Progress on terrain and turnouts

All things are continuing apace.

I am up to seven Fast Tracks turnouts, and am thinking I should really wire one up one of these days and give it a hot test with a real locomotive. I have been testing them as I make them with a voltmeter, and in two cases have had shorts that it has taken some time to resolve. Both times they seemed due to solder creeping across the gaps in the PCB ties.



It has gotten really fun to make them. The grinding of the points and frog is no longer such a mystery -- I just needed to acquire that skill of filing. The soldering is the best part, very satisfying.

I have made the mini table saw, incorporating the Dremel, with which to cut my new sheet of 1/32 PC board, which arrived very quickly. Tried it out on some 1/16 scraps given to me by a friend, and it works fine. Ground PCB smells horrible, though, like formaldehyde. I hope it isn't bad for humans. I think I will be doing the PCB cutting outdoors, on the patio.



A friend of my son who is interested in the whole process has been helping with the terrain-shaping, surforming and sanding away. Here are some pictures:


This is the "West Blob," with what passes or Signal Mountain and a fictional tunnel. Chickamauga Creek is on the left, the branch line in the foreground.


This is the future site of Ergon Terminaling. The cardboard rings will one day be storage tanks, and are there to maintain a vision of the completed industry.


Here's a view down Stringer's Ridge, with the branch line on both sides.


The branch line rounds the end of Stringer's Ridge. This is a fairly true-to-life geographic location:



Here's where the interchange yard will be. The long ridge will be its backdrop, and will serve to mask the staging area behind.


Finally, this is the "East Blob" with its mountain and the future location of the railroad museum at the foot of the hill. The folders are the turnout "kits" I described: pre-cut ties and rails for assembling Fast Tracks turnouts.

Making my own N-gauge turnouts

Well, I took a big swing at turnout-building over the weekend, using my new Fast Tracks jig. It's for building #7 turnouts with code 55 rail, which, as I discussed in my last entry, is the standard for my layout.

Let me tell ya, it isn't easy!

Or let me qualify that. It isn't easy at first. It involves some skills and techniques that you may not have yet. Your first few efforts will be where you make your mistakes.

But that being said, even my first, mistake-ridden turnout is still going to be usable. The jig is excellent, and by the time you get to the soldering stage it gets really fun. The hardest thing for me was learning how to use the point-forming tool; I took a few unadvisable strokes with my file and shredded the end of one rail, and it can be hard to know how much to take off.

The experience I gained from just one turnout was amazing, though. Suddenly I knew what had to be what length, knew the trick for filing the gaps in the PC board ties, had a handle on how to get the frog point soldered together without having three hands.

My total output for about 5 hours of work was two completed turnouts, but that's not all. I also started making "kits" to assemble more, getting the ties trimmed, frog points made, stock rails and guardrails cut, etc. to assemble five more turnouts. So it should take only a couple more hours till I have seven. I think this is a good approach. Each of "kits" I am putting into a small manila envelope, and doing it this way really lets you master each of the turnout-building tasks.

The instructional videos posted on the Fast Tracks site are very helpful, as is the user's guide, but remember they're all in HO. N poses some unique challenges.

There's one more matter to discuss here: Cost. In the long run, the Fast Tracks jig will save you money. No question. If you're willing and able to do the work, you'll get unlimited, high-quality units that get cheaper with every one you build. You could even sell them on eBay, they're so high-quality.

But the materials cost money. I have already ordered my own sheet of 1/32 PC board from an electronics supplier, and plan to rig up a little homemade table saw with my Dremel (armed with a cutoff wheel) to cut it into strips for lower-cost ties. A 12" by 12" sheet of the copper-clad board costs $15, and should make LOTS of ties. The rail I'll probably order from somewhere closer by, to save on the shipping from Canada.

Talking about track

My first N-gauge efforts, (at age 8, and then age 29 or so) both used that old Code 80 track. The stuff with the black ties and the barlike rails. Times have changed, of course. There's more realistic stuff available.

I knew from the start that I would use this more realistic stuff. All that remained to be decided was what combination of sizes to use. I finally opted for Code 55 on both the main line and the branch, and for this reason:

Switches.

Something else I knew from the start was that I was going to build my own switches, no matter how hard it was and how long it took. That's the point of a hobby, right? The goal is in the process, and the joy is in the work? Well this looked liked a whole lotta joy.

Some experiences building HO switches (back when I thought I was sticking with that scale) convinced me that I could get excellent results, but that it was a heck of a lot of work, and quite tough on the back and the eyes. When I switched to N gauge, these concerns doubled.

In my searches for information on switch-building, I came across Fast Tracks, a Canadian company that builds aluminum jigs in all scales for all manner of track features. They also sell the materials needed, such as rails, wooden ties and circuit board ties.

After doing the math of buying dozens of Atlas switches, versus making all my own from scratch, versus dropping a big old check for a Canadian jig, the jig won hands down. I now have one in a box on top of a cabinet, awaiting use, and really look forward to it. With it came a bag of circuit board ties, and you solder just enough of these to the rails, all held in place in the jig, to create a switch that holds its shape. Then you add cosmetic, wooden ties once you've installed it on the layout. It also came with a point-grinding tool for very sharp, precise points.

It was expensive, no joke. But I can make unlimited switches with it. And they promise to be better than the factory-made ones.

Which brings me back to my choice of Code 55 for everything. I only wanted to buy one of these hunks of milled aluminum. They differ according to track code and of course turnout number, so I decided that #7 switches in Code 55, layout-wide, would be my choice. #7 seems pretty big to some people, probably, but one of my initial goals here has been realism, and real-life rail switches are pretty darn long.

The way I will distinguish the main line from the branch is by paint. The main line will be more blackish and greasy-looking, while the branch will be browner and rustier to reflect its lighter, lower-speed use.

Other track details: The flex track is by Atlas, except for the bridges, which will be Micro-Engineering bridge track with the more closely spaced ties. I still need to pick up one more piece of this stuff. The roadbed will be standard cork, which I have used in the past and liked. I plan to stick the roadbed down with white glue and the track with water-based Liquid Nails.

Stick with me here and you'll see how that goes.

Just Some Real-Life Pictures

Well, I am back after a few days of working on a new beer-brewing blog, but I have been working on the railroad a lot too. I am busy carving pink foam into ridges and mountains, and have drawn most of the main line track plan onto the tables.

The picture is of those MP15s that work the real-life CTC branch in Chattanooga, trundling through Red Bank. Here's another one of them crossing Tenbridge:



And finally, here's a little mishap that happened with a CTC train in Red Bank, and which I am sure I'll be repeating:




If you want something done, put a bunch of 12-year-old boys onto it. My son and two of his friends stopped at the pink-foam Dumpster with my wife yesterday and brought me back a ton of it! Yesssss!

I have not taken pictures of the recent progress yet, but will get them up ASAP. Right now I am going to quit, since I've been on this laptop long enough on this Saturday morning and my eyes hurt.

The basics

The most basic thing of all, I suppose, was finishing the basement in our new house where the layout is being built. But I'll save that for my carpentry and drywalling blog. Suffice it to say that I pity anyone who looks to me for drywall-mudding advice. The space turned out adequate and relatively attractive, as long as you don't look too closely.

The benchwork was constructed as cheaply as possible. No apologies for that. For 1X4s, I bought a sheet of 3/4" plywood and ripped it into about 13 strips. I raided a dumpster at a local mall and got a ton of 2X4s, and also used those left over from the basement framing. OK, I bought a few too.

I also bought some long drywall screws and some bolts and tee-nuts to put in the bottoms of my table legs and make them height-adjustable.

The rest of the hardware was pretty much leftovers from my hardware box -- I knew I was keeping all that old stuff for something.

Pink foam was the expensive part, and I needed (and still need) quite a bit of it. 2" thick sheets are $24 at Home Depot; 1" sheets are $11.

But then the gods of model railroading stepped in. As I was driving along Electric Road here in mountainous Roanoke, I saw it out of the corner of my eye:

That unmistakeable shade of pink.

In a dumpster. Lots of it.

Turns out there is this company that builds modular pieces of buildings or some such, and fills a dumpster a week with scraps. So having spent about $60 on sheets of the stuff, I will need to spend no more. I don't regret the bought sheets; I needed some really clean and seamless ones. But it sure is nice to have unlimited mountain-building material!

I have all the track-level foam down on the tables at this point, and will be building all elevations above that after I have transcribed the track plan onto the foam. And by the way, here is THE BIG TRACK PLAN, finally:

My Industries (all 10 of them)

I suppose I could add more, but this is what fits comfortably, and I didn't want a layout so crammed that it didn't have a realistic feel. Two team tracks will add to the freight destinations, and I could add a little freight house or fuel supplier near the interchange yard.

Notably absent from this CTC layout is a notable traffic generator, the DuPont Chemical plant in Hixson. In real life it attaches to the CTC right at the junction with NS. It was just too big to cram in. I suppose I could add it somehow as an "off-layout" industry; we'll give that some thought. Airco Gases is also right there. I should really try to work in one of these two ...



So here's the confirmed stuff. The rail traffic percentages are pretty much a product of my imagination, based on some basic logic and research:

GEO Specialty Chemicals
Intake:
• 40% Sulfuric acid in tankers
• 60% coal ash in 3-bay hoppers
Output:
• empty tankers
• empty hoppers

Ergon Terminaling
Intake:
• 70% empty tankers
• 15% empty gondolas
• 15% empty hoppers
Output:
• chemicals, asphalt and fuel in tankers
• gravel, sand in hoppers and gondolas

Signal Mountain Cement
Intake:
• 60% empty 2-bay hoppers
• 20% empty boxcars
• 10% 2-bay hoppers of fly ash
• 10% hoppers of coal
Output:
• ready-mix concrete in hoppers
• bagged ready-mix concrete in box cars
• empty 2-bay hoppers
• empty coal hoppers

Commercial Metals Co.
Intake:
• 100% gondolas of scrap
Output:
• empty gondolas

Colco Commercial Furniture Co.
Intake:
• 60% 3-bay hoppers of plastic pellets
• 15% coil cars of rolled steel
• 20% empty boxcars
• 5% empty gondolas
Output:
• empty hoppers
• empty coil cars
• boxcars of furniture
• occasional gondola of scrap

Chattanooga Brick and Tile Co.
Intake:
• 100% flatcars of brick, pipe and block
Output:
• empty flatcars


Little Katie Baking Inc.
Intake:
• 40% 2-bay hoppers of flour
• 30% tankers of corn syrup and oil
• 10% boxcars of other
• 10% reefers of fruit
Output:
• empty 2-bay hoppers
• empty tankers
• empty boxcars
• empty reefers

Rock-Tenn Co.
Intake:
• 100% empty boxcars
Output:
• boxcars of collected paper fiber for recycling

Dixie Flour Co.
Intake:
• 80% 3-bay hoppers of grain
• 10% empty box cars
• 10% empty 2-bay hoppers
Output:
• empty 3-bay hoppers
• occasional box car of bagged flour
• occasional 2-bay hopper of flour

A few of these haven't been discussed yet: Little Katie Baking is a tribute to my eponymous daughter (now 16 and a musician along with being a devout consumer of snacks). Colco Furniture is a tribute to my son Colin, who needed his own industry. Why is it office furniture? Can't tell ya. I wanted to drag around coil cars and plastic pellet hoppers.

Chattanooga Brick & Tile is a business I used to drive by every day going to and from work. It's right along Dayton Boulevard in Red Bank and an easy industry to model.

Dixie Flour is fictional, and based on a big flour mill here in Roanoke, Va. I figured it would be nice to have an industry that I could make some actual field trips to model. Chattanooga's a little too long a drive.

GEO Specialty Chemicals makes aluminum sulfate for use in the Moccasin Bend Water Treatment Plant. Its reactor uses sulfuric acid and fly ash (coal ash), and the facility is surrounded by a few settling ponds.

Authentic industries

How to pick industries? You can just browse through the hobby store or Web site, picking up pre-made ones like Walthers' Red Wing Milling, Interstate Fuel and Oil and Mew River Coal, etc. etc. There are a lot of great ones out there, if you're willing to settle for off-the-rack.

But what if you really want something authentic and realistic, that reflects modern day rail traffic (some of which can seem sort of mysterious with all these unmarked cars and chemical names)?

I had a really good time doing this. After closely examining my prototype route, I called up the Chattanooga GIS site and started researching the industries that looked interesting and small enough to model with some degree of realism.

Most GIS mapping systems (check out the one for your city or county) have features that let you click on a property and pull up the tax info. This will usually give you a name, sometimes rather cryptic, but enough for a Web search.

One industry I'll be modeling is Ergon Terminaling. A search of this name pulled up a slick, Flash-produced site with a full description of what the company does and where and how, and from this it was easy to extrapolate the kind of rail traffic it would produce. There was even a great aerial shot of the Chattanooga terminal, although I see the site has changed in the few weeks since I looked. Look at the site here.

The following image is from the Chattanooga GIS site, and shows part of the CTC that will be generating freight traffic on my layout. The area is in actuality known as Moccasin Bend:



Signal Mountain Cement is highlighted at the top, at one of the extreme ends of the line, and highlighted at the bottom is the area along the river where Ergon Terminaling and a barge-loading facility for Commercial Metals (a scrap recyler) are located. Clicking on these parcels on the GIS site brought up the ownership information and kicked off the research.

Now here's a close-up of the Ergon/Commercial Metals areas:



Note the branchline proper, over on the right hugging the hillside. My Ergon and Commercial Metals will be much abbreviated, of course, but you can see how incredibly useful this information is when building models. Just to the south of this area is the little GEO Specialty Chemicals plant, which produces aluminum sulfate for the nearby Moccasin Bend wastewater treatment plant. I'll be modeling this as well.

Next post will be about the industries I have chosen to model.

The real thing, in Hamilton County, Tenn.

The big honking image above (click on it for the full-size view) is a capture from Google Earth showing the actual CTC route all the way from the current NS line down to the Tennessee River in North Chattanooga. The route is currently served by a pair of EMD MP15 switchers that spend the night in the Manufacturers Road area and run freight out to the NS main line, over Tenbridge and into DeButts Yard. Here is a picture of the paired switchers pulling a consist across Tenbridge:



The image above is from railpictures.net, an incredible, searchable database. You can search by state, roadname, locomotive model, you name it.
Obviously, you would need an empty Wal-Mart building to model this to scale. So I have condensed it in every possible way. Capture the flavor; that's all you can hope to do.
The Web makes model railroad planning a joy. You can use Google Earth and Google Maps to look at your routes in detail, and then use county and city GIS sites to plan your industries. I'll discuss this later.

The track plan

I experimented a lot on my laptop in RailModeler.

The first concepts were for HO, and I tried mightily to squeeze in everything I wanted:


But when I made the leap to returning to N gauge, things got a lot easier.

The first N concept was a huge, hollow oval with a swingable Tenbridge section for access, and a branchline intertwined along one side. I never liked the idea of the bridge/gate, however. Too easy to damage, and just too much of a pain to negotiate over and over again. I made several track plans based on this and it just never fired me up:


So I moved to a dogbone with a branchline coming off on a parallel peninsula:


After some tweaking and rearranging to maximize scale distances, ease of access and realism, I finally came up with a dogbone about 22 feet long, with a blob on either end. Off of one blob extends a long peninsula, paralleling the length of the dogbone and making the whole layout into a kind of deep, skinny walk-in U. This is what I am building:

The NS-CTC interchange yard is located at the middle of the dogbone, just "south" of the Tennessee River, where the north and southbound tracks are necked close together to cross a four-foot-long, double-track Tenbridge. Yes, this fictional yard is is on the other side of Tenbridge from where the CTC branches off.

But I sort of like that. In real life, you see, the industries in North Chattanooga are served by trains put together in Chattanooga's DeButts Yard. On the other side of Tenbridge. Real-life traffic to the branch crosses Tenbridge, too. I'll just be using a little interchange yard instead of NS' DeButts Yard, which is, er, a little out of my league to model!

So the CTC train leaves the interchange yard, crosses Tenbridge on the main line as the great blue herons go flapping and squawking away, and veers off the main line on the other side to head for Red Bank. (I'll post a bigger, better track plan later.)

Now, this is where the long peninsula at the bottom of the diagram comes into play. The branchline goes down the whole length of it, serving a few industries and passing through Red Bank, then curves around the tip to travel down the whole other side. The peninsula is divided down the middle by a view block.

The strips of usable real estate on either side are not huge -- about 17 inches wide -- but in N scale that gives room for a lot of industrial activity. The branch serves riverside industries in this final stretch, and terminates, as it does in real life, at Signal Mountain Cement.

But what does this region look like in real life, anyway? Not very much like my abbreviated version. That's the subject of the next entry.

I've been waiting a long time for this

The CTC Railway is the fulfillment of a longtime dream: To model a piece of the Tennessee River valley with a Norfolk Southern mainline and a small, industrial branchline serving riverside, barge-fed industries. I started watching trains in the years 1990-1995 in Chattanooga, Tenn., and have always wanted to recreate all those spots and sites in miniature. Now I can do that, in the basement of our new house in Roanoke, Va.

At the time we lived in Chattanooga I built two N-gauge layouts that never really got finished, but that had some beautiful scenery and nice features. When we moved to Florida I sold all my N stuff and switched to HO, mostly because my railroading had to be done in the garage and the dirt made N-gauge track maintenance a nightmare. And it just stank being out there in the heat as well.

For the next 11 years, my railroading consisted of that little-used, HO garage branchline and then, in Sarasota, an HO 8X4 that I carried into the house when I wanted to run it. Lean times. I amused myself by brewing my own beer instead (which I still do).

But now we're back in the land of seasons and hills and plentiful trains, and I have a newly finished basement in which to run wild. As I write this the project is well under way.

My space allowance was probably pretty generous by most people's standards, but it was still a challenge to get in the major elements I wanted: a respectable Norfolk Southern main line, a looooong branch line into North Chattanooga from the old Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific section of the main line, the imposing Tenbridge over the Tennessee River and a yard to interchange between the main and the branch.

Faced with a space about 26 feet by eight feet, since a wide corridor had to be left in the basement for wifely access to the garage from upstairs, my first move was to switch from HO, which I was never that thrilled with, back to N scale. This opened up the possibilities.

I got on eBay and sold my two Southern HO locomotives and bagged about $150. Enough for the track, anyway!

Some might find my layout a little boring. Not a lot of grade changes or mainline meets. No spaghetti-bowl of interconnected track. A small yard. Not a lot of electronic complexity. But what I am going for is a realistic feel here, of the place where I first really fell in love with trains. I like the gentle hills and little rock faces of Chattanooga, and the nautical feel of the inland waterway of the Tennessee River with the high mountain ridges in the distance. And industrial switching. There should be plenty of that.

All this took a while to rig into a track plan, which is the topic of the next entry.