Model Railroad Blog

Some Vertical Details

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I spent the better part of Saturday scratch building two utility poles and one cross buck for the Everett Avenue crossing.  I’m guessing I had about six hours into the project and the cost of materials probably didn’t crack a buck. (lots of recreational play value per dollar!)  On top of that, when I was done, I had something better looking than anything I could have purchased ready made.  This would be a good project for a student or deployed military because the parts are small, inexpensive, and will, without question, be needed once you get a layout.  They are also details that create a fair amount of visual impact.

Crossbucks

Take a Tichy plastic cross buck and shave the cast on post off.  Spray paint the back of the cross buck  dark gray.

For the post, take .041″ basswood (Midwest pn 8016) representing a 4×4 and paint that gray as well.  When the paint on the post has dried, give it a few swipes with 400 grit sand paper to get the “fuzzies” off of it.  Lightly spray it with flat with white spray paint and give it another pass with the sandpaper.

Glue the post to the cross buck plate.  Take two Ticky NBW castings, paint them with dark gray primer or camo. brown and glue them in place.  All done!

Utility Poles

You’ll need:

  • Bamboo skewers from the grocery store (pole heights vary but a common length is 40 feet with 6 feet of that buried in the ground)
  • .0416″ x .0625″ basswood (Midwest pn 8017) representing 4×6 cross arms.  Cut to  scale 8 foot lengths. (8 feet is a common length although some cross arms are longer)
  • Insulators scavenged from Atlas telephone poles
  • .015″ Music Wire (K&S makes this)
  • Yellow decal stripes from your scrap box
  • Tan or earth colored solvent based paint

Lightly dilute your paint and stain the poles and cross arms.  Mark the center of the cross arms.

Start with the top cross arms.  There are two of these, back to back on the top.  Glue them roughly a foot down from the top of the pole.  Next, glue one more single cross arm a scale 6 feet below the top arms.  For adhesive use a thicker viscosity CA.  Snip off a half inch long piece of music wire, bend it in an “L” with 1/4″ sides, glue it beneath the cross arms and paint it a dark gray.

Take a spare Atlas telephone pole, spray it a light gray, snip off the insulators and glue them in place on the cross arms with CA.

Some streetside poles have yellow reflective tape near the bottom, I simulated these with yellow decal stripes from my scrap box.

Utility pole styles vary greatly and it’s simply a matter of looking at your window to get some ideas.

 

Working With Powdery Soils

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Working with powdery soils is difficult from the standpoint of getting a flat, smooth surface, free of ridges, bumps, and craters.  There are two challenges.  First is applying the material smoothly.  Second is applying the adhesive without disrupting your application.

To get a smooth application, avoid pouring the material from a cup.  Instead, use a fine meshed sifter.  Pour your material into the sifter and lightly bounce it up and down and swing it side to side until you’ve covered your entire surface area.  If additional smoothing or dress up is needed use large, soft, flat brushes.

Next comes applying the adhesive.  I prefer dilute matte medium from Scenic Express.  Pick up a spray bottle that produces a super fine, gentle, mist.  Fill it with a water and add a touch of rubbing alcohol or detergent to aid in breaking up the surface tension.  Spray your soil base that so that it’s saturated but not puddling.  I use an eye dropper to apply the matte medium.  If you’re not careful applying the drops, you’ll end up with unsightly ridges or craters.  Start at the edge of your soil area and liberally apply the adhesive around the edges.  Wait a moment and let the capillary action draw it into the soil as far as possible.  To hit the remaining dry areas, hold the dropper just a hair above the surface and very gently squeeze out a drop.  Again, see how far the capillary action carries it.  Repeat until the entire surface is saturated.  If you end up with any ridges or bumps lightly smooth them out with a flat, smooth, brush.

The Quest For “Perfect” Research

As prototype modelers a large part of our job, and a fun part at that, is researching our prototype.  Although there are a variety of sources for trying to pin down the elusive clue as to what the “typical” situation was in the area we model, by and large we are totally dependent upon photos.  We may be able to augment it here and there but for the most part the photos carry the lion’s share.  The problem is that a photo only shows what the situation was the fraction of a second the lens was opened.  I’ve stood on weed-choked rights of way, surely abandoned, only to be surprised seconds later by a locomotive coming around the corner.  An aerial photo may show an entire town totally devoid of freight cars.  Does that mean rail service has been abandoned?  Could be, particularly in this day and age.  However, it might mean that the local came by an hour before the shot and swept away the empties.

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 For almost ten years, Bing Birdseye has consistently shown Seaboard Terminals totally devoid of cars.  Surely rail service has been discontinued, right?

 

Case in point, Miami’s East Rail industrial park.  When I first started researching it in 2006, the busiest customer was Seaboard Terminals Warehouse.  On the day of one of early my site visits the local was wrestling with spotting no less than a dozen cars.  Then, for reasons unknown, all rail service appeared to abruptly stop in 2007 or 2008.  The track was maintained but from 2008 through 2015, a period that included three site visits, I never saw a car spotted there again.  Bing Birdseye and Google Streetview backed that up.  Not one car.   I had long since concluded that this once vibrant industry had given up the ghost as far as rail service was concerned.

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By chance I happened to check Bing’s traditional aerial view and found this shot, dated 2015, showing that I was wrong, Seaboard was still rail served.

 

Last week while researching how to find time stamps on Bing Birdseye (and learning you can’t) I came across a post that stated time stamps were posted on Bings traditional aerial view.  Out of curiosity I went back to East Rail with Bing Aerial and to my considerable surprise, guess what popped up in the image?  Two high cubes spotted at Seaboard and documented with a time stamp of February 2015.  I was wrong.  They were still taking cars.  The takeaway is that the only “perfect” research is living in the area and dropping by the site every week or so, or having an inside contact at the railroad that works the job frequently.  Photos will only tell you so much.

All Done, Now What?

Following Up on a Successful Launch

 

By far the biggest obstacle facing the entry level modeler is overcoming inertia, getting that first layout off the launching pad, and operating reliably.   Doing so is an enormous achievement.  Things flow much easier after hitting that first milestone.  The primary reason I’m an advocate for smaller, simpler layouts going in is that it stacks the odds of success in your favor.

Lately I’ve gotten more and more emails and photos of well done first attempts that are up and running.  The sense of satisfaction obtained by these modelers is very evident.

So,  you’ve got that modest switching layout up and running smoothly.  Now what?  What’s the next step?  How do you maintain that positive momentum?  This is a hobby and the only measure of success is how much satisfaction you extract from it.  My experience is that satisfaction is generally tied to a relaxed but generally upward trending advancement of skills and knowledge.   By relaxed I mean really relaxed.  That said, if there is no upward movement at all, stagnation tends to set in.   Here are a few ideas for that next step:

  • Keep the existing layout but gradually replace small sections with higher quality modeling that reflects your newer and better skill set.  For example,  make a second attempt at some of the structures in an effort to increase the quality somewhat.  Remove a foot or two of track and try your hand at more detailed weathering and ballast.  Remove a half square foot of scenery and re-do it.  Focus on improved color treatment and cleaner, more subtle, execution.  Compare your model against prototype photos.
  • Keep the existing layout but switch your attention to improving your freight car painting and weathering skills.
  • Replace the existing layout entirely with something of similar size but with design tweaks that reflect your higher level of self-awareness and knowledge.
  • Replace the layout with something slightly larger.  If you’re a beginner I wouldn’t reach beyond doubling the square footage for the second attempt.

Some things you can only learn by doing and the only way to zero in on which aspects of the hobby interest you the most is to dive in and start building.  Make mental notes about what aspects of your layout you like and which aspects you’d like to change on the next attempt.