The Carolina Sandhills Lines in HO Scale

[davefoxx]

This Milwaukee, Racine & Troy RR boxcar joined the fleet this evening.  It is a limited run Accurail car offered by Kalmbach Publishing through their online store.  Since I was fortunate enough to tour the Kalmbach offices and railfan the MR&T in 2016, this car brings back those fond memories.

While building this simple kit, I swapped out the plastic wheel sets for metal Kadee 33” wheels.  I just need to build and install a set of Sergent Engineering couplers before I can place the car into service.



DFF

[davefoxx]

Model railroading victory tonight!  I bought a ScaleTrains bulkhead flatcar a few months ago, which is arguably one of the nicest cars that I own.  Look at the detail!  It's also the first car that I have to actually have rotating bearing caps!  Cool, except that they're not all that visible way under a car body that doesn't need to be lowered.  (Take that, N scale.) 



Anyhow, the car is advertised as a minimum radius of 18" and a recommended minimum of 22".  This was dead-on accurate advertising.  Sure, the car can negotiate an 18" radius, but that's when it's not coupled to anything.  Otherwise, it will drag just about anything else off of the rails under a 22" curve.

Well, that didn't work so well on my layout, so I removed the car from the layout until tonight, when I took the car to the workbench and opened up the coupler boxes.  I carved a little plastic away from the pocket opening to allow a little more coupler swing, but it really took filing the coupler shank down significantly to get more coupler swing.  In the picture below, you can see how much I filed away from the Sergent Engineering coupler.  The modified coupler is in the pocket, and an unmodified coupler is laying next to the pocket.  It may not look great, but it fixed the problem.



The end result is that this Athearn bulkhead flatcar pictured below was immediately retired tonight, because, next to the ScaleTrains flatcar, it looks horrible.  See?



Now that I solved that problem, I may add a couple more of these cars to the fleet for plate steel deliveries to the A&R.

DFF

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Those are one of the cars I wish they did in N.

Nice work.

[davefoxx]

Hey, @Chris333, I found some more original track that hasn’t been ripped up and replaced.  So, I corrected that.    Yes, with two planned additions to add some more capacity to the layout, i.e., staging, I pulled out a crossover, which will be moved farther down these two tracks to allow a longer cut of cars and a runaround for the power.  It was tough getting all of the Bullfrog switch machines out, as they were buried over a shelf that holds the DCC command station under the yard.  I didn’t want to have to take all of that apart, too.  So, it took a while and some contortions to get the switch machines out.  I’ll need to reuse them farther down these tracks, so I had to get them out.

Before (a very old photo but shows the crossover):



After:



I’ve got to go back and study how I built the folding staging on the Seaboard Central 2.0, because that’s the plan here to extend these two tracks.

DFF

[Chris333]

lol



 

[davefoxx]

I finally purchased a couple sheets of 1/8” Masonite this afternoon.  I installed one 24” strip as a backdrop over the end of the layout.  The balance of the Masonite will be to start applying a fascia to the layout.



DFF

[glakedylan]

looks great, Dave...
everything is coming together so nicely
i enjoy following your build and the improvements you are adding
taking it all to the next level
that masonite will look fantastic with the blue paint and whatever else you add to it
kudos on several jobs well done!


sincerely
G

[Chris333]

Sky looks a little dark...








 

[davefoxx]

The first piece of fascia went up today, . . .



so I also began building the folding shelf to extend two tracks to improve ops on the layout.  This is the shelf deployed (on a temporary leg):



And, here is the shelf folded down:



Eventually, I may rebuild the legs of the layout to allow the shelf to fold farther underneath.  On the Seaboard Central 2.0, a similar shelf folded all the way under the layout and used a hook and eye to hold it up under the HCD.  Here, I have my rolling cabinet with computer, LokProgrammer, and programming track in the way.  Unless, I can find a better place in the layout room for the rolling cabinet, I won't need to work out folding the shelf up under the layout.  But, it doesn't stick out so far that it's a problem when hanging as shown in the picture.

DFF

[nkalanaga]

Is the bridge long enough that the leg could fold up under it?  Hinge the leg to the deck, add a latch at the benchwork end (or one of today's super magnets), and the leg will stor itself when the bridge is down.

[davefoxx]

Is the bridge long enough that the leg could fold up under it?  Hinge the leg to the deck, add a latch at the benchwork end (or one of today's super magnets), and the leg will stor itself when the bridge is down.

@nkalanaga,

Thanks for your reply and suggestion.  No, unfortunately, the shelf is not long enough to fold the leg underneath in one piece.  But, that's okay.  On the Seaboard Central 2.0, I had the same problem and built a two-piece folding leg.  I'll do that again, and it will work fine.  The plan is to stow and deploy the leg with carriage bolts, wing nuts, and/or hinge pins to hold everything in place.

I'll post pictures as progress is made.  I'd refer you back to the v2.0 thread for reference, but the pics were lost with the Photobucket debacle.

DFF

[wm3798]

I dug it up for You!
Lee

[davefoxx]

@wm3798,

YES!!!  I love that video. The choice of music is perfect for the switcher madness going on.  I want to see @Ed Kapuscinski recreate this on his new layout.

Thanks,
DFF

[davefoxx]

The two-piece leg is built.  The carpenter's pencil underneath the leg is taking up some of the allowance for the adjustable foot yet to be installed.  The hinge pins hold the leg in place.



The leg is two pieces, so it can fold up under the shelf and allow the shelf to be dropped:



DFF

[wm3798]

Nice wood work!