Here’s a blast from the past….Splitting off of Miami’s “East Rail” siding, just south of the main industrial park, is a one track spur that dives into the weeds, and weaves through concrete canyons between closely packed structures. At the end of the spur there is a blind crossing of 37th Avenue to reach an industry called Pan American Papers. You couldn’t come up with a more interesting model railroad subject. A few days ago Tolga Erbora, camera in hand, stumbled across the local actually working the spur. Being able to catch this action unfold was rare and exceedingly lucky. You can watch his footage HERE.
This mock up of the Bush Terminal Freight house was a test to see if the photo wallpaper technique would scale down to N scale. It appears it will. In this attempt, my main goal was to test the print resolution which does check out. I’ll now rebuild the model adding more layers, depth, and stand off details.
Entering into the Brooklyn Terminal project I had a lot of questions I needed to work through in my mind to see if I had a fighting chance of building something that at least approached what I’d done with my HO layouts. It wasn’t enough to be able to address the questions and challenges (at least what I personally viewed as challenges) but to do so in a way that didn’t involve excessive amounts of time. I really wanted to have a realistic grasp on what the issues were and how hard they’d be work through. At this point I do think I have a sense of what I’m dealing with and it appears the big questions and concerns I had are things that can be dealt with in a fairly straight forward manner.
Photo Wallpaper: Could this technique be scaled down to N scale? The main question I had was print resolution. How would the photo laminates look when blown up in a photo? As you can see from the shot above, it appears the resolution will be fine.
Photography: I enjoy experiencing my models through photographs. Would I be able to create N scale models that would stand up to the up close and personal photography I enjoy? It appears so. With careful weathering, the cast on details on rolling stock aren’t as noticeable as I had feared.
Code 40 turnouts: Track tests a few weeks showed that the Model Power Mogul can handle code 40 track, as long as there aren’t spikes in the way. Easy enough to fix that but what about the turnouts? How to throw them? It seems so basic in retrospect…Tortoise Switch Machines. As I was mulling over the issue I recalled a post on one of the forums where a modeler had devised an ingenious method of modifying the throw wire for code 40. He used the standard .037″ wire but at the end, at the point the wire would touch the throw bar, he soldered on a short, half inch extension of much thinner wire. This approache gives you the stiffness you need to throw the points and a small enough wire at the top to allow the use of narrower throw bars.
Couplers: For now I’m going to stay with Z scale but I’ve been contacted by a modeler that has had some success modifying the Micro Trains scale couplers to make them more viable. It sounds promising.
Keep Alive: To be fair, the Model Power Mogul rarely stalls (even on complex track), but it does occasionally. If I could find a way to get even a small capacitor tapped into the decoder it would be a game changer. Litchfield Station has offered to dig into this if I’ll send them a unit to look at. It’s not the kind of thing they can address unless they have the model in front of them with the shell off. I have to believe that at some time in the next year or two we’ll have the capability to add this feature in tight N scale quarters.
A little photographic experimentation with mock ups as I start to gain momentum with the Brooklyn Terminal layout…… Boxcars are Micro Trains, the switcher is by Model Power, and the structures are DPM.
A tandem of Micro Trains boxcars sit temporarily in the street trackage of 1st Avenue.
We’d all like to have our cake and eat it too but, unfortunately, life rarely pans out that way. An N scaler has the enormous advantage of being able to have a rather significant railroad virtually in their hip pocket. The small size also opens up the ability to have much more realistic scene composition by virtue of having the space to spread things out as they appear in the real world.
For all its positives, however, the scale poses significant challenges, especially for the realism orient modeler. When it comes to rolling stock those challenges are:
-Truck mounted couplers
-Massive ‘pizza cutter’ wheel flanges
-Oversize couplers
-Unrealistic ride height to clear the truck mounted couplers
-Cast on details analogous to the HO scalers old “Bluebox” days or….
-or…if the details aren’t cast on they tend to be grossly over sized
Whew! Did I miss anything or are you back to HO already! The situation isn’t hopeless though. The rivet and seam detail tends to be very finely cast to scale which is no small thing. Also, the pad printing is typically well done. So all is not lost. However, if you hope to achieve any semblance of a plausible end result, and do so without spending weeks on each car, it’s important to come up with a strategy.
The starting point of attaining visual realism is the realization and acceptance of how much color treatment and weathering has on overall appearance, far more so than prototypical accuracy. Once that realization is embraced, you can direct your efforts in that direction. Since the overall casting detail is generally excellent, the use of dark washes will “pop” that positive attribute out. Off the shelf, all rolling stock of any scale, has very vivid lettering. For WW2 era that is usually white. This brilliant white needs to be toned down but very subtly. The cars above were first given a thin wash of burnt umber and black artist oils. When that dried, I used an airbrush to fog on an ultra thin mix of Dullcote dulled with a drop or two of Model Master Army Helo Drab. Dark brown and black chalk was then rubbed along the outside bracing. Surprisingly, with this color treatment the cast on details are less objectionable than cars that come with oversize stand off details. In summary, apply a thin brush wash of dark artist oils followed by an airbrush hazing of US Helo Drab to knock down the brilliance of the white.
Moving on to ride height….stock wheels and couplers are immediately stripped of and consigned to the trash. BLMA makes an exceptional N scale truck comprised of thin, small flange, metal wheels. What’s particularly interesting is the bolster has an ingenious downward offset that lowers the car’s ride height. Atlas has picked up the ball and integrated this product into their production line (I generally use BLMA #9045). Putting these wheels in place and body mounting the couplers generally puts everything (car and couplers) where it needs to be vertically.
The final issue is the couplers. Gosh, you HO scalers have it so nice. This is a “down the road” issue I’ll need to experiment with and sort out in the weeks ahead. For now I’m using body mounted Z scale couplers simply to have something there that isn’t so huge. However, the Z scale couplers don’t really have a prototypical appearance and give cars in motion that maddening yo-yo/slinky effect. I may be able to mitigate that a little by adding friction to the wheel bearings. The new Micro Trains scale couplers look nice, don’t yo-yo, but have a massive coupler pocket that creates clearance problems in their own right. If I can come up with some form of modified pocket that may be the best bet. Stay tuned…..
Wayland Moore and Riley Triggs running the Brooklyn Terminal during ProRail 2018
ProRail, the national operations convention, is now in the bag. I was a little surprised how drawn the attendees were to running the BT layout. For the most part it ran well although some minor track tuning issues cropped up. Approaches to this entire “operations” thing varies from person to person and layout host to layout host. For my part, when I stage a session I put a lot of effort into trying to get the operators away from the natural tendency to fall into what I call a “check list” mentality when it comes to an operating session. By that I mean where the mindset becomes one of “give me a list so I can work through that list”. I want it to be of a case of “experiencing” what it would be like to be in a specific time and place and to be able to enjoy that experience without undo pressure or frustration. There are a few ways to help this along.
One is to not overload the session with too many moves.
Another is to avoid building in operational “gotchas”.
The third is to let the operator know that it doesn’t matter if the switch list is completed or not. After a set time period, the session will be declared “done” and the power to the layout will be turned off.
Encourage the crews to take real time coffee breaks during the session.
For switching layouts, emphasize that you’d like the speed limit not exceed the third speed notch on a throttle.
This takes the pressure off so hopefully they can just relax and get a sense of what it would feel like to be in say 1945 Brooklyn. I staged the layout with only 13 cars and set up a simple switch list. Over the course of the event three operators ran the layout on successive days and to my surprise the relatively small 13 piece car count took about an hour and half to spot. The fact that only a dozen cars will fill out a session takes some pressure off me as it will be a lot easier to fine tune the rolling stock. I see the exceptional BLMA replacement trucks are back in stock so the focus in the next month will be on lowering the cars, tuning couplers, and adding weight. I’ll also be working on some track fine tuning.
I’ve never understood the hobby culture in terms of how smaller layouts are often viewed. It seems to be one of “settling”. One of making the best of a bad situation (limited space). During ProRail I had all three layouts running. They ranged in size from the Downtown Spur at 400 sf to the Brooklyn Terminal at 30 sf. Watching the guests run the layouts I really didn’t notice any difference in how much they enjoyed the larger vs. smaller railroads. Without feeling contrived, something like the Brooklyn Terminal will easily spin out a relatively long operating session and will serve up many, many years of construction enjoyment and it’s of a size attainable to anybody with any living situation.
Here’s the switch list I used for ProRail 2018. It’s just a simple Excel spreadsheet and took operators a relaxing ninety minutes to run through.
