Burnham Yard Fall Tidying Session

Over the last few months nothing much of anything has been happening on my layout. Lots of reasons for this, but one thing I did decide to get to grips with was the fact that the layout was being used as a storage shelf.

It may be hard to imagine, or not as the case may be, but this is picture is taken after I had already removed a bunch of Walthers Cornerstone buildings boxes that were obstructing the right of way.

So I decided to make a start at correcting the situation, as at some point it would be nice to run some trains, the lack of installed Hex Frog Juicers not withstanding, I use to be able to run stuff.

While the rest of the layout still needs clearing, and while there is still clutter on the layout, none of it interferes with the right of way. So that's my new rule; stuff can be placed on the board, but mustn't block the right of way.

Unsurprisingly enough, I now feel motivated to start working on finishing off the cars in the above picture, which are in the process of being weathered, and or having details like uncoupler bars added to them.

One Year Older

  
Actually one year and two days older from when I first posted on this blog. I seem to have missed my first anniversary through becoming distracted by other stuff. Other stuff being trying to either set up my own business, or find another job with a suitable employer. As luck would have it the job search came up with a job on Monday that I had to complete the application form for yesterday. I was a little distracted by filling in the multi-sectioned online application form, which ran to many pages.

I've been laid off now for two months. Three months if you count the last month of work when I was using up all my annual leave entitlement. One would think therefore that I have been busy building lots of model railway models and the like. Not so much.

I have been practising with my static grass applicator on odd bits of board, as I was not completely happy with the first attempts. It's not that there is anything wrong with what I did the first time around, but I wanted to see if I could improve the look of the grass by adding more layers, which is what I have been doing over the last week.

Today I was applying varnish over the tops of said static grass to see how this works as a sealant, as I find a lot of the grass tends to lift off over time? I'm probably handling the grassed areas too much, as I suspect that this method is best for looking at, and not robust enough to be handled as such. I've actually been painting the static grass to add shading to the finished product. I know that one can mix different shades of static grass material, but to my eye it all looks a little flat. Unfortunately, painting the static grass tends to lift it off, and if you over do it, tends to make the grass clog up. I'm going to experiment with some spray dies next.

Other than that I am trying to get on with getting the Hex Frog Juicers actually fitted. Trouble is that the layout has become a temporary storage area for other projects, like the grass boards I've been working on. That as they say is the trouble of living in a small flat with limited space.

Frogs

Just got back from a very nice day out at the Seaboard Southern's show held at the Holbrook Club in Horsham, Sussex. This was a local all American model railroad show with trade representatives and layouts.

Talked to Nobby, Atlantic Region director about recent NMRA British Region developments and general gossip. Several people came up, hi David, and talked to me about stuff like wheels, CLAG and other stuff. This seemed largely driven by them reading my blog, and asking when the next post would go up?

Well here is another blog. Happy now?

Anyway, I bought a CE&I covered hopper from Intermountain, and two Walthers road sets for the layout too from Terry at LSWR Models, who is lovely. Then I was lucky because my partner bought me some Tam Valley Hex Frog Juicers for our layout from Coastal DCC.  They are very nice people who we bought the NCE PowerCab from, and they did us yet another great deal on our purchase. So highly recommended.

So I really have no excuse now not to get over the hump and have the layout fully operational by wiring these in. However, life has taken a difficult turn at this time. My work contract was not renewed, so I'm sans-job, and having to take time to reassess my goals in life. This takes time, so I expect it will be at least a month before Burnham yard is rolling.
   

Ready-to-Run

I'm going to start by telling you what I'm going to tell you. There is no such thing as ready-to-run for a modeller who wants to model a specific prototype.

This post comes from an email by one of my readers, name redacted to protect the innocent, who wrote asking how I was getting on with building the Sunshine kits that I had bought off him recently?

Ready-to-run, or ready-to-roll, or out-of-the-box, all describe the concept that the model is fully complete and ready to be run in a train on your layout. For definitions of fully complete that include less than full detail, and for ready to run in a train that might require some fettling, this is largely true.

But, as soon as you start setting standards that are different to those specified by the manufacturer, then not so much. The truth then being that the model has all the basics and requires further work. As such I now have a dozen models on the work bench in various stages of transitioning from RTR out of the box, to actually ready to operate on my layout.

Unfortunately, Real Life (tm) has rather gotten in the way of late, what with my contract at work coming to an end and all. So I've been doing easy stuff to take my mind off the hard stuff. Such is life. Anyway, it's summer for definitions of summer that vary from rain, to dull and over clouded, with an occasional spot of sunshine, as and when.

AT&SF 31564 Box Car

This PS-1 box car was known on the AT&ST as a BX-57. However, for freight car aficionados one should note that the BX57 class should have a Gypsum running board that was unpainted galvanised steel. This is a Plano replacement etch I plan to use to replace the running board. I'm a bit surprised that Kadee haven't produced this variant of the running boards for their models, as I can't imagine that they haven't made back their investment costs yet?

In general any PS-1 box cars running in the late 1950s should have their tack boards placed in the lower position, since by the time they were built the trend was towards lower boards that train crew could reach from the ground. I suppose I could change this, which in this case would mean getting replacement doors, not sure I can be bothered?

All the bits cut out, with the running board applied using canopy glue.

Just showing the lateral running boards in the process of being applied. You can just see at the right hand edge the replacement etch at the brake wheel has also been applied. To finish off I retrieved the lateral running board grab rails from the Kadee moulding and glued them on using canopy cement.

All I have to do now is send this car off to the weathering shop.

Operations 5: Lies, Damned Lies & Statistics

I have just got back from a week long work based conference, where I went to workshops and symposia to listen to learned professors either teach, or give overviews on their specialist field, and present research findings. I should add at this point that I'm not a researcher, professor, or statistician. My only role in all of this is to understand what the research implies for best practice, and how strong the evidence is.

I mention all of this as a preamble to a few comments that have arisen from various private conversations about the distribution of freight cars across the railroad networks of the North American continent.

When I started in the model railroad hobby the received wisdom was that one should base the number of freight cars per railroad on a rule of thumb that said anything between 25% to 35% would be the home railroad, and then the rest of the freight car models would be based on the connecting railroads, according to their size and proximity to the home railroad.

This paradigm has been replaced by the Gilbert-Nelson model that states that freight cars were seen in proportion to the national fleet. However, I would like to quote directly from Tony Thompson's post a couple of very salient points that people overlook:

"Of course, as they fully recognized, this can only be true of free-running cars like box cars, flat cars and gondolas which are not specially equipped, and is likely true only on main lines. A coal branch, for example, will obviously be quite different.
     They also recognized that certain factors can distort the general pattern. For example, interchange requirements or pool agreements can change the data; so can “hostile” or competitive relations among railroads."

Taking the first paragraph first. My model railroad is based on a traction line that mostly ran passenger services with a few freight trains to service industries along the line. It is therefore not a mainline. I highlighted that part of the above quote to emphasise the importance of the caveat.

The second paragraph's importance is that it defines the confounding variables that can relate to specific presentations of a locale, or railroad.

I have used photographs to support some of the assumptions that I'm making for my freight car roster, because unlike a mainline railroad, freight trains on the North Shore were quite short, and rather than being in the position of being only able to see the first few cars in any train, I often have the luxury of seeing all the cars in the train. I may not be able to fully identify them all by type, but can get close to identifying the owning railroad though.

As for for my aims, I'm trying for verisimilitude rather than quantitative replication. So while I'm aware of the percentages, of freight car types per owning railroad, I'm not going to try and replicate them literally, because I can only have a very small number of models relative to the number required for a statistical representative numbers.

So statistics should be seen as guidelines, rather than rules per se.