| Navigation: | Home | Blogs | 2015 Posts |
|
Posts from 2015 |
Received the new tank from Shapeways, but it didn't quite work out - the lettering didn't appear and the whistle didn't render. All is not lost however, the good people at Shapeways have been working with me and I'll be uploading a new model for a trial print sometime during the first have of October.
I also updated the drawings for the laser cut cab, got it redone and have the test parts. While I'm waiting for the updated tank test, I'll assemble this model and make sure it fits (more next month).
Lastly, I had to be Ft. Collins, Colorado for a work meeting on 9/14 and 9/15. Rather than fly, I decided to make a pilgrimage on Sunday and drive west on I-80 to Cheyenne to view the "Sistine Chapel" (aka the Union Central and Northern) and then down I-25 to I-76/I-70/CO 58 so as to cover the "Holy Land" (aka US6 up the Clear Creek Canyon to Forks and then CO 119 to Black Hawk). What I had conveniently forgotten was that CO 58 took me directly past the "Church of the Holy Sepulchre" (aka the Colorado Railroad Museum). The links cover all the photographs I shot during the trip - providing me LOTS of prototype material (even give the late afternoon sun and smoke and haze from the California wild fires when shooting in the canyon). The first realization is that I had planned the wrong ballast mix - so I have lots of bags of iron ore ballast for anybody that models northern Minnesota...
This one is a little late - I was holding off in hopes of having all the parts of the rebuild in my hands before posting, but that was not to be, so I'll hopefully post an update mid-September when the cylinder block and shell arrive.
That being said, I picked up the almost 30 laser cut pieces for the new cab after my mid-August business trip and spent two evenings assembling them, finding the following mistakes:
To quote _Iron_Man_2_: "Get ready for a major remodel, fellas. We're back in hardware mode!" (well, sort of)
Why, you may ask? Simple - during July, I finally got the layout clean enough that I took some time to replace the trucks on one of my house cars with wired caboose trucks to see if it would help my engine's power pick up problems. The initial testing was enough of a success to go on and figure out how I'm going to solder the leads to the back of the engine frame (as a side note, hiding the wires should be simplicity itself - cover the exposed parts with small diameter heat shrink tubing, shrink said tubing and then use it to model an air hose...). Of course, I don't want the wooden cab and back styrene channel to get damaged by heat, so they have to be removed. Before that, I'll need to build spacers to ensure that the distance between the frame and the idler car correctly compensates for amount the back of the cab overhangs the back of the engine frame as well as the length of the draw bar between the idler car and the cab.
Ok, but that overhang has been bothering me for a while now, because it creates a cantilever problem when attaching the cab to the frame. While helping restage a friend's layout and talking about the situation, I took time and noticed the cab sizes on his circa 1950s engines and it began to dawn on me that my cabs were likeyly oversized (you can probably now guess where this is going). So after that work session, I pulled out my information on Colorado Central #4, the first class C 0-6-0T Porter Bell ever built and putting a metric to it confirms that pretty much *everything* in the model is oversized, and not by a consistent factor. So, I'm now redesigning the pieces to align more closely with the prototype - I plan on keeping the crossheads, pilots, and bells, but pretty much everything else (cab, tank, steam dome, sand dome, smoke box, stack, cylinder block, and saddle) are being redesigned and will be rebuilt - I'm planning on rebuilding a resized cab out of wood, and handling the rest as a single 3-D printed model. I expect that I can have the new model together and out to be printed before I have to take another biz trip to silicon valley in the middle of August.
No post for the middle of the month - I was a bit busy with travelling around and starting to "cash the check" that I inadvertently wrote during the MCoR convention at Jefferson City, MO. That convention was the first weekend of June and it was the usually rolled up ball of insanity, fun, and socializing that regional conventions usually involve. During the convention, I cavalierly said to the NG folks at the convention that if they came to Omaha next June, the B&CC would be "operational" (this is the check that now needs to be cashed!). There was a great time had by all and unfortunately, I don't have photographs because I cleverly left my camera at home and my phone's camera is questionable at best...
I had been scheduled to be in NJ the second weekend of June, but after a day business trip to Dallas, I came down with some variation of the "creeping crud" that I still haven't gotten rid of yet. So, I spent the weekend "finding" the basement layout - it's been about a year since I've done anything really serious with it, and so the first step has been uncovering the layout and putting the basement in working order - not completely done, but have made enough progress to be able to start some of the next steps (see below)
Saturday, June 20 was the Kansas City Narrow Gauge (KCNG) meet, and I presented my photos of Craig's RGS layout as a slide show and brought the first generation paper mock-ups of the tunnels that I am now building for the layout - while the north fork of the clear creek didn't have any tunnels, there are two places where the layout's main line folds back over itself - just west of Forks Creek Staging and from east of Blackhawk up to the yard). With the advent of "Otto-vision", I wasn't about to have my tunnels be just holes in the scenery. Instead, I'm basing the two tunnels on the Alpine tunnel to Gunnison.
Right now, I've got presentation board mock-ups of the two tunnels. These mock-ups serve three purposes:
I also got permission to add more two more layouts to the "fallen flags" section for layout photos. Dave Husman's Wilmington & Northern and Dan Munson's Rock Island. These were local layouts to Omaha and I was fortunate enough to get to operate them a couple of times. I'm hopeful that the W&N will return in a larger format, but don't know when/if I'll see an updated Rock...
Work intrudes again - had to spend the last six to eight weeks pulling 12-16 hour days to meet a deadline. Having finished that, I took off Memorial Day weekend and drove up to Thunder Bay for this year's TLR convention. Broke the drive on the way up into two days - chased a stacker out of Missouri Valley along US 30 to Dennsion, at which point the UP was doing inspection on the westbound main, so there was only single track. Continued on to Ames, where I had lunch with a friend, and then ran up US 69 and I-35 to Mason City.
In Mason City, the Iowa Traction had #54 out at the ag industry, and all of their snow removal equipment was on the track along 4th street, so I rail fanned that as well. Stopped in to take photographs of Clark Propst's layout. Regrettably, I never got to operate this gem, but with Clark's permission, I've started a "fallen flags" section for layout photos - I'm in the process of getting permissions from other owners to put more there and will update.
I took US 65 from Mason City up to Albert Lea, hoping to railfan the spine line. No luck there, other than a truly impressive balloon track at the windmill unloading facility north of Mason City. At Albert Lea, I picked up I-35 again and dropped in to shoot photos of Jeff Otto's Missabe Northern - he's been putting a lot of green stuff on it since I was there last (as opposed to the green stuff that has already gone *into* it). From there, I drove on up through St. Paul and called it day in Hinckley.
From Hinckley, the second day of driving was very easy and pleasant. Rolled through Duluth right around 8am, so I guess that I experienced "rush hour", but honestly, I've seen much worse in many other cities. Of course, I-35 ends in Duluth and pretty much dumps you onto MN-61 at a traffic light! The good news is that MN-61 along the north shore is truly a delight (when the weather is good) and fortunately for me, Memorial Day weekend along the lake was all aces as far as weather was concerned - I don't remember seeing a cloud the whole weekend! I stopped in Two Harbors for breakfast, but after that, it was open throttle to the border and Thunder Bay - arriving about noon central time (the border into Ontario is also the time zone boundary).
The plan for Thursday in Thunder Bay was checking into the hotel - the Prince Albert was built for the CPR back in 1910 and has a great view of the CPR east-west mainline. The surprise of that day was the rogue operating session that Craig Symington held for his 1941 RGS (he models in HOn3, just like I do). Fred Headon and I made up a wayfreight in Ridgeway and ran it (one of us as lead engine, the other as rear helper service) up to Rico. All of the grades are the same as the prototype and the scenery and modelling are truly spectacular (Craig was awarded MMR #553 at the convention banquet and it is truly well deserved). We started making up the train at about 9:45 PM on the real clock and pulled into Rico just after midnight *and had a blast the whole way* - running up the grade from Vance Junction to Ouray with synchronized chuff and no coupler slack is something every operator should experience at least once in their life...
Friday was clinic day - I was scheduled to give two (the first on model evaluation, contest judging and documentation, the second was an introduction to 3-D printing and Shapeways). By the time my schedule was done, I had to make a choice - go on the last tour of the Resolute facility, or haul my camera back over to Craig's to shoot photos of his layout. Since one of the main reasons I was at Thunder Bay was to shoot pictures of the San Juan, that won. Took me about an hour to shoot the layout, at which point Craig asked if I would take a passenger consist from Rico down to back down to Ridgeway to "give the layout life for folks visiting" (of course, I accepted). The trip back down the grade took an hour - there was another operator from Thursday taking a 5 car MoW train going up the grade and that was more than the engine could handle and he had to double the grade from Ouray to Trout Lake.
Saturday morning was contest judging and railfanning along the way to lunch at the Bombardier facility (unfortunately I had to miss this tour to get things done in the contest room). After lunch, got to take the tour of the Thunder Bay Terminal, which was unloading a coal train while we were there (unfortunately, the coal train *would* have a UP engine on the front of it!). The facility currently handles both coal and potash (which puts it two-thirds of the way to being where you really don't want to be) and I got some pictures of the facility and unloading process.
After the terminal facility, headed back to the hotel for the evening banquet - the keynote was a presentation on the Port Arthur, Duluth and Western (also known as the "peedee" railway, although my favorite was the "poverty, agony, distress and want"). I had put a scratch built bridge into the contest room and from there into the chinese auction to see if anybody would be interested in taking it home. I was very happy to see both the number of tickets in the cup as well as the reaction from the folks that won the bridge. I'm now thinking of doing some sort of commemorative car for next year's convention in Fargo.
Sunday was "going home day" - started out bright and early and was back through Duluth by about 9 am. Rather than drive straight home, I took a slight detour at Minneapolis/St. Paul over to Hudson, WI to visit the St. Croix Valley Railway. While I had lunch with folks, unfortunately the weather wasn't cooperating (it rained pretty much from Duluth down to Des Moines), so I didn't take any photographs or rides. Got back on the road about two and zig-zagged my way across south eastern Minnesota until I picked up I-35 again, at which point I just put on full steam for home, arriving a little after 8 pm.
All in all, a very successful trip, and one leaving me much more energized than I've been in a long time. My next three weekends are booked (Mid-Continent regional in Jefferson City, family reunion in NJ, and the KCNG meet) but other than that, I'm ready to get back to working on the layout.
Not much progress over the first two months of 2015. Most evenings have been spent either on work, other pursuits, helping other layout owners get ready for OS Omaha 2015, or working on items for the MCoR region. What time I have had has been spent researching and drawing plans for the first Central City reverse flats and finally revealing the updated B&CC history that grew out of the Kimber Mill research collaboration.
