Interchange

I managed to get the last turnout and assembled the interchange that connects to the railway station platform. Anselm had picked up two left R4-15 degree turnouts from Germany for me. I just couldn't wait until November. That's when Minitrix is starting up their production run. Since Marklin went into receivership, parts are in short supply in North America.

I used the XtrackCad software to figure out the necessary pieces without having to cut any track. Unfortunately the dimensions of the Minitrix track pieces in the software weren't correct so I had to measure it with a ruler and figure out the pieces manually. As a consequence, I'm going to also measure the full length of the interchange before I construct the table. Speaking of the table, I think I'm slowly converging on the overall design of the tables. It's a little complicated involving single pass and sliding dovetail joins. Since the train layout has an architectural theme, I thought the construction of the table should be like a nice piece of furniture to complement the layout. Right now, I'm checking out various dovetail jigs. I like the Leigh jig, but it's very expensive. Unfortunately, there aren't many hardware stores in town that sell dovetail jigs so my choices are limited.

Era of steam

My model steam train arrived in the post today. Along with a couple of turn outs and catenaries! I ordered some Sommerfeldt catenary to see what they were like. They are of excellent quality and built of metal like my steam train. I've seen other catenaries that were less expensive, but they were all made out of plastic. You definitely get what you pay for. Now I have to figure out how many I'll need to complete my layout. I'll have a lot to do over the winter, but for now I'll keep accumulating equipment and focus my time in the garden while the weather remains warm. And before you say anything, the catenary are for my ICEs, not the steam train.

Era III

I wonder if there is a help group for model train addicts. I was surfing the internet and was looking at the Eurorail Hobbies website. They had a limited edition Era III steam train on sale. I pined over it for a week. In the end, I couldn't resist and ordered it along with a Faller viaduct. I picked up a bunch of freight cars for it from Hobbytech. This is a sick disease. Here's the list of Era III rolling stock I've just acquired or ordered. God help me.

11457 (1/1) BR 89 Steam Locomotive with two heavy duty flat cars Era III15138 (1/1) Tank car Era III15199 (2/2) Freight train baggage car Era III
15270 (1/1) Freight train baggage car Era IV15501-08 (4/4) Box car Era III
15501-09 (2/2) Stake car Era III15644 (2/2) Tank car Era III/IV

Summer

Summer has finally arrived in Canada. It's been a very cold Spring, which is good for modeling, but not good for hiking or gardening. The nights are still very cold (3c brrr). At least the temperatures are in the double digits during the day. The weather has been really weird this year.
I managed to finish up my trees for the club's layout. I took a picture of the trees after I spray painted and sprinkled on the woodland scenic powder. I have to say that the powder does make the trees more realistic. However, I didn't cut into the air filter fibers enough as Hans and Al had advised. As a consequence, my trees looked too conical in shape. I'll have to do better next year. You can see them in the top picture of the club's layout, which was taken at the SuperTrain show. The show was in April. I apologize for the lateness of my blogging. Work has been getting in the way. I love how the catenaries looked on the club's layout. It gave the layout a whole new dimension. Pictures don't do it justice. I'm still debating whether to include catenaries in my layout. I ordered a Sommerfeldt catenary just to see how it looked. Unfortunately HobbyTech doesn't carry that brand so I had to order it from Eurorail Hobbies. Other manufacturers' make catenaries, but Sommerfeldt offered more realistic and better quality and are constructed of metal.

The organization of this year's train show was much better than the previous year. The show was quite successful in terms of attendance and the club's layout was well received by the public. Brian kept telling people that our layout straddled the border between Germany and Austria. The train took passengers to Germany for bier and Austria for streudel, which was the reason that the train didn't loop in a circular fashion. I think there is a desire to expand the layout in the future so that it will loop around.

There were lots of exhibitors at the show this year. One of the exhibitors was Black Forest Wood Products and they had a selection of Proxxon tools for hobbyists. I picked up a table vise from them. I haven't had a chance to use it yet, but I definitely like the quality better than the previous vise I purchased, which I returned. I'm seriously thinking of buying the miniature bandsaw, but that will have to wait until I get back into modeling this Fall. Hopefully Fall comes late this year. I really need to get to the mountains to work off those Winter calories!

More kato

I picked up some more Kato unitrack last week and finally managed to find some time to put the track together for a test run with my InterCity. Unfortunately the floor is uneven in some areas so it looks more like a roller coaster ride.

Station status

I thought I'd give a quick update on the railway station module. Slow. I've completed two thirds of the across track ceiling trusses. Only 20 more to go. Ugh. I would have been finished, but the trees for the club's layout took higher priority due to the impending show in April. Hopefully I can get back to my own layout soon. I am considering not building the along track trusses, but I'll have to see how it looks without them. In principle, I just want to give the impression that this is a station. I think that can be achieved without going nuts. I mean without me going nuts.

Trees

The Supertrain 2009 show is less than two months away. I volunteered to help the club with the landscape. My task is to build trees for the layout so I'm constructing coniferous trees. Al described how to create them and it's not really difficult. It's just time consuming.
You need to get your hands on some natural fiber air filters. These are becoming more and more difficult to acquire as most vendors are moving towards synthetic materials. Fortunately you can still get the filters from Rona Revy. They're priced $5.53 for a 20" x 25" x 1" pad. It's manufactured by American Air Filters and the model is called Cut-N-Fit. Canadian Tire sells something similar, but it's unsuitable because the fibers are too densely packed. You want the fibers to be loose.
Taking the air filter, you'll need to cut it in half length wise so you'll have two 10" x 25" x 1" pad. Now cut 2" x 10" strips. Then take those strips and cut triangles so the base is 2". You'll want to take the triangle and cut circles out of the pads. Now apply glue on the skewer and push the circular pads you cut from the air filter onto the skewer. Biggest circle first, smallest last.
Before you can assemble everything together you need wooden skewers you need to stain them black or brown. I used acrylic paint and thinned it down with some water before applying it onto the skewers. The length of skewers depend on your scale. The club's layout is HO.
It's recommended that you make trees of varying height. Al described to me about perspective and placing shorter trees in the background gives the impression of distance. I never realized this until he explained it to me. I've got a lot to learn still and a bunch more of trees to make before the next step. About 50 more trees to go. Once the white glue dries, it will turn clear. Then I can paint and sprinkle some Woodland Scenic green fine particles to make the trees look more realistic. Although, I'm considering using some form of clear lacquer or shellac and thinning it down to a very viscous liquid and dipping the trees instead of spray painting. The paint is only used to cause the Woodland Scenic material to adhere to the fibers.

Wiring tips

I was at Hobbytech this morning. Brian was doing some wiring and gave me some good advice. As I learned, you can't rely on rail joiners to provide consistent voltage across modules. Most hobbyists run voltage on 18 gauge wire under the surface of the table top. They solder 22 gauge wire to the rail and connect them to the 18 gauge feed inside the table. Brian was showing me how he uses wire taps instead of solder to connect the wires. I see the benefit of the wire taps. Since the club decided to continue using the Marklin K-Track, they have to use three wires for the power lines. For two rail track system, a red and black is sufficient. I'm told that those are the standard colors used, but I may elect to go with black and white for my layout. The reason is that I can see some of the red wire connected to the rail. For my layout, a white wire won't stand out. Brian used molex and plastic connectors to connect the 18 gauge wire between modules. I really liked that set up. It makes for very easy connections. He used a 12 plug connector. It serves to connect power in addition to the signals and solenoids for controlling the turnouts. I'm still a long ways from wiring, but it's not as overwhelming as it had looked before.

I stopped over at Active Electronics and picked up a soldering station and digital multimeter. With model railroaders, there are common tools that are a must have. These two items are definitely a must have. Active was having a sale so I managed to save myself about 25% off the retail price. I could have saved a bit more cash and bought a cheap soldering iron instead, but I elected to go with the Weller soldering station. It's better to get quality items that will last.

Some of the guys at the office recommended Fluke as the brand for multimeters, but the price difference was too big. Since I was only going to use it for continuity tests on the tracks, my criteria was simply something that was easy to use. I also picked up a vise by Lenline that clamps onto the table edge. It has a lever on the bottom that is used to lock the pivot head securely. Unfortunately, the edge of the table prevented the lever from locking tightly in place. Even if I could, the pivot head still felt loose. The price was right, but it was a perfect example of that old adage, "You get what you pay for". They have other vises that looked of better quality, but this one was just poorly designed. I may have to go back to Lee Valley and reconsider that vacuum vise. I pulled a photo from some website for reference of that lenline vise. You have been warned.

Jig

Well I finally finished the jig last week. Just to give a summary of how I constructed it. The longest time was spent figuring out how to make the jig. Since it is pretty small, I was trying to figure out how to drill the holes with my cordless drill. I would have preferred using a drill press, but I didn't want to purchase such an expensive device just for this purpose. So I came across a jeweler's precision hand drill from Lee Valley, which was perfect and it wasn't that expensive. You can see that I taped the drawing of the truss onto the wood and started drilling where the peg holes would go in order to hold the plastic in the correct shape without clamping. By the way, don't do what I did. Remember to put something underneath the piece of wood. I drilled right through the wood and into my cutting mat. Doh!

For the pegs, I used cylindrical tooth picks 5/64" in diameter. After drilling the holes, I cut the tooth picks in half and inserted them into the peg holes. The tooth picks weren't all the same dimension so I had to apply some scotch tape to make sure they fit tightly. I was pretty happy with the outcome. I'll probably use the same principle for all my jigs. I went to Michael's and purchased a sheet of birch plywood 12" x 24". It will be perfect for the bridge jig.

I was pretty excited to assemble my first truss. I thought I was careful in applying the solvent, but it still managed to seep to the underside of the truss. Of course, I didn't know this until I lifted the finished truss out of the jig. You can see the underside.

So I had to adjust my gluing technique by just applying a dab on the ends of the short plastic supports. This prevented excessive solvent from seeping all over, but it definitely took longer to put the truss together. However, I'm relieved that the results of my second attempt are decent enough that I can continue making the rest of the trusses. I held the truss above the platform to help me visualize how it would look. It's going to look great once it's completed.

Lastly, I reverted back to using the 1mm square plastic strips instead of the 1.5mm. The truss system held its shape perfectly unlike the 1.5mm square strips, which was much stiffer and didn't keep its curved shape as I hoped. It also looks like I'll only be able to make three to four arches each week.

Filler

Sorry about the lack of posts this past month. It's been difficult to find time to work on the layout with other commitments getting in the way. I thought I'd do a quick post today.

The DB logo is quite well known, but I didn't know that the name of the state corporation that controls the German railway system was DBAG until I started modeling. During reunification, West Germany's Deutsche Bundesbahn (German Federal Railway) merged with its eastern counterpart, Deutsche Reichsbahn (German State Railway) back in 1994. The DB stands for Deutsche Bahn, but I only finally figured out what AG stood for today. In its expanded form, it is "Aktiengesellschaft,""which translates to "stock corporation". I always thought it was GmbH. Our German office uses the GmbH acronym. I guess it is equivalent to our Ltd, Corp and Inc which all indicate a corporation versus a partnership or private ownership.

I had often heard others refer to the old term "Bundesbahn", which initially confused me because I always thought it was just, "Bahn". As it turns out they were modeling in Era III / IV whereas I was only familiar with Era V. It took me a bit of time to sort out that confusion.

Oh I forgot to mention that I picked up the remainder of my track bumpers for the railway station. I have all ten of them now. I also received my shipment of curved turnouts, but I haven't had an opportunity to connect them to the track. I still need to build the benchwork this Spring. The drop in the Canadian dollar really made it more expensive. I wish I had bought them earlier in the Summer.