Decoder install

The new Blue and Gray diesels cannot go into service until they have DCC decoders installed. So this weekend I did an installation on the FB-2 unit and filmed and video'ed the process.

Installing a DCC non-sound decoder in an O scale diesel "B" is about as easy as it gets, this side of 'plug and play.' There are no lights or sound to hook up and there is plenty of room to do so in the wide-body.

Here we're ready to start, the body's off the chassis of the Weaver diesel and the decoder, a Lenz LE1835W, is at hand.



The LE1835W is an HO decoder, albeit a robust one with a 1.8 amp continuous output.

Here the leads from the left and right rails have been snipped at the motor terminals.



The two feeders from the right rail have been joined with a short length of red wire per the DCC color code for the right rail.



The red wire is connected to the red wire from the decoder and both solder joints have been insulated with heat-shrink tubing. Similarly the left rail leads have been attached to a black wire that has been connected to the black wire from the decoder.



The orange and gray leads have been soldered directly onto the motor terminals (orange to terminal 1, gray to terminal 2) and insulated with heat shrink. This could have been a tighter installation but I deliberately left the wires from the decoder full length in case I ever want to replace this decoder and reuse it elsewhere, I'll have long wires to work with. Therefore all of the excess wire along with the function outputs have been dressed with a cable tie. Finally the decoder has been attached to the weight with double stick tape.



Here's the chassis on the layout ready for a test.



Test run:



Here's the full installation video at standard definition (640x480):



Here's the full installation video at HD (1280x720) recommended for faster computers only:

B&O Royal Blue and Gray

After being on my workbench for an embarrassingly long period of time, I am nearing completion of three diesel shells repainted into the B&O "Royal" Blue & Gray scheme. Only two of the shells are shown in this picture. The upper is a Weaver FB-2 and the lower is an Atlas (1970's) F9 (Yes, yes, I know that the B&O had no F9s; but I do and I'm using them until I can get and build some P&D or All Nation F7s. Besides I'd rather practice painting on these units instead of the better ones). Not shown is a Weaver FA-2 which, as of this date, still has only the black roof and the gray band.

I've learned a lot in this, my first attempt to repaint a diesel since I was a sophomore in High School. Foremost among them is that there is no good model paint out there for either B&O Royal Blue or B&O Gray - regardless of the several model paints sold as B&O Royal Blue. I bought B&O Royal Blue in Scalecoat, Floquil Poly S and Badger Modelflex. Poly S has a definite purple tint, while Scalecoat and Modelflex are both too bright(with Scalecoat the darker by about a half shade). I reluctantly used the Scalecoat.

By contrast, the picture below is an actual F7, restored to B&O colors; taken by me at a WV Rails 2010 on June 25. Notice that the blue is a shade or two closer to a Navy blue. It's the same for every picture that I can find on the web, the real locos are darker.



Granted, the model is being photographed under 4000K fluorescents and the real loco is in sunlight; but that should make the real loco a brighter blue. It's possible that the model paint manufacturers have made some assumptions about the layout lighting that their paints will be viewed under and adjusted the color accordingly.

In any event, I did not like the color of any available B&O Blue and I will try to formulate a mix of paints that will suit me better. I'll probably use the Modelfex as a base as it is a standard acrylic and can be mixed with the widest variety of other paints. Poly S is an acrylic too, but I would not know how to downplay it's purplish cast. For the moment, these locos are going into service as is.

It's the same for B&O Gray, except that no model paint manufacturer sells a paint labeled B&O Gray. Most modelers use D&H Gray, but that appeared too dark to me. I had tried nearly every light gray that I could find (that's one of the reasons that this project took so long). I even tried many of the craft paint colors. You'd be surprised at how many color variations are present in gray paint when they are sprayed next to one another on a white card; they are not all gradations of neutral gray. Yellow and brown casts predominate. That's fine if you are painting rocks, but it's not B&O Gray.

A knowledgeable B&O modeler suggested using Floquil primer as the gray color; which is what I did. It appears to be a half shade too light compared to all of the prototype photos that I can find.

The next most important lesson learned is about masking. I followed conventional wisdom and painted from light to dark; in spite of the fact that I had read somewhere (I believe in B&O Modeler magazine) that dark to light is a better way to do this paint scheme. Whoever wrote this was right.

Painting the gray first meant that I had to mask along the upper and lower rivet strips above and below the grills. Try as I might I could not get a perfect seal of the tape along the rivets. If you click on the pictures to enlarge them, you will see that the roof's black and the side's blue seeped under the masking tape onto the rivet strips. These will have to be touched-up.

I think that a better way would be to paint the blue first without masking even if the paint strays onto the grill and/or the nose. Then casually masking off the sides to protect the blue, spray the roof black keeping the black off of the grills and the nose as much as possible but without having to do a perfect job. Finally do the critical masking for the gray. In this case the masking tape will be protecting the black above the top rivet strip and the blue below the lower rivet strip but it will not have to be applied to either rivet strip itself. As an added bonus, the masking for the shallow chevron of gray below the headlight on "A" units will also be easier to apply lying flat and flush on the nose and not applied over the headlight.

The final lesson is about priming. The FB-2 was primed overall with Testor's gray primer and it has better paint adhesion and a darker, less transparent color of blue. The primer was used because the stripped shell was black plastic.

Even though the F9 was completely stripped down to an almost white plastic the paint does not stick as well nor cover as well. I'll camouflage this flaw with weathering this time; but next time I prime before color coating.

BTW Floquil primer (solvent based) is thinner and covers less detail than the Testors.

Microscale decals will finish off the paint job. The Weavers will get DCC decoders and go directly into service. The Atlas will receive a new motor and decoder before entering service.

4th of July Weekend

I did not make as much progress on the layout over the weekend as I would have liked. I did clean things up quite a bit, worked on some models and some wiring. But I did get a chance to make this short video.

I left the camera on auto white balance; I should have set if for high florescent. The two beeps that you hear part way through is me starting the second train via the Lenz cordless-phone based wireless throttle.

Works best with any browser other than Internet Explorer.

Oldie but Goodie???

Here is a project that I am completing after a 20+ year hiatus.



This Main Line Models kit was "old school" when I bought it sometime in the mid eighties. The only pre-formed parts in the kit were the scribed and printed sides and ends, scribed wood for the floor and the end blocks for the body - everything else in the box was stripwood, wire, a few castings - and a single a sheet of instructions.



Even the roof was made up of seven individual pieces of wood; an addendum sheet in the box declared that the former milled roof had been replaced with seven pieces which had to be glued up to form the roof. Then each roof rib had to be measured, cut, formed and glued down; each is made up of three pieces.



The same with the undercarriage. Each piece had to be measured, cut and glued together; center sill, side sills and all of the stringers.



In my initial enthusiasm for assembling this kit I completed the roof and undercarriage, including the painting, the floor, the ends and one side; complete with outside bracing. At that point I estimated that I did not have enough "T" section stripwood to finish the other side; the kit went back in it's box "until I can order more stripwood" and there it languished for over 20 years.

Recently I resolved to finish this kit and I'm almost there. I did, in fact, have enough T-section stripwood to finish; although some other sizes were short. Somewhere along the way all of the grab irons were lost (if they were ever there, I cannot remember); so I have some replacement corner grabs on order which will let me finish the roof walks.

On the remaining work I'm going to cheat a little. Rather than use the couple of brake system castings and wire provided, I'm going to see if I can adapt an Intermountain brake set - all for better appearance, of course. And I'm going to use Intermountain ladders on the car sides and ends instead of the grab irons. Every photo of an OB wooden boxcar from the late steam era that I can find shows ladders instead of grabs. I believe that there was a change in the law at some point.

The Curved Turnout

April's project was a curved turnout for the downhill (eastbound) track on the Cheat River grade. This switch is not shown on the track plan as it is an afterthought conceived as the layout was building. It will lead a track into the area next to the water heater where there will be either a coal prep plant or the Alpha Portland Cement factory. Neither facility actually exists (or existed) on the Cheat River grade; although the cement plant is across the river (approximately opposite the Tray Run Viaduct) on the former M&K subdivision of the B&O.

Was a curved switch necessary in this location? No. But the diverging route of a conventional straight-legged turnout would not have fit smoothly into the 68.5" radius curve of the main track here. I decided on a curved turnout because later on I would need some elsewhere; so it seemed like an opportunity to give it a try.

Construction of the turnout started with a template that I drew in TurboCad. It took some doing to figure out how to draw this in TurboCad. The template shows the gauge lines and the centerlines of the two routes. I constructed and printed turnouts with curved legs ranging from 68.5"/153" to 68.5"/168.5". The latter switch seemed to fit the geometry of the space best and the larger radius was a gentle curve. Surprisingly the frog angle measured out to about a #6.



The template printed out on my Epson 13"x19" printer if I glued two sheets of ledger size paper end-to-end to make an 11"x33" sheet and using custom size on the printer. Staples would have printed it out for $2.98.

Here's the beginning of the turnout with the stock rails in place. (I should have cut, soldered and spiked the frog first, but I got ahead of myself).



Now the frog is in place.



Closure rails, wing rails and guard rails have been added and a truck runs smoothly.



Close-up of the points.



Close-up of the frog, guard rails, wing rails (yeah, yeah the wing rails are different length - doesn't bother me, does it bother you?). After soldering the guard rails in place and filling the gap with solder, I found that I had a Dremel cutter that cut a flangeway to the perfect width and depth; although it threw chips of solder all over the place.



Straps soldered in place, ready to go to the layout.



Here's the initial fitting on the ties and roadbed. I glued the ties on before spiking.



Here's the throwbar and the head blocks. The throwbar was made out of perforated printed circuit board material (perfboard); I know that I had solid PCB material somewhere, in fact, I had found it just a few weeks before; but for the life of me I don't know what I did with the bag of it. The perfboard will need reinforcement. I also made another mistake here, do you notice it? In my haste (enthusiasm?) I forgot to pre-drill a hole through the roadbed for a switch machine. I'll have to use a Caboose Industries manual machine in this location.



Ties finished, ready for spikes.



The critical center section of the turnout spiked down. Note the marks where the gaps will be cut around the frog.



Here are two of the gaps cut and then filled with styrene ACC'd in place and filed to the rail profile. I fill all of my gaps that are for electrical isolation only. In this case I wanted there to be little chance that the gap would shift over time thereby mis-aligning the rails at this critical point.



Finished. All that remains is to solder on power feeders, paint the ties and weather the rail.

Freebies!!

One of the things that I did during my "armchair" modelling phase was collect equipment and other items to eventually build my railroad. Some of the things that I collected were graphics of vintage advertising signs. Most model railroads are devoid of the posters and signs which were quite common in the years before Lady Bird Johnson's campaign to "beautify America" by eliminating outdoor advertising. Ads were plastered and painted on nearly every available surface.

The images that I collected come from various places around the Internet. I have pictures of vintage tin signs, the reproductions that are commonly sold at flea markets, etc. Online vendors also have ads cut out of magazines for sale and, of necessity, they post pictures of them. There are also websites devoted to vintage ads. Oil company memorabilia, maps and ads can also be readily found; all of these contain company logos. Car companies, some of them long gone like Studebaker and Nash, cosmetics (think about the once common Burma Shave roadside ads), food products (e.g. Heinz) and, for those of you old enough to remember, the once-ubiquitous cigarette and beer ads.

These resources are not difficult to find online, just do some creative searching using Google, etc. They are free for the taking (use "Save Picture As" in your browser). Using readily available photo-editing software the images can be manipulated into any type or size of advertising poster or billboard that you may want (for a free image editing program as powerful as Photoshop search online for the freeware program GIMP).

I have found some sites that are real gems which for the moment I'm keeping to myself. However here are some examples of goodies that you can find (click on any picture to get your own copy):

Here is an example of a once-common Smokey the Bear poster.

This was the symbol of the Phone Company before the breakup of Ma Bell.


Are you old enough to remember these once-famous trademarks? Radio Corporation of America (RCA) with it's mascot dog "Nipper" was once a producer of phonographs, radios and televisions. Nipper was hearing "His Master's Voice" emerging from the early phonograph.



Here is an example of a magazine ad which could be turned into a nice billboard by using image editing software.



Schlitz "The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous" was one of the first nationally-distributed beers. Another Schlitz tag line was "When You're Out of Schlitz, You're Out of Beer".

I won't post any cigarette ads for fear that the anti-smoking Nazis will come after me :-).

Work, Work Everywhere

I never really believed or understood until now. That is, I never understood why it took others decades to build a basement-filling model railroad. I had read about the process and procedures for, well, decades. It seemed straightforward enough. Open grid benchwork is simple, you can build several sections in a day, no? Ripping plywood for the subroadbed is only slightly more complicated; and flextrack should go down 1-2-3, right?

No.

Looking back almost three years after starting actual construction of the railroad, I still can't point to a single reason why all of the above is not true. I can point to dozens of reasons. Some of them are my own fault, some are due to circumstances and some of them just are.








The parts of the track plan highlighted in green are what I have accomplished since starting in the spring of 2007. Have I worked on the layout every available moment since the beginning? No. In 2007, part of the straightaway at the bottom was completed in between preparing for a major overseas trip. 2008 was the most productive year, I finished the bottom portion and constructed the first turn and S-curves to the right in a burst of activity from late July through Christmas. 2009 was dismal with only the curve at the lower left completed by Feb. of 2010; although a change of jobs partially accounted for the lack of progress.



Part of the problem resides with me. Reading about how to build a model railroad and actually doing it are two different things. So I work slowly and carefully. The plodding pace of work has been exacerbated by the Lords of Model Railroading offering their sage wisdom in the various magazines about how benchwork and trackwork and couplers must be perfect and woe will befall you if it is not so. Of course, all of these experts are working in the smaller scales where a millimeter of error is more important than it is in O Scale.

I also hate - hate - hate doing things over; I consider it to be the ultimate waste of time and money. As a result I spend more time planning and working slowly.

For all of the time it has taken, my track does seem to be smooth running. All of the equipment that I have run so far shows no wiggles as it passes over track joints, over the bridge and between sections of the benchwork.

Circumstances also contribute to the slow pace of work. The one that I run into most often is that I never have all of the materials at hand to finish a task in one sitting. It seems that no matter how much you plan in advance, you're always short on something.

For example, the weekend that you plan on building the next section of benchwork, neither Home Depot nor Lowes will have a good selection of dimensional lumber. Or after returning from he home center I've run short of one or two bolts to attach the legs.

And what about the O Scale items that you cannot get at the local hobby shop: 2-rail O scale track, roadbed, even rail joiners; if you run short on these, snail mail is your only option.

Then there are the things are involved with building a basement-filling model railroad. For example, there are thousands of parts to fabricate and thousands of operations to perform. Consider the simple task of building raisers for the roadbed, each has two pieces of wood to cut, four holes to drill and two screws and gluing. About ten operations for each one and there are hundreds to be built. Track wiring is similar, hundreds of feeders each having to be cut and soldered. And I haven't even started on scenery and structures.

Am I unhappy about all of this? Yes and No. Yes I am frustrated with the pace of the work and I wish that I had been able to follow John Armstrong's advice to get the mainline into operation early; but the geometry of the track plan and the basement does not allow for that. But no, there is tremendous satisfaction in doing a job and doing it well; and I will not compromise by dong something 'temporary' because they have a way of becoming permanent. I put in temporary bus wiring for the first several sections of benchwork and now I am reluctant to go back and fix it; I'll not repeat that mistake.

Onward.