Power pole insulators

Today I had to glue up some more insulators for my scratch built power poles. So I thought I would take some pictures. I start out with insulators from Tichy part #8158. I cut them from the sprue and run a drill bit though the hole to make sure that is clear. Then cut out each one from the the group they are in making sure to cut on the flat side of each to leave the domed top that the wire would attach to.





I then take a .015 wire put bend in the end and then start sliding the insulator on to the wire all facing the same way. Once they are all on I put a bend in the other end of the wire. Now they are all locked on to the wire and can't go flying across the room. I now side them out and space them and then go along and give each one with a shot of CA. Once that is set I can cut off how many I need to add to the poles. The extra can just stay on the wire. I leave enough wire attached to the insulator so I can attach it to the pole.

I have not installed the brases to support the 4x4 yet

TV Antena

Today I built couple of TV antenna's for some of the people in town that have bought TV's.

I tried first gluing the arms to the center piece with CA but as per usual CA only works when it wants to...fail. I then decided to just solder them all together which really worked much better. I put some resin flux on the center piece and tinned it, then tinned the 6 arms that attach to the center. Gave them a touch with the iron and they attached easily. You can only add heat for a couple of seconds or the others ones will come loose. No need to paint as this is a natural colour. The wire is .015 and the pole is .02. You can see from the picture the other patterns I drew out. The patterns are sitting under the glass on my desk. This antenna is scale 5' long. I then took the house drilled a hole on the roof. Before I installed the antenna I cut a small piece 1ft sq out of tin foil and slid that up the stand to act as a mounting base of the antenna. It is just from memory, I know there could be guy wires but that would be just to pidly for the effect I wanted. 

I think it looks pretty good. I had to really zoom in so you could see it. When looking at it from a couple of feet away it is hard to tell any of the arms are bent at all. I will give 4 or 5 out of my 11 houses some form of these. It is hard to find how many people would have had TV in 1959 in Sask. and that is when I was born so no memory there. The first one took 75min but any of the next ones now would only take about 15 or so. It is a nice quick little project.

CNR Ice House

CNR Ice House

I scratch built this from CNR plans that came in a bundle from the CN Lines. I use this process to layout and cut the building see this post. How I build all my scratch projects

I modeled a 500 ton version because of the space I had, but you could go bigger if you wanted, the plans were for a 1000 T. The ladders and doors are scratch built, the windows and hinges are Tichy. The roof is 80 grit sandpaper airbrushed black and glued on with Lepage Pres-tite spray adhesive. Which is a very good glue and you only get one chance to lay the paper. I cut the roofing paper just a little larger than the roof and trimmed off the excess once the glue had set and then added the fascia boards. You do not have to be as fussy laying the paper in this way. The siding is from Evergreen along with the other parts. The cement piles are just .08 styrene rod painted with Delta Ceramcoat mudstone craft paint that I use for concrete, they are then planted in the foam scenery to match up with the above timbers. The sling track that comes out the end under the peak is code 55 rail. I air brushed the building CN #11 box car red. The doors are painted yellow using Polyscale cat whisker yellow which seems to be close to the CN cream yellow colour. I then weathered it with some chalks and then sprayed it with a mat finish.

Uncoupling tool holder

I have been asked a few times how I made the uncoupling tool holder. It is made out 1/2" PVC tube 3 1/2" long. My picks are 4 1/2" to 5 1/2" long. On the bottom I cut out and glued on a piece of styrene. Once that was dry I filed it down to the edge of the tube. I  then took the tubes and the 1/2" pipe holders  out to the garage and painted them gloss black. Once they were dry I installed them throughout the layout where switching takes place. They will  hold about 10 picks each. When I am taking photos I pull the picks so they do not get in the way of the shots.

How I build all my scratch projects

I draw up my projects on my Cad program. I draw in Cad with actual dimensions and then I print it off at scale.By doing this you never have to convert to scale, the program does it for you. I then cut out the outside edges of the drawing for each wall, floor,interior walls, roof panels,doors and glue it to sheet styrene with a glue stick ( if it is a small part I do not cut close to the lines ). Now I cut out the styrene along the the printed lines cutting out the window and door openings along with the outside edge of the wall. Remember your orientation to scribed siding because you are gluing the drawing to the backside. Using this process means that I never have to measure, just cut on the lines. Because I have this saved on Cad I can go back and print out as many projects as I want. There are free versions of AutoCAD and learning to draw in 2D is reasonably straight forward (you could learn a lot over a weekend). LibraCAD is a good choice. The kids glue stick glue is water soluble and so I just place each part in water and the paper just floats off. Wash with a little soap and the part is ready to paint. If you are working with wood you should first cover it with a sealer so the paper will come off. Cover both sides so the piece will not warp. Use a wet cloth and dab the paper, once it is wet enough you can rub it off. Practice on a scrape first. Start your first project with something easy like a box with a roof. The quality of the drawings below is not great because I had to save them as a picture so I could post them here. I do not add every detail but you get the idea from from the pictures how I would be able to cut out the walls roof panels, floor, ect. It also gave me the positioning for the 2x6's under the platform on the ice house and were the doors should be placed, On the horse car you also get the position of the grabs so I would drill the holes for them after I have cut out the sides. Again I never have to measure. The drawings you see below are what I see on my screen in the program. the program will size the drawing so that it will fit on the screen, when I go to print it I set it to print the drawing at 1:87 and you will see a print preview to see what will fit like on a page and maybe you will have to print it on 2 pages to get it to fit.

I have a post on the finished Ice House.

This is the glue stick I use they can be found easily.

Using your smart phone with Digitrax

I had my phone hooked up to my layout yesterday Engine Driver/JMRI/Digitrax simplex and it worked better.  Before there always seemed to be a problem that it would not always take a direction change, especially if you were switching and going back and forth a lot. The problem is with the Digitrax command station.The Digitrax command station can't be fixed. The Fix??? Well on our trip to Lethbridge Peter was telling me that if it will not take a change in direction you can press any function button F0-F4 which will send the packet as they are part of the same packet as direction. The command to change was always there it just didn't get sent????? This issue affects all types of throttles. This would have been nice if Digitrax had disclosed this years ago even if there was not an ability to correct the firmware.
I really like to use the phone as it is easier and more intuitive for new operators. I have also gathered a couple of old phones from the kids, cheap throttles.
If you go into roster in JMRI you can go to Labels and Media in the bottom right corner. Once you have this open you can add the description for each function that your decoder has. When you load the engine to your phone only the function you have on the list will appear. You need to set the preference on the phone to use labels from the roster. If there is a function that you do not want use you just leave it blank in JMRI labels and then it will then not show up. Hope you find this use full.

Looking for roundhouse drawings

I am looking for drawings of a CNR roundhouse preferably in the west 3-8 stalls so I can scratch build one. Thanks to Warren and Norm for supplying drawings for me. This works really good :-)

Farm details

I have been working on finishing the details on my farm site which is used as part of my NMRA Scenery AP. I have now finished the fencing, the window treatments on the house, the fence for the chicken coop, the metal gates, the slab corral fence, wood fence and gate, feed and water toughs, and touch ups of the ground cover. The barn, wood bins, fuel tank, fences, grain auger, rotary mower and chicken coop are all scratch built with the plans that have been drawn up in Auto Cad. I will go through the construction of some of these in the future.

Amazing rail car graffiti

Here is a new picture that I just took in Dec 2020 by the old Alberta Pool elevator in Camrose. The railways should hire some of the real artists to paint cars for them.

Here is another picture. Being from Saskatchewan I really like the original paint job on these cars and the art work just adds to it. If you notice none these painters cover and data on these cars and take a lot of effort to leave it clear. 

This picture was taken by my friend Ron. He is an engineer for the Battle River Railway (BRR) and saw this car sitting at the Cargill Terminal East of Camrose on the Alliance Sub. The only way to see it was from the sub as it sits at Cargill. Note that it looks like the artist repainted the car number when he was done. I would buy an HO decal of this.

Heating fuel types

Since I am finishing details work on my town I needed to determine if and when natural gas came to towns in Saskatchewan. You would think this should be dead simple thing to google NO. As near as I can find it came in the fifties I have a picture of the Sask Power Gas trucks lined up in front of the head office in Regina in 1957. I did come across the logo that Sask power used during this time which will come in handy for a truck or 2. Why do I need to know this you ask...well I need to determine what percent of houses would have had coal delivery or fuel oil delivery in 1959. So as a result most house will get gas, 1 will get coal and 1 will get fuel oil. I do know that during this time period that almost all farm houses would have received heating oil. So my farm house has an outside connection for this. The line is connected to a tank that would have been in the basement to keep it warm and thus fewer problems during extreme cold.

CNR Wood Trestle

In place just before I poured the water for the creek

A little closer view

4-8-4 6226 going across on passenger service

A couple of pictures of the completed scene

I scratch built this from CN plans that came in a bundle from the CN Lines. This is built from scale wood from Northeastern and Kappler with only minor adjustments. I took lots of pictures of the trestles by Bonnyville and Cold Lake  Alberta when we lived there and worked from some of these for details that the plans didn’t show. I partially drew it out in Cad so I knew what it would take to cover the span and how long each bent would need to be. It also helped in where to place the bents on either side of the creek. Then I created other drawings in Cad to use as gluing templates. I would tape wax paper over the printed paper so the wood glue would not stick..Both the bents and the deck where made in this fashion. I assembled it all and then set it in place. The spots were marked where the posts for the bents touched the scenery. I then drill holes in these spots for the posts to slip into. The poles were intentional built longer and were marked and trimmed if needed. The NBW are from Tichy. The track is Micro Engineering bridge flex. I add then added the guard rails down the middle using code 70 ME rail. There are fire water barrels inserted in the ground at both ends. The piles are just doweling. All the wood pieces were stained and weather by airbrushing on some thinned black. I used ME weathered rail and then brushed on some diluted rust colour.

CNR 2nd Class Station

I scratch built this station from various plans and pictures I could get my hands on. It is mostly based on the station in Big Valley Alberta. The eve on the back side of the station has been shortened to fit the space.

See this blog post for how I layout this building. How I build all my scratch projects

The inside of the outside walls, interior walls and ceiling were then painted a dark grey.

This station had stucco applied to the walls. Lots of modelers use sandpaper to get the texture. I chose to take a different approach. I cut strip styrene the width of the bumpers and eve supports on the outside walls and glued it on with tacky glue. I then sprayed each wall section with 3M glue and sprinkled on very fine sand ( .004 grain size), shook off the loose sand, and repeated the last step again. I then rolled it with a tube to make it stick better. I then painted it white to seal the glue and sand. The strip styrene was then removed and  new strip styrene was painted CN green #12 and glued in place for the bumpers.

 I then built the freight doors and made adjustments to the Tichy windows so they matched CN type. 

 I then painted the windows and the doors CN Green #12 and Cat Whisker Yellow as this seems to match the cream used by CN. I then used Weldbond white glue applied to the back of the windows for my glass instead of cutting clear polystyrene. Once you practice this a bit you can make very convincing glass. I use this on all my engines and vehicles that need glass also. Once this was dry I glued in the windows and the doors. I cut out coloured paper for the blinds and taped these in place.

 I glued the walls together along with the floor and interior walls and fitted in the ceiling. I put bracing in the corners and along the floor. While doing this I cut the holes for the platform lights.

Now I started on fitting the roof panels in place. Once I was happy with how they fit I added the rafter tails to the underside of the roof along with the support beam that rests on  the eve supports.

 I went to the Camrose station and took measurements for the eve supports, drew one up in Cad so I had a gluing template and cobbled them together, painted them and glued them in place on the wall. At this point I installed the lighting under the eaves.

For roofs that have cedar shingles I use Campbell Scale shingles. They are easy to apply and they take light coats of paint well. I did not use the card stock supplied as it is only good for small roofs. I again go to my Cad and draw out lines with the same spacing as Campbell uses and print this on an 8.5 x 11 paper. I then spray the roof panel ( plain .04 styrene ) with 3M high tack and glue ( use a cardboard box for the spray booth ) on the paper. You only get one chance to to apply the lined paper. Start along one edge and then lay it down and smooth out any bumps. You may want to practice this on some scrap to get the hang of it. You then apply the shingles the same as you would if you were using the card stock. Once they have had time to dry I airbrushed the shingles red using only a couple of very light coats and used some chalks to add further weathering. I used a piece of card stock to protect and act as a mask. I just held the sheet in my hand and sprayed. I had to move the station around a lot to get the roof all covered.

The fascia boards were then attached, along with the signs. The signs are printed using the right font size. I then cut out the station name leaving a little space, glued it using a kids glue stick to a 2x12 and then trimmed the paper and cut the 2x12 to length to fit the station name length.
The platform/floor was built with styrene following the process above to cut it out. I used scribed sheet and strip on the edges. I marked the inside of the station walls and that was painted wood brown. To weather the platform I used this process found at 
http://www.pacificcoastairlinerr.com/rough_weathered_plastic/ that was used on the flat car deck. With a little practice it works very well and I use it a lot. There are also some other ideas on this site you could also use for weathering wood. Platform lights will be added later.