T-Trak The McCabe Lumber Ttrak module

[CRL]

Isn’t a Climax falling over normal behavior? 

[dem34]

Not quite prototypical, but you can slightly cheat a narrow gauge by superelevating the track slightly. Ran into a similar issue on my 2x4 where some of the dimensions tightened after ballast and Sculptamold. Still tight, but leaning into the curve slightly keeps the drivetrain torque from twisting the trucks out of the gauge.

[randgust]

One of the things I've been dreading is building the runways.  In the 1890's up through the 1930's, you didn't have forklifts.   Lumber came off the green line (remember almost all steam mills were two-story jobs with the cutting deck above the power machinery) and were put onto carts.  Most mills put these on rails, pushed by hand, and rolled out to stack the lumber to air dry as dry kilns were still rare.   

McCabe was a challenge because of the limited real estate on how to imagine that.   I borrowed an idea from my fathers sawmill up through the 1960's, he had a transfer table for the carts between the green line and the kilns that put the carts sideways into various runs into the kilns.  That would work here, too.

So this weekend was spent hacking up, staining and gluing up package after package of Northeastern basswood.  I do jigs to cut and set them up, pinning them to wax paper with the drawing and balsa underneath to hold the pins.   Had to make about 55 sets of pilings, 5 runways, the transfer table, and the cart.   Very tedious, very slow, very repetitive.  Right up there with making trees.  Ideal weekend, cold and wet.



link:   http://www.randgust.com/McCabe9.jpg



link:  http://www.randgust.com/McCabe10.jpg

This really shows off the size difference between a narrow gauge boxcar and a standard gauge boxcar on the dual gauge.  The 'black holes' in the hillsides will be behind trees; basically everything turns green by the time I'm done.



link:  http://www.randgust.com/McCabe11.jpg

I still have more diagonal bracing to put on, just ran out of time.   You wouldn't' think you could suck up about 30 lineal feet of basswood in N scale, best guess based on empty packages.

At this point it's probably a blessing that there are no surviving photos of the mill.  I'm freebasing a mill based on the production, age, standard practices of the era, similar mill photos and doing the layout to fit the geography of the module.   If I actually knew what it looked like it would be more difficult!

I found some small-medium circular saw mills in Casler's "Tionesta Valley" that closely resemble this, mix that with the Lumber Museum in Galeton, PA, which is very similar to this.  There's big gaps at the museum in terms of no log dump (how the the railroad get the logs in the pond?) and while there are a couple runways, there's no lumber.   They demo the mill under steam only a couple weekends a year.

The carts were on rails, I did the front runway already - which is HO 1x2's prepainted dark rust brown and set to 24" gauge.  Another thing to get to on the rest of them. 

This is the big W&D mill at Endeavor but the runways are very visible, along with the 'tracks' on them.  My father said that the runways extended for almost a mile away from the mill at the peak - two mills, no kilns, all air dry.
http://www.randgust.com/birdseye.jpg

This is 'pretty close', and after studying the hardware personally, helped me design my own mill building.   What it's missing is the log pond and runway operations, but the inside of the mill is nicely documented for a small circular saw operation like I am modeling.  There is a boilerhouse, and all the steam engines are 'underneath' the cutting deck.  They show them stickering on the cart, wrong, it would be stickered on the pile off the runways.  And they have the only carts I've ever seen that didn't use rails on the runway decks.

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[Ed Kapuscinski]

So very cool. Can't wait to see it in person.

[Chris333]

I drew up the Manns Creek RR a while back. This yard area is where their lumber stacks went to dry. All the outlying green lines were for logging. The main RR in yellow was used for coal. https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1xT4OtKUkby4kT1Won3OxxfRTOV2YRRkN&ll=37.96749591839276%2C-80.93959461892321&z=17

[randgust]

I wanted to get past a couple things I wasn't sure how well they would work.

First, the entire design of this thing was really an oval.  But I hate ovals, every layout I've ever done dating back to 1968 has had some staging.  So in this case, the back of the oval is buried in the hillside and backdrop, entire length.  But I don't want tunnels, no dirt-cheap logging railroad ever had tunnels.  So it just has to disappear into trees.  Well, how will I do that.....hmmm
And the second one is that considering the size of even a SMALL drying yard, it's a massive amount of stripwood sacrifice.   I can reduce it by some scribed sheet, and even more to put balsa blocks where the edges can't be seen on the interior, but how will that look?
And then like every Pennsylvania module I've done since 1976, trees, trees, and more trees.  And dense enough you can't see for the trees.  Little trees by the hundred, this is all second growth in this area by the river as it was first logged in the 1850's.  Logging railroads extended into the hills where it was impractical to drag distance with horses, but around the towns and mills, things had resprouted.

So, one test of the 'disappear in to trees', one test of lumber stacks, and about 25% of the tree cover....  (Woodland Scenics foliage balls on sticks)



Link:  http://www.randgust.com/McCabe12.jpg

[randgust]

OK, well, I finally finished the trees.   Yuck.  Glad that's over.

And I got the turf layer all in, and the dirt layers, and even decided to risk putting in the cinders and the ballast.

That's scary, because diluted white glue migrates better than Monarch Butterflies, even when you tape off the turnouts.   You never know if you're glue one solid.  And with the Rokuhan Zs, they are just like Katos, there's stuff up inside that the only way you can clean them is yank them back out. 

So imagine my relief when I yanked the tape, cleaned and inspected the rails after ballast, and everything still worked.



link:  http://www.randgust.com/McCabe13.jpg

I've got a lot of detail to keep me busy, and pouring the water is next.   But hey, it still runs, if I had to put it in a show now I could.

[Chris333]

I always wondered if people cut out the roadbed from under those turnouts so you can get to them from under the layout.

[randgust]

Like the Katos, the contacts and electrical switching are up inside the turnouts.  I suppose you could tear all that out, but the ties are cast in.   I don't solder the turnouts in, I suppose I could get them out, but getting in from underneath?  Wow, not really feasible.

I did hand-paint the roadbed the dirt color, painted the ties and rails, before ever installed.   So after a dirt berm is built into them, they look pretty good to me.   And on the yard turnouts, I painted them cinder black and painted the rails and ties, so after you blend in cinders the appearance is actually just fine.

I put a single half-layer of cork under the Marklin track and turnouts and that brings them up to the Rokuhan level.

[randgust]

Pretty much just final details and scenery, but this shows the geometry as well as anything, and clearly shows the dual gauge track here.



Link:  http://www.randgust.com/McCabe%20aerial.jpg

[randgust]

RICK!  RICK!  Rick???  (tribute to old SNL Kaitlen, by the way)

OK, so this is not my best shot lately, but until I can drag this outside and do a proper lighting it will have to do.

Apparently the "technical" term for this in railroading is a 'wood rick', not rack, not deck, but Rick.   And in Nn3, with two very tiny logging locomotives that burn wood, this seemed necessary here even if it was designed out of thin air.   

It's only 4' high and the wood (real wood) is cut and split to 3' lengths with an 11 blade, and I have the band aids to prove it.  Those fireboxes are tiny, even that seems big, but that's as short as my cutting tool can go.  And its painful to admit I burned more hours than necessary scratchbuilding it from stripwood last weekend in a relatively cool basement workshop.

I still need some steps or something.  So, other than a sawdust bin by the boilerhouse and a whole lot more brush/weeds, it's Altoona ready.



Link:  http://www.randgust.com/McCabe16.jpg

[N Scale Train Boy]

Nice work! Details like that are what put one in the scene! Hope your fingers are healing up lol, we've all been there!

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Pretty much just final details and scenery, but this shows the geometry as well as anything, and clearly shows the dual gauge track here.



Link:  http://www.randgust.com/McCabe%20aerial.jpg

Absolute fire, as usual.

[randgust]

In your mind you're always at the next step, you can see it but it seems like it never gets there.   You see the finished product, everybody else sees plywood and unpainted track, but can't read your mind.   In 55 years of model railroading, it seems like you rarely, if ever, look at anything you imagined in there and say 'done'.... there's always something else that if you actually got it done, would actually complete the vision.  Then it would be right.   Only then.

So last night finished up the scenic details, seriously.  Thought I'd never see that on this one.   And I dug through my decades-old boxes of N figures (mostly old Preiser and Merten) and found enough working types to flesh out the sawmill crew.   Hmmm.  What else.  I have a sawdust cart coming to add, and a way to make the roofs removable but secure them in transport, as this module gets flipped upside down for transport.   But wow, that's about it.  This is getting down to either invisible or irrelevant detail.....  no more pictures until I debut it at Altoona.

That's one advantage of T-trak, it's actually possible to get something 'finished' basically as a self-contained, bite-sized concept.

[wm3798]

I've concealed a screw set to the right height to catch an earth magnet glued to the underside of the roof.  Pretty bulletproof.

Lee