Weekend Update 9/18/16

[wcfn100]

.025" diameter steel wire, .020" black styrene for the roadway, 3/8" x 1/8" x 1/16" block magnets from K&J.  I took the measurements off of the TomyTec road components.

Okay thanks.  The magnets are part of the stopping mechanism yes?


Jason

[bbussey]

Stopping and starting, as well as speed control.  Functionality is based on whether the magnet is to the left or right of the guide wire, and which magnet pole is facing the bus.  Delayed stopping (as opposed to standard stopping) is mandatory in this type of scenario since there are no manual controls.  The K&J magnets also are more powerful than the TomyTec magnets even though they are half the thickness, so it took some experimentation to get the orientation to the wire correct.

[jjb62556]

Brigg's model says store is closed for Maintance.how do you order/

[fcnrwy23]

There was one experiment that I had always wanted to try.   That is trying to make "White" decals, with a Ink Jet printer.
I have done so with some success on my N-scale automobiles and freight cars, but never on a locomotive.

I a recent thread on this forum, the topic of discussion was of non-prototype railroads.  My experiment was of the MRT GE's, in this case..
I have known of their pending offering, from the Fall 2016 catalog.  That came with one of my last, large parts orders from them.

I thought that this would be a project to try...



The closest I could be with the color was, Conrail blue.   Reefer white seemed to be OK for MRT white.
The decals were done in MS Paint,  I found that the font "Noto Sans" was also the closet I could get to a "MRT" font.   The logo was created after a hours work.

In order to get the 'White", I used Micro-scale "White Trim" film (painted decal paper) as a "Backing" for the decals.   The inkjet prints all White characters a "Clear".
The challenge was to try to "Color Match", the finished decal with the model's color.  I painted a "sample" piece of styrene stock, when I painted the locomotives' body.\
I then, scanned this "chip" sample of paint.   In MS Paint, I got the RGB color numbers off the sample,  And then was able to use these numbers when I colored in the background behind the lettering.
Where the decal covers the White trim film, is not too bad.  Where the decal covers' the body color, is where it's too dark and noticeable..  I could try to paint the dark edges, with some of the Conrail paint..

I DID order two (2) Atlas models, by the way.    Delivery is 2nd quarter 2017.

Jerry G.

[Roger Holmes]

The Mike McGrattan Memorial Train arrived in Springfield, IL this weekend.  It deserved better than my mediocre cell phone photos so my friend, John Evans, did the photography as he has done on all of the articles we have done for MR, RMC, etc.

The train passes river bluffs before reaching the prairie flatlands.





The train arrives at a generic Central Illinois county seat with the Courthouse dome in the background on the town square.



And soon departs en route to Chicago.



The train passes the engine house at The Milwaukee Road's Bensenville yards west of Chicago.



And finally passes below the Sears Tower and the Chicago skyline.



Next stop, Macomb, Michigan.

[mu26aeh]

I was part of an open house layout tour this weekend, so I was running trains all weekend.  Layout was very well behaved, as the only problems occurred when I tried to swap trains while people were there.  Had a few cars that wanted to pick switches or derail a spots so I put them back in the yard.  I had about 35 visitors on Saturday and 20 on Sunday.  Last year, I had almost 100 visitors across the two days.  Saturday morning was almost agonizingly slow, so I decided to work on a few structures.  Saturday night, I went into the O Scale layout I am helping with and was put in charge of a WM coal drag.

20160918_180150[1] by Adam Henry, on Flickr

20160917_194311[1] by Adam Henry, on Flickr

20160917_190025[1] by Adam Henry, on Flickr

[bbussey]

In addition to playing with the TomyTec bus and ballasting track, I also got the base paint on the two heavyweight diner bodies.  One all imitation aluminum, and the other imitation aluminum with Hunter green windowband.  Waiting on some PolyScale Engine Black to arrive to paint the underbody appliances and grab iron hardware.

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[jereising]

Can't play with the little stuff ALL the time...

My annual pilgrimage to the Illinois Railway Museum.

I rode these cars for a year when commuting to downtown Chicago:



And there was steam as well:



And some old friends - LUGO by UP, and where better to store them?

[C855B]

Model time this week and weekend has been tending to the club layout. I have been frustrated for years by how much time it took to setup the five yard modules.

There were a couple of big design faults with the legs. The first was that each leg, the "N-Trak standard 2x2", was hand-drilled relative to the frame, so you had 20 legs that could not be interchanged, you had to find the correct leg for each corner. (Fortunately we bundled each module's legs together. But, still...) And then each leg was bolted to the frame by two wing nuts, which were affixed on its bolt for storage, so you had to, by hand, remove the nuts and washers (provided the washer wasn't lost), thread the leg onto the bolts, and then, by hand, replace the two wing nuts and washers to clamp the leg into place. Simple enough to do one, multiply that by 20. A crew of two usually took a half hour before everything was on their feet.

New system is thin-wall PVC pipe inserted into a 4x4 block bored for the OD for a loose fit. The legs have a short bit of 1-1/2" dowel Gorilla-glued into each end. Each leg is held in place by a 1" neodymium magnet against a fender washer in the block socket. All legs fit all corners, and with no fasteners it takes seconds to put all the legs on. My dislike of this system is that the loose fit is a little wobbly when upright. I pointed this out to "the boss", and had already designed a fast clamp system for the block socket in lieu of the magnets. He said "do the magnets!", which he justified because the old legs were somewhat sloppy in their own right, and that once the layout was clamped together this wouldn't be an issue. Okey dokey!

New, and old:



Oh... better feet, too. Wrench not needed to adjust.

All the machine work is done, gluing operation for the leg inserts starts tonight and will likely continue through the end of the week since I only have but a handful of pipe clamps.

[Mike C]

Not exactly modeling , but this is what I did today .

[BCR 570]

Answers to questions posed earlier in this thread:

I have test run the four new Atlas RS-11s and they run very well; no concerns.

Jeff Briggs says approximately two weeks for web site to be open again.

RS-18 fuel tank sample expected soon; RS-18 long hoods are next.


Tim

[nkalanaga]

Jerry G:  Instead of putting white trim film on the loco, then applying a blue decal over that, how about printing the decal ON the trim film?  That way, when you cut it out, it will all be backed by white, with no overlapping edges.

[cbroughton67]

I finally dug-out this pair of Pennsy H16-44's I've had for a while and began detailing them.

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[brokemoto]

Not exactly modeling , but this is what I did today

.............and no diseasel behind it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[cbroughton67]

Ugh... So, the pics are oriented correctly when I view them on my PC. Why do they keep posting upside-down when I post here? Preview just shows the placeholder for the pic, not the pic itself, so I don't see it until it's too late.