Homemade Contemporary-era Building Flats

I enjoy armchair-traveling on Amtrak via YouTube. One thing I've noticed, though, is that the trackside environment no longer looks like the urban backgrounds the commercial hobby suppliers think it does -- there are no longer all that many brick factory or mill buildings next to railroad lines, for instance. Downtown hotels look nothing like they used to, and there are new kinds of structures like concrere parking garages. The suppliers of building flats and urban backgrounds have really been behind the curve, and you really can't order buildings that fit the era of current Amtrak, NJ Transit, or Chicago METRA off the web.

Now and then I've been playing around with saving screen shots off YouTube or other photo sources on the web and seeing if I can make my own building flats that fit the modern era, at least as a stopgap. My first experiment was an N scale compatible flat based on a YouTube screen shot of the Morrow Hotel, which overlooks the Amtrak Northeast Corridor just north of Union Station in Washington. It's posed on a single-wide T-TRAK module in the photo below.

I made it using the cardboard from a Triscuit carton. I printed the screen shot out on ordinary printing paper, glued it to the cardboard using Elmer's glue, pressed the cardboard on a sheet of glass under weights overnight, and assembled the box with more of the carton braced with used fireplace matches.

More recently, I decided to see if I could extend this into a full backdrop that would fit the whole width of a single-wide T-TRAK module, which is 12-1/8". I found a photo of a concrete parking garage that printed out very close to N scale and built a second building flat using a second Triscuit carton the same way:

Right now, this is just a proof-of-concept, but I feel encouraged. Commercial building flats actually need quite a bit of work with Photoshop to edit out perspectve effects and random unwanted details, but the result here is at least a lot closer to what I see riding Amtrak on YouTube, and as I see more opportunities on the web, I'll do other experiments.

Track Relaying On Inglenook Complete

I finally was able to complete replacing the track on my N scale Inglenook. I had a brightt idea at first of re-using Peco switches and whatever-brand flex track salvaged from a long-ago N layout, but it had simpoy gotten too wobbly in the salvage process, and once I decided to make the layout compatible with other N modules using Kato Unijoiner architecture, my option was clear. Only a little of the salvaged track remains on the diagonal track and crossing that serves as the programming track.

I've begun to extend scenery in the upper left corner. I still have to figure out what to do with the DS52 switch machine decoder. I've put a Bar Mills Jeffries Point kit that's not quite finished on the layout temporarily to see if it will fit. This is one of their N kits that are based on HO structures on George Sellios's layout. I also need to start dirting things in.

Programming A Walthers Proto SW900 With ESU LokSound

I found a Walthers Proto Lehigh Valley SW900 with ESU LokSound at a good price, which I like a lot.

A number of manufacturers seem to be settling on LokSound. There are two areas of incompatibility between LokSound and other makers. Up to now, most had focused on F9 as engine start/mute. LokSound uses F8, which wouldn't be too much of a problem, except LokSound then adds a feature called "drive hold" for F9, which locks the loco into its current speed step setting but allows the user to change the apparent speed of the motor via the controller knob. But if you forget ESU engine start is F8 and press F9 when the loco is at speed step 0, this will keep the loco from moving until you remember that you goofed and press F9 again to release it.

The other feature I'm less enthusiastic about is the "prime mover delay" available on full-featured LokSound decoders (but not the economy LokSound decoders on Walthers Mainline locos). In additioon to normal momentum from CVs 3 and 4, this adds an additional acceleration delay while the sound of the prime mover spools up in the decoder.

Since I've never driven a prototype diesel, I don't know how much this additional throttle delay actually reflects the prototype. The main problem I see from a model perspective is that this makes a loco equipped with an ESU LokSound decoder incompatible for consisting with locos that have decoders from other manufacturers, since the ESU equipped loco won't accelerate as quickly as the others -- and that would even include Walthers Mainline locos with the economy LokSound decoder.

The way to fix this is simply to change CV 124 to 16 to eliminate the prime mover delay. Then the model will accelerate compatibly with other locos.

Cosmetic Job On The Pola N250 Quarry

In my last post, I talked about the hstory of the Pola N250 quarry kit that eventually became the Model Power Blue Coal Depot, in which form I used it to represent a coal loader on an N scale module. Once I understood it had started out as a quarry, I recognized the detail I needed to either remove or de-emphasize to make it look more like a coal loader.

Viewed from this side, there are bins at the bottom level that represent grades of crushed stone that are apparently sold direct from the quarry and not shipped out by rail. These are a distraction and need to be minimized if this is going to be a coal loader.

On the next level up, there is a shed that apparently holds some sort of crushing and grading machinery. This might be sort of credible, so we'll keep it. There is also a cover for some sort of conveyor up to (or down from) the loader itself, maybe halfway credible. At least it's a conveyor

I said in my last post that I would try to use vegetation to distract from less credible features and focus on what looked most like a coal loader. Here's the result:

I filled the bins at the bottom with Woodland Scenics Foliage Clusters, held in with Elmer's Glue. I planted more of the Foliage Clusters around the rest of the base on this side and then planted some JTT trees to focus the view on the credible parts of the coal loader idea. Here are a few pictures that I used for inspiration:

It'll serve for now, there's just very little available in N that isn't a much larger facility. If I get inspired to scratch build something better, or if a new, better model comes along, I'll either swap it out on this module or build a new module. That's one advantage of doing things in small steps this way.

The Model Power Blue Coal Depot

In my last post on the "found item" module, I mentioned the industry, which I referred to as a Pola coal mine kit from the 1960s. In the incarnation I found it, it had become a Model Power Blue Coal depot that I found on eBay. This appears to be out of production. An HO equivalent model seems to be easier to find.

As a result of discussion on a Facebook post, I located something like the histoy of this model. As I said in my post, it really doesn't seem much like a coal loader or tipple, either European or North American. In fact, it appears to have been issued originally as a quarry or ballast loader as the Pola N250:

The photo is from an eBay listing, as is the one below. As far as I can tell from this post, Pola was a German manufacturer of plastic building kits in at least HO and N. Some of them were, or could be interpreted as, North American prototypes and have been marketed at various times by companies like AHM, Model Power, and Walthers. The original owner of the Pola company passed away, and some of the European buiodings in the line were taken over by Faller, but apparently not the North American style buildings.

This particular quarry model seems to have taken some design features from the larger N245 coal mine model.

This is much more clearly North American, since it was based on a Model Railroader series, “How to build a coal mine”, by Jack Work in the October, November, and December 1959 issues.

My aim has been to simplify the N245 kit's profile and do as much as I can to distract from the extraneous features and make it look a bit more like an actual coal loader. Here's the current status:

I'm going to continue covering the extraneous parts with vegetation. The ivy is made up of Elmer's glue brushed onto the model full strength, covered with Woodland Scenics fine turf pressed into the glue.

"Found Item" Module

While I was working to convert my Inglenook micro layout to Kato Unitrack amd Kato Mini Diorama/Pocket Size Module standards, which I covered in this post, I beganm to think abou8t other small module possibilities. I found am irrwegular piece of 5/8" plywood about 8" x 20" in my garage and decided to turn it into a module that could be connected to the Inglenook or any Kato Mini Dorama/Pocket Size module that follows the 25 mm deck height and Unijoiner standard. Here it is, just finishing basic electrical, trackwork, and connectivity tests:

The Kato switch is controlled by DCC, thus the terminal strip in the corner. There is no clearance for it or a switch decoder under the board. I'll have to figure out a way to hide it. But the point is that as with T-TRAK, the DCC bus can go from module to module via the Unijoiners. This expands the possibilities for lighting and control.

The industry on the sidinmg is a Pola coal loader kit from the 1960s. I'm not sure if it looks like any coal loader in the real world, but little else that size is available in N, and it was fairly inexpensive on eBay. I plan to bury it partly in a hillside and cover much of it with ivy or kudzu.

The main line at the front can connect with other Pocket Size/Kato Mini Diorama modules at either end, or with the Inglenook at the near end. Scenery is the net step.

The New Atlas N Scale FA-1

Atlas has a new N scale Alco FA-1 and FB-1 that are reworked versions of Life Like-Walthers models. For entry-level models, these have a couple of new features. While they're available with sound, I got DC versions intending to install DCC-only decoders.

One feature is a Next18 DCC socket. This is mounted on a plastic motherboard above the motor toward the rear of the unit, where the Next18 socket points downward. I used a Digitrax DN167n18 decoder.

The best way to get to this is to loosen the rear nut and screw that hold the two halves of the chassis together enough to lift the rear of the plastic motherboard up, remove the Next18 dummy plug, and insert the Next18 decoder. There is barely enough room for trhe decoder to fit between the socket and the chassis, but it does fit.

Once I appllied power to the loco, I noticed there is an extra set of LEDs at the front 9of the chassis. These will allow the number boards to be lit and controlled separately from the headlight. The headlight is controlled via the usual F0:

With a DCC-only Next18 decoder, the number boards can be lit with F1:

I don't know what function controls this on a sound-equipped loco.

I don;t believe these locos have flywheels, or if they do, there is very little momentum effect. However, setting CV 3 acceleration momentum to 2 and CV 4 deceleration momentum to 2 will mimic a flywheel effect. The loco has a 5-pole skew-wound armature and operates very slowly and smoothly.

Unfortunately, as seems to be the case with recent Atlas N locos, there's no documentation in the box. Users need to figure out shell removal and decoder install for themselves and intuit the headlight-number board functionss. (The shell comes off by spreading the sides outward with small screwdrivers or toothpicks.)

An exploded diagram of the loco showing the location of the Next18 socket would have been very helpful; it isn't immediately clear.