Stupid simple project - Updating Bachmann crossing details...

[wm3798]

Those of us who recognize the fashion value of white New Balance sneakers and remember doing things in a car like rolling down (with a crank) the windows so your Talking Heads cassette can be better appreciated by your fellow motorists, will probably have at least one, and maybe dozens of packages of those time-honored crossing gates and signals that were shat out by Bachmann Brothers since the dawn of the scale.

You know the ones.  Kind of fuzzy black stripes on a clunky cast arm, a reasonably proportioned crossbucks with non-working flashers and a very fragile but proportional post, and of course, gigantic square bases to install them on your green sawdust grass mat with an 8 penny nail...

Before you put them out for styrene recycling, take note of the above image, and realize that it doesn't take much lipstick to make these pigs a little more kissable.

The Gates:  It always bothered me that the casting seems to sideways.  There's the appearance of two bars with a web between them, like an H, with the narrow edge facing your N scale motorists.  Real gates are usually two bars place vertically, with spacers between them that are not seen from the street level.  Simple fix?  Cut the gate at the junction of the counterweight and the bar, and rotate the bar 90 degrees and glue it back together.  To deal with the fuzzy stripes, I paint the bar white, then apply some more appropriate red stripes with a narrow brush to get sharper lines.  I'll then paint the counterweight an aluminum color.  The base can stay black, or be painted silver if you're so inclined.  I was attaching mine to a portable module, so I kept the base full size to get a good gluing surface.  I may go back and paint the bottom surface more of a concrete color to make it a little less of an eyesore. 

For the Crossbucks, the trick is to take the all white casting, and color it in.  This means a silver-aluminum post, silver on the back of the crossbucks, and black shrouds on the lamp housings.  The lamps are actually a clear red styrene, so if you're careful, light will pass through them at just the right photo angle to trick your friends into thinking you know what you're doing with electronics. 

Each touch up takes about a minute and a half.  For this installation, again on a portable module, I replaced the post below the lamps with the shaft of a straight pin, which I installed by drilling a small hole up between the lenses and secured with some CA.  The base is from a set of Atlas Hairpin Fencing, painted to match the post.  It's also drilled into the sidewalk and CA'd for a little extra durability.

Eventually I'd like to spend the big bucks and get those newfangled blinky lights, but with a show this weekend, I'm completely satisfied with the appearance these little upgrades give me to some bits and pieces I had laying around the junk box for literally decades.

What's in your junk box?

Lee

[randgust]

I think that my poor misguided father bought me a big wood clipper or whaling ship kit for Christmas - you know, all balsa, string, and rough cast metal, probably when I was about 12 - which makes this rather sad because virtually every piece of that kit was salvaged for model railroad use - all the stripwood, dowels, the balsa blocks... and I dumped all the metal parts and castings into a plastic drawer in my organizer box.  Never built the ship.

That was now 50 years ago.

So I'm trying to make a stationary well-pump engine for my 'Jamison' module (which will debut Friday) that actually spins.   I need a 60" pair of flywheels in N.  I looked everywhere, trying to find something online that would work.  Zilch.    Went through all of my junk drawers, found a couple of old plastic Kibri wheels that could have worked... but then I dug into that 'ship castings' drawer and found what must have been the two crank wheels on the anchor hoist, nice cast metal, just the right diameter, spokes and everything.  Bingo.   50 years later I finally found a use for those things, they are perfect.    If there's older stuff I've saved for no good reason, I don't know what it is.   That predated my N scale interest.

And, I'm still looking at those neat cast metal lifeboats, yeah, I'll hang onto those...I'll use those someday....

And if you look in my very oldest 'wood plastic and cardstock' drawer there are old edge-perforated styrene plastic sheets from a Mattell 1962 Vac-u-form that makes me about 7 years old then, and some remnant printed balsa sheets from another impossible kit from the era -  a balsa, dope, and fabric airplane kit from Guillows that I never built either but scrapped out the stock for train projects.    Until recently I had one of my first kitbashing ideas in HO - a working Mack railbus - with a major lead block front truck with tiny wheels on it that dated back to about 1969, and finally used that chunk of lead again by beating if flat with a hammer.  I have an epic junk drawer collection!

[dem34]

Throw little superstructures on the lifeboats and you could probably pass them off as a home built clam or mussel trawler.

[Philip H]

Throw little superstructures on the lifeboats and you could probably pass them off as a home built clam or mussel trawler.

not unless they have a really small dredge.  Most oYster smacks range upward from about 25 feet - larger if they were under sail.

[C855B]

I'm looking at those crossing gates and musing how they were scaled-down versions of the Plasticville (also Bachmann) O & S scale gates I had on my first American Flyer layout. "Stripes" on those were just holes cast into the arms.

You guys have got to cut it out with all the nostalgic, look-how-far-we-have-come nonsense. I just don't need more of it.    PBS is going nuts with the moon shot documentaries commemorating the 50th, and with Dad working for NASA I was in the thick of it while growing up. Sitting here, longing for the '60s ambience of my childhood... [sigh]

[randgust]

If you look at Lee's Cumberland you'll also see a lot of tweaked-up Bachmann vehicles floating around.

The very first construction thread I ever did on the 'old' Atlas forum was taking one of those god-awful Bachmann Greyhound Scenicruisers, cutting the body in half and taking a foot out of it lengthwise, putting corrugated sides in it, replacing the tires, adding window details....and making it into a pretty darn good-looking bus.

You can avoid all that now by just getting a Shapeways print.

There are gems in the rubble though, that sure looks like a Combi van, and with a little paint, that VW is still a nice little model of a difficult/expensive alternative.   And on the opposite end of the scale was that awful semi tractor!

[OldEastRR]

Wondering why Lee didn't mount the signals post on the gate base, like many real crossing sets are (but maybe not in his neighborhood,  in his era). Should be easy to drill a hole in the gate base right up against the mechanism, and put the pin up through that. Also, not sure if this is pertinent to his place/era but there was also a "Stop on Red Signal" sign posted just below the lamp arms. The later NJI crossing signals (w/ working LEDs) had that sign.  On multiple track crossings there was also a prototype sign just above the "Stop" signal telling how many tracks there were at that crossing "Two Tracks", "Four Tracks" etc.
You can make up the "Stop" sign on a computer and shrink it down to correct size, glue it to the signal post.
I like the idea of turning the gate arms sideways. Very clever. But whether the striping is black or red again depends on what era is being modeled. I think they were black/white until 1971, when new codes made them red/white. Also. I thought the backs of the proto lamps are black. But again maybe not in his state.
But the exercise does prove the point that small details are easy to add to make something look more realistic. Plus the fact if you do enough of these small detailing projects on various pieces of scenery eventually it makes the whole layout look better -- or, more realistic, if you prefer.
One thing I've been wondering about this scene: did the actual railroad weld the rails to the support I-beams over the river? Because I see no ties.

[bman]

Those of us who recognize the fashion value of white New Balance sneakers and remember doing things in a car like rolling down (with a crank) the windows so your Talking Heads cassette can be better appreciated by your fellow motorists, will probably have at least one, and maybe dozens of packages of those time-honored crossing gates and signals that were shat out by Bachmann Brothers since the dawn of the scale.

Cassette?  My rolling rust bucket Volkswagon Squareback was equipped with 8-track tape connected to a pair of home speakers in the back. Bonus points for your favorite song that skipped from one track to the next right in the middle of an epic guitar solo. But seriously, those look good. I could use a pair of these on my TTrak module on a budget that's run over budget. Yes I know they'll get knocked off eventually but hey, it'll look ok for a few. I always see these and their counter parts with no crossing gates at train shows our club sets up at. Of course now that I'm looking for some I'll not find any.

[randgust]

On the 'no ties', yes, that's correct, and if you float right down to the Google Earth view from the pedestrian crossing at the end of the bridge you can see that there is some kind of bolted-on direct fixation right on to the bridge girders.   There's walkway grating on it now but that may be a more recent addition.

There was a skewed, multi-small girder bridge similar to that in Savannah, GA over Louisville Rd. (now removed), and there's some similarly oddball spans over the canals in Lowell, MA that have the girders but no track.

That also 'beams me back' to 1972-80 or so on my first N layout.   I was bound and determined to have a set of those Bachmann flashers and gates actually work.  I had a motorized drive unit I stole from a Tamiya tank model and had under-the-table arms that connected to a .010 wire set to the gates, and actually rigged up fiber optics up into the flasher heads with a Walthers flasher set and under the table light bulbs.   It wasn't all that effective, it made more racket than you can imagine, but it did actually work.   But I lost track of how many times I broke the signal masts off and had to reglue them....

That's evolved into NJI gates, micro-LED's and tortoise drives, but I still have a working crossing set.   All started with that Bachmann.

[DKS]

Wondering why Lee didn't mount the signals post on the gate base, like many real crossing sets are (but maybe not in his neighborhood,  in his era).

50-50 chance that was done. About half of my reference images show both on a common pole; otherwise, they're separate.

...did the actual railroad weld the rails to the support I-beams over the river? Because I see no ties.

They're bolted to the beams. No ties.

 

[OldEastRR]

That's really neat. Must be a bitch to replace a rail. One thing that Lee should do is add the inside guard rails. Besides being prototypical it helps fill that space between the rails.
And it appears that the signals in his town have silver backed lamps instead of the black backs where I grew up. One of those regional variations that makes a layout look familiar to the locals.

[randgust]

Very well can be era-specific.  Lee is beaming back to the WM years, not current WMSR.

I'm modeling '72, and I noticed that that on my prototype, all the flashers changed, the gate stripe color changed, and the ballast color has changed now four times.   And its gone from wood to concrete back to wood ties, depending on the year.

The station has been repainted twice, including two different colors of roof shingles.

All the adjacent businesses have changed names/purposes except two.

One major building burned down....   the lumberyard across the street from the depot is now a micro-brewery.

So if you're a 'prototype' modeler, things change and Cumberland is no exception.   The huge, glaring feature now is that big elevator tower on one end of the station.

[DKS]

One thing that Lee should do is add the inside guard rails. Besides being prototypical it helps fill that space between the rails.

Um, he did:



 

 

[nkalanaga]

"remember doing things in a car like rolling down (with a crank) the windows"

My 2008 Chevy Aveo has crank windows, manual door locks (push the button down...), manual transmission, etc.  I had to order the manual transmission!

[Point353]

"remember doing things in a car like rolling down (with a crank) the windows"

My 2008 Chevy Aveo has crank windows, manual door locks (push the button down...), manual transmission, etc.  I had to order the manual transmission!

The cheapest trim level of the Nissan Versa still has manual wind-up windows.