Happy Friday! Just a quick post to highlight a couple of fun things for this week's edition of Friday Fun!
First, my buddy Dean (way over in Calgary, Alberta, Canada(!)) gave me a heads up that The Valley Local was mentioned in the latest issue of Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine. I've had a few articles published over at MRH, and I occasionally post on their forum as well.
They have a section in their magazine where they pick from the forum and my "Backed Up at the Backdrop" post got featured. Of course, since you follow this blog, you pretty much saw this already here - but it's cool to see it in MRH too!
And I definitely want to mention again that the NMRA-X is running its virtual national convention all this week. In fact, tomorrow (Saturday 7/18) is the last day - and I'll be presenting at High Noon!
Each of the days of the convention has a theme, and tomorrow's theme is model railroad operations. As it happens, I'll be doing a presentation on how I do ops on the Valley Line. I hope you'll have a chance to tune in, but if you can't cuz you're mowing the grass or washing the car, don't worry. This clinic - like all of the NMRA-X presentations - will be recorded and available for later viewing at your convenience.
So whether you're able to tune in live (when you can ask questions which hopefully I can answer :^) or if you choose to watch later, I hope you'll get a good sense of prototype operations. Even better if you have some information or tips that will help me refine my approach.
No matter what you're doing this weekend, whether down in the basement, in the train room, or sitting in your favorite chair, I hope it includes some time enjoying this great hobby. And maybe I'll "see" you sometime tomorrow!
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the September issue of Model Railroad Hobbyist (which just posted today) has my article on how to superdetail a factory painted Proto 1000 RS-2. It's in the "Running Extra" portion of the magazine, which costs $2.99, but also includes a great articles by Jack Burgess and Jim Six. Even if you're not into the New Haven's RS-2s (class DERS-2b), those two articles alone are more than worth the 3 bucks.
I hope you'll check it out - and if you do, be sure to leave some (hopefully positive) feedback!
I was at a NHRHTA volunteer appreciation picnic last Sunday and visiting with fellow member John Kasey, who had sent me lots of modeling information for the New Haven's Alco RS-1s and 2s (classes DERS-1b & DERS-2b). I asked him if I ever sent him photos of the finished models, and when he said I hadn't, I got on my phone and into my cloud photo storage to show him.
He enjoyed seeing the pics, but about half-way through as I was describing some of the details I'd added, he mentioned offhand: "You know, I could just wait and see it in next month's Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine."
What?!
I knew I'd submitted the article, but - although I'd downloaded the August issue - I hadn't gotten to the back page yet . . .
Color me surprised - or, rather, blushred. %^)
This will be my third major article for MRH (posts about the first article here and the second article here) and I'm especially lucky to be sharing a little bit of space with one of my idols in the hobby: Jack Burgess. His Yosemite Valley RR layout was one of the first - if not the first - "strict prototype" model railroads I ever came across. And it really set the hook in me to try and do something similar with the New Haven.... "someday."
Thankfully, in this case "someday" did eventually come & I've been working on the Valley Line for some time now - and needed some additional motive power for the Airline Local. Which is where DERS-2b #0510 comes in.
So be sure to check out next month's MRH for the story behind the engine - and, more importantly, how I went about superdetailing a factory-painted locomotive to match the prototype.
With your help, it was the top-rated article in last month's issue - and the You-Tube video has over 4,900 views (and those aren't all from me clicking). Talk about about a HUGE shot of motivation - so thank you so much! This is all still very new to me, but I'm glad if I've been able to convince even a few folks to try something new in the hobby and make some more progress. Certainly makes it much more fun!
Speaking of progress, when we last left the Rt. 15 Overpass Project, I'd just extended the right abutment a bit to fit better against the wall. After that dried, I finished up the details and started painting! Here are some photos of the progress . . .
Next step was to figure out the exact shape/size of the roadway, using cheap cardstock.
Also needed to add supports for said roadway. I used hot glue to attach the 1/4" square styrene to the Strathmore.
After lots of cutting/fitting, I had my template for cutting the styrene roadway.
Roadway in place, awaiting final details (parapet & sidewalk).
The State of Affairs at this point - just starting to sand the concrete pier bases.
Cutting up said bases from .060" styrene scrap to squares that "look right" under the pier shoes.
A few quick passes on the sanding block angles off the top edge to make it look like a support pad.
All the bases done and attached to tape for painting.
To raise the abutments to match the height of the bridge on its supporting bases, I cut out some more .060" styrene as a base.
Bases done.
I attached the bases with hot glue, but wouldn't recommend it. Considering the long runs of glue, some of the glue had started to cool & harden before I could attach the base (even though I used my extra hot gun). Consequently, I wasn't able to get the base as tight to the bottom of the abutment as I wanted. I'd try Walther's Goo or WeldBond next time.
Everything mocked up all ready for painting.
Based on a post from Kathy Millatt, I tried some Rustoleum "Desert Bisque" texture paint. She recommends it for concrete roads, so I thought it'd work for the abutments. It actually seems to have some fine grade sand in it so, while it might be great for roads (and I'll certainly try it for that), I thought it was a bit too textured for the abutments.
Another view - note the texture on the left.
I also considered a non-descript light gray for the base color, but it looked too blue to my eye. I finally settled on - wait for it! - "Concrete" color from Floquil. Fortunately, my friend Pete had a small spray can of it left that he let me use.
So with the concrete color choice out of the way, it was time to mask off the girders to paint the concrete bridge and abutments.
I used a combination of tape and paper to cover all the girders & supports, and here's everything painted and drying.
Unfortunately, as I was removing the paper, I ended up breaking off three of the delicate vertical supports - despite my being careful and having added some bracing, I guess they're still pretty delicate.
Fortunately, they all broke at the brittle ACC glue joints, so fixing them was just a matter of sanding off the old glue and regluing.
So that's where things stand - literally - for now while I get some other non-modeling stuff done and choose a color for the girders. I was just going to use a rattle can of flat black, but I think that might just make them disappear. I do plan to highlight them with some weathering so all wouldn't be lost. But I'm now - based on a suggestion from Bill - considering Model Masters "Aircraft Interior Black." Apparently, it's a little lighter - though not as light as "Grimy Black." I'll see if the local shop has any. If not, I have some Grimy Black on-hand and may just end up using that.
As always, I hope that you'll chime in if you have any suggestions or recommendations on anything I'm doing here. With the layout done up through benchwork, trackwork, and wiring (and a bunch of successful ops sessions under my belt), I'm blazing new-for-me ground with structures & scenery. So stay tuned for my mishaps and - hopefully - some successes.
Wow! What a weekend! I attended my first "OP"toberfest, operating some amazing layouts Friday night through Saturday afternoon, and even got an impromptu tour of another layout on Sunday. Also, Friday night Kaylee Zheng let me know that the Model Railroad Hobbyist YouTube channel featured a video I did on resin casting. Then, to top it all off, this happened...
The October issue of MRH posted which includes an article I did on First Time Resin Casting. Click the image above (or here) to get to the issue - the article starts on page 190. I hope you enjoy it and can take a minute to rate it (and even leave a comment). The feedback really helps - thanks!
Finally, as if the weekend's events weren't motivation enough to get me doing some modeling, I received some parts for the Route 15 overpass in the mail from Dave Messer . . .
The timing couldn't have been better since the resin casting article shows how I cast the girders for this bridge - and now I have the abutments! Since I was eager to see how they'd look, I decided to try and mock everything up . . .
I still have a bit of finishing work to do, and of course I have to assemble everything and install it on the layout, but it's REALLY starting to come together!
Between Dave's help, seeing some of my efforts in "print" (and video!), and the inspirational layouts I saw over the past few days(detailed report coming soon), it's been a very motivational weekend and I can't wait to get back to some modeling!
If you're a long-time reader and you also get MRH's weekly email, you may have recognized the photo with the "Bachman steamer sound upgrade" link. Yup - today's "Friday Fun" is especially fun since the weekly email featured one of my past posts!
I've often said that ops sessions are one of the best ways to tease out problems with your equipment, and my last session was no exception.
I use ESU decoders exclusively in the diesels that operate Shoreline trains and the Full Throttle feature - which allows you to ramp-up the prime mover sound while maintaining the motor drive independently - makes it easy to simulate the starting of a heavy train. But I discovered that you have to be a little careful with how you do the programming - especially if you start moving functions around (which is super easy to do with ESU's Lokprogrammer software).
My ESU decoder mapping
As you can see (if you click on the image), I've remapped the Full Throttle functions (Drive Hold and Independent Brake) to functions 5 & 6, respectively. That way, they'll show up on the screen on my NCE "dogbone" throttles (the LCD only shows the first 6 functions). I also (thanks to Roman) changed the sound default to default "on" so that whenever a Shoreline operator acquires a road engine, it doesn't automatically shut down the prime mover.
So far so good. Everything was running well - until someone wanted to run a two-diesel consist with the Full Throttle feature. Turned out, only one of the locomotives in the consist would respond to either Drive Hold or the Independent Brake - and it'd literally drag along the other engine. After a bit of troubleshooting, I figured out the problem.
I'd forgotten to make sure those functions would respond to the consist address(!) Yup - the checkboxes for functions 5 & 6 (Drive Hold and Independent Brake) weren't checked.
My ESU Consist Functions
Once I figured that out, it was a simple matter of making sure F5 & F6 were checked and loading the changes into the decoder. Now everything works as it's supposed to (yay!).
Decoder programming can be a hobby in itself, and it's way too easy to go down yet another rabbit hole in this hobby. But knowing at least a little bit makes the engines run so much more realistically and, fortunately, ESU's Lokprogrammer makes these little adjustments super easy. Once you know what the problem is . . .
Happy Labor Day! While this holiday weekend marks the unofficial end of summer, being a "glass-half-full" kinda guy, I prefer to focus on its being the unofficial beginning of Model Railroad Season!
August ended up being very busy with my family visiting and Deb's dad continuing his fight against cancer. After the news we got earlier in the month, we'd planned on his going back in the hospital for a week before continuing treatments at home. Unfortunately, "week" turned into "weeks" and he's actually still in the hospital. Though we're hoping & praying he can finally come home in a few days.
With all the family-related stuff, I've been a little out of the hobby over the past bunch of weeks and am just now starting to get back into it a bit. That started with catching up with my favorite model railroad "e-zine" Model Railroad Hobbyist. I hadn't looked at it since my article appeared in the July issue, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover the article ratings that were published in the August issue:
There on page 22, I found out that my Goff Brook Farmhouse article had made the top-5 rated articles! Thank you so much to all of you that took the time to rate my article - I'm really psyched you liked it and it's really great for a writer to get such encouraging feedback. So thank you!
But the surprises didn't end there - as I finished up the September issue, I discovered this little tidbit in the "Coming Next Month..." section:
Talk about being out of the loop for a bit! Long-time readers will recognize that as one of the pics from my posts on resin casting. I reworked them into an article for MRH and it looks like it'll be published next month! Very cool!
You may recall that the reason I even got into resin casting was so that I could make some copies of a master set of girders for my model of the Rt. 15 Overpass. Well, with everything going on lately, progress has been glacial, but I'm happy to report that I'm finally getting around to assembling the girders.
Good thing too - my friend DaveM has graciously agreed to help me with the abutments (and by "help" I mean he's doing them entirely(!)), but before proceeding we (he) really need to know exactly what their dimensions will be. And that requires that the bridge itself be in as final a state as possible in order to determine all the measurements. I hope my next post will go into that a little bit.
Finally, I was able to get down to the grade crossing this past Saturday morning for the penultimate Saybrook Special of the 2018 season. Unfortunately, the video (included below FWIW) came out sideways. I used to be able to easily rotate it in YouTube, but apparently YouTube no longer allows that. Google searches for "How do I rotate a video in YouTube" all pointed me to directions for how to do it in the old version of YT. Sigh. Won't make that mistake again.
Here's hoping that you're able to enjoy these last days of summer and, especially, these first few days of Model Railroad Season! As family stuff hopefully calms down a bit, I look forward to joining you and sharing some more progress on the Valley Line!
I hope you find it helpful and/or entertaining. And if you do, leave a comment below - or at the MRH site. And if you do go to the site, I hope you can leave a good rating on the article. I'm certainly not immune to positive encouragement!
In other news, it's been a busy week on the Valley Line as I prepared for - then hosted - an ops session, just getting it in under the wire in June. I plan to have a post up how that went within the next day or so - so stay tuned!
I have to admit, given the first 5 months of 2018 I was starting to wonder whether I'd fallen off the model railroad wagon without any chance of getting back on. Things were going well and I was making progress right through Springfield Weekend, including (almost) finishing the B&O flatcar I was working on. But then work & life intervened in a big, unexpected way. Thankfully, things are finally calming down now and dads' healths are improving, which all bodes well for focusing on other things (heh - like yard work). And also thankfully, the NERPM came at Just The Right Time to re-ignite my model railroading mojo.
One of the first things on the agenda is dealing with the in-progress stuff on my bench (which I alluded to in last week's WW):
In due time I'll get to those projects - hopefully soon.
But in the meantime, there's another fun development I can report on . . . Just check out the (2nd to) last page of this month's Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine. Long time followers of this here blog will recognize one of the photos there, but for those that don't, here's a little teaser:
Maybe that farmhouse in the lower right corner will look a wee bit familiar. :^)
Between the RPM meet and finding out I'll soon have my first-ever feature article published (as opposed to an op-ed piece), I've really gotten a HUGE shot-in-the-arm of modeling motivation. Thanks for hanging in there - and especially for all your well-wishes, thoughts, and prayers - while I was out of it for a bit. I'm looking forward to making more progress and sharing it with you!
Hope this doesn't sound too much like tooting my own whistle, but the main reason I write this blog is to share my experiences, such as they are, and hopefully get feedback from the modelers out there that are much farther along than I am. And having a publication like MRH help spread the net a little (well, a lot) wider is very cool indeed.
So whether you landed here from MRH or stumbled onto it directly, I hope you'll enjoy reading along - or at least get a chuckle or two. And - as always - if you have any helpful tips or suggestions, I hope you'll let me know in the comments!
In the meantime, here's wishing you and yours a Very Merry Christmas and a wonderful time with your family and friends.
I got a pleasant surprise in the weekly newsletter/email from Model Railroad Hobbyist yesterday . . .
If you scroll down to the "Tips" section in the email, you'll see a link to a thread on "Building a Christmas Layout/Module/Diorama". Well, the accompanying photo looked pretty familiar and then, on closer inspection, I realized: "Hey! That's MY Christmas layout!"
This was just the first of a few installments on the project, which I finished in time for Christmas. So be sure to click on the link, and then scroll down that page for links to all the rest of the posts in case you missed them last year.
Of course, if you want to skip ahead, here's a direct link to the Final/Finish Fotos.
Certainly in keeping with the season - hope you enjoy!
Many of you are likely already familiar with Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine. Joe Fugate and his team have done a great job of creating - then dominating - an online space for high-quality model railroad content and I've enjoyed reading each monthly e-zine since they started way back in January 2009. If you're not already familiar with MRH, you're really missing out.
Imagine my surprise when they contacted me to do a guest commentary for their "Reverse Running" column! I got to go from being just a great fan of the magazine to being (sort of) a contributor. It took just a little back and forth (let's just say they have amazing editors and leave it at that :^) but it's now arrived in "print" in the August issue which was just delivered today.
You can click here to go to that issue or click here to go directly to the article. Check it out when you get a chance and - whether or not you agree with my conclusion - leave a rating and/or comment. It'd be great to keep the conversation going!
