The Valley Local on Video(!)

Since Trevor put the bug in my ear the other day, I decided to try shooting some video on my layout. Credit (and many thanks) goes to Bill for the scenery & structures. At least I can lay claim to the trackwork. And the freight cars.

I hope you'll enjoy these short vignettes despite the fact that they're shot freehand with my iPhone (maybe Santa can help me out with that) and they're, um, color - a rarity in the Autumn of 1947.

So, without further ado, I think I hear a train comin' . . .

Wordless Wednesday #96

The Simplicity of a Stolen Hour

Most of us typically wedge in hobby time sometime after dinner and on weekends when possible, but occasionally I can steal some time from the wee small hours of the morning. When I was bike racing, I'd typically wake up a bit after 5am to train and I still occasionally see that time of day now that I'm, um, "retired" from racing. But not often.

An exception to my general rule of "sleeping in" (heh, til 6:30) occurred one recent morning. I'd woken up at my old usual time, and was - inexplicably - wide awake. The responsible thing to do (health-wise) would have been to get out on my bike, or at least go for a run. But the responsible - or at least much more fun - thing to do, was to go down in the basement. And not to get on the treadmill or trainer.

I took advantage of the "found" hour to glue down some track at the Saybrook Wye and lay some roadbed "north to Essex" (on the liftout).

I've seen folks using cans of soup and vegetables to hold their track down. You can use bottled water as well.

Tacking down the roadbed to Essex.

I've written before how important it is to have little projects ready and available to tackle so you can always make some progress on your layout, no matter how incremental or small an amount of time you have available. And sometimes you can do one of these simple projects during some time you've stolen from other things (like sleep, apparently).

Cheshire Branch Videos

Just a quick post to point you to the two videos I took during my visit to Jim Dufour's Cheshire Branch railroad. Keep in mind that they don't really do the layout justice, but - although shot freehand - the image stabilizer did a good job of keeping things steady.

You can see more (and better) videos here (many of which were posted by FlyingYankee59 (who is much better at this than I).

But for a quick taste, click on the vids below - Enjoy!

Admiration as Motivation: Jim Dufour's Cheshire Branch

Thou shalt not covet.

Exodus 20:17

During this time of Thanksgiving, we take time to be grateful for all we have and to appreciate all the little and big ways we've been blessed. Long-time readers of this blog have seen me go on (and on) about how wonderful it is to live where I do, how nice a space I have, how loving and supportive my wife is. And all of that is - and continues to be - true. But they say confession is good for the soul. So here goes:

I want Jim DuFour's model railroad.

Jim's layout depicts the Cheshire Branch of the Boston & Maine Railroad c. 1947-1951 and is one of the best examples of how a model railroad can be used to transport us to a different time and place. It has everything I want in a model railroad: great scenery - true to the geography of the places modeled, flawless operation - even of finicky brass steam engines, and the highest fidelity to all aspects of this particular section of the B&M, from the signal types used to the particular type of guardrail used along Route 12 in southern New Hampshire. And he's done it all by modeling 5 consecutive towns in a fraction of the space I have available. His exhaustive research and obvious skill have created a world where it doesn't take much imagination at all to believe you've taken a time machine and landed right in the middle of a Philip Hastings photograph. Except better - you can interact with the world Jim's created. And it's in color.

Jim and I met at the NE ProtoMeet a couple years ago and discovered right away that we were on almost-identical paths modeling wise - the only difference  being that he's modeling a B&M branchline and I'm modeling a New Haven RR branchline. Well, that and he's obviously much more talented and further along than I am. But it's been really cool to discover how similar our mindsets are and what we want to accomplish with our modeling.

Since I'd been a distant admirer of his layout for a while, I took a chance when I heard that he was having an open house and all-but-invited myself over, dropping Bill's name (hoping that would help rather than hurt :). I needn't have worried though, he graciously extended an invitation to visit and see the layout in person.

I took almost 10 rolls of film 240 pictures while I was there - everything from the vintage 1948 calendar, to the fastclock control panel, to - of course - the layout itself. Most of my shots were for my reference (his State Line area looks almost the spittin' image of much of the Valley Line, especially the southern end), but I got a few that are worth sharing here. I'm sure others got much better shots than I did, and I hope they'll mention so and give us a link in the comments. That way we can all appreciate Jim's accomplishment.

There's a fine line between inspiration and discouragement. All too often, my reach exceeds my grasp and I've sometimes wondered if I've taken on too much. But seeing the Cheshire Branch in person reminds me of what can be accomplished and that motivates me to keep going with my own effort.

In the meantime though, please pardon my occasional covetousness.

And enjoy this little taste of southern New Hampshire in the summer of 1948...

You come onto the layout from staging at State Line. I've never been to State Line, but if the accuracy of the rest of his layout is any indication, this scene is a spot-on model of the real location. But - to me - it looks the epitome of so much of the New Haven's Valley Line that I took probably 2 dozen photos here alone.

Symbol freight headed out of State Line westbound (compass northwest toward Bellows Falls, VT).

The next town on the line is Fitzwilliam, NH

Westbound freight rounding the bend, approaching Troy.

Local freight stopped at the Troy station for orders.

Later, near dusk, symbol freight BX-1 westbound through Troy, NH

Westbound with Mt. Monadnock in the background

Ditto

The cuts at Troy Ledges

After Troy Ledges, the next station is Webb. The eastbound local is waiting on the siding.

Just west of Webb 

I hope you've enjoyed this tiny taste of the Cheshire Branch. Be sure to click the links in the text above for additional photos and videos.

Wordless Wednesday #95 - Happy Thanksgiving!

Over the River and Through the Woods....
Valley Local carrying passengers southbound
over Shailerville Bridge, Haddam, CT

Control Panel Wiring

Now that the control panel is all up and mounted, here's how I wired it up. . .

I needed to power 14 switch machines, including 2 crossovers which would have to be wired together so that they would throw together. The control panel would be on a wall on the other side of the (small) room from the layout & machines - about 8 feet away "as the crow flies" - but as it turned out anywhere from 25-36' away "by wire." In order to keep things cheap economical, I used a 500' spool of plain brown 2-gang (2-wire) lamp cord to provide the power from the panel to each machine. Each wire is also 18 gauge, so should be large enough to carry enough current that distance without too much voltage drop.

In the above photo you see the terminal strip between the machines and the bus wires going to the panel. The wires from the machines come up from the bottom while the wires to the panel go out through the top. I wired one machine at a time, attaching a 2-gang wire to the machine, labeling it, and running/connecting it to the terminal strip (also labeled). Click here more detail on wiring the machines.

I ran what turned out to be 25' of wire from the terminal strip, up & over the door between the staging yard room (shop area) and the layout (as above) . . .

. . . then punched through the doorframe and bottom of the stairway . . .

. . . under the stairs and up along the back of the stairway footer wall . . .

. . . to the back of the wall where the panel would be mounted. And then repeated the process 12 times (thanks to Pete for LOTS of help with this part of the project!) In the photo above, you can see that each wire is labeled - I ran one at a time in order to keep track of them all (I couldn't expect to have found 12 different colored wires - especially being color-blind!).

So that concluded all the wiring between the layout and the panel location. Now, back to the panel itself. . .

You may recall my (what turned out to be a minor) debacle whereby I discovered that the panel was too thick for the toggles to be mounted. As you can see above (and read about here), I used a spade bit to rout out where the toggles would go. The pic above shows the first wire of the power bus installed (the green wire going right-to-left with insulation removed where the wires to the toggles would be attached), the first toggle installed, and connection to the first pair of LEDs. Click here for details on how I wired the LEDs to indicate switch machine direction (polarity).

To keep everything neat and organized - and to make it MUCH easier to connect all my lamp cords later - I installed another terminal strip inside the control panel cabinet. Wires from the toggle to the switch machines get connected to this terminal strip. You can also see in this pic the other power bus (the red wire) and the remaining connections (short wires going from the power bus to the toggles), as well as wires to the terminal strip and LEDs.

Here's a closeup view of all the wiring completed. I still have no idea why I drilled that 13th toggle hole - or why I took the time to rout it out - when it wasn't needed. Oh well.

Here's a closeup of one of the LED pairs wired up. Notice the resistor joined to the anode (long leg) of one bulb & the cathode (short leg) of the other bulb. The remaining legs are joined as well (and of course all the connections are soldered). Wired this way, one bulb will light when the toggle is switched one way, and the other bulb will light when the toggle is switched the other way. For further explanation of this wiring, click here.

I've made mention of the power bus a couple times already. Power comes from the DC terminals of an old 12v MRC power pack I picked up at a local hobby shop for $5.

I used lamp cord (again, since it has the two wires) to go between the power pack and the two 14ga bus wires inside the control panel cabinet which run along the length of the panel (see above). The lamp cord is connected to the bus wires via two screws (poor man's terminal strip) . . .

. . . but the other end of the lamp cord is connected to a SOCKET (female part of the plug).

Attach the plug (male part) to the wire coming from the power pack. This arrangement allow me to easily connect & disconnect the power pack to/from the panel. But you want to be sure and use the SOCKET on the panel-side so you (or anybody else) are never tempted (or able) to plug the panel directly into a wall socket, via an extension cord or otherwise. I don't even want to think of the FLASH!!! that would result(not to mention the smoke, and possibly fire).

Speaking of fire hazards, note also that despite the heavy gauge lamp cord and such, there is NO house current going through any of these wires or into the panel. All of the power comes through the powerpack/transformer and is only 12v (& 1 amp) max when it gets to the panel.

And here's an overview shot of the completed panel wiring. Power comes in through a 1/4" hole drilled through the bottom right corner (and in turn comes from the power pack as discussed earlier) and goes through the bus wires to the toggles. The toggles simultaneously control polarity to the switch machines and alternate lighting of the LEDs. All the wires you saw fanned out under the stairs earlier are coming through a large hole drilled through the back of the panel and through the wall and are connected to the terminal strip. Again, each wire is labeled to keep track of them all (big thanks to Tom for passing them to me from inside the wall!)

And here's the panel in-service above the Agent-Operator's desk. I'm really proud of how it all came out - especially since having it at all was the result of a (mostly) off-hand remark I made way back when I was first starting the Saybrook scene - "Gee, wouldn't it be cool to have all these turnouts remotely controlled by a tower operator just like the prototype - we could put a panel above the operator's desk over there. We'd "just" have to run some wires to it - should be easy."

Well, I wouldn't say it was exactly "easy" but once I thought it through it was fairly easy work - just a lot of it. I had a couple setbacks along the way, but those turned out to be pretty minor all things considered. And the result is - to my mind - the proof that the work was definitely worthwhile.

I can't wait to get things cleaned up and run some trains through Saybrook Junction - S.S. 102!