Let's Poke a Bear

Let's cut to the chase. I'm going to poke the track and wheel cleaning bear.

Here is my track cleaning train. How I got to this train is a bit of a story.

I'll start by saying that track rubbers are not good. They are abrasive. As one modeller once told me, no one will let him clean their car with a track rubber.

However, some of my track is really old and so the 'don't use a track rubber' ship sailed long ago. I use a Fleischmann track rubber and I find that it does the business. I also use a Walthers track rubber on the bottom of one of their track cleaning wagons.

Another fact is that if you regularly use your layout, you need to clean it less. I have found this to be true over the years. Covered tracks also need less cleaning. I once left a small portable layout covered for six months and the track was fantastic. In comparison my main layout left uncovered next to it had grubby tracks.

Back in 2005 when I joined the Gosford City Model Railroad Club, I noticed that they had a couple of modified wagons which had track rubbers attached to a pad underneath them pushed by a loco at the start of every night. One car had a masonite block underneath it with the rougher side to the track. It worked with the same effect. I found a track cleaning car in a local hobby shop and thought that I would give it a go. It's the Union Pacific car.

I had seen another modeller's track cleaning train years ago. He had a Centerline track cleaning car which he had put a body on. These cars are a rectangular slab of brass or metal with rectangular hole in the centre. In that is put a brass cylinder which is covered with a strip of Chux wipes. The Chux is secured with a rubber band. It was doused with isopropyl alcohol and run around the track. Then a new Chux strip was doused with CRC 2-26 (I think). The train was run around the layout and the layout was given a couple days for the CRC 2-26 to work its magic. Then he reckoned that he didn't need to clean it again for six months.

I made similar wagon with an old Trax MHG, I swapped the bogies for some Powerline clip in bogies with metal tyres on the wheels. For the cylinder I used an old 35mm film canister which I cut down and filled with lead sinkers, all held together with Tamiya masking tape. I used an old Lima loco weight to hold it down. It worked. And the above method worked well... the first time.

He has also replaced the Walthers track rubber with a bit of cork to help collect some of the dirt before the roller reached it. So I did the same. It does work well.

The second time I used this treatment there was too much CRC2-26 on the track and I had to wipe it all off.

The track cleaning train was relegated to the off layout shelves until I needed a better solution to hand cleaning the tracks.

With the last layout I needed to employ another track cleaning train. By this stage I had started using the Noch clip on cleaners. They are a little brush of sorts that clip onto an axel of a wagon. They won't clip onto newer Australian models but will to a couple of the older Powerline wheels with metal tyres which are on the old MHG. The Union Pacific wagon was re-employed with the cork pad and I bought another Walthers track cleaning car with the rubber. This time I pulled the body off and put a Casula Hobbies or Silvermaz kit water gin on top. I painted the two Australian wagons yellow to represent the permanent way department. 

Next time I'm down Liverpool way or at an exhibition, I'll probably buy another water gin kit for the original track cleaning car. I'll also buy a roll of HO underlay cork as it fits well on the pad. The cork was originally blu-tacked on and it stayed for quite a time. I replaced the cork and used a UHU glue stick. It worked a treat.

One thing that I have found with these Walthers wagons is that you need to take a spring off one of the screws that hold the pad in place. After a while, turn the wagons around to even the wear.

CRC 2-26 is not good on traction tyres. I have Minimodels suburban sets with traction tyres so I need something else. We also used CRC 2-26 to clean wheels of locos. We'd spray some on a paper towel and place it in the track. Next we would place one bogie on the paper towel and the other on the track, turn the power up and hold the loco in place. We would then turn the loco around and clean the other bogie.

This worked well too and would spread the CRC 2-26 thoughout the layout. However, we had one bloke in the club who hated it. He was German and with his accent he would call CRC 2-26 "Das oily schitt". 

To clean loco wheels he would only use a brass brush to scrub the wheels. Peco produce a wheel cleaner like that. I have two so that I can clean opposite wheels at the same time. They are connected to the track with alligator clips. When hooked up and the power turned up the Peco brushes are applied to the wheels which spin and get cleaned. It works 99% of the time.

However, when I had to clean the wheels on my Southern Rail interurban, the wire brushes weren't as successful. On closer inspection, the insides of the wheels were dirty and the pick ups weren't able to do their job. 

To solve the problem, I spayed some paper towel with some isopropyl alcohol and put the loco on it. I also took the bogie being cleaned and made sure the towel was brushing the inside of the wheels. It made the world of difference.

I put some isopropyl alcohol on the cork and ran the track cleaning train up and down the incline from the terminus. This also made a world of difference but the cork needed replacing. I've got a supply to keep me going for a while.

There are other chemical products out there such as Rail Zip, which I haven't used with success, and Deluxe Track Magic, which I have yet to use. According to UK publication Model Rail the latter works well. I have a mate who swears by it.

Everyone has their own method of cleaning tracks and with the past treatment the track has had, I find that my little train works well.

Until next time.

Happy July

Wow! Just over three months since the last update.

Since then, I have linked the coal mine head shunt to the line from platform one of Bega Station, I have re-aligned the track at the renamed Billabong Marina to fit in the Fine Fish building. I'll need to block off the ends where vans went through on the old layout.

The third thing mentioned from the last blog post was an unloading platform for the coal mine for supplies.  I'm going to need to build the coal tipple first to see if there is enough room.

As for working on the terminus, not much happened. We have some renovations going on and while I was able to get a start on it and adding bits of track with my 15 minute a day philosophy, work was soon halted as stuff needed to go into the train room for temporary storage.

We were meant to be going away last week but someone in our house got COVID. As an aside, we're triple vaxed so for the infected person, things weren't too bad. Dad came down with it too on the same day. It was a coincidence as the the only common factor is me. However, I love that his doctor prescribed him some $1000 antiviral tablets and it cost him less than $6. Mum came down with it a few days later and received an even better deal. I love that we are in a country with health care like that. I'm happy to pay my Medicare levy.

Despite the illness, I looked at the silver linings of the storm clouds that battered the NSW coast for the first week of the month. I didn't have to drive in the hazardous conditions and I could self isolate to the train room. As a close contact (I still am) I don't want to go anywhere and potentially spread something.

The train room needed some cleaning. I'd stacked some stuff where the terminus station was planned. It was convenient to put it there. I had to buy some new points as well. There may have also been some binge watching as a distraction too. However, as of last night, the terminus has been put down and trains can now arrive and depart.

The curved track placed in the foreground is to a planned good yard. There are 6 platforms and a bay siding for unloading parcels vans. In later years, when passenger traffic increased, this was turned into another platform. However, the new platform couldn't be named platform 7 as it was on the opposite side to platform 6. There are a number of station which have a platform 0. Lidcombe is a good example. Why not renumber it platform 1? Apparently, it's a big programming issue. I don't know the ins and outs and I don't really mind that I don't know.

Why put a platform 0 on a new layout with a fictitious station? It is a shorter platform than platform 1 and I like the idea of the more important express trains leaving from platform 1. 

The original idea was for a 4 car suburban train on a DC shuttle from the bay platform as though it was travelling on a different line. However, there isn't enough room on the other end to hide the train. With the shuttle at the back of the layout, there would be less things to interfere and it could be its own little circuit.

With that idea not coming to fruition, it is just another platform for trains on the rest of the layout.

It was pointed out to me by a friend that platform 1 on every Sydney station has trains heading to Central. I think Museum on the City Circle is an exception but trains on both platforms are heading to Central one way or another. Platform 1 is always on the up side of the station. Maybe my platform numbering is totally wrong. I'm not changing it.

There are also no points at the buffers end of the station. That means we need a station shunter. I've a couple of locos that can fill the job. The operator can uncouple the loco at the buffers and at the other end of the station, the shunter can come in and remove the train to the carriage sidings or onto another platform. The loco can then head down the hill for servicing a the loco depot. With the terminus at about 1.4m from the ground, I reckon that some of my operators (including myself) might not be able to reach any points a further 50 cm from the front.

What's next?

Fill the rear window with a a board for a backscene.

Get some timber for the platforms.

Build the coal tipple for the coal mine.

As I'm still a close contact, the tipple might be built tomorrow.

Until next time. 

A long overdue update.

 

Yes... it has been a while. What's been happening? I've just been enjoying the layout and running trains. I've been working on some waybills and car card boxes for operations on the layout because realistically, all of the freight stuff is done. I've learnt some stuff on the way.

Most of the work in the train room has been furniture based. I've got a mould problem. I've wiped down as much of the furniture as I can with vinegar in January and even pained some old shelves. They look pretty good now. But the mould all came back too soon. 

So I replaced the furniture. That helped. As did throwing out the unpainted ply. I was ruthless. Anything that had a hint of green fuzz went out the door. This included some old wooden boxes that I have had for nearly twenty years. One of the victims of this purge was my micro layout Billabong Marina. That had some nice green and yellow fur underneath it.

It might seem extreme but my cavalier attitude to mould in the past has lead to a mould allergy. The long and short of it is that it makes me cough and that is not socially acceptable these days.

Today was spent painting and installing more shelves to replace some old Aldi MDF shelves. The new shelves are very similar but the MDF is nice and white.

But while running trains, what did I learn?

The line from the coal mine is way too short for coal trains being loaded by a flood loader. These trains will block the return loop for the mainline, even if they go the other way than I originally planned. The coal mine head shunt runs along the same line as platform one of Bega station. The line veers right and there is a short stub siding. The plan was to put a signal box in there. Now there will be a new piece of track.

I reckon the coal mine needs a siding for unloading equipment and supplies such as explosives. I could also put a small platform there for workers trains. The old layout had a space for one at the mine.

I figured that if I was putting platforms in then one at the harbour area might work. I could put the Billabong Wharf station building there.

The Fine Fish building from Billabong Marina could fit in the harbour area but some track work is needed for it to fit - and some perspex as the track will be very close to the edge.

However, I reckon that the biggest thing that I have learnt is that it's just plain fun to run trains. That's why we're here in the hobby isn't it?

With the Easter break coming up, I'm hoping to get on with the terminus level and some of it is already in place.

Until next time. 

The Industrial Area

With most of the work around the inclines completed, (The stuff that is left requires work closer to the front of the boards to be completed first.) I can get to work filling in the loop with the industrial area.

Here's what is in so far.

The track for the brewery and manufacturing industry is in. The next two lines are the wheat sidings and then the container sidings.

I've spent some time during the past week putting together a Walther's Medusa Cement kit. I've still got a bit to go but I put it on the layout for a bit of an idea as to how it would fit. In between the cement works and the container sidings is the steel works.

I had planned to use a Peco Manyways train shed. It is a little wide. I am trying to cram in as much as I can. It may be slightly unrealistic but I am more into the operations side of model railways so more industries to shunt is more appealing to me. I can save about 3 cm by using old Hornby Tri-ang loco sheds. While these are red and yellow with big windows, a bit of brick plasticard and some paint and they should look the business.

In the meantime, they will hold a bright place before the work is done.

Behind the wheat silos I've placed an extreme low relief building. It will hide the incline but still allow some access. I'm considering placing more behind these buildings so that the line to the terminus on the upper level disappears for a while.

The plan for this week is to finish off the cement works kit and lay some track.

Until next time.

Mind the Gap

 Before:

Oooh! What a nasty gap. I always thought that it would be a problem for future me. A bit of masking tape and some plaster, paint and some scenic material later and we have this.

While the gaps aren't gone, they are better disguised. The big one on the left is for future me to deal with.

The end result for today is this.

This is closer than people will get to the scene but I can tell that there are some patches where the ballast needs topping up.

Some of you may notice that I am using three different shades of ballast in this scene. There is a fourth shade around Bega. At the main junction of the inclines the track looks like this.

The three colours are for three different routes. I got the idea from Tony Koester, the American railroad modeller, author and legend. On his layout he uses a different colour of ballast for his mainline from his yards so that his operators know which track is the mainline.

All of my sidings that have so far received ballast all have Bombo ballast, which is the brown ballast on the right. The mainline on the lower level has a shade of grey of unknown origin. It is a lighter grey but you can still discern the mainline from the sidings.

On this level the mainline will have Ardglen ballast, which is a dark grey and on the left. This is the track that comes up the incline from the bottom level. This track runs along two and a half walls of the room before entering a return loop and coming back before heading back down to the bottom level.

The middle two tracks head up to the terminus and has Martin's Creek ballast. All of the ballast used is from Matt's Ballast and picked up from my local hobby shop or exhibitions. 

The track on the bottom level to Tathra should have Martin's Creek ballast as well but I used something that looks more like budgie grit or crushed shells. I thought it was good stuff. When I get the chance, I'm going to replace what I can with the real deal.

Operators will know that the lighter grey of Martin's Creek represents branch lines and the dirtier brown of the Bombo ballast as sidings to help them guide their trains through the layout as they change the points themselves.

This is a function of interior designed used in a lot of public spaces such as shopping centres and airports, if you remember going to them. The floor is a colour that takes you where they want you to go and can help differentiate from thoroughfares to areas such as shopfronts where they don't want people bustling past. I had to dig the clip up but I saw this years ago. 

I'm hoping that using similar principals of using colour will help operators. My layout is complicated and while I know it well, visiting operators visit once a month so it takes a while for them to learn the route. Hopefully, this will speed the process up.

Until next time.

A Scenic Start

 Last time, I was fixing up the main yard. After a bit of testing, I came up with something that I said that I wouldn't do. It works. It makes three sidings longer and the others about 5 mm shorter, so I figured that it wasn't a bad trade off. I did lose the Repair in Place (RIP) track and the storage siding. The latter was geometrically impossible.

While I was at it, I realigned the loop line that runs hidden behind the yard. This was to give the operator a better chance to stop their loco before shorting out the layout. I had accidentally run my sound 3801 through the points and shorted the layout. The chip reset itself. I have yet to reprogram it.

I have a real hankering to get the industrial yard going but I know that the best thing to do is to work from the back. In this corner, I want a bit of suburbia, a bit like this image from the last layout.

I was told by a mate in the UK when I was there in in January 2020 that the house with the porch needed a bloke with a BBQ. I went to the Ian Allan shop near Waterloo Station (it has since closed) and bought a set of Noch people having a BBQ. They didn't make it on to the layout before the flooding.

On Friday night I was pondering what to do. Could I get all of this sorted this weekend? The plan was to build the the scene on a platform of MDF on top of pine to support the foam. To try and keep the scene moving along the back wall I cut some ply to represent a hillside.

It was looking great until I realised that the clearances were terrible. I cut some 3mm MDF for the hillside and re-carved the foam. All this was after the scene was finished. Hey, if you haven't don a job at least twice have you really done it?

Here's the finished result with the tracks in front ballasted as well. The space wasn't the same size so I could only fit in one house. I was able to reuse a lot of the previous scene and I have included people having a BBQ.

The next task is to fix the gap between the two inclines.

Until next time.

Measure Once Cut Twice: That's the Right Way Isn't It?

 It's been one of those days.

Did you hear about the bloke who left the parcel shelf of his car on the roof of the car and drove out of Bunnings? That was me. So that's the caliber of the day and it's not the only thing that went wrong. Why not calm down with your favourite hobby?

The good news is that I think I now have all of the timber to finish the layout.

I wired up my turntable and tested it. It works. It's not as well aligned as I had hoped but the only line coming onto the turntable is curved, so it all works out. 

The line is curved so that my garratt can run across the turntable and into a suitably long track.

That's the plan. The reality is that the siding is at least 2cm too short. It's too short because after planning the loco depot, I put in my marshalling yard. When I did that, I altered the track plan a little bit.

Here's what it is.

The top track is an extra storage siding which can hold 10 BCH length wagons. The right hand point on the left was modified to fit a tight spot about three layouts ago. It still works. It leads to a Repair In Place (RIP) track. I though that it could be fun. The top three sidings are through roads, the bottom three are dead end sidings. The nearest siding from the ladder holds 4 bogie wagons and I am planning on this holding the guards vans. The top siding can hold the longest train from the Bega staging yard and will be the main arrival track. On the old layout we realistically used only one of the five available tracks as an arrival track.

Below is what it needs to look like. It's not what was originally planned, everything was meant to come of the first three way point.

The original idea was to have the ladder start higher but that would make the bottom three sidings shorter.  I can make the change by leaving the bottom 3 way point where it is. The top storage siding will be 1 and a half to 2 BCHs shorter. The RIP track won't really be useful but you could park the shunting engine there. Sidings one and two at the top will be longer by a 48 foot bogie van. The other sidings won't change.

If I move the the top 3 way point back even further, then sidings 1 and 2 will be two wagons longer. Siding 3 will be a little shorter. Siding 4 will be a little longer and sidings 5 and 6 will be shorter. There will also be more work involved. The current siding four effectively holds 10 CH bogie hoppers and a guards van without a loco attached. This is the same length as the two longest sidings in the Bega staging yard. Most trains moving to and from this yard will be 6-8 wagons long therefore the sidings don't need to be longer.

I also nee a little bit of straight track provided by the first point to reduced the hazards and strains of longer wagons going around the reverse curves.

Adjusting this track alignment will make my garratt problem go from this...

...to that.

I reckon though, all that can wait until tomorrow.