Welcome back everyone. I hope you all had a great weekend with many projects worked on and maybe finished. Let's get started. Saturday: With the threat of of ice on the way, the domestic Goddess decided to get everything done on Saturday. Since this would be the closest thing to a "date" I went with her. This included our weekly trip to do laundry and get water. We also snuck in a meal at one of the local establishments. The rest of the day was spent setting up for the virtual show. Sunday: Set up continued including getting all the audio bugs in the form of a new Mic figured out. With everything set up, I went "live" at 1:45. It was fun, but again, I miss the actual show and the interaction with modelers. Next year! I concluded and then took it easy after cleaning up my new studio. The evening was spent enjoying a new to me spicy Chicken soup and some re-runs of Top Gear. So how about you? How did you do? Let us know. We'll assemble again on Friday the 5th to start the process all over again. Until then, have a great week, be safe, stay healthy and as always... High Greens!
The electronics I ordered arrived Friday afternoon so Saturday was spent building and repairing sound effects and lighting effects. Sunday I rerouted some cables for the TV in the train room which made it easier for it to fold away and open up scenic viewing on the layout. The rest of the week will be done on wed and Thursday, time to get cooking on the modules and finish them up.
No real work on the layout itself but I did get some infrastructure work done. I sent off the following two PCBs for manufacturing yesterday and hopefully I'll receive them around Feb 10: ESP32 Command Station PCB v1.5, almost all parts have been replaced with SMT variants (screw terminals, RJ45 jacks and two PTC fuses remain as THT). As part of the rework the PCB size has shrunk to 80x100mm which will allow it to fit into SnapTrak rails or be enclosed in a 3D printed case (needs to be designed still). Additionally the OPS track will now allow up to 10A but will be software limited to around 5A. I'll be posting more details on this once I have testing complete. This is a PWM extension board (hat?) for my Esp32OlcbIO PCB project. The PWM outputs are typically used for servos or LEDs. With these two PCBs sent off I'll now be shifting focus back to the layout again and working on wrapping up the helix.
Managed to get the coal branch bus wire in and connected. Only need to drop the feeders now. Also managed to finish painting window sills, putting in all windows, and getting the facade lettering on the Highland Paint Co. building. It is coming along slowly but surely.
I didn't get as much time working on the layout as I wanted, but I did finally get back to work on it! ! ! Saturday I cut the underside hollow core door skin to make a place to mount terminal boards. I used an oscillating tool for this. It left a very clean edge on the door skin. I've cut into several door skins in the past and all have had a cardboard honey comb interior. This door had ribs made of a pine colored homasote like material I worked on mortising the hollow core door style to mount the parallel plug to the control panel. It was my first time cutting a mortise. I used an egg beater style drill and some old narrow mortising chisels picked up at a yard sale. I cleaned them up and restored the cutting edge a while ago. Sunday I cut the mortise in the temporary control panel, also using hand tools. Although it took a bit longer it was very relaxing with much less noise and mess than using power tools.
A package arrived the other day containing some laser cut stainless steel parts. These were to become new metal floors for my Walthers Thrall LO-PAC II well cars. These old Walthers kits come with a molded plastic body and floor with the openings in floor modeled correctly and a recess is molded into the car bottom for a solid sheet steel weight. The weight is painted black, which maintains some illusion of shadow contrasting with the floor painted the body color, but on the prototype the rails below can be plainly seen through the openings in the floor. I made two drawings of the floor: one of the floor bottom and one without holes for the container pins and with slightly larger openings in the floor. Laminating the two different sheets gives me a heavier floor while maintaining the thin sheet metal appearance of the prototype. These cars came out around the same time as the Athearn Maxi-III cars, so there hadn't been much of a standard established for the container pins. I'm not sure if you could even say today that a standard has been established, but current Walthers containers have a smaller pin at each corner than the original containers from the 90s did and the shape is different. Over the years I've settled on the pin size and spacing established by Athearn with their original blue box containers since I already have so many. For this reason it was imperative that the container pin openings in the Walthers floor be redesigned to accommodate the Athearn pin setup, ergo the pin openings have a rugby-ball shape compared to the oval shape on the original floor. I still have to install the wedge-shaped guides in the small rectangular openings in the floor and of course paint the floors to match. Besides this four-unit car, I also have two more five-unit articulated cars of this type to convert, including one that must have the end wells shortened to 40' openings. I was a little concerned about how to do that prior to receiving these laser-cut parts but now I think it will be a piece of cake.
I made great progress on my FT project. Decals are done. Next will be re-installing details and detail painting. Photos soon Hope Y'all had a great weekend, Wolf
Excellent presentation yesterday on the virtual show Jim. Had a few projects going this weekend. Decaled and weathered an older ConCor autorack, built 2 and started decaling 4 River Point Station Ford F250's I received Saturday, and I cut a styrene roof for my grain silos. Not sure I am happy with how that roof cut went. I may just start over with two new sheets of styrene. Here is a shot of the autorack.
We got the roadbed shimmed using a combination of foam and/or 3x5 cards. I didn't try anything with the Kobo units... Just doing a read has made them unresponsive, so I'm going to wait for the LokProgrammer. Replaced a curve in the yard, found a bad Unitrack straight (surprised that's been the only one as old as some of my track is.) Put the mountain frame on the layout to see how it looks, and ran trains.
Saturday I got the ballasting done on the rear track in the expansion area then built a temporary bolt on extension for end of the plywood section so it could support a return loop of reasonable radius. Then on Sunday I played with various arrangements of Kato Unitrack for this return loop / staging yard. It's always fun to experiment with this track system. What I settled on for now is having 4 stub end sidings passing through a double crossover so a train could enter from the eastbound track and exit on the westbound track after having it's locos moved. This is what is shown in the photo below. Both days I did watch selected segments of the Amherst virtual train show.
No, but I could send you the CAD files to upload and have them cut yourself. I used sendcutsend.com to cut these parts from 0.030" stainless steel.
Folks here got a lot done. Earlier today, I completed end ladders for two cabooses. What is left (I hope!) is smoke jacks and corner steps. Wish me luck! Have a good and safe week.
I did not get much done this weekend. Storm prep and shopping took up much of the time. Since it is the end of the month it meant we had to do our regular heavy shopping. The situation was aggravated by the Bread and Milk Panic crowd. Also, on Saturday we had to wait for the plumber to finish installing the vanity, sink, and faucet in the master bathroom. As a result, we only made it to the pharmacy, PetSmart, and the drive thru dairy store. Sunday, I did the grocery store and the meat market shopping. On the modeling front I did not get anything done on the layout. I did build a Bev-Bel/Athearn NYO&W coach and switch the couplers on a Bev-Bel/Athearn Reading coach.
