Weekend Update 3/21/2010

[jsoflo]

No modeling for me, I am still waiting on a few more supplies. Setting up a fully functioning work bench has been more time-consuming than expected. But I did get a behind the scenes tour of the Tradewinds & Atlantic Railroad, a 1-1/2″ per foot layout in Coconut Creek, Florida. The math works out to eleven times bigger than HO. The track gauge is 7-1/2″. Talk about scale modeling! The trucks, couplers, wheels, and track are amazing!  They have 2600' of main line and a nice yard. This weekend alone more than 2000 public passengers hit the rails. They operate for the public one weekend a month.

A few random pictures from their site. I didn't take my camera!




Was Caboose Mikey there? I have been meaning to get over there for a year, or more, always end up being busy, busy. busy....

Shawn

[tom mann]

nice John...did you end up getting a wet saw?  Cause if you did, I may want to borrow it...

[John]

nice John...did you end up getting a wet saw?  Cause if you did, I may want to borrow it...

I did .. 89 bucks at lowes after the 10% military discount .. home despot wanted 40 to rent one .. and i figured i would need it again ..

[shawnleon]

Was Caboose Mikey there? I have been meaning to get over there for a year, or more, always end up being busy, busy. busy....

jsoflo, Caboose Mike was there running the station. Friendly, welcoming guy! I didn't even know about this railroad and I only live 30 minutes north. Guess it was the wrong scale to come up in my Google searches. Met a member of their club at a hobby shop yesterday afternoon. You nearby as well?

[Dave V]

I posted all my recent work on Enola over in its dedicated thread.

I've also been working with the new airbrush.



The tank car still needs some oil spills down the dome and sides:



I'm really liking my foobie Trainman CR cabin.

[jsoflo]

Was Caboose Mikey there? I have been meaning to get over there for a year, or more, always end up being busy, busy. busy....

jsoflo, Caboose Mike was there running the station. Friendly, welcoming guy! I didn't even know about this railroad and I only live 30 minutes north. Guess it was the wrong scale to come up in my Google searches. Met a member of their club at a hobby shop yesterday afternoon. You nearby as well?

I'm about 45-60 minutes south, Mike is a member of the FEC-N-trak group and just the nicest guy, my kids adore him. A bunch of the FEC-N guys are big at the ATW, Tom, Jay, several others as well, a real good bunch. Based on your location you may want to check out FEC N-trak, the convention in the fall is in Ft. Pierce this year which should be right in your neck of the woods, a fun layout when everyone is there, a great ops session and probably an on-site tour of Ft. Pierce yard and maybe some other cool stuff,
my best,
Jan

[wm3798]

Bruce, great looking layout and a fun ops session.  I think the WM lends itself to really good model railroad ops due the variety of traffic it handled.  Love the split personality between the Appalachian coal hauler and the mid-Atlantic bridge route...

Do you have a track plan posted somewhere?  Oh, and directions to your house?

This week I got a little too deep into too many projects.  I decided that before I put too much more effort into the Ridgeley yard, I needed to wrap up what I started with Elkins.  So, I added the last turnout I needed to add, and built the last slide switch actuator.  Then I unbuttoned it from the wall, and took the whole mess out into the garage to do the electrical work.



As such, the underside of the hollow core door donated by Mr. Foxx now looks like swiss cheese.  I still have to pull the black wire in and hook it up, but for all intents and purposes, it's ready for action.

so, once all the drops were wired, I flipped it over and applied some paint to the track.  I used my usual blend of oxide red, equipment gray, and flat black, alternating mists and angles to get a reasonably good weathering pattern.



I went back over it with some black to tone down the section that looks too red.  Then I borrowed one of my decoder patients (Thanks, Dave Balderston!... I'll be getting these done this week!) to get a perspective shot of the painted track...



This week I'll be working on ballasting and some minor landscaping.  I also want to run some leads for structure and exterior lighting.

Lee

[Mark5]

Some inspiring stuff here.

Only thing I managed this week aside from the BLMA 4000 acquisition was to add 34 undec open hoppers of multiple styles to my fleet. ;D

Was playing around with various trucks on Atlas 100 ton hoppers - wanted to try the Atlas 100 ton truck on it with the low slung coupler box (from the Trainman 4750) but I could'nt find my Trainman 4750 ... I even tried the new BLMA 100 ton trucks under it but they lowered the car too much lol. ;D

The goal is to get a 100 ton Roller Bearing truck under it so that leaves me with basically one option - if they'll work (Atlas currently ships these with 70 ton RBs*)

Mark

(these cars were tooled in the 70s, back then nobody even made roller bearing trucks!)

[seusscaboose]

playing around with the new camera (finally)

[Bruce Bird]

Bruce, great looking layout and a fun ops session.  I think the WM lends itself to really good model railroad ops due the variety of traffic it handled.  Love the split personality between the Appalachian coal hauler and the mid-Atlantic bridge route...

Do you have a track plan posted somewhere?  Oh, and directions to your house?

Hmmm.....Directions.  Just get on the NS and head west to Decatur.

Op sessions are always fun, and if you've ever been lucky enough to be the host you know what happens.  You get feedback from your operators on what to change and what to add to make it easier, faster, more organized, better designed, etc.  And all of that is well and good, but you also want to have something that is a challenge.  I found out that I need to do a little more work on my car cards and that my 16 track staging yard is not big enough and too crowded.  I also need to pre-block the cars at Hagerstown at the beginning of the session to keep the yard fluid and my yardmasters from going on strike!  I was very pleased with the helper operation.  The operator was very good and shoving and he only had one minor derailment pushing AJ-1 up to Deal (that's a long, curvy way!).  But I had him covering both pusher districts (separate power sets) and there were some delays in getting trains pushed.  Mechanically I need to add another radio receiver, more loconet jacks, and probably another booster.  And about 20 more locomotives wouldn't hurt! 

Bruce

[Philip H]

Better late then never . . . .
I bought a bag of 10 3 inch tall "pine" trees off eBay a couple of weeks ago.  Thease are the Chinese ones that cost $0.99 per bag with $4.95 shipping.

They arrived Friday


After unpacking  them you have to open up the branches - which are twisted wire with clump fliage glued on.

Not bad looking - but I need to fill in the wire trunck with something:



I also got some painting done for the refinery complex - my storage tanks are no longer white plastic - they have nice silver sheen now.  Just need to add some yellow safety strips, and start gluing them down to the base.

[shawnleon]

I'm about 45-60 minutes south, Mike is a member of the FEC-N-trak group and just the nicest guy, my kids adore him. A bunch of the FEC-N guys are big at the ATW, Tom, Jay, several others as well, a real good bunch. Based on your location you may want to check out FEC N-trak, the convention in the fall is in Ft. Pierce this year which should be right in your neck of the woods, a fun layout when everyone is there, a great ops session and probably an on-site tour of Ft. Pierce yard and maybe some other cool stuff,
my best,
Jan

Jan, wish I had known about Mike being a member of the FEC-N-trak group. I had a false start with them years ago when I arrived in South Florida. Got caught up with school. And know I am holding off because I would like to relocate to the Atlanta, GA area. But it the convention might be enough to draw me in!

[jsoflo]

Shawnleon,
Unfortunately it is my humble opinion that FEC N-trak is winding down a bit, jobs, members moving on, dissipating energy, so the story goes, we'll see what it has left, but nonetheless, that may work even better for you at Ft. Pierce: just sign up, no need to build or bring modules, bring some FEC or freight or come empty handed and borrow one of the club locos and a freight and you could run an ops session for sure, its a lot of fun. I am not sure if the club will be running a Cocoa Beach library session this July but that is usually a fun one also. I know its on the books, but just have to wait and see...

As for Mikey, he is just a bottomless pit of very interesting stuff and the most cordial guy! They call him "Caboose Mikey" because he owns a caboose that the FEC transported to his property for him (we usually include this feature in one of the locals during ops sessions to transport and drop off Mike's caboose). I'm told by reliable sources (forgot to ask him myself) that he also owns an old FEC passenger car that we saw during the tour of Hialeah yard 2 years ago but they have not found a way to get it transported up to his property and lifted off the tracks yet..

Jay K., who is one of the officers in the FEC society lives up your way in Jupiter and often attends the ATW events with his family, really excellent guy as well, I don't know if you met him or not. And Tom, the president of FEC-N-trak, and a real hard-working dedicated FEC fan from Melbourne is usually there also, also a really decent guy.

Always good to see fellow basementless South Floridians around,
my best,
Jan