Steam Test On Malabar District

When I started the basic 85" by 12" shelf at Malabar, I had it in mind to bring back a shelf layout I built on a 1 x 10 plank 7 feet long in a walk-in closet in my first apartment after I moved out on my own. My object there was to find a small steam loco that would perform adequately on such a small layout, and given what was available at the time, I never quite succeeded. (I believe some of the small PFM brass locos of the early 1970s would have been good choices, but they were beyond my budget.)

I revisited this effort the other day by testing a Bachmann 2-6-0 on the Malabar layout. With a Digitrax DZ126 decoder, it did pretty well, especially on the 14-7/16" curves. It does need cleaner track than an equivalent diesel, probably because it's lighter. Here are some photos of the test:

This is making me think I will add structures and other details on Malabar consistent with the steam era.

PCCM 48B

The cars headed for the East Coast via Elkhart are headed to East St Louis on a BSMFF with a Penn Central GP40 in the consist from a Cotton Belt pool. Here the train is leaving LA Taylor Yard.

So I'm now passing PCCM 48 over to Brian!

PCCM 48A

I decided to originate as much of this movement as I could on the new Malabar District. This would amount to a good operational test of how things would work out -- I'm still figuring out how to operate the district, as well as how to fit it into the larger layout's operating scheme. But this test turned out very well.

One thing I discovered is that westbound moves out of Malabar toward Jaques must be shoves, as changes in the grade will cause couplers to come uncoupled on pull moves up this hill. So this is a dominant factor and will determine how the outbound cut is made up.

The first job is to take GN 3630, bound for the Empire Belt, out of Malabar and use it to get the WP bulk sugar car in Paper Box.

The Santa Fe GP7 will need to run around it in Malabar to get it in position to pick up the WP car in Paper Box.

Now it starts its shove to Paper Box:

Meanwhile, the two reefers, a BAR bound for the Empire Belt and an NP bound for the Atlantic Pacific, are waiting in Paper Box. The WP bulk sugar car is also on the right.

Here comes the shove:

It passes the reefers and couples to the bulk sugar car:

The GP7 and the two boxcars move into the "sugar refinery", go onto a sector plate, and are rerouted onto the track with the reefers so it can shove them back to Malabar:

The whole assembly rounds the curve back into Malabar:

Now the GP7 has to get the boxcars back in order so it can shove the whole cut up the hill:

And off it goes!

So far, I'm finding that Atlas/Kato locos work best on the Malabar District. They have the flexibility to handle the vertical curves leading back through the wall and the power to shove cars up the grade to Jaques. I'm still working out what the industries will be longer-term, but I'm happy with using mechanical reefers on the district, as this exercise shows.

I'll finish up my part of the move tomorrow with PCCM 43B and hand off to Brian!

PCCM 48 Pre-Movement

John R said he wants to get PCCM 48 started on June 20. I don't want to jump the gun on anyone, but it'll help my own momentum to do some preliminary work on the pool of specific cars that might be available for us to "exchange" in virtual movements. Here are photos of cars on my roster that I've identified up to recent e-mails that are on my roster and also on the rosters of other participants in the virtual exchanges. Here are the most recent:

BAR 11128 matches a car on John R's layout and will be in the PCCM 48 movement from the LF&NW. It's an Athearn bluebox.

NPM 473 matches a car on Neal M's layout and will be on the PCCM 48 move. It's an Athearn RTR.

WP 26839 matches a car on John R's layout, which he found on eBay to match mine. I've tried to find info on WP bulk sugar cars, but haven't found much. The WP 26000 series was for older cars rebuilt for a specific purpose. Many had hopper style inserts on the interior and roof hatches, but I haven't been able to find out (yet) what shippers used them and what traffic they were in. However, this car will move in PCCM 48. It's an Athearn bluebox.

GN 3630 matches a car on John R's layout and has already been back and forth to the East Coast in PCCM 43. It will move in PCCM 48. It's an Accurail.

LFNW 160 is a Tyco car repainted and lettered with custom decals. I sent a set of these to John R, who duplicated the car. It will move in PCCM 48.

I think we all agree that this is a work in progress, and there will be other ideas on how to work "virtual interchange", and we'll probably discover other cars that duplicate those on other layouts. For that matter, I assume that everyone in the current group who's participating will welcome others who might wish to come into the program.

Shelf Project Update 4

I've completed the job of relocating the micro layout that had been mounted on shelf brackets above the new shelf project. I mounted it on new shelf brackets on a wall 90 degrees from the new shelf, at the same level as the shelf, so that I was able to add a curve that streamed the new shelf onto the micro.

So I've finished the tracklaying and electrical infrastructure for the Phase I - Phase II project. Here's a short run under power. The tunnel portal, and other scenery items and building flats, are there temporarily. I have my eye on a different tunnel portal with a more West Coast effect.

I'm congenitally unable to do neat wiring. At some point I'll staple this wiring to the bottom of the shelf. You can see the two NCE DS52s that control the Unitrack switches.

However, I'm retaining the SPDT control for the switches on the micro layout. I used low-profile worm-drive switch machines from Lemaco for this layout, and as far as I'm aware, there's no DCC decoder that will control this type of switch machine. Also, I didn't feel like doing the rewiring I'd have to do for this. So the former DC power from a Bachmann train set power pack, visible to the right in the next-to-last photo above, has been disconnected, but the power pack is still there to provide plain AC for the Lemaco switch machines.

With the micro now converted to DCC and streamed onto the main layout, I've revised the operating scheme in JMRI to place the existing Paper Box station in JMRI onto a new Box Secondary route that's reached directly from the main layout. The Box name comes from the name of the original layout plan, "Box Street", designed by Jack Trollope. I kinda like keeping the Paper Box name, reminds me of Brea Chem on the former SP. For now, the shelf name stays Malabar, and the whole project is named the Malabar District.

A Few Quick Upgrades

Here are some upgrades to diesels I've recently made. The first is a Bachmann Canadian Pacific SD40-2. By number and details, it's a Soo Line unit, upgraded on the prototype in later years with dynamic brakes.

The paint on the model is especially nice. The air intake filters on the hood to the left of the roadname are part of the factory paint. I masked off the air intake louvers and painted them grimy black. I added Highball Decals CP-style images for the first aid kit and fire extinguishers. I also added a Details West plow.

Here's another recent Bachmann loco, a Katy GP40 with the new road number 234 on this run. On the prototype these were ex Conrail locos, exx PC.

As with the CP loco, I masked off the air intake louvers and painted them grimy black. I added a Details West plow and A-Line sunshades. Luckily, I still have some Floquil MKT green paint. I've found that the Bachmann couplers, while they work better than Accumates, don't stay coupled if locos are in a consist, so I carve out the coupler pockets and install Kadees mounted with 2-56 screws.

Here's an Athearn bluebox dummy SD40-2:

I believe I used Juneco CP style plows on this and modified it otherwise like the Bachmann loco above. I also added Highball Canadian style marker lights above the front cab windows.

How Does Kalmbach Make Any Money?

Last year I posted about the advice I got from David Popp on how I should cancel my subscription to Model Railroader Video Plus. Earlier this year, I got a notice to renew my subscription to print Model Railroader. I forget how much I'd paid the previous year, but the amount struck me as a heck of a lot more, right about when MR started running a print version of the Winston Salem Southbound series it had run on MRVP last year. So I started to ask why I was being asked to pay more for material I'd already paid for. I let my sub expire.

A friend e-mailed me that the current MR has an article on rebuilding Great Northern stock cars into emergency grain cars. I thought first that I'd glance at the current issue next time I go to the train store, since I no longer subscribe, and see if the article is worth $6.99. Then I thought I'd go to the MR website and see if there's an intro there that might give me an idea. Well, no, nothing there. Probably means it's a short article.

Then I remembered google is my friend. I googled "emergency grain car", and lo and behold, not far down the page was a link to a Cody's Workshop article on MRVP on -- wait for it -- emergency grain cars. Not only that, it's free, outside the paywall. It's dated April 2018, so I'm wondering how much of it is duplicated in the current MR print issue.

So here's a continuation of my gripes with Kalmbach:

1. MRVP gave away a feature that I'd have been paying for if I hadn't taken Popp's advice and canceled my sub.
2. The MR article on emergency grain cars appears to duplicate material I got for free outside the MRVP paywall that I'd have paid for -- twice -- if I hadn't also canceled my MR sub.

People in the end seem to know what things are worth. Kalmbach wants more and more for less and less.

Paper Buildings

I've been playing around with variations on how the Malabar shelf project will be configured, which the combination of sectional track and lightweight building flats makes very easy. I decided to break up the simple four-track ladder arrangement with a couple of tweaks, which gave me a chance to incorporate a paper building project I did maybe 15 years ago, a grain elevator.

This used paper building sheets from a short-lived company called Paper Creek Models. I got all the product I could from this guy. There were lots of variations on pre-weathered building sheets. In this case, I followed plans I found in RMC for a small grain elevator located in Colorado. I used heavy cardboard called museum board from an art supply store for the basic form and applied the paper to it, followed by wood and cardboard trim and a few plastic windows.

Paper Creek also did whole building kits. They had some ghost town structures based on prototypes in a real ghost town, Randsburg, CA. These make up a lot of the town of Terrible on my layout.

I used Paper Creek papers to build a lot of simple structures from plans I found in MR and RMC. Here's a Lackawanna ice house from a 1960s MR drawing:

Here's a Reading two-story section house from an MR drawing from the early 1950s. The windows, doors, and steps came from Grandt Line, which is now closing down. The coal box was urethane from some other supplier.

The brick low-relief warehouse here uses Paper Creek brick paper. It follows a structure I found in Petaluma, CA. It housed a chicken feed dealer at one time. I made the star-shaped iron reinforcing bolts on the corners from star-shaped sequins. I had a real time locating these -- it used to be you could get stuff like this from Michaels or Hobby Lobby, but no more! I finally found a place that had them on the web.

Here's a pair of SP speeder sheds. The sign on one reads DIESEL ENGINE WATER, which I found in a prototype photo and really like!

Here's an engine house based on a Milwaukee Road prototype in an RMC drawing. The Paper Creek building paper made it easy to reproduce the different colored siding on the prototype.

Here's an Illinois Central section shed from an RMC drawing:

I did this one from the same MR drawing of a Lackawanna ice house as the one above, but I did this 50 years earlier. I was using shirt cardboard for the main walls and file card stock cut into strips for battens at the time. I refurbished it at the same time as I did most of these others, but I stiffened it with a rectangle of museum board at the base and airbrushed a new coat of paint to seal it. It's held up pretty well!