Was at a hobby shop sale a few months back and went exploring the HO aisles to see if there was anything I could use in O scale.
Found some nice tanks by Rix Products. It took a few hours to put together the separate layers. You have to pay attention to the rivet detail and be a real rivet counter. It looks good...supposedly the 60' tank is roughly 30' tall and 12' in diameter in O.
Definitely something worth looking at if you're planning on doing an oil tank farm like I am doing.
I ended up painting mine oily black...almost a brownish color when the paint dries. That is not reflected in the photos below.
So I kind of never documented how I constructed my small L shaped switching layout that is nothing more than pretty much 2 4x8 boards put together. It's basic design has 2x4s for the legs and a frame of 1x4's topped with plywood. A few cross beams also go through the center of each 4x8. The left-bottom 4x8 shown in the diagram below is set lower than the rest. I wanted to do L-girder, but figured I can still achieve that with some extra wood and not have to worry about losing the space under the layout. It will just be a little heavier than the 3 other pieces. All 4x8 sections have been bolted together with the same bolts used to hold the legs to the frame. This will make it easier to dismantle the layout when its time to move out of my current location and actually move it up stairs to get it out. Since its going to be a mostly industrial area, plywood made sense as I will not have really any hilly scenery except for by the power plant region.
I'm using AtlasO track right now due to its ease in putting together, despite the requirement to have to rewire every switch of theirs due to a handy, but flawed design. See a previous post on some of that work.
Here is overall layout design:
I used Atlas' RRTrack to do the design and wrote on it with my text editor. I think I used the 3R library, edited to only have the 2R pieces that are currently made. There are a few sections where some curves won't match up, but those will be done by cutting flex track. With much of the track laid in the right 4x8 section, I wanted to go ahead and get some of it wired, so I could run my engines back and forth. Below will show a photo essay of the work it took to get those wired and what my control area currently looks like...
The control point is at about 2 feet from where the 2 4x8s connect to make the L. The picture shows all of the various components I have to run my 2R DCC. I decided to go with Digitrax after learning more about it and getting a good deal on a system from Jerry Davis and George Lasley. It also came with a 20A power supply that Digitrax makes. So here is how it all works...
The 20A supply supplies power to the 8A DCS200 Booster. This booster then supplies the DCC signal to everything connected to its Loconet port and from the track output. That track output goes to two places. One is to the PTB-100 (more on that next). The other is to the DCC Specialities RRampmeter, which is specially made to read the square wave AC DCC signal and gives an accurate measurement of the current and voltage being used by my layout (I have no blocks). From there, the power is fed to the PSX-1, which provides my extremely quick short circuit protection. That device is also made by DCC Specialties and is customizable for amperage settings. The PSX feeds to both of the 10AWG barrier (terminal) strips from Home Depot. I had to get the jumpers from Digikey and they cost more than the strips...sad I know. The jumpers for the 18AWG strips also cost more than those strips, but are readily available from Radio Shack. I had gotten a deal on 10AWG wire from an OGR Forumite (along with the 18AWG wiring I am using for all the feeders and other needs), thus my usage of 10AWG wire. I selected several feed points to run the wire to and have wired a bunch of feeders. More on that after the PTB-100 info.
Looking back again at the picture, you can see a UR92, which provides the wireless signal from the DT402D. It is connected to the booster with an RJ12 cable. It has its own power supply. The lights on both the UR92 and the DT402D can be used to ensure that my signals are reaching the booster and vice versa. A locobuffer2 is also shown wire-strapped to the leg. That is used to connect my macbookpro with JMRI DecoderPro to my booster via the loconet terminal on the UR92. This is used to program all of the decoders with a custom easy-to-use interface. It removes the need to memorize and understand hundreds of CV settings across the different manufacturers. It is a must have for DCC (I personally think everything in my control setup is a must have (ie - PSX, RRampmeter). Last, I screwed in a screw to hold the voltmeter I regularly use on projects...now I will always know where it is.
So here's the PTB-100 setup. The PTB-100 is made by soundtraxx and is necessary to program sound decoders that cannot be normally programmed with just the programming output of the booster. PTB stands for programming track booster. The PTB is wired from the booster, 20A supply, and is fed to a terminal block, which I will then eventually wire to a piece of isolated track on my layout that will be used to program engines. Currently, I added a DPST switch that cuts the power on/off to the PTB100. I was going to use the other prongs to control the power direction to the programming track...will design that later.
Another part of my control board is to use the Tam Valley Hex Frog Juicers (in the bottom right of the above photo). I have about 11 switches on my layout and I have ran separate feeders to all of the frogs. The first 6 I laid have been connected to one of these boards. This board is used to instantly change the polarity of a switch, so that I can have all of my frogs powered and is especially needed for all of those little switcher engines to give an extra ability to safeguard against power failure. It is wired from my track bus. They are available from here: http://www.tamvalleydepot.com/
So I added a cheap light from Home Depot to under the layout...where I also have an extra workbench setup. You can see the 10AWG wire coming from the right and swinging around to the ends of the track on my layout. It goes directly through the wood beam at the left as I drilled a 1" hole in there, which is an easy way to get wiring held up along the layout. Thinking back...I should have ran it across the middle of those tracks instead, but its okay, since my layout is so small. You can see from white wire, red and green 18AWG wires that are my feeders to the track itself. I ran the bus wire (10AWG) first and then soldered to the bottom of the track, the feeders that I knew would be long enough to reach the terminal/barrier strips. I wire. I then took the bus wire and used my wire strippers and an x-acto to remove sections of the bus and wrapped a feeder from the bus to the terminal in the correct polarity. I then soldered that feeder to the bus wire. I could have used suitcase connectors I guess, but soldering would have a 100% success rate. Terminal strips made it easy to run multiple tracks to the same bus location and will make it easier to reuse wire if/when I decide to retire this layout.
I double checked all of my work by taking my multimeter and ohming out the 2 rails to ensure there were no shorts. I noticed I was not consistent in color coding the wiring from the track feeders and had to fix only one of the connections at the terminal.
Also, the red hangers were found at I think Lowes and were IMHO one of the better options for running wire as the top opens up and you can keep adding more wires into the channels when need be. A very flexible option that is not ruined everytime one wants to make a change or replace a failed wire. They take 2 drywall screws to anchor in place. A 1" one at the top and a 2" one that goes in at an angle from the bottom.
This last photo shows the end of one of my bus runs. It is wired to a terminal strip that has a snubber wired in parallel to the last feeder connection. The snubber is used to cut down on issues with over-voltage that one can see, which has the potential to fry decoders. Here's a website on more info on this topic (and many others) http://www.wiringfordcc.com/dcc_waveforms.htm It was basically a 150ohm 2W resistor soldered to a .1uF capacitor. The leads of those were then put in the terminal strip and connect the 2 bus wires.
The last item of interest here is that you'll also notice the bus wire is twisted a lot. Several times per foot. This is to reduce the inductance caused by the pair and hopefully reduce interference with other wiring on the layout. This is also discussed on the previous website, among other sites that deal with DCC. I'll end this with a photo of one of my snubbers:
I received my set of Southern Railway F7's a few weeks ago and while there is a lot of work to do to make them right, they are a great base model and I felt they were worth a basic review. I think John Sethian is working a really detailed review in OST, so I didn't bother asking Joe to review these. There are also some cool things John will be doing to upgrade his and I will be too, but outside adding the new-style Kadees, I haven't modified mine. So here we go with my photo essay (captions underneath each CLICKABLE high-res photo)
What the box reads on the outside...
Paperwork that is inside the box on top of the styrofoam. The quick guide on the left is bare bones and tells the DCC operator to go look up the product online and find the DCC guide. As of now, 20-20191-2 still doesn't have a detailed instruction manual and I never received a response from MTH on why. Instead, I had to go view the HO instruction manual and the DCC section there appears to mirror exactly the HO version as far as I can tell. You will need that to get the listing of the CVs, etc, but as a favor you reading this, I took a screenshot of the 29 functions and list it below:
So you never bought an MTH F or E ABA set huh...well this is what they look like brand new from the factory. Now try to wrap them back exactly like that each time you put them away...
On my unfinished small switching layout, here is a look of the slave A unit with the kadees installed.
Side profile shot with that newly tooled blomberg truck. Pretty nice. I just wish they made it easy to change out the bearings used on their trucks and sold those as a separate detail pack as these trucks only have roller bearing on all 8 spots. Often many roads had mixed bearings on their units...
A close up of the pilot detail. They shrunk the hole for the kadee. Less huge gap for it. I like it. The screws for the kadees didn't come in the box like past 2R MTH diesels. I had to tap the holes for 2-56 screws. Obviously a freight pilot.
A closeup of the newly tooled blomberg trucks. Feel free to rivet count to your hearts content. Look good to me other than being stuck with the roller bearing sections.
An angle nose shot. I like how they added these service grabs, but these particular units never had them from what my references show. The font of the numberboard is also wrong.
The exhaust vent on both units came with the paint scraped off. Very odd...
So this is probably MTH's only 5-chime horn that comes close to an M5. The M5's were popular on many roads, so I am confused why they never made the casting. It must be replaced on both A units.
Here is the end of the slaved A unit. Rubber diaphragm/door along with rubber MU hoses. Not very realistic but I understand the desire for rubber airhoses. I will have to replace, along with putting the tether through the door.
The door on both A units open for the controls. Shown is the slave unit. Not much to select, but plenty of openings to get the tether through (or enlarge the openings...either way...
Here's what the main powered A unit has. Still room to get the tether through, but the current settings show that it is set for 2R DCC with the option to go to 3R (pickup rollers in box) or to DCS. I keep the smoke turned off, but these do supposedly smoke. I have no interest until after I do all the detail work. The sound POT does not work in DCC. Instead it is controlled by using the F6 key and can change it up 10 levels or so.
The lead A unit has this nasty creature for the tether along with the non-functional kadee and rubber air hoses.
Here's what the truck blocks look like. Can easily screw in the 3R pickup roller. Look at the huge space between the 2R wheels and the frame. Supposedly easily fixable by John Sethian. I will await his detailed article at some point to proceed.
Added my Kadees with 2-56 screws. Tapping required I believe, but taking off the pilots was not.
Here's what the only speaker in this trio looks like. Comes with PS3 freight sounds and inspected by #1? Will look to expanding sound to the B and slave A unit.
Close-Up of non-function kadee between units.
A glimpse at the wiring mess of the tether...
Proof that these close couple as-is, but the tether is hideous. It will be completely hidden by the diaphragms once I get around to moving them. Wish MTH thought to move them first.
Now that the model is shown in detail, here is info on the prototypes MTH chose:
Southern had 76 F7A units. Most were originally SOU with 9 from the CNO&TP and AGS.
Southern had 72 F7B units. Most were originally SOU with 27 from both CNO&TP and AGS.
These were all equipped with 567B engines.
4242 was built in 5/49 with Dynamic brakes installed in 23Oct53 at Spencer, NC shops.. Retired in 1969.
4228 was built in 6/49 with Dynamic brakes installed in 25May55 at Spencer, NC shops. Retired in 1973.
4400 was built in 5/49 with Dynamic brakes installed in 22Apr53 at Spencer, NC shops. Retired in 1969.
Using photos from both my physical and digital library...it would appear the following needs to happen to bring these closer to the prototype for my time frame(though all photos I have are only within my time frame, so I'm curious how MTH screwed up the service grabs...)
Remove the service steps on both A units. They were not installed on these 2 particular units.
Add the obviously missing MU and air hoses to the pilots.
Add roof coils and spark arrestors to both 4242 and 4400.
Replace the horns with brass Nathan M5 castings
Add speed recorder and ATS shoes to appropriate trucks.
Re-tether the ABA units through the diaphragm instead of through the truck.
Redo MU hoses on rear of both A units and on both ends of B unit if feasible - Installed rubber ones may be required due to 36" radius curves
Maybe try to add sound to the B and other A unit if feasible.
Numberboard Font is off. Need to check Microscale decals to see if replacing is feasible.
Potentially body mount kadees if feasible
Potentially body mount side truck steps to frame if feasible
Move the truck sideframes in if admittedly...John Sethian's way of doing it turns out to be easy.
Get inside the nose lights/cab and paint the LEDs with orange translucent paint to make the bright white turn more warm white.
Weather to 1968 conditions
End of my review. You're bound to see my changes when they eventually occur as I finish them. So many other projects I am more motivated to complete first.
Here is a video of my units to show a few of the functions easily achievable with my Digitrax DT402D. The video shows flickering of the lights, but it is entirely based on the camera's shutter speed seeing faster than our human eyes can and I can't easily fix it.
My final thought is that I wish MTH made some of these F7A units as dummy 2R units. Would be nice to run these elephant style as in the prototype.
I just have to share this good deed (or amazing customer service...).
I bought an Iwata Smart-Jet compressor for my Paasche Airbrush. I bought it for several reasons at the time as it is a known quality name-brand, had positive reviews at the time, can hold my airbrush, included a moisture trap, and it knows when to turn the air on/off all on its own. This last option is nice, so you don't have to keep flipping a switch, or fill up a tank every so often.
So after several years of use...probably 4 or maybe even 5, my compressor stops working. I can't figure out why, but I figure trying to get it fixed would be cheaper than buying a new one as its still in good shape. I called tech support and the gentleman gave me a few ideas for the model I was using, but told me that it was probably the pressure switch and they no longer use the part I have on mine. The back up plan that where I could not figure out what was happening or fix it, was to mail back the compressor with $50 and they would fix it with return shipping included. Even that isn't a bad deal for a quarter of the price of it new.
I took the advice first and I hit the pressure switch with a hammer and it would turn on sporadically every time I did that. It was a sign that the switch was broken. I ended up taking it off and opening up the part. A broken copper connector that is used to push a pole into the air-flow gap had broken, probably from lots of use.
In an attempt to get just that part to fix the switch, I emailed the photo to Iwata and a customer service rep actually replied and said they would send me an entire pressure switch free of charge; no worries that the compressor was way past the one-year warranty mark. I never had to send it back and the part usually runs $20 by itself. Now that is service. I will stay with their products if I ever need to actually buy a new one.
Here is a link to the compressor itself... http://www.iwata-medea.com/index.php/products/smart_jet
So I am very close to having all of the turnouts I need to complete my switching layout.
With that, I've already started laying most of the track and before I could finish that step, I wanted to go ahead and wire the turnouts to avoid failure and frustration later, due to failure of AtlasO switches (the contacts under the switches fail over time)
Cutting away parts of the plastic substructure under the rail is easy as is soldering to that (as witnessed in Part 1), but the frogs gave me some trouble and are shown below. I was using my Weller 50W variable soldering iron set at 850 degrees and even after filing a section of one of my wyes, I was not able to heat sink it enough to keep the frog from melting off the ties. The alloy they use also corroded. I did not have silver solder at the time to try to solder to this, so I went ahead with the method below. Silver solder may work, but I have not experimented with it at this time.
After some suggestions from the OGR Forum, I decided to go ahead and potentially make eyesores on all of my frogs by drilling a hole in them and tapping them for .25" 2-56 brass screws so I could solder to the heads from the bottom. I will be wiring all of the frogs to some Tam Valley Frog Juicers.
Another tip was to add styrene spacers to the frogs to ensure they don't short with any of the other rails from either movement or rail expansion.
Below is one last photo. It shows the top and bottom of how the rails are connected and where I chose to cut the ties to add my own wires. The top photo shows the frog in red - it is isolated from the rest of the switch. The blue and green lines show the same rails that should be connected and where I wired across under the rail. On one side of the turnout, I soldered pigtails that would all three go together through a hole under the layout to connect to the 10AWG bus I have running around the layout. Those pigtails and small hole are drilled after I lay the roadbed, so that they are really close to the roadbed and will eventually be entirely covered and hidden by ballast.
Hopefully this provides a stepping stone for others to use to do similar work to do their best to hide wires on the rails.
This post shows how I did the magnetic air hoses for an AtlasO 50' Plug Door Boxcar that the prototype had extended cushion couplers.
The coupler boxes are made by a guy of the last name of Gougen. They are made for the Kadee couplers to be inserted, but attach to an AtlasO boxcar using the different screw spacing unique to Atlas cars.
I looked at a prototype picture and basically the pipe extends back into the car, so I bent the wire at 90 degrees far enough back to be away from sight, but to extend through the box twice so it has a second hole that won't allow it to turn vertically. I trimmed the brass wire (see part 1 for exact sizes of bits and wires) so that it would barely stick out of the second hole on the other side of the box. The other end was trimmed to keep the angle cock flush with the end of the coupler box. The photos showed the end of the pipe coming to the angle cock to be bent down, but it would put the glad hand too low and be down in the height of the ties.
I was looking for ideas on what needed to be addressed and how to address shortcomings of AtlasO's 2R turnouts...here-forth called switches.
I was told to not trust the copper cross plates on the underbelly of the switches and to add my own wires to the frog, both sets of rails and also possibly the points, but I decide to let the points use the built in copper plating in the ties.
I went ahead and soldered 5 wires; one to the frog, one to each the right and left rail on one of the diverging ends, and soldered jumpers to the other diverging end's rails to assist the embedded copper plates. I wanted to see if I could do the soldering myself without a resistance soldering machine, and I wanted to see if I could solder to the bottom to the rails to avoid unsightly solder joints on the side of rails.
It was suggested on the OGR Forum to use wet paper towels to act as heat sink for a soldering iron. I went a step further and soaked a sponge in water to do the same. I set my variable setting soldering iron to its highest setting-850 degrees or so. I used solid 18 gauge wire for all connections.
To prepare for the connections, I cut away several pieces of ties (see photos) in such a fashion that it would not hurt the overall integrity of the one-piece plastic tie casting. (I choose pieces between the ties that were at diagonals and/or were opposite of sections that weren't cut).
At this point, I filed all areas I was going to try to solder to. I then added flux paste to each area. I then tinned both the wires and the rails. Tinning the rails was easy. The frog is a big metal casting, so it took a lot of heat to tin it and you could hear the sponge sizzling from the heat. I did push the switch into the sponge to ensure good contact with water and I did make sure not to melt any of the ties. I was able to easily solder the wires to the rails by bending the ends of the wire into an L shape to allow more area to solder to the rail. I did the leads first and then the jumpers. An idea for the future would be to cut a piece long enough to do the jumpers and the leads and just strip some wire also in the center of that one wire so it can all be one piece and I wouldn't need to worry about the lead coming off when I try to solder the jumper. The frog was a pain and as I tugged hard on the lead to make sure it was a good solder joint, it pulled off easily twice. After each time I filed the same spot again and even harder than the time before. I put more flux paste each time and got the third time to hold pretty strong.
I am curious to see how a resistance soldering device would make this any easier or stronger solder joints. Perhaps I should consider using a high grade silver solder. If anyone knows of a good resistance soldering unit for sale, let me know.
Here are some photos. Feel free to click on the photos for larger sizes and to comment as always.
I had the pleasure of building 2 kits for a friend of mine. Sad to say, I hope they are the last 2 I ever build for anyone outside selling anything from my personal collection. It just takes too long too build kits at a higher quality level. I do want to say that the Sylvan car did have an older set of decals that were falling apart in the water and were scratched off. Sylvan amazingly replaced these at no cost to me and it was appreciated.
The two kits are the following:
-Sylvan Models CNR 1929 Boxcar
-Chooch NKP War Emergency Boxcar
The Sylvan is a two-piece body kit and comes with everything but trucks and couplers. The ladders are a bit crude, so I opted to use a modified plastic set sold by Des Plaines Hobbies. The CNR decals appeared to be missing a lot of little extras that I saw on some photos of cars in the 50s.
The NKP kit was a flat kit and needed its entire body squared up and put together. It did not come with trucks, couplers, decals, or a roofwalk. I ended up getting one of the last sets of decals from Nickel Plate Models (Dave Vaughn), but he said he could get more printed if needed. The etched apex roofwalk I used was also from Des Plaines Hobbies. This makes for a superior model in the end.
The cars are fitted with Weaver trucks (with some washers in between the bolster pieces due to clearances needed from the flanges and bottom of the car. The cars still meet kadee heights)
The CNR car got boxcar red. The NKP car got mineral red and black. The trucks were painted for NKP car per the photo I saw and the only weathering any car got was with the oily black on the inside of the wheels of the NKP trucks.
Can't think of much else to say, so here are some photos of the end results:
