Man Down

Last annual checkup the doc let me know that I was herniated. Yay me. So a week ago last Monday I went and had it fixed. For the last week and a half I've been recovering from that, and let me tell you it's no fun. I was convinced for the first couple of days at least that it would have been less painful to keep the hernia. It's getting better now, but it is going to be a few more days yet before I'm ready to go back to work.

So what have I been doing in the meantime you may ask?

First, I finished the second of my Nn3 T-TRAK modules. The trackwork had been finished and bulletproofed and the dock itself was built, what it needed was scenery. I had gotten the basic mountain done and I had built the shack, but it needed trees and finish work. The outhouse, trees, shrubbery, talus and people were all installed and then the module was cleaned and finished. I think it turned out really good.

The railings and dock workers were the finishing touches that the module really needed. Now I have two corners and a pair of singles with the Nn3 curving off to the back that will finish the narrow gauge loop to complete and then perhaps the whole collection can be taken to a show or two.

I also got some building done on my narrow gauge rail cars. I had purchased a bunch of them in anticipation of the closing of Republic Locomotive Works; Marshall (the owner) had expressed an intent to retire at the end of 2019 but apparently everyone else decided it was time to put in an order at the same time I did. He ended up having a great year and decided to hang around for a while. That is a good thing, but that meant I had a bunch of rail cars to build before I can put in another order (the East Broad Top had a lot of hoppers).

 The above picture is the fruit of my labors in that respect. Along with my regular order I got a bunch of stuff that I didn't order, mostly defective castings that I suspect came from the scrap bin at RLW that Marshall was throwing in with the orders to clean out his bins and also to give his customers some scratchbuilding materials. So along with the boxcars, hoppers, flat car and caboose that I did order I got a couple of boxcars that I didn't order that just needed some holes filled and truck bolsters rebuilt, and I also got a tank that I decided to put on a flat car.

The East Broad Top did have such a tank car, built out of flat car 116. As has become standard for my building style this is not an exact copy of that prototype, but it captures the flavor of the original. Since this photo was taken the tank has been painted silver and the car has been decaled so it looks a lot better in my opinion. It is a welcome addition to my fleet. The flat cars aren't prototype for the EBT either, but...yeah, close enough.

Then I decaled the whole lot, starting with the caboose. I already had 28 so I turned this one to 27. I finished the flat car and the tank car, then I did three of the five boxcars before finally calling it a day. I finished the other two box cars the next day, and now I can concentrate on the hoppers.

My medical vacation will be finishing up soon, I hope, but before I have to go back to work I'm hoping to finish up the coal hoppers I have in the build and then decal some of the ones I already have built for the rock trade. There are ten of those, some are fully decaled, some are partially decaled, and some are not decaled at all. The decals available from RLW do not have the labels for the rock cars, but fortunately the Friends of the East Broad Top sell some in the company store that do. I just got in a few decal sets from the FEBT, so I'll be able to finish up the ROCK decals now.

As for coal hoppers, I have six on the work table right now. The RLW hopper kits consist of a top cast in resin and a bottom frame with attached dumps in white metal. Of the six, three have had their resin tops sanded and fitted to the white metal bottoms with end platforms built and three more sanded and fitted to the bottoms with the end platforms left to build. I also have three more that are still in their package and three more on the way. I should have enough trucks and couplers for the first six but since I have more boxcars than I had planned it's probably about time to take inventory and order some more trucks and couplers. I also need to buy some brake cylinders to fit to the end platforms, something that I overlooked when I put in my initial order.

That should keep me busy until I get back to work.

Up And Running

I think I have the trackwork all squared away on my T-TRAK modules.

I built a standard T-TRAK end cap (180 degree curve) so that I could make a complete oval with both standard and narrow gauge tracks. I hooked everything together...or I tried to at least. I ran into troubles right away.

First I had trouble connecting the narrow gauge track. Aligning two tracks on standard T-TRAK modules is not so bad, get a double crossing track or a piece of double track with 33mm spacing and check it on each end, easy peasy. However, when you add a narrow gauge track at a higher elevation and setback you really have to pay attention to details because everything has to align in all three dimensions. If not, connecting the modules is troublesome when it's not downright impossible. And of course this was the case, I had some modules that would connect straight away with each other in one configuration but went from difficult to impossible with others or in a different configuration.

So, I had to spend some quality time with the template and shims to get everything at the exact height and depth. I had several end pieces that had the narrow gauge track either higher or lower than the others so they had to be carefully aligned, in some instances the end had to be shaved away to lower the track and in other cases it had to be shimmed higher. I also had to adjust a few tracks end to end to make sure the 2mm spacing between modules was consistent through the depth of the modules in every configuration.

I finally got everything straight, and I checked each module by connecting it at each end with every other module. Every module will connect in various configurations (really there are only about twelve possible connections since two of the modules have curved narrow gauge track and straight standard gauge and will only connect to each other in one specific combination) so it should all be good now. And then I ran trains...or attempted to...and found other issues to deal with.

First I had power delivery issues. I have connected the Tamiya connectors, which is what both Kato and Rokuhan uses on their power connector tracks, to my power packs so that I can connect them easily to the tracks. On some of my modules the wiring was less than stellar, so I had to correct them. I checked all three connections on each module, which took a lot of time but was well worth the effort since I know they are all good now.

With the power delivery gremlins banished I was able to put a train on each track and started running them around. It was then I found tracks not connected correctly, or misaligned, within the modules. So I spent a couple of minutes correcting those issues. Then I had a bad hump on the outer track on Dragon Bridge, so it had to be pulled up, the roadbed leveled off, and the track re-laid. Then I had a narrow gauge hopper consistently derailing...but that ended up being a car issue and not a track issue.

Finally I had everything running smoothly, so I ran some trains for a while.

I did eventually put some cars on the standard gauge locos and ran them without difficulties. I also ran multiple engines and consists just because it was fun. I took this little video* and ran some trains all afternoon. Finally I disassembled the modules and put them away.

Now I just need to get the scenery done on them, and then maybe I can get everything evaluated and approved for running in the shows.

*Thanks to recent You Tube policy changes I have removed all videos from my You Tube channel.

Dragon Falls...An Update

I've been off work for a few days and since Mrs Hades is still in school I've been at home, so I have managed to get a few things done around the house. One of those things is the Dragon Falls module.

The dragon's cave

  A look at the falls from water level

 Overall view

 Some idiot in a barrel

 Closeup of the river

 Another overall view

Rockslide and mountain meadow

I want to do a little ballasting around the base of the tracks to help blend it into the scenery, but overall I think I'm done with this module. I really like the way it turned out.

Now I have to complete the other four modules so I can put them together and run a train or two. I hope it won't take as long as this one has, but I fear that it will unless I run into another situation where I am home with no one to bother me and nothing else to do.

Given the current state of house renovations in progress I think that might take a while.

T-TRAK

I have been building T-TRAK modules with narrow gauge track on them. The latest module is a double straight with bridges. I had planned on going 1.5 inches elevation for the narrow gauge, but I changed it up to 2" (51mm) so that I can run the standard gauge underneath it if I want to, I thought it would work out better.

 I built the base on an open front so that I could dig down into the foam to put in a bridge or two.

 At first I thought about putting in a road crossing, but it just wasn't going to line up with the narrow gauge bridge that I wanted to use. Maybe I'll get a chance to try this again and I'll just build my own grade crossing instead of using the Unitrack crossing.

 So I just decided to go with just bridges. The plan is to put a waterfall in behind the narrow gauge bridge and have the river run under both bridges off the front.

I've been carving foam and casting rocks to put on the mountains, in the pictures the mountains are pretty straight but I've carved some reliefs in and I think the rock work is going to really set it off.

Tomorrow I'm going to take the roughed in modules that I already have done, two outside curves and the straight pictured above, to the club president's house and hopefully get the OK to put them in the shows once they are finished. If I get the OK I need to do two more single straights and then figure out if I want to do inside corners or junctions to connect them up to the rest of the T-TRAK layout.

Future plans are to make a junction so that I can connect these narrow gauge T-TRAK modules to my existing layout. And when that happens more pictures will get posted. At least then I'll have some narrow gauge track put in somewhere.

T-TRAK: The Adventure Begins

I don't remember if I mentioned that I have recently joined the North Raleigh Model Railroad Club. Just this past weekend I attended the Great Train Show at the Raleigh fairgrounds with the club and had an opportunity to debug and run the Model Power Mikado that I had put the DCC decoder in.

Apparently somewhere along the line I had reversed a wheelset, but since the Model Power inexplicably uses axle wipers for pickup power instead of the 4 wheel pickups that are found in the Bachmann Spectrums and Kato Mikados the connectivity was so horrendous that I didn't notice it. This made the loco stall in various spots around the layout and when I cleaned the wheelsets and axle wipers it caused a dead short on the track.

Some quick investigation with a multimeter and the offending wheelset was found and reversed, and the Mikado happily pulled a coal drag around the mountain track all day Saturday. I was hoping to get a decoder put into one of the K4 Pacifics but alas it was not to be, I don't know what is going on with that loco but it is pretty annoying...kind of like the SD7.

At any rate, running on the club layout really gives the locos a chance to stretch out and show their stuff, something they really can't do on the cramped setup I have at home. Unfortunately I really don't have the room here to build N-TRAK modules, but thankfully there is an alternative...T-TRAK!

My plans are to build some T-TRAK modules for show and also maybe for use at home since they are small enough to sit on a table when they are in use and don't take up much storage space when they are not. But of course, me being the glutton for punishment I am, I insist on putting Nn3 on my modules, which as far as I can tell has not been done before.

My intentions are to use Rokuhan Z scale roadbed track 220mm curves at 38mm (1.5 inches) elevation. This puts my Nn3 trackage a little over an inch and a half from the standard gauge and high enough that I can run a spur of standard gauge underneath the narrow gauge if I want to, as long as I don't use tall cars on the spur.

Rokuhan does not have sectional track in the proper lengths to make multiples of 310mm, but fortunately they do have flextrack. This comes in 330mm lengths, so a single piece of flextrack will suffice for each module. I'm planning on soldering the feeders to the track so connections shouldn't be an issue either.

I'm not a big fan of the toylike looks of the Rokuhan turnouts but I'm not planning on having any on these first six modules anyway, and when I do there is always FastTracks. I have several of those to use so I won't have to build any more right away, either. I'm also not a fan of their method of putting power to the track, so I'll be soldering feeders to the rail joiners on the corner modules.

So far I have all the track I need, both the Kato Unitrack and Rokuhan, and I have just ordered all the connectors that will be required. Next is to get the lumber and foam and start building.

Maybe I'll even be able to get this project done.

K4

The Bachmann trucks for the Minitrix K4 have been received and installed.

The slow speed performance is vastly improved, before the locomotive would stall repeatedly unless running at ludicrous speed and even then the headlight would flash like it was sending a message in Morse code. Now as you can see it runs smoothly (albeit noisily) at slow speeds, and I have clocked it at a scale 4mph.

I have a remotor kit on the way, hopefully it will improve the low speed running even further and reduce the noise as well. The remotor kit consists of a RE13 maxon motor (a 7 pole precicion coreless motor with precious metal brushes and commutator and Neodymium rare earth magnets) and a custom built compound gear to replace the single red gear, which should give me smoother operation and better gearing.

The GP7's got a new set of duds as well, they are now sporting Pennsy shells. That means I have a nicely detailed pair of Northern Alberta Railroad shells looking for a new purpose in life.

Additionally I have purchased some Kato Unitrack and some Rokuhan Z scale which will be used to create some T-Trak modules with an elevated Nn3 line. As far as I know this has not yet been done, so it should be a first. It is surprising to me that no one has done it yet, but it should be interesting.

Happy Railroading!