Amoskeag Northern - Conrail Portland (PRO&C) Line Engineering Thread

[DKS]

I am appreciative of DKS and his banging out plans for me. I've built them all pretty much to a point, and had to take them down for whatever reasons, but he's done them all without a hit of complaint that he is...yet again...drawing me another plan.

I would never complain, especially as I see the appreciation of my efforts realized in actual construction--even if it's aborted or sold or whatever. Plus, I look at each new plan as an opportunity to learn and grow and improve, not just in track planning (I'm still learning ops), but in understanding the builder's desires and intents. There's one fellow for whom I've designed roughly two dozen different plans--over 60 renderings counting revisions--and he's only ever made a halfhearted attempt to start one of them; I'm not inclined to do much more work for him. I've also done bushels of one-offs for noobs who were clueless to start and even more clueless when presented with what they claimed they'd wanted ("be careful what you wish for"); their discards become fodder for others who may have better intentions. But for folks like Ian, I'll keep cranking them out as long as there is genuine interest.

As another example, I've put a lot of effort into two different versions of Leggy's ambitious Australian mining railroad:

https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=30522.msg336216#msg336216

https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=30522.msg337619#msg337619

and I'd do another one in a heartbeat.

[Ian MacMillan]

I would never complain, especially as I see the appreciation of my efforts realized in actual construction--even if it's aborted or sold or whatever. ..

This is good to hear.  I'll have some modifications for you in a week or so!

Are you really selling that old layout Ian?

It had been up about 8 months ago. Like we talked about earlier Its just an odd size for a lot of people who don't have the basement space. It is 30"x16' so it wont fit into about any spare room or apt out there. You'd have to build an L module for most people to make it work. I have started pulling stuff off of it to use on this layout, and some buildings I may sell off cheap as they have not purpose on the new one.

The plan from DKS was great, but the execution of it was equally impressive.   This was a great shot of many
And all these were some of the first pictures that got me hooked onto Railwire. 
I have always enjoyed your construction progress pics and I see no reason why the new project will be any different.   Thanks for taking us all along for the ride!

Mike

Mike, this is humbling to hear. I'm glad that those photos got you hooked onto TRW. We have quite a collection of amazing modelers here. My personal goal is to push scenery and overall presentation of N scale, and I'm trying to do it better and better with each layout.

Wish you lived closer, I'd be (and am) interested. 

Freight shipping available!

[Ian MacMillan]

A change in my schedule this week due to training resulted in me having the entire day off today, and with the other half at work, I was able to get some work done on the layout and put aside working on the rest of the basement for once!

Getting more base foam down I started working on the Bearcamp River crossing in West Ossipee. I don't have the central valley truss bridges in yet, so for now I am using spare tile as a place holder. I also used some spare tile for the Route 25 bridge so I can get a feel of things.



I also was started putting up the lower and upper fascias so that I could get the upper fascia ready for the LED lighting strips. I clamped one of the lighting strings up to see how it would look and I like it so far. I am planning on adding an additional strip towards the backdrop and then get the diffusers installed. The lighting with one strip is plenty even, but I plan to add the diffusers to hide whats behind the fascia.



I also started mocking out the CR / NHN junction with the NHN's Conway Branch. I decided to make a modification to the DKS plan and swapped the positions of the CR line and NHN line. I moved the CR line to the front and the NHN line to the back. Since the NHN line is a branch line I could tighten the radius so I could move the junction to the east more so that it fit the real geography better. This also allowed me to move the intersection of 16 and 25 so I could more accurately model the buildings located at that intersection.





Now I need to get more foam and roadbed so I can get this part of the mainline down, then start on the helix to staging.

[basementcalling]

Coming along nicely. Illuminating, even.    What strip is that you are using for lighting? LED I assume?

[Ian MacMillan]

Sunny white LED strips. 16 meters. $15 shipped from a US ebay seller.

[mcjaco]

Ugh, the old layout would fit perfectly along my one wall......

Love the updates on the new one.  I keep looking at the LED strips.  And waiting for them to drop in price.

[Philip H]

  $15 for 16 METERS of LED strip?    How much lower do you want the price to go????????   

[C855B]

  $15 for 16 METERS of LED strip?    How much lower do you want the price to go????????   

[serious thread drift... sorry, Ian...]

Yeah. That. No kidding.

My biggest problem with the bargain LED strips is they're unrated, and most of the time are one-time-only surplus lot purchases. If you can afford to get all you need in a single buy and the product works for your purposes, that's great. If not, it's money wasted, what are you going to do with it all now?

One of the unanticipated costs of building a very large layout - or any other large, long-term project - is the challenge of incremental purchasing. In the current consumer market so much is made in a single ginormous manufacturing run, never to be made again. There are so many things that if you don't get all you need, today, right now, you won't be able to match it in the future, and, in my case, then have to do the design and engineering all over again to match the currently-available product. Very frustrating.

Anyway, that is why I am intentionally designing away from the LED strips since there is so much product variance unless you pay big-$$$ for commercial-market product like that available from superbrightleds.com.

[/serious thread drift... sorry, Ian...]

[mcjaco]

  $15 for 16 METERS of LED strip?    How much lower do you want the price to go????????   

Did I say anything about the price he got being bad?

I'm looking at them at places like Menards and Lowes, and they're too expensive there. 

Chill out.

[Chris333]

Ian, are those strips the brighter 5050 LEDs?

Do they take something more than a 12V wall pack to power them?

[Scottl]

I'm still trying to get past someone here using "meters".  There is hope yet, now we just need to introduce the unit Celsius 

[packers#1]

I'm still trying to get past someone here using "meters".  There is hope yet, now we just need to introduce the unit Celsius 

  but what else would we learn for the first month in engineering class if we swap to metric? 

[Philip H]

I'm still trying to get past someone here using "meters".  There is hope yet, now we just need to introduce the unit Celsius 

Being a professional scientist, I've been "multi-lingual" for over a decade. 

[DKS]

but what else would we learn for the first month in engineering class if we swap to metric?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

The primary cause of this discrepancy was that one piece of ground software produced results in an Imperial unit, while a second system that used those results expected them to be in metric units. Software that calculated the total impulse produced by thruster firings calculated results in pound-seconds. The trajectory calculation used these results to correct the predicted position of the spacecraft for the effects of thruster firings. This software expected its inputs to be in Newton-seconds.

[Scottl]

LOL.  NASA needs more bilingual engineers 

This is serious thread drift, even by TRW standards.