Santa Fe in China Basin

[CVSNE]

Dave,
Definitely getting there. Nice to see this project after hearing about it on the podcasts.

As far as your laser "tweaks" remember..."The laser has a kerf!"

[railnerd]

It has been a while since the last post, so I thought I'd share an update on my China Basin project.

A few weeks ago, I had a few hours to play with the Epilog laser cutter at TechShop San Jose.  My first attempts at laser cutting after a year or two away from the machine served as an opportunity to re-learn the practical limits of laser board on the heavily used machines.

I tried cutting some of the superstructure and gears, but ended up with parts that were burned and fragile— I had forgotten to consider the thickness of the laser beam itself.



After tweaking the CAD a bit, I increased some of the dimensions, ran a few more cuts, and ended up with a pile of laserboard widgets to play with.  I had to head home, as my two hours of reserved time were over.



After playing with the parts, I had decided that there was no good way to build a "fold-up" model of the gantry crane.  I also had my doubts about the strength of the resulting construction, as this would eventually end up on a Free-moN module.

A few days later, resigned to the concept that I may need to abandon the laser, I started playing with Plastruct parts.





While the model was sturdy, it looked a bit too "beefy" for my taste— as I was starting to consider building the latticework on the front face, I stumbled upon another idea.  I had posted the work in progress to the Model Rail Radio Facebook group, and Jimmy Simmons said it looked good, but he'd stick to his laser.  Then it hit me— why not combine the two techniques.

As part of the earlier laser cutting attempts, I ended up with a few individual pieces that might work:



As a quick hack, I decided to glue up the laser cut faces to the plastic, and the results were quite pleasing to me:



I was psyched— a few weeks of the project sitting on the back shelf inspired me to get back into it.  The next step was to try out the gluing up multiple laser cut parts into the large pulleys used at the top of the gantry:



Some good progress on the difficult bits inspired me to get back to building more pilings, and the test fitting the works on the dock:





All in all, it was a productive Thanksgiving weekend— I hope to make more progress during Christmas break when I'll have more time to devote to the project again.

-Dave

[jagged ben]

Awesome dude. 

[mark dance]

very very cool

md

[Spades]

I was psyched— a few weeks of the project sitting on the back shelf inspired me to get back into it.  The next step was to try out the gluing up multiple laser cut parts into the large pulleys used at the top of the gantry:



Dave

Is this picture (with the gantry and the APL container ship in the background) from the Trackside San Francisco book?  The text looks interesting.  As does your great modelling.

G

[railnerd]

Is this picture (with the gantry and the APL container ship in the background) from the Trackside San Francisco book?  The text looks interesting.  As does your great modelling.

G

Nope, this is the out-of-print Warbonnet magazine I referenced at the beginning of the thread.   The Trackside around SF book is interesting, but really only a few pages of ATSF stuff.  Many many pictures of SP and WP power in the 1960s, and some neat shots of shortlines the north bay. The bulk of the ATSF pictures are around the Richmond yard, which looked like quite the hopping place.

The shot of the China Basin engine house and yard office is a taken from exactly the same angle as the post abandonment photo in the Warbonnet.  There are a few shots of the ferry slip which clearly show nice bright red paint on the water pipes for the fire suppression system, though.

The nice thing is that most of these shots are from the author and had not been previously published.

-Dave

[railnerd]

The next phase of the ferry dock was building the walls along the inside edges of the dock.

In a departure from the plastic construction I had been using to build the trestle sections, I decided to try my hand with using real wood to represent wood.

First, I stained 3/16" hardwood dowels using thinned Vallejo Model Color 70-822 German Black Brown:



After cutting an insane number of pilings, I got out some "dark wood" carpenter's glue (it dries brown instead of yellow) and started to assemble the wall.  Working from photos, I realized that the pilings needed to be spaced apart AND an extra layer of angled timbers were used to tie the wall together:



I really liked the look of the wood, but then I realized the next phase of the problem— I needed to paint the white plastic trestle sections.

As a test, I took the thin section of the dock, and painted it with Games Workshop Chaos Black primer, then began dry brushing Vallejo paints over the black.  I ended up dry brushing over the primed dock with the 70-822 German Black-Brown and 70-871 Leather Brown.



Here's a better look at the progress so far (with the barge for a reference):

[railnerd]

A productive modeler once told me: "Try to work on your railroad every day, even if it is only for a few minutes."

Taking that to heart, I decided to embark on the something I had been putting off for a few months: building the 3-way switch for the China Basin ferry dock.

I started with a set of paper FastTracks templates (http://www.handlaidtrack.com/Fast-Tracks-Printable-Track-Templates-s/11.htm), cut them up, and taped them together to get a reasonable looking three-way switch:



Using my Xuron flush cutters, files, and FastTracks PointForm/StockAid tools, I spent a few evenings cutting, filing, fitting, and soldering rails. I used Cloverhouse PCB tie strips (http://cloverhouse.com/Store/product_info.php?cPath=35_36&products_id=67) and MicroEngineering Code 40 Rail. I built from the middle rails to  the outer rails, which is the opposite of my usual build order.

First Frogs (#12):



Center Route (Point rails):


Building the Righthand Route:


During the build process, it is critically important to check the turnout dimensions using an NMRA Standards gage. A piece of Rolling stock and/or truck is also very helpful.

After a few nights, I managed to get the rest of the rails in place:



At this point, you are probably saying, "Why the 3#@k is he using such long PCB ties?"  Well, they say that a picture is often worth 1,000 words, so here you go:



Next steps will be to get that nested set of points to throw properly... more on that soon.

[Chris333]

Sweet progress! 

[Specter3]

That is just so much hottness!

[Philip H]

Yep, we're done here gents. Everyone else might as well go home, cause @railnerd just a won the Internet. 

[Jesse6669]

So very impressive!  Keep it comin'! 

[Scottl]

Beautiful and wonderfully intricate track and dock work.  Really enjoying this build.

[dnhouston]

Simply amazing work so far.

[Santa Fe Guy]

Hooly dooly my head is hurting that three way is simply awesome.
Rod