Grain Elevators part 1

On my layout I have 10 grain elevators. They are all in various levels of completion. I will make a series of posts in regards to them as I complete each one. Nine out of the ten elevators are scratch built and the only one that is completed is a Campbell's kit. The remaining are scratch built and use the same standard method for scratch built items which you can see in this post. How I build my scratch projects . They are all built based on pictures that I have taken and from my experiences in my farming background. Elevators are never built exactly the same and I have tried to incorporate different features into each one of them. There are not many decals available for my era of 1959. The only ones that are out there come from Microscale and the only ones that work are for United Grain Growers  (UGG), Parrish & Heimbecker  (P&H), and Federal. The others in the sets are too modern. Having said that we are lucky to have any of them. The decals for Searl, Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, Pioneer, National and Paterson were custom printed. As a point of interest Searl Grain is the only grain company that I am modelling that I did not actually deliver grain to while I was farming. There is an interesting article on the history of Canadian grain companies which is available on this blog http://vanishingsentinels.blogspot.ca This article is a time line for the Canadian grain industry Dates of Historical Interest. There is also an article that shows how an elevator works at this site http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/grain-elevators/ .
Take note not to confuse American and Canadian elevators as they are very different. The most notable difference being the driveway into the elevator itself. The Canadian ones are almost all raised and the majority of the American ones you enter at ground level. To do a full elevator scene would require about 14'X22" so you can fit in all the details. We can do it with less suing some compression. The office, the walkway from the office to the elevator, parking at the office, the driveways going in and out, storage shed, an annex and possibly a fertilizer shed are all things to consider in your build.

The 3 in Melville have been modified to fit the space that was available. These are all scratch built, being narrower than they would normally be to fit the space at the back of the yard. They are built using the same methods as I used for the 2nd class station.

These 2 in Waldron also will have some features left out because of space restrictions. These two are also scratch build.

The 3 in Atwater also will have some features left out because of space restrictions. These three are also scratch build.

This is the elevator in Lorlie and is a Campbell's kit. It is the smallest of all the elevators and would be the oldest plan. The fertilizer shed to the left is scratch built. This elevator kit that got all the space it needed.

This elevator is in Foster and is scratch built.

CNR 4-8-4 U-2-g Northern

 At rest in the yard waiting for the next assignment.

This is a picture of my True Lines 4-8-4 U-2-g 6226 Northern. I bought this locomotive at a very reasonable price. This is a beautiful locomotive to look at, runs nice when it runs but if you have problems with it you are on your own. There are no diagrams, spare parts would be hard to find and you get next to no help from True Line. I  had to take it apart to fix a wire that had come loose, (it would make sound but would not move) and that was a very touchy process. I needed all my soldering skill to fix it. I brought in my friends Ron and Norman for backup and ideas, we went slow and took lots of pictures as we went along. I was told that if you ever had to get at the motor good luck because  you would have to break parts to get that done. This is the problem with newer products like this, once it is off warranty (1 to 2 years) you will not get much help. You can just send it back if it is on warranty, but here in Canada that will be a cost of at least 50 to 75 dollars. They have nice lights and lots of details that may or may not be best for proper operation. The days of being able to get parts for a few years seems to be gone from some manufactures.  I would sooner have my brass steam if I had a choice as you can always get them running. Just like older P2000.  I will make the suggestion that you try to get part diagrams and an electrical drawing before you buy these engines as there may be multiple boards involved and the wiring can be next to impossible to figure out with out a drawing.

This picture shows the board that is under the cab. The wire that needed to be fixed was one of the black ones as the JST plug didn't jest any more. There is also another board in the tender.

Running as extra 6226 east bound just coming up on Cana Jct.

CNR 1937 AAR Box Car Overview

10',  series 14, NSC 2 end, original paint, blt. 1943

I started this project in the 1990’s using data from Stafford Swain's articles for these boxcars. You could not complete this project without Stafford’s data sheets. His articles were in RMC Aug 1993 and were reprinted in CN Lines 3-4. The information you need to model these cars along with a table is contained in those articles. I currently have 2 cars left to finish and this project will then be complete. It has been very fulfilling and has left me with a total of 47 CNR All Steel 1937 AAR Boxcars. I now have twenty five 10' high cars, fifteen 10’6 high cars with 6' doors and seven 10'6 high cars with 8' doors. The car numbers are based on a ratio of what CN owned to my total number of cars on the layout. I will start a series of posts covering these cars starting with the 10' cars. Many of the cars required changes to be made such as ends, roofs, brake details, doors, roof walks, trucks, brake wheels and decals. In the end there are 19 variations of these cars. Some of these cars were also boxed baggage cars in passenger service. The only thing they all share is that they were painted CN #11 red and have 10 panel sides. The passenger service cars were painted in CN green #11.

CNR 10’H All Steel Boxcars All these cars have 10 riveted side panels, 6’ Youngstown 6-5-6 doors and wood roof walks. They are made up of cars from series 1 to 24. They were produced from 1937-1946. There was a total of 19,215 cars. I have tried to model all physical variations for the 10’H cars. Intermountain and Red Caboose box car kits have been used as the starting point for all these cars.

CNR 10’6”H All Steel Boxcars All cars have 10 riveted side panels, 6’ doors, metal roof walks and W corners. They are made up of cars from series 25 to 43. They were produced from 1948-1956. There was a total of 18,260 cars in this group. I have tried to model all physical variations for the 10’6”H cars except for the welded cars series 42 that were produced in 1956. Branchline and Atlas made a welded car, just not lately. Intermountain and Branchline kits were used as the starting point for these cars also. CNR 10’6”H All Steel Boxcars With 8’ Doors All cars have 10 riveted side panels, 8’ doors and metal roof walks. They are made up of series 44-49 and were produced from 1956-1957 and there was a total of 5,000 cars in this group. Intermountain, Branchline and H&D cars were used as the starting point for this grouping of cars.

Tool Ideas 1

I am doing some work on my layout changing points and wanted to be able to move some of my tools around with me more easily.

1. I was looking for some way to hold my Dremel tool with a flex shaft. The flex shaft can't be curved too much or it will bind.
2.  For my soldering iron I wanted to be able to put it somewhere when it is hot so it would  not melt or burn anything. 
3. I was going to be do some work on my layout with scenery already in place and needed to move it around easily. I had thought of buying a mike stand, then my wife suggested that I use my tripod for my camera.
4. I also needed to be able to move around the tools that I would be using and have them close at hand. I now just use a chair with wheels on it.

Tripod holding my Dremel and soldering iron. The height of the Dremel can be easily adjusted

This just shows how the Dremel is hung. Very simple just make sure the thumb screw is tight

I just draped the soldering iron over the leg brace. It is still 1' off the floor.

I am just showing the cell phone holder that is mounted to my tripod.  It is a part off of a $10 selfie stick. All my model and scenery pictures are taken using a tripod.

This is my portable tool bench. It is just an office chair from the crew lounge. It has rollers so I can just roll it along as I move from place to place. Sometimes I put a towel down if things are dirty.  I spend a lot less time looking for tools.  I am in the process of changing out the throw bars and points on my turnouts. 

That white remote is for turning on the power on my layout. 1 turns the power on to my DCC, 2 & 3 turns the power on to my 12V buses. The receivers are all plugged in to a common power bar and then each device plugs in to a receiver. This equipment is all under my layout. Not very expensive.

CNR 4-8-2 U-1-f Mountain 6060

Van Hobbies CNR U-1-f Mountain. This model came from the last run and has a coaster drive, factory paint, raised numbers on running boards, back head detail. I installed a Soundtraxx 750 Medium steam decoder in this locomotive in 2014. This was a difficult install only because of the factory paint. I gave a lot of thought to this and had to consult Wayne in Ontario on how to get the ash panels, and smoke box cover off without scratching the paint. The ash panels fit very tight and have to be removed to get the shell off. It takes a leap of faith to pry them off without doing any damage to the paint or the brass parts. I managed to remove the front of the smoke box and could install the decoder in that space. While I had this open I installed an LED light. I ran the wires back to the motor and pickups from the tender and the loco. Next I had to find a place for the speaker. I could not place it in the tender, mostly because it is an oil Vanderbuilt and only had a 1/4" slot in the bottom of the tender to get a speaker inside and then there would be no way for the sound to get out.   It would have been very difficult to remove the plate from the bottom of the tender without doing damage to the paint. I chose to install a mini oval speaker in the floor of the cab which works well as it turned out because you can't really see it.
This loco runs really nice but did have some problems with the front and rear trucks that like to short on curves. A lot of time was spent on trying to fix the problems.  In the end the spring for the trailing  truck took off when I was taking it apart and in the moment I didn't feel like making a new one. I put the truck back on and  turned the screw in so that the truck was not tight and gave it a try. Well guess what it worked just fine and it is the best it has ever run. I took the screw back off and put a little white glue on it to hold it in place. By having the spring removed it also changed the balance and it pulls much better now. The front truck ended up with a lighter spring as it was lifting the front drivers off the track, with the lighter spring the shorting went away. This is all part of running brass steam and you have to stay diligent until you get the problems fixed. It will still take some maintenance to keep it from shorting by adding lacquer nail polish as the paint wears off and bare brass gets exposed.

Here are some shots of it pulling train #62 Yorkton to Regina just leaving Melville. It is entering the end of it's career and is on less important runs now. It is pulling a box baggage, reefer, and a coach.

Taken from the roof of the Hudson Bay store

Turnout control

 I knew once I looked at the price of Tortoise machines x 40 turnouts that it was going to be too much cost and opted for this method which I had used on one of my other layouts with a few changes. The DPDT slide will hold the points in place.

I started with a double pole double throw slide switch.

I had originally intended to have one set of contacts wired to a red/green LED in the fascia. Once I had finished doing all the soldering for the feeder wires under the layout, I had had enough of being under there so it has not happened yet. 

The pictures below aid in the description. 

I epoxied the switch to a small block of wood that I ripped from some 3/8 plywood. They ended up 1/2" wide and 2" long. It has to be long enough to leave room for adding the 2 screws that attach it to the plywood under the turnout.

 NOTE I did have the epoxy let go on a few as they are not straight in from the fascia and there was more torque on them so I made 2 angle brackets from some cheap flat decorative aluminum bar stock and bent them to 90 degrees, drilled 2 holes and screwed them to the mounting holes of the switch and then attached them to the underside of the layout. 

Next I drilled the slider on the switch and installed a short piece of brass tube OD .06 with an ID of .056.  It is  1.5" in length which is long enough to be  lower than the throw bar. The tube gives extra support to the piano wire and provides a means to connect the drilled dowelling.  

The piano .055 wire goes up through to the throw bar on the points. I did it this way to make the connection as stiff as possible and still be able to maintain the small size of the wire. This also gives more rigidity for the ⅛ inch dowel to work against. 

I drilled a hole 1/4" in from the end of a length of dowel so it would side over the brass tube.

I drilled a corresponding hole in the fascia straight out from the switch that is one size bigger than the dowel. 

The dowel  is inserted from the fascia side, I pulled the brass tube down and mounted the dowel. I then marked the dowel just 1/16 " longer than the fascia, removed it and cut it to length.  I then drilled a hole in the end for the push pin to go into as a tight fit. 

The dowel is then put back in, attached and then the push pin is glued in with CA. It is rare to have a push pin come off the end of the dowel. If it does I just re-glue it and it is ready to operate in seconds. The face of the push pins stops the dowel from going past the fascia.

The wire inside the brass tube can be adjusted up and down and once fitted  it is held in place with a bit of white glue. 

The slider on the switch has just enough throw to work the points from one side to the other but must be centered properly. 

The brackets are screwed in with #4 screws. I made the hole in the bracket for the switch just a bit larger so that there was room for some lateral adjustment.

Once everything is in place I put a drop of CA on the wire to hold it to the throw bar.

The cost for each one  is approximately $3 depending on the cost of the DPDT 

I made labels in Open Office using CN fonts which you can get from the CN Lines web site printing them in CN #11 yellow with a CN  #11 green background with settings that I got from the net. The labels are then cut out and glued to the CN green #11 fascia with a kids glue stick. Removal is easy using a wet cloth, once they are damp they just wipe off. Use a little soap on the cloth to remove the glue residue.

 Shows an installed unit.The yellow wire goes to the frog and the other 2 are from the track bus. I just used the top row of pins. The bottom row of pins would be used for lighting the LED.

This shows the wood block that I used to start with. The only problem here is that the epoxy let go on a few that had too much torque on them and I switched those out to the metal angle bracket below.

This shows a switch mounted with the brass angel brakets

This picture shows the rods coming through the fascia with the push pins attached to the end of the rod and the lettering that is used.

My track work

Code 55 to the ice house and code 70 on the ladder. The switch stands add a lot to the scene. Points on this turnout have not been changed out yet.

A little background. When I started this layout I looked at prefabricated turnouts and I just could not come to terms with the price for some 40 turnouts, although it would be easy. I didn't have the courage to hand lay everything because of time and my ability/experience. I like trying new things though and don't mind having to do some work/modeling. I then came across the Central Valley system and liked the price point, difficulty was midway between hand laid and prefabricated which didn't seem too difficult and the ability to have a consistent look with different rail codes. I knew I would be photographing this layout and felt it would look good with the different codes and it does.

All my track work outside of staging is from Central Valley. The main is code 83, the yard is code 70 and the sidings/spurs and engine terminal is code 55. Most the rail is weathered Micro Engineering some had to be weathered by hand. I followed the recommendations by CV. The tie strips (main and branch ) and turnouts were glued down to the painted foam with Weldbond white glue. The ties are then painted and weathered some. At this point the rails get their feeder wires soldered to them.Then I mixed Barge contact cement  with lacquer thinner, this is painted on the bottom of the Micro Engineering rail. Holes are drilled through the layout top for the feeder wires. The rail is then laid in place on the tie strips and is finally glued down by using a touch of lacquer thinner. I also install some ME spikes by drilling a tight fit hole in the tie and putting a little CA on the spike. On a recommendation I did not use rail joiners at all since the rail has to be pre curved to fit the radius of the corner and thus there is no forces applied to the rail except for Charlie’s VH CP 2-10-2 brass Selkirk with no blind drivers that went around the 36" radius curve and peeled off the outside rail as slick as anything. The rails for the turnouts are cut as per instruction and wired and glued down the same as the procedure above. The frogs came from Proto 87 and each one is wired so they are live and the polarity changes when the switch is thrown. Then the final touches of weathering are applied to the rails and ties and it is ready for  ballast. Once the ballast is in place I then go back and weather some more. I mixed dirt and water and paint the dirty water on, add some brake dust where needed and some spills and rust. There are 31 turnouts in the yard and the price for each turnout at the time was C $13 plus my time equals about half the price of Walthers switches. All of these instructions can be found on the Central Valley site. The point throws are all manual as they were in 1959 and will be covered on their own in a different post. When I laid the rail I joined them too close at .01-.02" and as it grew ??? would pop off the rail. These spots have since been gapped larger, the rail does come loose once in a while if it gets caught by a steamer. And I just put it back in place and give it a touch of lacquer thinner and it is glued back down.

The switch stands come with the turnout tie strips or can be purchased separate as part of the detail sprue and look good enough although not CN. They can be made to rotate the target when the turnout is thrown but I gave up on these as they are hard to make work properly. Now if one gets knocked off  by an 0-5-0 or something they are easy to glue back in place with no harm done. I  ordered caboose markers from True Line trains and cut the mounting pin off and drilled a hole in the bottom and mounted them above the target. The targets are from a hand drawing I got from one of the guys on CN Lines list. I cut them out of styrene, painted them and glued them to the stand.
Now... I am in the process of changing the switch points out as the ones that come with the switches do not work very well and have caused problems. If I was to do it again I would follow Joe Fugates poor mans switch article in MRH and all would be good, when using his article you would get better points and frogs.This article came out after all my switches were installed. Go figure. As a side note I have built a couple of switches using Fast Tracks and when I put the Fast Tracks over top my Central valley it is an exact match as far as gauge goes.

Shows the lanterns above the targets 

Code 55 in the foreground 

Sector plates

My friend Peter Ulvestad had given me this link  MRH sector plates. We had been talking about how I was going to make the limited space in staging work when I didn't really have room for a ladder. Here are some pictures of the sector plates that I use in my staging area.

This is the sector plate for the bottom level of my staging. It serves 6 tracks plus the main. The hole in the wall goes out to the layout. This one works really well as it is flat. The only critical part is drilling the hole for the pin to go in to to hold the track  in place. The hose in the background is the vent for my paint booth.

The next 3 pictures are of the sector plate on the 2nd level. Same basic design but was much harder because of the 2% grade involved. This one seems to be more prone to changes in temperature and humidity which might be because it goes around the furnace.

The little white stick in the foreground with the skid plate on the bottom of it. This is used to assist in lining up the tracks. The little wood post is a support for the end of the shelf.

The wood block was needed to make the transition from the Woodland Scenics risers and a pivot point. That little block took a lot of thought.

That 1/2" tube mounted on the wall is a string of LED lights that runs under the bottom of the 2nd shelf and lights up the bottom shelf and the back side of the loop. It is about 5 years old now and is sort of old tech already, as you can now get flat ones that are only 1/4" thick.


 They work great and save a lot of space. That said the one on the top shelf is a bit fussier to correctly line up because of the grade to that shelf. I use the little white tool to line line up the rails and then lock the track in place with the little stick. If you are going to use the little stick to hold the track make sure you give enough room for the cars to get by and not touch it. I am not completely convinced that using the Atlas re-railer is necessary. The one thing I did find was that once it was cut the rails came out of guage and had to be shimmed back into guage. As you can see it is only used on the bottom shelf when the track is lined up to the main line, the other 6 tracks work fine without it. The one on the bottom shelf has been installed for 6 years now and has needed no maintenance.
It is tough to get quality pictures due to the fact that there is incandescent and LED lighting used in this area. Again the lighting between the levels is an LED rope that I bought 5 years ago. It works well but the newer ones are thinner and brighter and you have choice over what colour of white you would like. If you have any questions contact me by email.

Follow me by email Part one

As you may have noticed I have taken off the link to follow me by email as it was not working well and I have since found out that Google is dropping Feedburner. This was the RSS reader that Blogger used. I am looking into alternatives for this function and will give an update once we have it figured out. Thanks for your patience.
If you would like to contact me you can use the email below.

Scale Model Plans

Well not too often do I feel moved too really flog a product BUT these plans from Tom Carson's Scale Model Plans are outstanding. If you scratch build or would like to try a card stock model you need to go to his site and order one of his buildings.. Just order one. He even has a free one right now so you don't even have to pay. There is also a discount to NMRA members.I do my own drawings and I know how much work goes in to this. You have to get measurements, draw it in AutoCAD. Then Tom includes an ISO of the drawing, the templates, and a full colour template so you could build a card stock model if you wish.
He has tutorials on his site on construction. He uses the same process that I do in how I build see this post. I just can't express how impressed I am with this product. There is a link to his site on my links page.

From the F7A Cab

Today I got to ride in CN F7A 9064 from Waldron to Melville past the farm I got to sit in the engineers seat. I also got to use my new colour camera. It is such a different view from up in the cab.

I have an SJCAM M10 with WIFI which is like a GoPro and I have it sitting on a 40' flat car. I have it shooting through a small wall that has a picture I got from the internet of the cab of an F7A that I resized to 1"x1"and mounted. I can move the wall back and forth to get the right distance then I just crop the pictures to just the cab size. The nut at the front is glued to the wall to hold it steady as we travel the rails. This camera can also take HD video. The only problem you have to work around is the wide angle lens that comes with these types of cameras that will give a curve to things that are beside it. It is about an 1 1/4 square. I will do a part 2 to this latter on.

Fast Clocks

There are some things I spend money on and some things I am cheap about. Fast clocks fall in to the cheap category. They just seemed very expensive and by design my layout would need three. I have been down 3 different roads so far over time.

1. I tried to used the Digitrax built in clock but I found that it didn't keep very good time and you need everyone to have a DT402x throttle to be able to see the time and then you have to train everyone to use it. I also tried this with JMRI but still didn't like how it worked. Sometimes if you wait things will look after themselves.

2. One day while looking for fast clocks on the net I found the Windows Fast Clock developed by Wesley Steiner. So I loaded/opened it on my laptop and my tablet and my phone. There, now I have 3 fast clocks, my laptop at the Melville yard, my tablet in staging and it sits on the deep freeze bedside the paper work and my phone which is in the other part of the main room. I have an adapter for my phone so it can be mounted on my tripod. The only problem with this system is that you have to start all 3 devices one at a time,  this only leaves a few seconds between start times so it worked well. The other problem is that all my devices want to shut down. The laptop is easy to adjust and is set to not shut down because I use it during ops for other things anyway. One of the things that runs on it is JMRI and WiThrottle so operators can use their phones as throttles or one of the old phones I have acquired that can be used as throttles. The longest I could set my phone and tablet so it would not go to sleep was 30min which means you have to give them a tap on the screen every so often so their timers for sleep mode reset. Sounds easy but every once in a while they are forgotten and the clocks they are running will stop. It can be a bit of a pain.
If you only need one clock this system works very well and has lots of different choices, my needs are just a little more complicated. You can even have a analog clock face if you like.

3. I was once again surfing the net and came across an app called Model Railroad Fast Clock on Google Play. I don't know if it is available for Apple because I don't own any Apple devices. So I loaded it  on my phone and it has some awesome features. The biggest ones are when it is running it will stop your device from going to sleep and it has Bluetooth so I can Bluetooth all 3 together. I only have to set the time once on one device. I have since acquired another tablet the same as my first one from a friend that changed over to an iPad ??? good for me. Now the second tablet replaces my laptop as the app is not yet available for windows. I have asked the developer if it is possible to have it work with windows. The other thing about the Bluetooth is that anyone who has the app can get this time on their phone, which is also a bonus if they are using it as a throttle. This is the one I am going with now and it seems to work great so far. Technology is amazing at times. FREE

So I run 4-1 fast clock most of the time. On the EMRA in Edmonton Peter runs their fast clock also at 4-1 but will adjust the speed up and down depending on how things are going. He will run slower at the start of a session so the yard ops can get up to speed , as they may be new to the position or have not run the yards for a while. Then when things start coming together he speeds it up. The other thing about this is if you have time gaps in your timetable so as no to overload the layout I can speed things up to 6-1 for a while to keep things moving. That way ops don't get bored. And by changing these times you can remove stress from the ops that are still learning to give them a better experience.

There are links on my links page for these fast clocks.

Fascia

The fascia is built from ⅛ in hard board with a top support for the screws to go into. The fascia is painted  CN green #11 and took a lot of bottles of model paint about 600. No that is not true. I airbrushed a piece of styrene about 2 in square with Modelflex CN green # 11 and took that down to Home Hardware and they colour matched it for me. I could put Modelflex paint on the fascia after it was painted and you could not tell the difference. I had intended to put a yellow band on the bottom of the fascia, and along with my back curtains, it would look similar to the 1954 passenger scheme. It is one of those things that I have just not got to yet. When I do I will have Home Hardware match some paint to CN #11 yellow. The curtains were cut,sewn and installed by my wife. They are held to the fascia with velcro that is glued to the back of the fascia along the bottom edge and to the back of the curtains with fabric glue. They have held up very well. It is intended that at some point in the near future we will add pieces of velcro to the bottom of the curtains to better hold them in place at the bottom causing them to hang a little straighter. The curtains also hide the storage that is under the layout. under the peninsula for the branch line there is space for just about all of our Christmas decorations, under the town is where all of our luggage is stored and so on.

It is cut to match the contours of the scenery.

Other items of interest on the fascia from left to right.

• a rerailer
• switch list for the yard crew generated by JMRI
• control rod for a yard switch. I will cover those in a different post.
• yellow labels and logos are printed and applied with a kids glue stick. 
• folding throttle/cup holder. I had bought some at Canadian Tire that were white and I repainted them black. They were half the price of hobby ones and are really sold as cup holders for boats.
• bad order sheet for anything that needs repair or attention, it works well and guys can fill it in during ops sessions
• a Rapido passenger car magnet on a stick to remove the coal loads from hoppers at the coal doc
• engine cards for the yard switchers
• uncoupling tool holder. I explained it in an different post
• pen that has an LED light in the end of it, it helps some of the visually challenged read the car numbers better.
• that snake in the bottom right is the vacuum hose as I was cleaning up. The floor is carpeted everywhere and has in floor heat. 

This shows the Digitrax UR91, DCC Specialties RRampMeter display and closer view of rod pulls for switches on track 5 & 6 in the east end of the yard. The curtain is pulled back so you can just see the command station on it's shelf. As a side note my amperage is now up to 1.12 that is with 25 engines on the track of which just about all have sound and 4 actually pulling cars. We really over estimate how much power we need to run a layout.