Crafting CPR’s ‘Sandford Fleming’ Theatre Car in N Scale

[peteski]

Not necessarily …  as I mentioned in our earlier discussion, I’ll get the more appropriate trucks the next time I have to order something from Kato.  They have a minimum shipping fee of $20 for Canadian customers, so I’m content with what I’ve got for the foreseeable future!

Oh okay, I just figured that since you already soldered wires to one of them, it was a permanent installation.

[craigolio1]

Arrrrrghhhh!  Been there. So sorry your model smashed. I feel like this is the universes way of serving up a dish of humble pie, meaning you were crushing this just a bit too much for your own good. Haha. You can fix it!

Regarding light pipes…. Fibre optics are your friend here. I’ve harvested them from Christmas trees, bought them by the roll on eBay and other places etc. no doubt Amazon would have them although I haven't looked.

 they come in lots of sizes. You can bend them sharply with heat. And bell the ends into lenses with heat.

I like bell the source end with heat as well to increase light pick up, and then seal the LED to the source end with black heat shrink tubing to prevent light leakage inside the model.

Here’s an example.

https://www.therailwire.net/forum/gallery/36/2507-241123160925-369262309.jpeg

Highly recommend stocking a few sizes. I use them on almost every lighting project.

Looking great!! 

Craig

[Dwight in Toronto]

Hey @craigolio1  - nice to hear from you!  And you couldn’t have contributed your fibre optics technique at a better time, as I’ve just had a most off-putting hobby day.

Everything WAS going satisfyingly well.  I affixed the tiered seating in place, and added a 1/2 oz weight in the centre portion of the car.  I made up a small plug-&-socket, mounted the socket to the head-end wall, and soldered it to the track power pads on the pc board.  The plug will be wired to the track power pads on the light strip, enabling the strip to be removable.

I also settled on how to attach the ESU light strip.  I glued two 1/8” styrene posts to the car floor, and two corresponding 1/8” styrene tubes to the light strip.  The strip could then be slipped over the posts and snugged into place, but easily lifted back off for service access. 

I made up two sets of dual parallel-wired 0402 LED’s - one set of two for the red/green markers, and the second set for the two spot lights.  I snapped the following pic to show the light strip in place, and the four LED’s inserted in their respective retaining tubes, just before I soldered them to the light strip:




After soldering the LED’s, I ran a set of jumpers from the rails on my test oval to the track power pads on the light strip.  A quick test with the NCE controller verified that all the lights worked.  Damn, ain’t I good!

And then the universe served up that dish of humble pie.

While removing an alligator clip from the light strip, it ever-so-briefly touched a neighbouring LED solder pad.  All the LED’s gave a short-lived flash, and the bottom of the board where all the components are located instantly became very hot.  And that was that.

Luckily, I had picked up two of those light strips.  After muttering a stream of obscenities, I retrieved the second light strip, cut it to the proper length, and then hooked it up to my LokProgrammer.  And that’s when I got the dreaded “No supported decoder could be detected” message.  Repeatedly.

So there you have it.  A clumsy mistake on my part ruined the first light strip, and the second appears to be faulty right out of the box (yes, I DID cut the board to size before testing it, but I did the same thing to the first one, in the same way, and it was fine). 

$60 worth of light strips down the crapper, and still no LED’s on the model.  Hence my interest in the flicker-free lighting circuit (which I’ve used many times before) and Craig’s suggestion about fibre optics.  Unfortunately, I don’t have anything to scavenge the fibre from … where are those cheesy light-up decorations when you need ‘em!

This is the second setback on this build, so as I said at the outset, not a good modelling day.
I guess I’ll finish up a few things like hand grabs and such, and eventually reassess if and how I might want to revisit the lighting issue.

[peteski]

With all the bad things happening, maybe put this project aside 'til after the holidays, and work on something simpler for a while?

[Dwight in Toronto]

With all the bad things happening, maybe put this project aside 'til after the holidays, and work on something simpler for a while?

Yes, I am sorely tempted to do exactly that.  In fact, I don’t think I’m going to have much choice, as I expect to soon be facing a bit of a waiting game.

Thinking that I had nothing to lose, I sent an email to ESU’s service desk explaining my foibles.  They replied within an hour saying they’d be happy to repair/replace the two light strips under their two year warranty, which is encouraging indeed.

However, we’re one month into a nationwide strike by Canada Post workers (with no end in sight), so I suppose I’ll have to look into using UPS or FedEx or whatever.  Hence the forced break - I’m pretty sure I won’t be back at it until the New Year.

[craigolio1]

I’m sorry to hear about your set back. Setting the magic smoke free is always a frustrating experience. Booking it back up in hopes that some of the magic still remains only to be let down and come to the sad realization. Ugh.

I about three weeks you’ll be able to get tons of fibre optic Christmas decorations for 70% off! Grab a little 3 foot tree and you’ll have a life time supply.

Craig

[Dwight in Toronto]

The two light strips are on their way to ESU in Colorado Springs via UPS ($30 Cdn shipping, and that was the slowest/cheapest option).  I’m sure that ESU will return them using US Postal Service, which means everything will grind to a halt at some border transaction where Canada Post would normally take over (due to ongoing strike).

@craigolio1 - what do you use to melt/form bell-ends, or to soften and bend the glass fibre?  A bunsen burner or propane torch or open flame on a gas stove?

[peteski]

@craigolio1 - what do you use to melt/form bell-ends, or to soften and bend the glass fibre?  A bunsen burner or propane torch or open flame on a gas stove?

Plastic fiber optics are somewhat similar to fishing line (although their composition is a bit different). Torch would likely just melt it.  To mushroom it, I just hold the end close to wider part of a tip of a soldering iron (or even the barrel of the iron where the heating element is). After few seconds you can see the end spreading out slightly.  For bending you can place the fiber few mm over a soldering iron tip and hold it there until it starts to bend. You will likely need to practice a bit to figure out the technique.
But with sharp (90 deg.) bends there will be light loss as the bend area. Gentle natural curves minimize light loss.

EDIT:  corrected spelling and added more details.

[Dwight in Toronto]

@peteski  - thanks for the pointers about manipulating fibre optic strands.  I was thinking that they were still glass fibre, not plastic, so that helps a lot.

UPS tracking says that my two light strips are on the delivery truck in Colorado Springs, so they should arrive at ESU later today.  And here on the home front, the feds have ordered striking postal workers back on the job starting tomorrow, so with any luck (and I could use some), ESU will be able to send me new ones.  I shudder to think what the mail backlog must look like, and disgruntled workers will most certainly not be busting their behinds to restore normal operations, so who knows if/when I’ll see those items in my hands again.

Anyway, in the meantime I installed hand grabs to the head- and rear-ends of the coach, glued a few people into their seats, and added the reversing lamps to the bottom edge of the rear facade (on either side of the coupler).   Although the lighting strip has solder pads for a reversing headlight, I can’t see a way to illuminate those lamps on the model.  What with the truck and coupler in the way, and crazy tight space for wiring/fibre, I think I’m going to have to leave these as ‘dummy’ lights.  Unless, of course, anyone has viable suggestions.

[Dwight in Toronto]

@craigolio1  …. I was thinking a bit more about using fibre optic materials.

What about those laser-based audio “cables”; I think they were called ‘Toslink’? 

I’ve got two lengths of that stuff that I never used/won’t ever use, each about 4’ long.  They’re coiled up with a good dozen loops in each coil, and when I stuck a flashlight at one end, the other was bright as could be!

[Dwight in Toronto]

Out of curiosity, I slowly pulled the end connection free of the Toslink cable (derived from “Toshiba Link”, who standardized this optical audio cable system in 1983). 

Buried deep within the centre of some substantial protective sleeving is a wonderful 1.0 mm plastic fibre optic cable.  In this pic, the light is emanating from a small thumb-sized LED flashlight located at the other end of the cable, 6’ away:



The mind boggles at the possibilities - thanks @craigolio1 !

[nickelplate759]

Some TOSlink cables are actually glass, by the way, but many are indeed plastic.

[peteski]

Yes, glass fibers can are nasty when they shatter inot small pieces. Be careful when re-purposing fiber optic cable assemblies. Glass fibers are very thin (to be flexible).

[Dwight in Toronto]

Thanks for the heads-up on glass fibre fragility guys.  The TOSlink stuff I’m exploring is most certainly plastic.

I know that fibre optic model railroad applications are old hat, but it’s new to me … I’m looking forward to having fun with some workbench experimentation over the next few days (heating, bending, belling the ends, bundling multiple fibres with a single LED light source, heat-shrink encapsulation, etc).

[Dwight in Toronto]

Well, I finally got to see a little bit of Sanford Fleming’s interior. 

I watched a YouTube video entitled “Railway Age Joins CPKC’s 2816 Final Spike Anniversary Steam Tour”, and there were several brief instances where the camera was filming and panning inside the theatre car.  I simply paused video playback and took a few screen shots:










To me, that last pic is the most informative.  It looks like there are 6 rows of black leather-clad seating, with a scant few inches of rise between gray-carpeted tiers, and a narrow aisle of hardwood flooring down the centre.  In my model, I guessed at 5 rows of oxblood leather seats with a steeper rise of 3 gray-carpeted tiers, and I didn’t imagine a centre aisle.   However, i think I may have correctly guessed at mahogany walls!  Anyway, this was interesting to me so thought I’d share.