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.

Modeling: Magnetic Air Hoses Part 4 - AtlasO 50' Plug Door w/ Cushion Coupler Pocket

This post shows how I did the magnetic air hoses for an AtlasO 50' Plug Door Boxcar that the prototype had cushion coupler pockets.

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.

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.

Kit Builds: CN and NKP finished kits

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:

Modeling: Magnetic Air Hoses Part 3 - AtlasO Fishbelly Hopper

This post is for the AtlasO Fishbelly Hopper.  This one was a bear of a job to do, but luckily the bolsters come off the hopper.  They are diecast, so it is a bit more work to get things to work.

For the kadee couplers, I redrilled and retapped the holes for 2-56 screws.  I then used 1" screws at angles to screw down the coupler and trimmed the tops to make them flush.  Everything gets touched with black paint to blend it all in at the end.

For the A end of the car, I was able to drill into the side of the piece that the coupler screws into using a #55 bit.  I had to be careful drilling to widen it slightly to take the brass wire that I bent to get the air hose at the correct height and angle.  I filed down both ends of the wire and went to solder the angle cock casting to one end.

For the B end, the notch that holds the triple valve kept me from drilling into the side.  I thought to drill at another spot, but I instead was able to use the 2 holes that originally held the AB Reservoir and bend them in place to hold the angle cock.  I was able to bend a piece first try to fit in both holes and soldered the angle cock onto the correct end.  For the AB Reservoir, I cut off the two pegs and made sure the "wires" into the A and B sides from the triple valve were glued so that the triple valve could hold the AB Reservoir in place.

The rest was simply putting together the glad hand, painting, and screwing the bolster pieces and trucks back on.  See photos below for some ideas...

Modeling: Magnetic Air Hoses Part 2 - AtlasO 40' AAR Boxcar

I've been incorporating the new air hose technique on the diesels that I have been slowly upgrading to DCC.  Those have been straight forward and easy as I have been able to simply drill a slightly smaller hole in the plastic pilots and have been able to wedge in the angle cock casting and glue them in place from there.

I went ahead and upgraded an AtlasO 40' AAR boxcar and figured the following would be the way to upgrade 90% of the rest of the RTR stock I have.  I still have an AtlasO fishbelly hopper on my workbench to look at how I want to add the airhoses, but the idea shouldn't be too different.

The boxcar I did by soldering a small piece of bent .049" brass wire (slightly larger than the angle cock casting, but is a stiff enough base to use) to the end of the angle cock casting.  The .049" wire was bent 90 degrees first before tinning and soldering the wire to the casting.  Then I slipped on the air hose/glad hand to the piece.

The hole for the wire was drilled into the floor where it would let the end of the angle cock roughly parallel the edge of the coupler box.  I used a #55 drill bit to drill the hole for the .049" wire.  I did have to go a second time and slightly widen the hole, but it provides a very snug fit for the wire.  This is so snug, I also needed to use pliers to push the wire into the hole.   This should work on all plastic cars.  Metal cars will probably need a more exacting technique, but I will find out with the fishbelly hopper's metal base.

Painting is trivial at this point.  I do paint the angle cock handle silver along with the glad hand.

Here are some photos of the process:

Modeling: My Try at Operating Air Hoses - Resin 40' Boxcar

I was intrigued when I read Ben Brown's article in OST.  It was a very neat idea and I had already begun to start adding air hoses to all of my items, but decided that I wanting to go the extra step and use Ben's idea.

The only hard part to the idea is being able to secure the brass extension (for the angle cock) to something else on the car.  My first two test cars were easy since one had a brass underframe and the other had a very thick bolster that I drilled out to fit the extension.  The brass extension piece was made from .046" diameter brass rod, which allowed me to solder the PSC angle cock easily.

For the air hoses, I followed the OST article for the parts, which work great.  The only step from the article that I felt was not possible was using a 3/32" bit to drill into the glad hand further.  The bit kept getting caught on another part of the glad hand.  I just made sure the magnet would fit into the underside of it and glued it in.

As for deciding upon an air hose length, which was not mentioned in the article,  I feel that 1/2" is long enough to look about right and still connect the glad hands together, even if the magnets are the same polarity facing each other.  That was a possible issue when using these, but they still connect close enough for it not to matter.

As for the resin car with the thick bolster, I used a #52 bit to drill most of the hole from the car end side, but then I finished the last part of it with a #55.  This provides a very snug hole for the .046" rod that needed pliers to push the rod through.  Once through, I bent the wire on either side to try to provide an extra step to keep it in place.  Paint can be added afterwards.

The resin kit in this instance was a Rails Unlimited MILW Ribside boxcar.

Here are some photos below: