Continued Fun

Finding time to work on the trains seems to be difficult this season.  The kids, 3 years old, both want to help... yes twins, boy and girl, if you're stuck on the why 1 age...  but don't really contribute too much except a lot of excitement (some unwanted when they get interested in things they shouldn't)

So not making too much progress but here's what's happened these last couple weeks -

Because every layout needs a comfy chair !

More bench work construction.  Putting in the small pieces for hidden track. Ran power cables, re-used the old stuff.  Labelled it better this time around.

Found some junk server rails at work so I re-purposed them to make a slide out drawer.  Figure these can hold, oh, about 150 to 200 lb's extended to 3 feet, so probably *ok* for me leaning on it.  Learned a lot about drawers and being square.  yikes.  But it works, maybe not as smoothly as I'd like but its pretty good.   I'm going to use this as my "backwall" in Telco speak.  So all the electronics will feed in and out of here.  Except the Tam Valley Quad's that need to be near to their panels... or do they?!  they do because of the allowable cable distance for the button.  I'm going to see if I can't Macgyver something so I can put the quad's on the drawer.

Note the planned booster positions.  Track power is above

Power to left, sensors to the right

Note the use of some old BIX blocks on the right (like AT&T 110 blocks but the Nortel / Canadian version) for my sensors connections to the TC-64 loconet converter.  I'm using some photo sensors in serial, so 3 or 4 per detection section.  Each has two leads, 1 goes to a common, the other to an input on the detection board.  With currently 16 sections, that's a possible 64 little wires inter-connected.  A real mess... then one day as I was punching down dial tone at work, I had a eureka moment.  I use telephone wire (24 awg) to all the sensors, so this would be a perfect solution to keep it organized and neat.  Also changes are a breeze.

Due to the sheer number of Quad's to drive servers, I'm anticipating two boosters.  I've got one from Tam Valley and its beautiful.  Very professional, like all of the Tam Valley stuff.

I also have a DCC specialties PSX-AC that some day, I'm sure, I'll use.  That would go here as well.

Yeehaw !  first track down !

Managed to get some track installed.  This would be the hidden loop that will be underneath things.  So had to get it completed first.  Wired up with power.

Which, really, was just an excuse to test it.  Meaning I could runs trains for the first time in 6 months!

Another New beginning

Recent zoning changes within the house have relegated the trains to the newly vacated basement apartment.  Mixed feelings on the big change at the time - but now I'm just excited to re build with all the lessons learned fresh in my head.

This happened back around January, so its been some months of dismantling, storing and now, rebuilding.

What's been done so far -

Total tear down, clean up and salvaging (if possible) of the old room

Storage of trains and rolling stock (which is heartbreaking looking at them in their boxes, so lonely and sad !) .  How long until they run again !?!?

all wiring coiled and stored

all electrical components stored.

first level of the new bench work is almost complete, working on a double level layout so its a little more complicated than I've ever tried before.

Running the Trains

As mentioned, I'm in a dreaded transitional phase of the train project; moving from one room to an unknown room.  This is where, I think, its easy to lose your momentum and call the whole thing off and be done with it.  While this would be easy, I'd always be nagged internally with my train bug.  What I'm trying to say is - I have to keep my interest levels up while its determined where my trains will reside next in the house.

I'm running trains.  Got some new stuff in the mail, a box of goodies! I've started going into the inter modal scene, since let's face it, that's the way of trains now.  That and my new design calls for a harbour full of fun inter modal cranes and ships.  Oh, and a couple KATO AC4400 Beaver logo locomotives. 

 If you look at the picture to the left you'll probably think I like 7up.  I don't.  For the nosy - yes, that is my work cube and my shoes.

Naturally I tried to install the decoders into the loco's that night.  So a couple things...  apparently Digitrax changed the decoder type that's recommended for this KATO unit.  Although it says clearly in their documentation (web, instructions etc etc ) that it doesn't need a shell modification to fit, IT DOES.  Digitrax mentioned that - after when I asked them.  Great service response time though!  anyway, they were helpful with a suggestion - file down the back LED or mod the case.  I chose the filing method.  Worked great.  FOR THE FIRST ONE !!!  Of course it couldn't be easy after that.  no, that's not how life works.  The second decoder only ran in 1 direction.  Lights worked great.  ran great backwards.  nada forwards.  *sigh*

Of course Digitrax says send it back - its Friday, and I'm leaving for a course in Denver the next day so everything has to wait until I get back.  Realistically it's been a week and the decoder is still sitting on my desk waiting.

Aside from that, got my two FVM GEVO's speed sync'ed.  Or at least I thought I did.  A couple tweaks are still needed, as they're out to lunch with each other on the low speeds.  Cool feature in JMRI is their speedometer, which tells scale speeds based on my detectors.  Set the high speed to 90 mph and then worked down.

Local hobby store (http://www.cvrco.com/) had a sale this weekend, and last time I was there noticed that they've got the scarce BLMA 53' spine cars.  At full price, 89.99 its a bit much, but they had a great sale (21% off), so I got their last one.  oh yeah! 

So I ran my new KATO, my consisted GEVO's with 9 inter modal cars and associated random containers.  Sweetness. 

The nice thing about running trains is I've learned things for the next layout.  Like the importance of perfect trackwork and switches in the yard.  The BLMA's had a tendency to walk over some of the switches, thought I'd fixed 'em all perfect but apparently these cars are a bit fussier.

Had fun anyway.

More grass Man, more grass

Okay so the title is bit misleading - this isn't actually about the effects of marijuana. Maybe though, it gets me some cheap web hits ... if that's the case, sorry but thanks for visiting.  This is actually a continuation of the use of the new Grassinator on my N scale model train.  Dude - don't judge, you're looking up web references for marijuana !!   Anyway, I also tried my hand at building a rural road. Mixed results. Definitely mixed results, by that I mean the road stinks, the grass is pretty good.  Again, no weed ref intended.

The road was made with plaster of Paris tinted with grey. Mistakes

 1. should have used black not grey.
 2. was the plaster of Paris itself not runny enough I think.  
 3.Lines were painted - too thick a brush and I shake.  Tried, halfheartedly, to make a stencil but that failed too.

Grassassinator and the wonders of static electricity

My efforts for getting the short escarpment area continue... slowly.  I'm a bit mixed in thoughts on if I should finish or not.  The Zoning controller has deemed the train room to be re-zoned back to residential use.  In English that means my Wife has decided that I should clean out the garage and move into that so she can have the spare room back.

This presents some great opportunities for me to re-design, and re-build a BETTER, STRONGER, FASTER layout.  but all the work done thus far on the current layout would be trashed.  The cliffs have turned out great so it will hurt somewhat to tear them down, but I'm confident I can redo them again and make them better.  Lessons are being learned !  and in that viewpoint, I'm going to proceed a bit and finish this small section.  But the new train room is beckoning..

So my father built me a fantastic static grass applicator using a $5 dollar ionizer thingy from the internet.  The most expensive part of the build was actually a transformer to make it safe if it didn't ground properly - its electronic talk that went over my head, but amounted to if someone bypassed the grounding pin when plugging it into the wall (or extension cord) it could fry a whole lot of electronics in the house.  So that was $17 well spent I think.  Certainly a far cry from the 200 dollars the Germans want for theirs.  Although, lets face it, theirs is probably pretty cool too.  Not sure if its more powerful though.

Anyway, we tried it out at my nephews birthday party.  Very cool stuff watching the grass stand up.  Feels like fur when the glue dries.   Anyway, here's some shots from my new iPhone 4. The first two shots are kinda artsy and look great, the first with shadows from surrounding things or clouds but then again I'm biased.  The other shots show more of the grass.  The hill is covered in 'vegetation" not grass. It will have trees all over it when its complete, so that will be the forest floor.  I'm going more for a bit of different colour and texture.  I'm going to do some more passes with different coloured grasses to make it thicker and more like a field between the tracks.

My weakness seems to be ballast.  Sure the line that's done is an old line, that's supposed to look kind of crappy and used (with the grass growing in it) but it looks really bad. Maybe it will dry better and I'll be happy.  Or I'll just fix it up as best as I can.  Of course, there's the fact that it will all be destroyed with the new train room move !

The hills go on and on

I continue to work on the escarpment and as I go I'm trying different techniques and such.  The downside is that the first section is looking drab I think.

This first shot  shows all the sections that are (almost) complete.  The bit in the middle is the first, the far right was done after that and the bit left (not far left that's not done) is the new batch.  The blacks are stronger, there is more variation and looks better.  I think.  The next shot shows the two areas side by side (latest and first).  The first is a bit washed out.  The escarpment, though, has sections like that. Bleached and then it has the darker, earthier sections. So it should work out as I continue to scenic it with trees, dirt, bushes and wild life.

I couldn't resist taking some shots of my latest FVM loco in the new rocks -

The Hills are alive with the sound of music

Well that's not entirely true.  But my Ipod Touch does play music to keep me company (gen 4 for the nosy, and no I'm definitely not an Apple Fanboy, I can't stand Apple the company - decent product though).  Got the Touch so I could run trains wirelessly with JMRI and this App.  Its pretty cool.  But I digress...

I spent the weekend working on the hills - at night and nap time as the twins demand (!)  my attention during their waking hours  of course I don't mind.

Painted the next section.  Thought the first (the bit to the left in the picture) was a little too light grey, so I tried something different.  Started with two intensities of black wash, then moved to a dark gray heavy wash, lightened that up then washed it out.  Went to the umbers (raw and burnt) washes, added a bit of yellow to some areas, then went gray, light gray and a bit of white.  I think it might be better than the first section.  Also built my first scratch structure - a retaining wall but its a start.  Came out looking sharp!  Mostly this is thanks to my new chopper and a metal gluing box 

 I also built a tunnel box for the portal I purchased from the LHS (Local Hobby Store).

For the over observant, yes that is a toilet roll tube.  I painted the inside black and stuck on some cardboard sides (also painted black) with a glue gun.  I got this idea from a good book, Jeff Wilson's Bridges, Trestles and tunnels.  The idea is to make it more a tunnel than a hole into the backdrop / scenic shell.  You can, of course, take this to another level by added more details - like the brick pattern, or drill marks etc on the walls but I went minimal.  I might regret this later if I every get a camera on a train.

Back to the hills for me...