The JACALAR RR

The gorge has base pigments

First thing this morning, got the pigmentation done on the gorge area (after all the plaster and joint compound dried over night)



Specifically went with the dark streaks in the clefts, to create the waterfall look (water fall to be added)



looking up the creek bed, with the pigmentation planned for depth illusion

I got all this done by mid morning, then needed to run some errands....

After lunch, started on fitting in the trestle. Not sure why I have so much trouble measuring things, and then cutting to the same length, but suffice to say, as I trimmed the bents to fit the gorge, I managed to get some too long, some too short, and one, the right most bent, up near the tunnel portal, the legs came off the cross top cross piece completely!

Well, for the too long - a little extra trimming, for the too short, some terraforming to create piers. Not sure what to do with the now missing bent. I might just build up the roadbed underneath the track (this one was going to be only 0.7" long), or build a wood box filled with gravel as road bed.

Here's first picture of trestle placed in place (I still have to touch up the new changes), and track not yet attached to bridge



you can see the new foot that had to be added to the cliff on the right side of the creek

 

A few more trestle pictures

Here you can see into the tunnel, with the bridge leading up. I still have a lot of detailing to complete on the ground and around the tracks



This is going to be a great rail fanning spot! A fantastic view of the trestle and trains entering/leaving the tunnel



Here's looking down and along the trestle. The roundhouse, yard, city area can be seen in the distance



And here's a shot looking up the creek bed. I've added boulders and some dead fall.



still need to add some underbrush and ground cover. Might need to get a couple bears down by the creek.

 

Amazing what one can get done on a long weekend with basically nothing else to get done. Plus, really want to finish this area up before next weekend, when we take youngest off to UCSD.

 

Hiking in the Sierras

Here are some shots from a recent camping trip up in the Sierras, near Donner.

First, our campground:



Here's looking down towards Donner Lake



and hiking. What we found on the hike was very cool (next post)

 

Calif Zephyr on Trestle

Coming down that ridge, there was a great little mountain creek, with a train trestle along the rock face. We were down in the creek, when we heard something loud. Finally got the camera set back up, in time to capture the end car of the California Zephyr on the bridge





It stopped, long enough to climb up above the trestle for this shot, just as the train started moving, and the car went into the tunnel

 

For completeness, here are a couple wider angle "layout shots" of my completed mountain top and the trestle/creek

 

Thanks all! This was quite a learning experience, between the mountains, station and "The Caboose". I think, at this point, finishing up the scenery around the rest of the JACALAR will be relatively straight forward. Of course, there is still a whole lot to do, so it will keep me occupied for a long long time. And, there are still lots of details to add, as time goes by

Yeah - quite the Lewis and Clark of model railroading LOL

 

I haven't been very busy on the layout the last few weeks, had to take my youngest to college (she's a freshman at UC San Diego), and then work has been extra-ordinarily hectic.

Did have a chance to acquire a new item: a WP RDC "Zephyrette"



Also, the traveling TrainBoard car has been visiting. You can see that thread in the Sticky section of N-Scale Forum. Here are a couple of shots, as I played with the story line

 

Need to retrack the trestle

I'm going to have to pull up the track leading to the trestle and the actual track on the trestle. Whatever I did between all my testing and the final attachment and ballasting, I can only run a small subset of my trains (which, of course, includes the 4 units I tested with) across the area with any hope of making it. Almost everything else derails :tb-hissyfit: (does lend itself nicely to staged photos, though)

And, of course, everything has unique problems (but all perfectly reproducible for any given unit). The GS-4 with Daylight train can run perfectly in the "clockwise" direction, but derails the front drivers in counter-clockwise. My Kato E8's run both directions, no problem, but my BLI E8 can't make it. Kato PAs derail the trailing truck in one direction, the lead in the other.... And the list goes on.

I think I'm going to give up on transitioning between the unitrack and ME bridge, and just cut the base off the unitrack and put bridge-spaced ties on, instead. This should help eliminate the areas of the most concern. Just hope I don't damage the trestle during the removal process.

 

A bit of luck saves the day. Prior to ripping out, or trying to shim the curves, I was very carefully running the different locos over the problem area, to pinpoint the trouble spot. I removed the section of mountain, covering the tunnel, to get at the locos as they derailed, and, while looking straight down the track with the outside light now providing a back light, low and behold, there was a small glue drop on the inside of the outer rail, extending just over the top of the rail. Don't know how I missed it when ballasting or cleaning, but almost everything is now running smoothly through there.

Still have to work the area for the Kato PAs to make it through, but am pretty confident some "super elevation" of the curve will keep those on the rails.

 

I've changed out the bridge track

After I found the glue drop, which solved most (>80%) of my problems, I spent about 8 hours of tweaking this weekend, shimming, etc, trying to get the Kato PAs to run through there, with varying degrees of success (different PAs still derailed, always differently, but no longer all the time). So, today, I went for the "unitrack" approach. I took Mark Watson's method of cutting off the base, and then, I very carefully slid the flex-ties from the ME bridge track onto the unitrack! Fit perfectly, and look fantastic. Of course, I have two "open ends" of rail meeting in the middle of the bridge; I did a light solder along the outside, but once fixed to the trestle, even that won't be needed.

I cut the old bridge track off (xacto knife slid along the below the ties, to break the CA bonds), cleaned up the ballast so I could plug the unijoiners in, dropped in the new section of bridge, and I can now run every train through that section, at high speed, just as before I started on the gorge (not that high speed will be permitted over such an old bridge)! Took me all of 4 "interrupted" hours today (I was working at the same time).

Now I just need to detail up the new bridge top (rail weathering, guard rails, fire buckets, etc), drop feeders from the Unitrack ends, and fix the ballast/scenery where I had to cut (which was really minimal - I actually did more 'damage' with the cutting to try the shim/tweak).

I am certain that if I had more experience with laying flex track and joining it up with Unitrack on a curve, I could have done a better job up front, but, with the flex/bridge ties, this still looks fantastic (actually better, since it is now truly one continuous curve with constant radius). Once I finish the detailing, I'll post comparison pics to show.

 

Old and new

Here's the before picture of the tracks over the trestle





And here are a couple shots with the replaced tracks. One can hardly tell the difference, visually, yet the operations are infinitely better!