A Couple Of New Items

My camera didn't die after all. Since it uses a rechargeable battery, it was up in the air as to whether the problem was the battery or the camera itself, but with the battery no longer holding a charge, it could be either. But then it occurred to me out of the blue that the last couple of times I used the camera, the battery died really quickly, so I decided to order a new battery and see how that worked out before I went ahead with a whole new (actually used) camera body. Turned out to be just the battery.

This was great news, and instead of spending the money for the used camera body, I got a Walthers Mainline GP9 in SP Kodachrome.

I don't know if it's the new battery or something about my last visit to the eye doctor, but the camera now seems to be taking much better pictures on its auto settings. Or maybe it just likes the Kodachrome paint job.

Kodachroome is by far my least favorite SP paint scheme, but I've lived my entire adult life in Los Angeles, and for some of those years had no choice but to railfan the Kodachrome. And after that time until the end of SP, there were likely to be Kodachrome units in consists.

By this time, pretty much no two GP9s were quite alike in terms of their lights and upgrade features. As a result, even though the model doesn't have SP lights, I can live with it. The same applies to the sound options, where ESU doesn't provide a Nathan P3 horn. These are good basic locos that are far better than the Proto 2000 version on which they are based but still at a comparable price.

I also got a Walthers Railgon in the Seaboard System patch lettering. This will need a lot of weathering.

Here are some prototype examples from recent years.

Paper Buildings On The Franklin & South Manchester

I've never visited George Sellios's Franklin & South Manchester layout. (I almost did when I had a work assignment in Connecticut 25 years ago and did get to visit the late Earl Smallshaw's layout. He asked me if I wanted to visit the F&SM; although there wasn't an open house scheduled, he said he could get me in if I wanted to. Unfortunately, my schedule didn't allow it.) However, I seek out every photo of the F&SM I can find on the web.

One thing I've been noticing is how much in recent years he's been using paper building flats. In some cases he turns them into 3-D structures, and he often kitbashes them from other paper flats or mingles them with his own handiwork. I've noticed that a lot came from the forner King Mill line, and there are a few cut out from Walthers backgrounds. Others I can't identify. The background buildings below seem to come from several sources, but I don't think I can identify them.

The apiary building below is either kitbashed from a building flat I can't idntify or possibly made from a UK paper kit.

The background buildinigs below are mostly cut out and kitbashed from former King Mill flats.

The scene below has a King Mill flat adjoining a 3-D building by George.

The background here is a whole series of kitbashed King Mill flats.

One thing he often does is cut out advertising signs from other sources and paste them onto the flats. He also adds 3-D detail parts like vents, chimneys, fire escapes, and window fans to give them a fuller 3-D effect. I find this sort of thing inspiring.

Still Working On The JMRI Roster

Updating the JMRI roster has been a lot more work than I expected. On top of that, my camera died, so while I wait for the new one to arrive, I've been searching various folders for existing photos. Here's one I like that I didn't know I had:

It's an Atlas Classic RS-3 with a Custom Finishes winterization hatch and a Details West rerailer. As long as we're on CP, here's a Walthers Proto GP9 that was one of the last things I shot before my camera died.

And here's an Athearn RTR CP caboose. It's only vaguely like the prototype, but I like the paint.

And here are a couple of items I never really thought about, Canadian prototype boxcars made by the German company Herpa:

As far as I can tell, these were available only very briefly and Canadian prototypes only. Herpa is still around, but it makes mostly vehicle models. I'm glad I found these when I did!

Using The JMRI Roster

In about ten years since I went to DCC, I've converted the best part of a lifetime roster of locos with decoders. I've slowly begun to see that I need to keep better records. It's important to know what type of decoder I've installed in each loco -- for instance, if one dies, it's good to have a source where you can see if it takes an 8-pin, 9-pin, 24-pin, or whatever other style of decoder to replace it.

But also, it's good to have a record of what CVs are set in a particular decoder. For instance, to use Digitrax decoders with advanced consists, you need to set CV 57 to 102. To disable the prime mover acceleration delay with ESU LokSound decoders, you need to set CV 124=16. But also, other CVs need to be set. Other starting voltage and speed curve CVs are set for individual locos.

It would be great to be able to reload these values into a new decoder from a file, or if for whatever reason you had to reset the decoder to default values.The JMRI roster lets you maintain these records for each loco and reprogram them directly from the roster record if needed.

Up to now, while I've been using the JMRI rosters in Operations under PanelPro, I hadn't been maintaining my roster much in DecoderPro. I started using DecoderPro via an NCE 2021 USB interface to my Power Cab when that was what I was using instead of an SB5 booster. That worked until my layout's current draw exceeded the PowerCab. But around the same time, my desktop died, and its replacement didn't have enough extra USB ports for the JMRI connection, while given the need to replace the Power Cab, a USB port extender wasn't an urgent need.

None of that changed until a few months ago, when I got a new desktop with an additional USB port and I reconnected JMRI to the NCE 2021 and the SB5. Up to then, I had been maintaining a manual record of locos, decoders, and CVs in Word Pad, cross-referenced to the Operations loco roster in PanelPro and to photos on my desktop. None of these was complete or accurate. I've spent the past week putting all the records in one place on DecoderPro.

The JMRI PanelPro roster includes the ability to store a photo image. This has the advantage for someone like me with a lifetime roster of being able to call up the photo from a roster entry. This makes it a lot easier to recognize just what loco i'm talking about:

This isn't possible with the Operations loco roster in PanelPro. On the other hand, you can't dispatch locos in JMRI Operations from the DecoderPro roster, so you have to maintain both rosters.

Another feature is the ability to use the DCC Throttle feature that's associated with the DeocderPro roster. In addition to maintaining records of CVs, JMRI lets you label throttle function keys. This is important, because much beyond F0 for lights, F1 for bell, and F2 for horn, there's no real standard for other light or sound features in DCC, and decoders often differ. Having these features labeled in the display for individual sound products and decoders is a real help. You can click on the image for a larger, more detailed view.

If you call up the JMRI throttle on your computer screen and the roster record has a photo, this is what you see.

There is a wide set of optioms for using the JMRI throttle on a walkaround basis with a wireless phone. I'm still working on this.

Moving Forward With Just Plug Lights

In an earlier post, I said it was a priority to add Woodland Scenics light distributing window film and a stick-on LED to the interior of the First National Bank on Lake St in Zenith, and I've done so:

Actually, I haven't done much to spruce this part of my layout up for 25 years or so, so adding lights to a lot more buildings, and rearranging a few, will now be part of a more general upgrade.

I also added light distributing window film and stick on LEDs to the interiors of a Bachmann Lackawanna concrete signal tower and a Downtown Deco Downtown Overlook Hotel in West Zenith. Lights in the station to the right will be another upgrade. This had incandescent lights installed 25 years ago, but these have either burned out or the solder connections came loose, and I may as well just replace them with more state of the art items.

I didn't notice until I uploaded this photo that light is bleeding through the "concrete" above the second floor windows in the tower. This should be easy enough to touch up. Another example of why it's good to photograph your work!

Tobacco Drying Shed

Here are two photos of a Rail-Scale Models tobacco drying shed in its spot on the Appalachian section of my layout. I still have to shim it level, give it a final dirting in, and bring the trees and vegetation up to it.

I posted on the incomplete version of this more than a year ago. I'm a little relieved to know that I have in fact made a certain amount of progress on this general scene since then.

The slope be;lpw it should be fairly easy with clump foliage held in place with spray adhesive.

Truck Replacement On A Walthers Mainline SD50

I was running D&RGW 5510, a Walthers Mainline SD50, as lead loco in a consist. I ran it up to a switch that was set against it, stopped to throw the switch, got distracted, and left the train in place for some period of time. The problem was that the lead truck ran past the insulated joint that isolated the powered frog, which caused a short, but the short wasn't enough to trip the circuit breaker on the command station, so instead, the loco sat there long enough to heat up the wheels and melt the gears in the truck.

When I finally threw the switch and tried to run the train again, the locos behind 5510 in the consist could push it along, and in fact the rear truck on 5510 was providing power, but I realized something was wrong. At first I thought 5510 might have been dropped from the consist, but I could also see the front truck was derailing. Picking the loco up, I realized the front truck was seized and the wheels were out of line. At that point, I thought of what I'd heard now and then about shorts at switches that don't trip the circuit breaker melting gears.

It's a little hard to see, but the wheels are out of level and out of gauge. None of them turns, and the worm shaft could turn without turning the wheels. Probably not worth keeping any of this as a replacement part source.

So I'd identified the problem. The loco was out of warranty, and the problem was my fault anyhow. Walthers doesn't list replacement parts for locos on its website. I thoujght I might have to find a basket case Mainline SD50 or 60 on eBay and salvage a new truck or something, but that was likely to be expensive. Eventually I contacted Walthers Parts with my problem, and they told me that although they don't list parts on the web site, a single replacement truck was available for a price of around $30 shipping included.

I've swapped out many trucks on Athearn bluebox and even older Atlas locos, but times have changed, and this turned out to be a fairly involved process. One issue was that the truck they sent was wired as a rear truck, not the front truck I needed. (I didn't know the trucks came pre-wired, and the Walthers guy said nothing about it.) So I had to cut the red and black wires from the truck and splice them to the opposite red and black wires from the chassis, insulating the joints with heat shrink tubing.

The tubing in turn prevented the body from sitting properly on the chassis, so I had to fiddle around with making sure the joints with the tubing were out of the way so the body would fit. I finally got things back together and got the chassis running.

I sprayed the front truck frames with a rattle can of Tru Color Weathered Black. The loco is back 100%.

In comparison, here's a 20 year old Athearn RTR D&RGW SD50, a generally simpler model.

I hope I don't need to do too many more repair jobs like this. Unfortunately, this is a rare enough gotcha that it's hard to make a "lessons learned" recommendation, except to say pay a little closer attention when you're at a switch set against your loco, and be careful about leaving power on without activity on your layout.

And More Work On Lake St

With the extension of sidewalks that would allow some addition and repositioning of buildings at the end of Lake St, I also started to look at structure lighting again. The original structure lighting I had on the layout dated from the 1980s and involved mostly incandescent lighting sockets from companies like Bachmann and Model Power. Over the years, bulbs burned out, connections came unsoldered, and so forth. Since then, Woodland Scenics developed the Just Plug system, and this brought back my interest in the subject.

One of my problems is that I built this layout before DCC, as well as Just Plug, and retrofitting these features has been a chore, since benchwork and most scenery were already completed. Finding a location for light hubs was a problem, since they need to be easily accessible to adjust brightness, swap out plugs if needed, and extend the system. As a result, I mostly couldn't just attach them to the existing L-girder. For now, I'm adding scrap pieces of 1 x 4 to attach them beneath the fascia. I don't care if they aren't pretty. I gave up on open houses years ago. But I can reach them without bending over.

But even if I were starting from scratch, it would be something of a puzzle to find places to mount them and keep them accessible. They require a fair amount of space, especially in multiples.

One of the best features of the system is the light diffusing film. This does wonders for buildings that have the old incandescent sockets as well as Just Plug LEDs. Below is my new Bar Mills Rusty's Radiator Repair, which I built from the start with light diffusing film behind the windows and a stick on LED under the roof.

The IHC town house behind it has had light diffusing film retrofitted but keeps an incandescent socket from decades ago. You can't tell the difference. The building at left below has just had light diffusing film retrofitted but again, it keeps its incandescent socket. The electrical connection had come loose, but I reconnected it when I repositioned it over the last couple of weeks.

The First National Bank at right has never had lighting and needs to have light diffusing film added as well. This will be a priority. In general, I've added light diffusing film to all my existing buildings, whether or not they're lighted, and all new building kits are built with it and stick on LEDs installed from the start.

Finally, as I thought, I gained enough space for a new building front farther down Lake St by swapping Old Dutch with Robbins Opticians and narrowing the alleys. I'm now thinking about making this a City Classics art deco, which will have the full lighting feature installed from the start. But you can see I need to add this to the whole block.

Back To Lake Street

Inspired again by more photos from recent open houses at Geortge Sellios's layout, I'm continuing to add structures to Lake St in Zenith wherever I can squeeze them in. I finished the Downtown Deco Cooter's Liquor and inserted it between Thorpe's Radio and the First National Bank. There was enough space to leave narrow alleys on both sides of the building.

Here's a side view of the Bar Mills Rusty's Radiator Repair:

And looking farther along Lake St, I noticed something I'd forgotten about for some time, that I'd left a pair of unnecessarily wide alleys to the left of Robbins Opticians and to the right of Old Dutch.

By narrowing these and slightly readjusting the position of the two buildings, I can scrounge enough space for a Downtown Deco Skid Row Part 3. Elsewhere, I've identified space for a Woodland Scenics JW Cobbler building.

ScaleTrains Kansas City Southern ET44AC

I've grown more interested in the Kansas City Southern over the years, especially as so many other railroads its size have disappeared. Now it looks as though it will be absorbed into Canadian Pacific. I figured I should get a loco in the Southern Belle scheme while I still could, especially as KCS locos are pretty common out here in Southern California, even running with other foreign power. (So far, I haven't caught one of their ET44ACs, so this shout of an ES44AC will have to do.)

Below is my ScaleTrains Rivet Counter ET44AC out of the box. Good as all their models are, they all fall short in documentation. It was only in reading the fine print about their latest runs that I discovered that the ground lights are supplied with their locos only as the prototypes had them. My last ScaleTrains loco, a BNSF ES44C4, didn't have them, and I noted in the post I put up that this must have been a glitch of some sort. No, BNSF locos apparently don't have ground lights. However, you can see from the photo below that the KCS locos have them. You can also see the side walkway light.

/Seeing tghese on ScaleTrains models makes me more aware of them when I see them on video DVDs. They have a prototype appearance.

Below is a 3/4 front view showing the improved brightness of the ditch lights, as well as a different view of the ground light. This is only on the engineer's side. As with my ES44C4, this comes on with the F8 startup along with the numberboards. This is another feature not clearly documented in the owner's manual. None of these can be turned off independently from F8.

The rear view shows that the KCS units don't have rear ditch lights. Also, following KCS practice, the front ditch lights don't flash when the horn is sounded. It would be helpful to find a single place, possibly on their web site, where all these features could be listed for the respective models.

Finally, here is KCS 5009 in consist with BNSF 4232, my ES44C4, passing West Zenith and the Downtown Overlook Hotel on my layout.

Bar Mills Rusty's Radiator Repair

I posted an in-progress photo of this kit last week. As of today, it's almost complete, with just a few castings to finish and some final weathering and dirting in around the fence.

I decided to try posing the Oxford Diecast Edsel with it, but it turns out to be a little too big for the site, and it's 1:76 scale anyhow. I'll try something like a Classic Model Works V8 Ford next.

I didn't buy this kit specifically for this space on the layout, but once I had it, I realized it was a perfect fit for the new area opened up by the new street trackage.

New Downtown Deco Structures OnThe HO Layout

I'm almost finished with a Downtown Deco Downtown Overlook Hotel and have begun to plant it in its final spot. I added Woodland Scenics light diffusing film to the interior of the kit with an aim to adding Just Plug lighting. The building at right is an Ed Fulasz hydrocal kit, while the station is a Life Like kit of a B&O prototype.

This is the West Zenith station area, which I've decided to expand with a few more structures, including the Bachmann Lackawanna concrete tower that I recently added. I really like the way that the background on the far wall matrches the foreground scene here. The tower has also had light diffusing film added, as will the station. All will get Just Plug lighting. I still need to dirt in the hotel and add sidewalks.

Here's a view looking in the other direction:

As you can see, the whole area is under construction, with new scenery revisions in progress.

By extending the sidewalk on Lake St in Zenith, I gained enough space to insert a Downtown Deco Cooter's Liquor store. This has yet to receive signs and doors. It fits an expended space to the left of of the bank building. Due to the work I've been doing there, the area is dusty, with details, figures, and vehicles removed. Because work is under way, everything is also out of plumb.

The shoe shop and radio shop are a Main Street Heritage Models resin kit. The bank is from DPM. Business signs are from Blair Line.

Finishing Up On Lake St

I'm in the last stages of retrofitting a stretch of trolley-interurban track on the west end of Lake St in Zenith. What I did over the space of several years was to chisel and dremel out a channel in the middle of the plaster street that woukld allow me to drop in sections of HO code 100 track.

This was a messy and tedious project that I worked on in spurts, taking long breaks. I was finally spurred on to finish when George Sellios reopened his layout after the lockdowns, and visitors began posting new photos on Facebook.

It took me a while to figure out the neatest and least troublesome way to resurface the street with the track in it and avoid having to clean out the flangeways.

What I settled on was to use spackle to fill in the space between the edge of the channel and the outsides of the rails. Then I sanded the spackle smooth to match the street surface. You can see the initial result below.

Then I realized I had some Walthers 933-3140 street track inserts left over from other projects. I used the center sections from these to cover the space between the rails. Then I painted the surface with Woodland Scenics Asphalt using the bottle shown in the photo below.

There are still some gaps and messy parts that showed themwelves after painting. I can fill these again with spackle and paint them, although no street surface is perfect in the real world.

I can finally get around to cleaning up the mess and putting vehicles, figures, and street details back in place.

T-Trak Updates

I've been doing more structure work on the modules, starting to fill in the city area. The latest is a Downtown Deco N scale Palace Hotel Card Room kit:

This is a deceptively complex project. Since the walls don't have windows cast all the way through, you have to paint the recessed window locations black before anything else, but then you have to paint and weather the walls, which have several different textures, plus add the mortar, and finally paint the Card Room sign using the stencil provided in the kit. Just finishing four simple walls and the roof took a week. Another issue was that the walls don't match dimensionally out of the box, so you have to trim and sand them so they'll fit.

The laser cut windows and doors don't fit the cast openings very well, either, but with everything together, the overall appearance isn't too bad. I still have to add a few more signs and details. I've done a number of Downtown Deco HO kits and have two more HO on order. The N aren't really up to the HO quality.

GATX 45605 is a tank car I kitbashed 40 years ago from three Atlas N beer can tank cars, which was about the only way you could get a longer modern tank car at the time. It still looks pretty good.

The building in the background is a Trackside Scenery BF-07 building flat to which I've added more depth via foamcore, plus roofing via downloadable texture off the web. I'm slowly adding other details like roof ducts to create a more 3D effect.

Progress On Lake St in Zenith

I was able to dremel and chisel out the hardshell in the knoll at the end of Lake St that would allow me to extend thr trolley-interurban street track a few extra inches into private right of way beyond the end of the street street. At the same time, I was able to dress out the end of the street with the Walthers subway entry and some additional sidewalk. The photo below was taken handheld with automatic settings, because I couldn't get a good angle with my tripod:

By adding about an inch of sidewalk to the length of the street in doing this, I was able to relocate the structures at the end of the street so I could add another, narrow structure. This will likely be a Downtown Deco tavern/liquor store. This photo was also handheld with automatic settings.

Finally, I retrofitted the IHC town house that had been on the corner with Woodland Scenics light diffusing film. This is a big improvement.

Cutting into the hillock has also added enough space to let me add another structure next to this one.