Surfliner Variations And California-Style Scenery

The Kato Surfliner sets provide only a couple of variations on Surfliner trains. Among other things, there's currently at least one Capitol-San Joaquin Califormia car running in consists down south in the northern California paint. I hope Kato makes this -- or in fact, other cars in that scheme -- available. Also, while Kato provides both a Superliner coach in Amtrak Phase Vi paint and one in Surfliner paint in its complete 8-item set, which are both prototypical, in recent years there have also been two Superliner Sightseer Lounges in Phase VI paint running as substitute cafe cars in Surfliner consists. Generally, the prototype Surfliner sets do not have both a Phase VI Superliner coach and a Superliner coach in Surfliner paint in the same set.

So far, I have just the Kato 4-item set, and while I've installed corridor lights in the SC-44, I have yet to install the 11-211 lighting kits in the coach, cab car, and business class car in that set. However, I have put together a Surfliner consist with both a Superliner Sightseer Lounge and Superliner coach in Phase VI. This gives 5 cars total, which is just 1 car short of the 6-car consist that sometimes runs on the prototype. This is probably perfectly adequate for a small layout like mine.

The Surfliner SC-44s that replaced the F59PHIs that went to Chicago Metra have been less than reliable, and Amtrak P42s and 8-32BWHs often substitute, sometimes with a loco on each end to replace the cab car.

You can also see that I'm starting to play around with more California style scenery on the inside corner Module 10. The new ground cover so far is JTT 0595603 Golden Grassland sheets, which I find at least acceptable for semi-arid California areas. I'm also starting to play around with some oil field details. I got these as 3D prints from eBay, but I also have an N Walthers pumpjack. Here is an example of California oil field scenery:

Installing The Corridor Light In A Kato SC-44

One real deficiency in N scale is how-to documentation for important add-ons. An example is how to add the side corridor lights in the Kato Siemens SC-44s and ALC-44s. As I understand this, these lights, which are visible in the radiator vent cutouts on the sides, are always lit on the prototype, with very few exceptions, whether these locos are pulling or pushing, day or night, trailing in consist or leading. One question I have is if Kato provides factory-installed headlights in all its units, why should it be necessary for the user to install theae separately at all?

This video from Kato USA gives basic info on removing the shell and the basic innards of both the ALC-42 and SC-44:

However, it leaves out specific info on how to install the corridor lights. It specifies that yoiu use the 11-211 lighting kit that's meant mainly for passenger cars. It implies that you leave off the long light bar for use in passenger cars, but it doesn't make plain that you also have to remove the piece of white plastic that surrounds the PC board and the two contact wires that extend below the board.

You can see the basic PC board from the 11-211 inserted into the chassis at left in the photo above. If you remove the white plastic piece that surrounds it in the 11-211, it will go in easily and work fine.

The installed corridor light with the body reattached is above.

Back To Richmond Main Street

I last posted on my project to build some sort of representwtion of the Main Street Station in Richmond, VA on a double-wide, lowered-deck T-TRAK module a little over three years ago. Looking at the dates on my photos, I began the project in 2019, three years before that. The idea has been to build a basic shape of the station from foamcore in N scale -- it's possible to find various dimensioned drawings on the web -- and gradually to add a "skin" of photos printed off the web reduced to N scale. Here is how it started:

It appears that not long after my last post in 2022, I burned out and set the project aside. Here, by the way, is a recent overall photo of the prototype

The station originally served the Chesapeake & Ohio and Seaboard Air Line, buit it sat vacant after Amtrak in 1971. In the 1990s, the city restored it as a wedding and event venue, and it eventually resumed use as an Amtrak station on the line to Newport News, VA. The train shed is now used as a convention hall.

I posted last week that I'm feeling encouraged by recent T-TRAK projects, and I decided to return to the Richmond Main Street module. It turns out that I never laid permanent track on it, so I added permanent double-track Unitrack and wired it to a terminal strip under the deck. The prototype is now single track, but the C&O side was double track in earlier years. Here's the current status with track laid and power hooked up:

The next stage will be to finish the large dormers and chimney, which for now are just cardboard facades. They will need backup pieces and roofs to bulk them up and straighten them out. I'm also scaling and printing more "skin" to add around the side and rear, and I need to add the roof between the headhouse and the train shed.

Some time ago, I heard from a guy who was thinking about doing this in 3D print, but I never heard more. I think doing this in any sort of detailed depth would be close to a lifetime project, and you'd either need to locate the original architectural drawings, digitize them, and translate them to Sketchup, or do some sort of mega scan of the actual building.

What I'm doing is purely to satisfy myself, and it probably won't impress too many other folks, but it will at least turn out to be doable.

Module 10

I number my T-TRAK modules, because it makes it easy for me to assign DCC addresses to switch decoders and NCE Illuminators installed in them. Module 10 is an inside corner module intended to fit inside an L-shaped configuration or an L-shaped around-the-wall arrangement. I took this photo in 2022 not long after I assembled it, without much scenery.

In fact, I wavered over what kind of scenery to give it. Finally I started to add a California-style palm grove using cheapo plastic Chinese palms from eBay, but then I set it aside. Here's the prototype I followed:

When I got a Kato Surfliner set this past weeK, I pulled the module out of storage and hooked it up again:

I decided to try using the palms as a backdrop for closaeup shots testing the Kato Surfliner lighting features:

I'm pretty happy with how these turned out with just the suggestion of scenery. It sort of encourages me in the general approach I've been developing toward T-TRAK.

New T-TRAK Module

I've finished basic assembly, track, and electrical work on a new T-TRAK module. This is a half-depth, single-wide module that I intend to be compatible with an earlier half-depth, double wide module that I based loosely on Amtrak's Springfield, MA station, shown below:

Although there's no scenery work yet, I want to base it loosely on the city scene just north of Washington, DC Union Station using the building flats I discussed in this post. Below is a top view of the track:

The upper track in the photo is a dummy track intended to add depth to the scene, but wired to the DCC bus to allow lighted rolling stock to pose on it for photos. The lower two tracks are according to T-TRAK mechanical standards and will interface with any other standard T-TRAK module. The departure, for those familiar with T-TRAK, is the Kato crossover. T-TRAK generally can't handle crossovers between tracks, because the wiring according to standards is opposite: the bottom track connects with the Kato terminal wires as blue-white; the upper track connects with the wires white-blue. Sending a train over the crossover between the tracks will cause a short.

From the time I started with T-TRAK, I intended to use DCC, and I intended to build modules mainly just for personal use, not T-TRAK meets. I built several early modules with DPDT toggles that would allow the wiring to switch from BWBW to BWWB in case I ever wanted to run them at a T-TRAK meet, but it seems less and less likely I will ever do this, so I've stopped including the DPDT feature on recent projects.

The photo below shows my idea about taking advantage of the space under the module deck. I haven't heard of anyone else doing anything like this. Normally the space under a standard T-TRAK module is empty. But doing things this way makes wiring much more accessible than under normal benchwork, among other things. The bottom line is that I can include crossovers on my personal modules and not have a short, but I couldn't use them at a T-TRAK meet. Not likely I will ever take a module to a meet as I get older anyhow.

The 6-position barrier strip at left connects all three tracks above the deck to the DCC bus. They are all wired BWBWBW. Every standard module I've built has a barrier strip like this that takes power off the two main tracks. Thus a bad connection via a dirty or damaged Unijoiner between modules can be bypassed via the Unijoiners connecting the other track to other modules. This also provides a DCC interface with other DCC devices on the individual module, like a switch machine decoder or an NCE Illuminator that powers Woodland Scenics Just Plug LEDs off the DCC bus. Normally there is no other connection to the DCC bus between modules than the Unijoiners that connect the tracks between modules.

The 5-position barrier strip on the right connects a Digitrax DS51K1 switch machine decoder, farthest to trhe right, to the DCC bus, as well as the red and black wires to the Kato crossover. This allows me to throw the crossover from my DCC command station.

The photo below is an initial test to be sure power is reaching all three tracks on the module and gives a basic idea of photo possibilities:

Surfliners As Modelable Prototype

I've noticed that the Kato N Surfliners have started to reach stores. It'll be a couple weeks until my budget will let me order a set. Meanwhile, here are some photos I've taken while railfanning them over the past quarter century.

A little-noticed scenic feature is the jumpover the passenger route takes over the Alameda Corridor freight line to Los Angeles Harbor and the LA River just past the Redondo Jct engine facility.

Here is 2112, one of the newer SC-44s, in Glendale.

Here is 2109 pushing a northbound past the BNSF diesel facility in Commerce.

Train 769 coming and going in Oxnard in May 2013.

Cab car 6953 next to a Metrolink train in Glendale.

A Little More Work On The T-TRAK Module

I did some scenery work on the T-TRAK module I posted about last week, adding some vegetationm to the berm:

The ground cover is just a sheet from JTT that includes all the dirt, grass, and shrubbery. I cut it up to fit the space. The great thing about these sheets is that they aren't paper, they're a somewhat more flexible material, and if you cover the area you're going to put it on with a coat of Elmer's Glue, even if it isn't flat, as shown above, it will shrink to fit the irregular surface as the glue dries.

The trees are from Bachmann. I'll be adding more to the area as work continues.

Most of the work I did over the past week was under the module deck. I've pretty much given up on the idea of ever bringing my modules to a T-TRAK meet -- a Southern California group was starting before COVID, but it quit for the duration, and then the venues raised their insurance requirements, so I doubt if this will ever really restart. In any case, I'd already been building modules that weren't electrically compatible with the T-TRAK standards, so I'm basically satisfying myself building small layouts in a home environment.

But under the decks, I'm installing things like DCC switch machine decoders and NCE Illuminators that let me run Woodland Scenics Just Plug devices off the DCC bus. This is what the underside of one of my typical modules looks like:

This will allow me to add featues like signals in the future, without the need to go under a conventional layout to make changes -- all I do is flip the module over to work on it. There's a lot of potential in T-TRAK besides just running big layouts in gyms and convention centers.