Renewed Scenery Work

Last December I posted on the start of new scenery work on a junk yard surrounded by California San Francisco Bay area scenery. Progress was sometimes slow and frustrating, but I've finally made some satisfactory progress on the scene. I was prompted by this photo I posted last week:

I could see I had the start of a good scene, but I needed to finish it out so that full scenery would at least be visible surrounding any loco that I photographed here. This is what the frame looked like without a loco in the foreground:

After a week of work, this was the improvement. Still some touchup work needed, but basic ground cover has been extended:

Here's the current view looking toward the junk yard, which is a Bar Mills Bull's Salvage kit plus various cast resin junk yard items:

Oak and palm Trees, yellow grass, and brush still to come.

Two More DCC Projects

I've managed to make some more progress on DCC installs. The first is an Atlas Silver Southern Pacific FM Train Master:

Although these came with 8-pin NMRA DCC sockets, the wiring was otherwise bare-bones. There is a circuit panel at each end of the hood behind the headlights for a number of SMD LEDs that light up the headlight, warning light, and number boards, but they're all wired together, and they all operate only together via F0 forward or reverse. If you want to set up the oscillating warning light to turn on and off separately and shine brighter and less bright, you basically need to get rid of those factory circuit boards, add wiring for new LEDs, and start over with a decoder that has extra lighting functions.

This didn't strike me as worth the extra effort, especially as the SP also had larger number boards to carry the train numbers for the peninsula commutes. The bottom line is that down the road, someone is going to have to issue a next-generation Train Master model, likely not in my lifetime if ever. On this one I simply installed a Digitrax DH126P and called it done. Looking at the photo, I see I need to add an SP 5-chime horn.l

The Train Master inspired me to pull out a couple of Keil Line ex Holgate & Reynolds SP bi levels I built from kits almost 30 years ago. I think they were old stock and out of production even then.

I also installed a Digitrax DH165A0 decoder in an Atlas Classic Tidewater Southern RS-1. I'm not sure if Atlas ever did a run of these with 8-pin sockets. This one didn't have one.

The unfinished scenery in the background is meant to be a start on some Northern California-style landscape that I started maybe a year ago and left to simmer. Now that I've tried using this scene as a photo backdrop, I'm going to resume work on it.

Walthers/Life Like DL-109 DCC Install

I'm continuing to plug along with installing DCC in locos I've collected in the pre-DCC era. The latest is this Walthers post-Life Like DL-109:

This is an easy plug-and-play install using a Digitrax DH165L0 decoder. The old Life Like circuit boards, which Walthers continued to use, were backward from the usual standard, with male 8-pin prongs on the board itself, rather than sockets for the 8-pin NMRA plug. The Life Like circuitry had an 8-pin socket, which you remove from the Life Like circuit board, and you discard the circuit board entirely. You then replace the circuit board with the Digitrax decoder. No soldering is needed, and the Walthers version of the loco already has an LED headlight.

The only difficulty I found was that the front coupler on these units sits in a unique swivel mount that easily falls apart and scatters its pieces when you unscrew it to remove the loco shell. I spent quite a lot of time retrieving the parts and getting things back together once I installed the decoder, but now I know what to look out for in the future, since I have another New Haven and two Rock Islands still to do.

Checking In On California High Speed Rail

A California high speed rail project connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco was originally proposed in 1996. By 2008, the project was put to voters in Proposition 1A, with the full project intended to be completed in 2020. It has successively fallen short of all its goals, and by February 2019, Governor Newsom announced the project would be cut back to a segment between Madera and Bakersfield, 119 miles. Newsom implied that it would never be completed between Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Construction on this limited section began in 2019. I've checked in on progress now and then on trips up the San Joaquin Valley, but there's actually not much to see. The first photo below is progress on a jumpover where the high speed line crosses over the BNSF at Shafter, just north of Bakersfield. I took all these photos in May 2022.

Here is another jumpover near Wasco, a little farther north.

These are pillars to hold up the largest viaduct on the current project, 6000 feet long, passing over highways and the San Joaquin Valley Railroad in Hanford.

A discussion thread on the Altamont Press board has recently pointed out that although construction of roadbed and bridges is under way, the US Department of Transportation is so far only prepared to fund track, signals, and "maybe" electrification on the current 119 mile Bakersfield-Madera segment. Funding of any further segments on the whole route is currently unlikely, and in fact the precise route either north to San Francisco or south to Los Angeles has never been established in any case.

But even if track is laid on the 119-mile segment, there won't be any trains to run on it. The discussion raised the possibility that existing California Department of Transportation equipment with F59PHIs, Siemens Chargers, and bi-level California cars might be used and rerouted onto the high speed infrastructure off the BNSF line currently used, but these are designed for a maximulm speed of 125 mph, not the 200+ mph originally intended for the project.

An additional problem is the jumpovers currently being built for the line, two of which are illustrated above. These have relatively steep grades leading up to them, even though the San Joaquin Valley is largely flat. Pure high speed trains like those in Europe can handle this type of grade by having powered trucks under the coaches, which results in very high power to maintain speed over these hills. High speed lines aren't designed for diesel-hauled conventional coaches.

There may even be serious questions over whether the high speed rail bridges were designed to carry the weight of a loco like a Siemens Charger, which is 130 tons. Thus it's entirely possible that the billions spent on this project can't even be repurposed for "higher speed" rail in the 125 mph range.

Micro Mark Track Cleaner On A Stick

I recentlyh discovered this Micro Mark tool, a track cleaner on a stick. My layout has a number of hard-to-reach areas for track cleaning, whether it's distance from the layout edge, structures, bridges, or tunnels. This is reasonably priced in the $20 range (currently on sale). It consists of three threaded rods that can extend to 30 inches, plus a cleaning head.

The cleaning head is pretty effective at polishing away stubborn spots of oxidation and dirt. This seems to be less expensive but with greater reach than the Woodland Scenics Rail Tracker cleaning kit, which is a similar idea, but the Rail Tracker looks a lot more complicated.

Recent Post-2000 Refrigerator Car Model Announcements

I've been interested in the post-2000 refrigerator car fleet for some years. I posted on BNSF and Union Pacific/ARMN cars here, and on CRYX cars here. Up to now, the only models of these have been Walthers kit and ready-to-run models of CO2-based cars from the 1990s that barely lasted into the 2000s, plus high-end models of Union Pacific/ARMN cars from BLMA, subsequently Atlas, and ExactRail, now ScaleTrains.

About a week ago, Walthers announced on its New Product Express YouTube channel that it would be running models in its mid-level Mainline range of what appear to be the same prototypes as the BLMA/Atlas and ExactRail/ScaleTrains cars.

The modern reefer announcement starts at about 14:10. Exactly which prototype these are is a little confusing. Walthers calls them 72-foot cars, but it isn't clear whether this is 72 feet inside length, which would be BNSF, TILX, and late UP cars, or 72 feet over sills, which would be 64 feet inside length, which would be the already-modeled UP/ARMN cars in the 110000 and higher number series. Illustrations off the Walthers site, as well as the YouTube announcement, indicate the cars will be lettered for BNSF, ARMN, CEFX, TILX, and CGFX, but the description on the video says they are "based on a reefer introduced in 2019 and now in service nationwide."

However, the BNSF and ARMN cars in the paint schemes shown in the video date from 2000-2002. CRYX has somewhat later cars, but from information I've seen on Facebook, CRYX will not license its artwork for use on models, so no CRYX cars will be in the Walthers run. I'm not sure what Walthers means when they say their prototype was introduced in 2019.

In any case, I'm left a little puzzled about just which prototypes are closest to the Walthers Mainline cars. Here are two illustrations from the Walthers site:

The UP/ARMN prototype is 64 feet inside length, while the BNSF prototype is 72 feet inside length. This means that one model should theoretically be longer than the other.

However, they are pretty clearly the same length in proportion in the photos. My guesstimate based on overall proportion is that the models are both based on the UP/ARMN cars. Although these have already been run from two makers commercially, the Walthers versions will be more in a mid-range price, and they'll have additional paint variations. So it looks like BNSF modelers will have a car lettered for BNSF, but it won't be as prototypical.

But ScaleTrains also announced a BNSF modern reefer this past April, which should arrive December 31. The photo below is from their site:

This means that BNSF modelers will have more accurate cars with this run, but so far, only the earlier paint scheme shown in the photo has been announced, but not BNSF 793810-794699, which were built by TrinityRail, Jun-Oct 2004, like the photo below:

These have different side sills and lack the frosty paint decoration at the roof. The ScaleTrains BNSF cars will be high-end models available with sound and lighted control panel, or without.

Track And Clearance Work At CP Drains

I've been doing some track cleaning, electrical and mechanical troublshooting, and clearance work around my main line. In particular, I worked on a problem I'd discovered whereby my recent GE locos were derailing on the superelevated curve at CP Drains. I looked at the curve carefully and saw that the superelevation wasn't consistent. It was a pretty easy fix, I jacked up the low spots with a screwdriver and shoved in some cardboard shims to make the level consistent.

I refreshed the ballast with some Arizona Rock & Mineral ballast I had on hand. This covered up the original Woodland Scenics ballast, which after 25 years or so had changed color. It was a big improvement.

The rock castings will also meed to be touched up, and the whole area needs more vegetation.

I ran a 3-unit test consist, including two Walthers Mainline ES44ACs, back and forth through the area to be sure the problems were solved. There was also a slight clearance problem with the tunnel portal on the curve. I widened the far edge of the portal with my Dremel and touched up the paint with aged concrete. I've seen a number of videos showing prototype portals like these, and they often aren't symmetrical.

Here's the test consist rounding the curve the rest of the way. The vegetation here was recently applied, and I need to clean it up where it impinges on the far track.

The scenery below the track needds to be replaced and refreshed here, too. But it feels good to have the trackwork back up to snuff.