During the past week, mainly over the weekend, the last of the fascia was applied and the shelves for each end of the layout got done. Things are really coming back together well. Here's a look at the spot for the DC and DCC base stations. The one thing here is I'm still working on a shadow box that will reduce what you can see beside and behind them. I then finished up the shelves for the front end of the layout Followed by the other end They could use a little trim to dress them up but how they look now is much like before except a shelf higher. Cut some new corner trim but have yet to paint it, put the BNSF sign on the one end, and loaded some cars into the shelves. Here's a look around it now. Then I put up some temporary track diagrams. Here's a look at one. I also finished up a couple of upgrades to my work cart by finally finishing and securing the bottom shelf plus adding a sheet of peg board to one side where I can store items I use mainly when using the cart too. It's turned out to be a much more flexible tool than I had hoped for. Other than that, i did a few other odds and ends and that I'll put in my layout thread so is about it for now.
Have not gotten too much further along as I have been getting things ready for a train show coming up the weekend this party ends. What I have done is to add the styrene strip blocking on the removable base for the two DPM buildings. These lock the buildings in their positions on the base while allowing them to be removed as needed. I do plan to add some detail to the first floors which will mostly be attached to the base. There are two more of the 3D printed Sears houses that I tacked together with a drop of canopy glue and set in their positions on their base to see how the area will look.
The JPT Sub is looking really nice and your cart is now tricked out too. The pegboard adder is a very clever idea.
@BNSF FAN That is a sharp looking layout packed full of clever ideas. At first I was not sure what you were going to do with those sections of steel framing but now seeing what you have done to make it into a display area, it's genius. Well done on all of it.
Very nice, you've come a long ways since December. I don't think I have ever worked in an area that clean but wouldn't mind it . Sumner
I really, really like your layout! The more I see of it the better I like it. Like Brad, I wasn’t sure how your shelves would work but now that I see it it’s a great idea. I like your idea to use strips to hold the buildings in place but make them removable when needed.
Been working on the sawmill design so I could work on the scenery in that area once I know how much space it is going to take up. A sawmill produces lumber so worked on that also. These are stacks of 2 x 4's, 2 x 6's, 2 x 8's, 2 x 10's and 2 x 12's in stack lengths of 8', 12' and 16'. The stacks are roughly 4 feet wide by 4 feed high. The stacks can also be printed with or without some loose boards on the top of the stack. I printed these with my resin printer as some of the detail is probably to small for a filament printer but might work. . . . There are three missing stacks above as those stacks/prints came off their supports during the print so will need to reprint them at some point if I want them. The next images show the stacks as designed using Fusion 360. I post more on my layout build ( HERE ) .....and links to the print files are ( HERE ). Sumner
With scenery largely complete for Wizard in the Woods, I turn to the black hole of organization. We started here: To say this doesn't bring me joy is an understatement. Last night forces converged and I got two hours to tackle train stuff. I went after my workbench, and while its not complete, it looks better: There might even be enough room to build a few models now.
I know that February is not done, but I am. I've run out of time. I apologize for the poor photos. I ran out of time because I took too much time working on The mystery short The circuit that controls the crossbucks timing. I was waiting for supplies to arrive. Most of the buildings seen here are in two states on their third layout.
Been taking a break from the scenery work and doing some work on the electrical and DCC. I have two Digitrax IR receivers on my layout, one at each end of the room. This has given me great coverage everywhere except for inside the helix. One of these is a UR90 IR receiver and the other is a UR91 radio receiver with the radio part being dead but the IR part still works. A couple days ago I noticed that one of them was not working. Determined that it was not getting any power so started to track where the problem is. I am assuming that it is a bad connection somewhere in the DC bus wiring. I'll need to clean some things off the work bench and remove the panels under Battle Mountain to access the DC bus wiring. Then looking through a box of old Digitrax stuff, I found another non-working UR91, tested it and verified that the IR part was still working. I was thinking it would be good to have reception in the helix for the times I have to get in there to retrieve a stall which does occasionally happen when the layout has not been run for awhile. So, getting sidetracked from the original repair job I found a spot under the bottom level of the upper helix and glued a mounting block there. While the glue was drying, I rounded the bottom corners on the UR91 panel and put tape around the bottom edge to make it less likely to get cut should I bump into it. Then mounted it on the block, cut it into the LocoNet bus, and ran power to it. Now I need to get back to that other one.
Spent most of the last 2-3 weeks keeping medical and dental appointments, addressing household maintenance and honey-do list, but Ken and I managed to make some progress on figuring out how to illuminate lanterns held by HO scale flagmen protecting grade crossings on Ken's layout. The flagmen for Ken's HO layout are a little over 3/4" tall (6 HO scale feet). The lantern will be a small (pico) prewired SMD red LED. I've cut the plastic legs off of a standing figure and will be replacing each leg with a 24 gauge wire about an inch long. The right and left legs/wires will be secured to the flagman's torso and one LED lead will be attached at the top of the right leg and the other to the top of the left leg. Instead of soldering the wires, they will be secured to each other with electrically conductive wire glue (epoxy containing very tiny carbon pellets). The visible part of each leg (about 3/8" from the torso to the surface of the road) will be built up with Liquid Tape and painted blue (like jeans). The bare lower parts of each wire/leg will be slid into two 2 inch long brass tubes that are flush with surface of the road and go down through the surface of the layout (about 1/8" of ballast, 1/2" of Homasote, and 1/2" of plywood. Feeders from the AC bus wires will be soldered to the tubes. The lead from the right leg will be glued to the figure's back, across the upper back to the left arm and down the back of the left arm to the LED at the bottom of the arm. The LED from the left leg will be glued to the left side of the body up to the arm pit, and then down the inside of the arm to the LED glued to the flagman's hand. Flagman connections by ppuinn posted Feb 16, 2024 at 2:08 PM Because there are four tracks that cross the road and need to be protected by a flagman and the 4 tracks are NOT close together, the flagman needs to be positioned between the 1st and 2nd tracks, the 2nd and 3rd tracks, or the 3rd and 4th tracks and may be looking south down the road or north up the road...and the LED has to light up regardless of which direction the Flagman is looking. If we had used DC to power the LEDs, we would have needed 3 tubes bringing power up to the LED (a negative wire in the middle and a positive connection coming up both outside tubes (so the figure could be facing either direction but the LED would always light). This solution would have forced us to always have an open tube (a brass-lined pothole !?!?) next to the Flagman when a train was present and 3 potholes next to each other when there were no trains or flagman present...an ugly option, at best. Ken is a retired electrician, and MacGyvered an AC wallwart to reduce 110v AC to 24v ac and a transformer designed to reduce 110v down to 10 volts for a door bell to further reduce the 24 volts to 2.2 volts. Then, knowing the LED had a maximum reverse voltage of 3.1 volts, he took advantage of the alternating current to power the LED with just 2 wires, no matter which way the Flagman was facing. Flagman Circuit by ppuinn posted Feb 16, 2024 at 2:08 PM Wallwart 110v AC to 24v AC, Transformer from 24v AC to 2.2 volts AC by ppuinn posted Feb 16, 2024 at 2:08 PM When I've got 2 flagmen put together and working reliably on Ken's HO layout, I'll try to reproduce the same design in N-scale on my layout. Pay no attention to the 5mm Red LED in the last picture...we used the larger LED (1 of 100 that I bought in bulk super cheap several years ago) when we were trying to figure out what combinations of wallwarts and transformers would yield the best results. Earlier, we had twisted it together with the 10 ohm resister and, rather than disconnecting and unwinding the larger LED, we just clipped the jumper to the pico SMD before the 5mm LED.
A while back (last fall???), I considered putting red warning lights on some of my cabooses and when Ken and I were working on the Flagman's lantern, I came across some of my tinkering related to putting red lights on the ends of my cabeese. This picture shows a .7" wide N-scale caboose I wanted to put lights on and the .9" battery I wanted to use...obviously not workable. Battery = 20mm (.79"); Caboose width = 17mm (.67inch); Battery holder = 23mm. by ppuinn posted Feb 16, 2024 at 2:08 PM So I wrapped some thin wire around the axles at both ends of a caboose, fed the ends up through a hole in the floor, and connected them to a resistor and LED, just to see if the homemade pickups would work. Truck Pickup powered LED by ppuinn posted Feb 16, 2024 at 2:08 PM Truck Pickups by ppuinn posted Feb 16, 2024 at 2:08 PM The wrapped axles did work...sort of: The LED flickered on and off when the caboose was pushed on the track, but, even after vigorously cleaning both wheels and track, the flickering only went away when the car was firmly pressed down onto the track. Also, when the caboose was sent coasting through several turnouts without being pressed down, the trucks easily derailed, most likely because the wires were too stiff and prevented the trucks from freely adjusting to the curved turnout rails. Adding several 1/4 oz weights did not improve reliability through the turnouts. Some flickering may have been caused by poor connections between wires, resistor, and the LED...soldering or wire gluing may be helpful. I used 24 gauge wire to wrap the axles, and I may have better results if I use stranded wire that I've separated into single strands...I think a single strand may be 28 or 30 AGW. Also, I should probably check the wheels for proper gauge: They were wheel sets taken from old/cheap cars I had in storage that were not proper era, were damaged, or had Rapido couplers. One truck has more wraps around the axle than the other, and that might might affect the flickering and the reliability through turnouts.
Continuing with the electrical work, I did track down a loose wire under the Battle Mountain section of the layout and restored power to the LocoNet panels that had not been working. Then moved over to the Carlin section and after removing the bottom panels, installed a couple of terminal strips to the DC bus there for the connection of lights and accessories. I had done most of the wiring on this section before installing it which was much easier. Wish I had done this part then too. The first thing connected to one of the new terminal strips was the light at the propane dealer. Here is a "night" shot with layout lighting turned off but the general room lighting left on showing the effect.
Was slow week when it came to layout work but I did at least start working on some fixes in this area over the weekend. I painted over the screws that hold on the fascia (I fixed the little paint run after the picture) and that made them look a lot better and they definitely don't stand out near as much as they did. Then started building the cover for under the switch controllers. I need to figure out what I'm doing with that panel where the DCC/DC switch is. It was my one mistake on cutting the fascia. I'm thinking a little filler putty, sanding and touch up paint should do the trick. I also spent some time installing metal wheels on a half dozen cars, and making a new load for a bulkhead flat. It got maybe half way to complete. That's about it. Not much but still progress.
Fortunately I'm glad to report a happy ending here. I got my replacement ESU 58741 decoder (plus the ALC-42 sound profile installed) in the mail a week ago and decided to dedicate my Sunday afternoon/night installing it. I was way more careful this time, but I still ran into some embarrassing moments (I forgot the clips that fit into the motor contacts didn't come with the decoder and mailed them with the decoder back to ESU. I tried to recycle the clips from Kato analog boards but they were all soldered on or were too thick or too long. I ended up peeling the gold plating on part of the motor tab contacts on the decoder (but there was still enough of the surface area to give me something to solder a hard-wire to). Anyway, I was too focused on getting this done and getting it done right that I didn't take any how-to pics. But I do plan to do this again with a Phase VII Amtrak Kato ALC-42 in the future and will do a how-to video now that I know what to do (and what not to do). But if anyone who's planning to take this on has any questions, I'll be glad to answer them. I also bought a speaker w/baffle from CRude Engineering and that sounded WAY better than the single sugar cube I was using during my initial install last year. The lights are always the hardest part of a DCC install for me, fortunately the way Kato designed their ALC-42, all of the lights fit in the 3-piece snap-in "cab module" so there's no need to permanently attach a bulb into the front of the loco shell. So finally, after almost a year after buying this loco and the decoder, and after much procrastinating, messing up (and cussing), I completed my DCC sound decoder install of the Kato ALC-42! Phew! Patience and persistence paid off. So here's the final result:
It's been a while since my last update. I changed the track a little and wired it to run DC. I still need 2 double crossovers but other than that the track is pretty much done. I added some styrofoam by the turn back curves on the ends. The ends are 28" wide while the rest of the 2 legs of the L are 24" wide. The foam triangles are glued and pinned in these photos. I'll remove the pins tomorrow when the glue is dry. In the first photo you can also see that I changed the 3 track yard slightly. It will either be an interchange or an intermodal yard, or maybe both depending on what I'm operating. The second photo shows 2 industrial tracks. There will be another industry on the other side of the tracks. I have no idea what that industry will be at this time. This photo shows the crossing gates on this side of the layout. The crossing was slightly to the left connected to the two 15 degree curves. As I ran a trai on the inside track I heard a click each time a train ran through the grade crossing. I thought there was a rail misalignment but couldn't find any. I watched as the train went through the crossing and entered the curve looking for the problem. It took a number of passes through until I realized that the back of the long engine (ES44) was hitting the crossing gate and that was causing the click. Once I realized what was happening I moved the crossing slightly putting 62 mm track section between the crossing and the curves and replacing the 248 mm sections with 186 mm sections on the right side of the crossing. No more hitting the gates and clicking. You can see the new configuration in this photo. Unfortunately I forgot to take a before photo. Holes need to be filled with spackle and switches will eventually be wired for remote control. The next project is the backdrop. I'll be running trains and switching to make sure the layout operates as I envision.
Have not done all that much more on the layout since last update. Did make up a little hanger for a Digitrax Wifi and Duplex throttle setup that we will be trying out on our Ntrak layout at the Great Train Show in San Jose this weekend. The idea here is that this can hang anywhere on a skyboard. Then removed and packed away until the next setup. I had ready tested this on my own layout. The Peninsula Ntrak club standard for frames, legs, etc. is Rust oleum smoke gray which I also used on my layout. I was out of it so got over to the big box hardware store for another quart and painted the hanger and while I was at it finished the last of the fascia on the layout. The party ends this Sunday but as I will be busy with the show, I likely won't get to my conclusion post until Monday or Tuesday.
That color looks good on the fascia Brad and nice work on the hanger for the Digitrax equipment. It's hard to believe that it's already been 10 weeks since this Winter Layout Party started. Where did all that time get away too?
I picked up the 2 double crossovers at my local train store yesterday. The photos show them on the layout. Now I need a few more terminal joiners. I don’t know I’ll document here since the layout party is coming to an end soon.
