leveled it off, cleared the flangeways, and carefully dribbled diluted white glue with an eyedropper to maintain the open flangeways while the glue dried. This also turned out pretty well, as you can see in both the above and below photos, although in retrospect I wish I had used real gravel dust instead of ballast, to get more of a variety of grain sizes in the pavement. It's certainly good enough for now. Here's the "final" product:

One last footnote - I noticed from Google Earth photos that the prototype kept the switchpoints clear of gravel pavement, so I did the same thing here, as you can see in the above photos and also below:

So now the car repair facility is paved! Next up will be putting all the equipment back, and possibly painting the building white like the prototype. Stay tuned, and I hope this motivates you to try some of your own paving projects.

Paving the Interbay Car Shed, Part 1

 What's the quickest and easiest and best way to pave the surfaces between the rails and tracks at the Interbay Car Repair Facility, now that I've removed all the locomotives and cars (which hopefully you already enjoyed in this quick video short on YouTube)? Here's an aerial shot of the whole area to be paved, which you can see is pretty large:

In the past, for paving streets, I've used (1) "lightweight spackle", (2) plaster, (3) sheet styrene, and (4) sanded grout. Here is my experience with each:

(1) I painted the lightweight spackle a gray acrylic, which looks ok, although a bit uniform for my taste, but I find it's easy to accidently gouge it with your fingernails or with a track cleaning tool, and then the white spackle shows through. I suppose I could make it less uniform with washes and pan pastels. The same is true for all the other methods, too.

(2) Plaster has the same gouging issue, and also can crack over time. I suppose you could add dye to it and make it the pavement color throughout, but again it would be too uniform in color. And I'm looking for something quick and easy, not a plaster dyeing project.

(3) Sheet styrene is durable, paintable, easy to scribe cracks into, and not subject to changes over time. But, it takes a lot of work to cut each piece to fit. It's not quick and easy.

(4) Recently, we've been trying sanded grout, in various shades of gray. You can putty it on like plaster, and it dries rock hard. Rock hard. You can't gouge it with anything other than tool steel - it's reconstituted rock, once it sets. So getting it out of the flangeways of the track, and below the railhead, is important if you want reliable operations with DCC. We did this while it was setting, but when I came back the next day it seemed to have slightly expanded in the final stages of setting. It was a real job getting the rails clean enough to have reliable electrical contact. The surface looks pretty good, although a little shiny for my taste, and I may need to go over it again with some pan pastels one day. Also, if you don't use pre-mixed grout, you have to get the proportions of water and dry grout just right, or the thing will not set up right. I suppose you could dribble the diluted fixative of your choice on it afterwards. This isn't sounding quick and easy either.

So, I'm game to try something new. Above you see a sample of a product that's easy to cut, glue, paint and weather. It's called "PVC foam", and I heard about it from Al Frasch and some other online NMRAx clinics. It's denser than regular "foam rubber", but it cuts easily with a knife and comes in thicknesses down to 1mm. This is good, because the height of my code 70 rail is .070 inches which equates to 1.8mm. (code 83 is about 2.1mm and code 55 is about 1.4mm). But the stuff you can buy in a regular craft store is usually just the 2mm thickness. 2mm would work fine for areas of code 83 rail, but in this case I need it to be a little less, so I ordered some 1mm foam online in order to try it. I don't really want the foam (or anything else) sticking up above the railheads, so stay tuned for the experiment. Al is using 2mm foam for pavement on his N scale layout, on the code 75 Atlas track, which should be about perfect. He claims that the loco wheels push the foam down and he has no problems with it. I might try an experiment with the 2mm foam, but first I want to try the 1mm foam and see how it works.

The other thing is how to color it. I could spray paint the whole sheet with a gray primer, but then would it curl up over time, or be hard to glue evenly? What you see above is that I tried a couple of shades of pan pastel on it, and I'd say it looks great. I can just glue it down black, and come back and create a realistic uneven gray using several shades of pan pastel.

Above, you see a single piece of 1mm PVC foam cut to fit the entire area. I should be able to cut it in strips with an Xacto knife without to much effort, and glue it down with white glue and some weights.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves - the areas between the tracks need to be raised up to the height of the ties first. We'll get to that in my next post. So much for quick and easy, huh?

Laying track and switches at Interbay Car Shop's north end ladder

Here's a view of the north end of the Interbay Car Repair Facility in Seattle on my HO scale Burrlington Northern model railroad, set in 1973, which is probably around the time that they built this modern three-bay car shop. The prototype facility has a ladder on both sides, but for many years I was satisfied with the tracks simply coming into the building from some switches on the other side and stub-ending on this side, as you can see in this photo, underneath the new Micro-Engineering switches that I've laid out on top of them. 

For the last week, I've been working on installing these three switches. You can watch a YouTube live stream where I describe rail-filing and rail joiners at this link. For the rest of this post, I'll just show some more still photos of the progress so far. Here's an aerial photo of the area on my layout, which more clearly shows the existing straight tracks and my desired layout of switches to connect them.

The first step was to remove the existing track, as needed. This was relatively easy, because I use liquid latex to glue down my track, so I can generally just reach underneath with a putty knife, as shown here, and lift the tracks up if I need to relocate them, such as I need to here.

Unfortunately, I had already ballasted the lead to this ladder, so I needed to wet down the ballast (held in place by water-soluble white glue) in order to cut some of the track and curve some of it.

But, I'm happy to say, wetting down the old section of ballasted track and curving it slightly to the right worked fine, as you can see in the next photo:

The next step was to carefully align the track, hold it with push pins, and apply drops of liquid latex (diluted about 3:1 with water), and press the track down with weights as needed for vertical alignment. You can see that the mainline was temporarily out of service while I used it for storing the car repair shed and other tools and supplies.

After eight hours, when the liquid latex was dry, I came back and applied ballast to the area and glued it down with diluted white glue. When that dried, I installed Red Caboose ground throws (#206S has the right amount of throw for these Micro Engineering turnouts), painted their targets to match the opposite push-pin "faux-signals", cleaned the tops of the rails one more time with a bright-boy eraser, and did some final testing. So far so good. Now, if I could just find the craft foam that I bought to pave the tracks in and near the car shed, I would continue on with that phase of construction. Stay tuned. It's got to be here somewhere!

The other thing I need to do is figure out the operating implications of these new switches. Can I use this side of the shed for storing switch engines and, of course, the "big hook"? When cars are repaired, do they come out this side and need to be switched back into the main yard? What do you think?

Our first ops session since Covid

With very little notice, we put together a small operating session on July 5, with a total of 8 vaccinated operators in the room for about 3 hours. Chuck Hakkarinen was visiting the area from his home in CA, and asked me if there were any op sessions going on, so we created one with only 48 hours notice! I was surprised how many people said yes, and how quickly. We are all looking forward to getting back to operating sessions soon. Chuck is the one with the polka-dot hat in the photo below, with Tim Taylor managing the Delta Yard area as usual:

 Jim Betz, from Burlington, WA, ran the GWS south from Bellingham to Seattle, while Lee Marsh managed the Stacy St. yard and Anita Taylor ran several through freights.

Todd VonStup did a great job as Interbay yardmaster, while Dave Enger and I did roving assistance as needed. We were all grateful to Chuck for asking the question!

I took a few handheld cellphone video clips at various times, and consolidated them into a YouTube video that you can watch here. I'm not quite ready to schedule the next op session, but it seems like we're getting closer, if there isn't another Covid spike in August brought on by people refusing to do the right thing and get vaccinated. Come on, people!

Removable scenery and B's Cafe

I'm a big proponent of removable scenery, and have many examples on my layout that are vital to its long-term success. For example, it's great to be able to take the top off a mountain if you need to clean the track inside a tunnel. This week, my example is a shelf above the narrow gage staging yard in Everett. I wanted to have a four-track staging yard to store narrow gage trains, but the area above it also needed to represent the Cascade Copper Co. mine, at the end of a narrow gage branchline. If there were derailments inside the staging yard, I needed to be able to get at it, but otherwise the space above it was perfectly good "real estate" ready to be developed. 

After several years of staring at an odd-shaped piece of foam only partially covering the staging yard, I asked my friend Eric Vannice for his thoughts. The next thing you know, he had crafted a detailed piece of scenery designed to fit over the staging yard. Here he is proudly standing next to his masterpiece:

One of the challenges with removing removable scenery is what to grab onto to remove it without damaging the scenery. Eric thought of making a small, vital, solid wood structure, screwed into the base, so you could grab the scenery by the building! Here's a picture of the screw holding the building firmly into the underside of the scenery base:

I won't be able to add a detailed interior to this particular building, but it looks great as it is! My wife and I both have names starting with "B", so this is arguably the obvious choice for this establishment, which will be well patronized by the miners at the nearby Cascade Copper Co. mine. I'll plant some HO scale picnic tables out in front of it and see how fast those hungry miners show up.

You'll also notice (above in the picture with Eric) that the rock molds in the removable scenery match the nearby rocks. Many years ago, when Eric was making the original scenery to the right of this removable piece, he suggested we cast some extra plaster rocks from the same molds we were using "just in case". I kept them in a drawer under the layout all this time, and now here we were with a perfect use for them. It turns out that being a model railroad pack rat sometimes pays off!

Below is a final (for the moment!) shot of this shoehorned piece of real estate next to a locomotive. Another thing that worked out well is placing the building in front of the shadow line. Right where the shadow line is I plan to put a gravel road and a few period vehicles, to further distract the viewer from the shadow of the deck above. Not to mention install some more of those rocks below the track where the locomotive is standing. And a few trees in the back. Perhaps if the trees in the back of the insert are a lighter color, it will dilute the visual effect of the shadow. A model railroad is a never-ending quest!

This blog post inspired me to do a YouTube video about removable scenery, which you can enjoy here.

A little construction progress

 We started slowly back to having "Train Days" on Tuesdays, mostly work parties with breaks for random fun with train running. Tim applied some Automatic Car Identification (ACI) labels to cars and locomotives, to help establish our time frame of about 1973. Above, you can see one of the newly-arrived Athearn Genesis GP-18 locomotives with the ACI label underneath the "F" in "PACIFIC". This locomotive clearly fits in that time frame, having been renumbered for the BN after the merger in 1970, but not having been repainted BN green, which would have happened well before 1977. In this case, we put the ACI labels on both sides of the engine, but with freight cars we're only applying it to one side, in case some day we want to run trains in the eras either before or after the ACI craze.

Dave, on the other hand, has carried out a couple of track and scenery improvements. The first was to lengthen the "Marysville" spur, which we use as a staging track to represent industries in Marysville, just north of, and across the river from, the main yards in Everett. There is no end to the effort that model railroaders will put into adding additional track capacity, and this was no exception. We carved up a perfectly good sloping hill and replaced it with a Chooch retaining wall in order to lengthen the track by about ten inches. Before and after photos shown below:

Along the narrow gage line, there was a curve behind the "Needles" rock outcropping that was bare blue and pink foam, ever since I reworked the grade in that area (5 years ago?) to clear double-stack trains in the standard gage tunnel below. Dave carved Sculptamold to match the cast plaster rocks above, and then colored it with acrylic washes. Then I came in with dirt and scree along the side of the tracks, glueing it down with diluted liquid latex on the ballast and diluted white glue on the scree. Mission accomplished!

Fun with MILW trackage rights on my BN Seattle Region HO layout

You bring the MILW coast train down to Seattle from Bellingham on BN trackage rights, interchanging with BN at Everett and again at Argo in South Seattle, and head into "Tacoma Tideflats" staging. Then you take a MILW switcher and sort out everything you have in Argo yard (including interchanging cars with UP, which also uses Argo). Then you take a cut up to the Pt. Townsend car barge slip near Stacy St. yard and unload/load the car barge, returning to Argo to sort it all out. Then you take any cars up and back from the MILW freight terminal east of Stacy St. yard against the backdrop and the aforementioned auto loading tracks at P90/91 on the west side of Interbay yard, and return to Argo yard again, and make up a cut for the northbound MILW coast train. You then park the switcher for the day, and bring in a northbound MILW coast train from staging (perhaps the same one you started with, which you might have turned and backed into staging earlier). Pick up your northbound cars from Argo, head to Everett, do another interchange move if needed, and run to Bellingham staging. Oh, and did I mention that while switching Argo you do an interchange transfer run to/from the BN at Stacy St. yard? Or that you do all this while staying out of the way of all BN operations? Whew - that's a long (and interesting, in my opinion!) day!!