Modeling: O-Scale - Lionel (2R) - Southern Dome 1613

Southern only had two dome cars on the system.  One of them was 1613, originally Wabash 203/Norfolk and Western 1613, found its way to the Southern via Central of Georgia in 1970-1971.  It found itself on the rear of both the Crescent as well as the train #3 - the Salisbury-Asheville (formerly the Asheville Special).

Lionel released a relatively accurate rendition of Southern Railway's 1613 dome, SKU 2027310 "Southern Vistavision Dome #1613". Suggested catalog retail price was $329.99, despite the website currently showing $399.99. I don't remember the specific release date, but I ended up ordering my model from a dealer in May 2022.

Lionel had and continues to have a hard time handling colors despite using the Pantone Library for consistency.  When I saw the original catalog artwork (which is still in the link above), I reached out to Lionel with a number of corrections.  They originally wanted to match some other previously released cars and had an incorrect color and font.

Lionel ended up taking my recommendations below into account:

1. Corrected carbody color (I had recommended Pantone 5535c)
   
2. Corrected roof color to black.
3. Corrected yellow of lettering/striping (either Pantone 141c or 142c)
   
4. Corrected letter/number font
5. Corrected placement of numbers
6. Corrected stripe width and placement

I remember spending an hour or two trying to figure out the best Pantone color for the lettering from photos. Metallic gold was on the table, but in all photos, it always looked a shade of yellow. Lighting and photo exposure then affects that yellow.

Beyond that, two things I asked for didn't make it in:

1. Black underbody. The underframe came with the green used on the carbody. Simple fix.
   
2. Accurate 41-CUDO trucks. I did try to ask that they provide these trucks, as I thought they had made them based on other catalog artwork, but turns out Lionel didn't have tooling for them, only the 41-ND trucks they use on every streamlined car.

I didn't pre-order as I was scared what might actually show up from the factory (which mistakes can still happen despite what you provide a factory). I was pleasantly surprised and made an order once I saw from others what was delivered.  I can't speak to the interior layout, but the car was built well and the paint/lettering came out as I had recommended.  Below are the additional updates I made to my model:

1. Add a PSC-40823 brass vestibule end gate to the vestibule on the 5-window side of the dome.
2. Paint the underframe black.
   
3. Paint the interior from tan to a set of "accurate" colors.
4. Add Antimacassars decals with SOU emblem to every seat.
5. Add MTH figures to the interior.
   
6. Add window film to all windows except for the camera window
7. Convert to #746 long-shank Kadee couplers using the provided adapter.
8. Add working magnetic air hoses. (Did not add steam line or anything else.)
   
9. Convert to Wasatch brass 41-CUDO 2R trucks
10. Add power pickups to the 41-CUDO trucks.

Notes:

• I didn't note exactly what colors I used, but I painted the seats some shade of red, the floors/walls maroon, and the dome seats green.  The prototype photos show that the seats were more of a mix of a pattern of colors, so I just went with the general color.
  
• The Antimacassars decals are my own design, and made custom to the measurements of the this car's interior, so I could place each pair of seats at one time.
• There were etched mirrors on various walls inside the car. I used a reflective product I found at Michael's that I could cut to size and glue to the walls.
• Tinting the windows could have been multiple ways. I decided to use a window film I found on Amazon.  It did take a bit of effort to cut to shape and get it to stick to the sharp curvature of the window.
• I had to modify the bolster and retap the holes to mount the 41-CUDO trucks.
  
• I run DCC, so the lighting and camera work just fine as the electronic components convert the square-wave AC similar to the 3-rail AC.
  
• The Lionel Wireless Camera app that is required to connect to the camera is interesting.  Definitely not the most robust Chinese piece of software, but essentially the camera board has a WiFi chip that advertises its own unique SSID.  You connect your iOS/Android device to it and then open the Lionel Wireless Camera app and then it should detect the camera and you go from there. You can watch in real time, take screenshots, and also take video recordings.  Relatively easy, but quality is only decent, not even 1080p. 
• Somewhere between 20-40 hours went into these modifications including testing/prep.

Below is the photo essay:

 

Finished car

View of the dome w/ tinted windows

Camera window left untinted

View of interior with tint

Another view of interior with tint

Provided Kadee Coupler mounts

Where mounts mount to underframe

Visualizing how the car will mount with a PSC bolster

Mounted PSC bolster

topside view

View of modified truck

Tension partially keeps board in place

Side view of painted Wasatch 41-CUDO truck

Another view of finished truck

Back of Antimacassars decals

View of completed dome section. The dome comes off separately.

Interior view

Interior view 2

Completed interior

In progress airbrushing

Bottom of dome seating. Hole is for camera to slip through.

Comparison of window film vs Tamiya clear blue. This film was redone as it tore in the corners.

Used Gila film solution and styrene to press film into corners. Then came back and trimmed with an Xacto knife.

Mix of paint used to match PSC gate to body color

How it was mounted into the plastic diaphragm piece

You can see the leftover green before I painted the underframe. On/Off switches for Camera/Lighting.

View from Camera on the Lionel Wireless Camera app

 

 

Here's a short video taken from the app. Sorry for the mess, that OMI RS-11 box will be written about on this blog at some point.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Layout Construction - Control and Wiring

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:

My Layout: Wiring AtlasO Turnouts Part 2

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.

Layout: My First AtlasO Turnout Wiring Attempt

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.