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This is a reminder that there will be no meeting of the Seattle-North clinic in June 2012. The arrangements for the usual June road trip just did not work out.
Coupled with the summer vacation, that means the next meeting will be the first Thursday in September (9/6/2012). I’ll endeavor to post a reminder of that meeting in late August.
Please come join us this Thursday (May 3) when our clinic topic will be railroading in Cuba. Last month Bobj returned from a trip to the island. As he was one of the guides on a railroad tour, he was privy to all sorts of good information which he will share with us.
Also the folks from the upcoming National Narrow Gauge Convention will be stopping by to make a presentation. This convention is being held September 12-15 in Bellevue. If you have never been to a National Narrow Gauge event, you are in for a treat. There is really some fantastic modeling being displayed and the techniques are applicable most anywhere. Think about it – there is no such thing as a narrow gauge tree.
Last month’s clinic covered scratch building turnouts with Stu R. And when we say scratch, we mean scratch. Stu goes so far as cutting his own wood ties. He also has made his own set of angle gauges for the turnout sizes he needs. Stu says he worked out the geometry by studying prototype books on track laying and using CADRail to lay out templates.
Stu started with a primer on hand laying track. His technique is pretty conventional. First he lays the ties and makes sure they are level. He coats the bottom of the rail with contact cement and clamps it down (or uses heavy weights) until it dries. After that he uses a few spikes to make sure everything stays put. He does one rail at a time. Stu has several handmade jigs used for getting tie spacing correct in different situations, like regular track, bridge decks, and under turnouts.
Unfortunately my notes are not detailed enough to explain exactly how Stu builds the turnouts. I do recall that when he does something with a flangeway, he fills the whole assembly with solder. Then he uses a section of hacksaw blade to “cut” the flangeway in the solder. This appears easier than techniques I have seen that try keep that area clear throughout construction. And it seems to result in a very robust assembly.
Stu's Tools (at least some of them)
Rob J brought an OmNi-Rail mockup, which is a new N gauge modular standard. He talked a little about the standard and why some folks think it is needed. The mockup was available for further scrutiny during show and tell.
OmNi-Rail Module Mockup
Bobj had a few mementos from Cuba on display. Of course we will learn more about them at May’s meeting. John B brought some of his hand built turnouts (in HO). He had a fascinating way of holding the points in gauge using a styrene throwbar with a notched spreader glued on top. He said he first learned about this method at a clinic some years ago.
From Bobj's Cuba Trip
In talking to John and Stu I learned you cannot always expect a perfect turnout. From time to time one of your efforts just will not function properly and you should expect this will occur. The best solution is to just build another one.
We meet at the Ronald United Methodist Church, 17839 Aurora Avenue North, Shoreline, WA. That is on the west side of Aurora (State Route 99) between 175th and 185th Streets and more specifically, between the Cadillac dealer on the south and Deseret Industries to the north. You can no longer make cross-traffic turns on Aurora, so you need to be going southbound (so you can make a right-hand turn into the church driveway immediately after passing the Deseret location).
Meetings are the first Thursday of each month, except July and August. In June we usually do a tour. For regular meetings enter the lower level of the church from the parking lot at the rear. Doors open around 7:00 PM and the program starts about 7:30.
Remember the next meeting is May 3.
Hope to see you there or at least sometime on down the line.
This coming Thursday (April 5) there is a big church supper scheduled, so our regular meeting room will be unavailable.
We are going to use the “Fireplace Room” instead. You enter by going up the the main entrance stairs from the parking lot. Then turn left once you are inside. This change is for the April 5 meeting only.
So, if you get to the meeting and find it crowded with lots of new people, lots of food, and no trains; you are in the wrong room.
Please come join us this Thursday (April 5) when our clinic topic will be scratch building turnouts in N scale. The basic techniques are applicable to all scales, so if you can build them in N you can build them in any size. If you have seen Stu R’s turnouts before, then you know these make for good looking track. Stu will be showing us how he does it.
If you were there last month, when he showed us how he uses Cadrail, then you might have gotten a hint of how Stu starts the turnout process. Cadrail can do a lot more than just pretty, scale layout drawings. But, before we talk about some of those other things, here’s what I took away from the demo of layout drawing:
And here are some other things Stu showed us can be done by Cadrail:
John B brought in some photos of the small logging layout he is building, so we could see what he is doing. It was interesting to see his paper mock-ups of a sawmill and some buildings; also to see some of the buildings under construction.
Dennis T brought an Olympia Beer plug door reefer and a Sante Fe ballast car, both in N scale. He had acquired these on a vacation trip to San Diego. He also had an On3 flanger which he had just cleaned up after getting it some time ago at a clinic mart.
Here are a couple of pictures of the dioramas David C brought to the February clinic and that I wrote about last month:
Feb Clinic – Dioramas from David C
Feb Clinic - Diorama by David C
Feb Clinic - Diorama by David C
We meet at the Ronald United Methodist Church, 17839 Aurora Avenue North, Shoreline, WA. That is on the west side of Aurora (State Route 99) between 175th and 185th Streets and more specifically, between the Cadillac dealer on the south and Deseret Industries to the north. You can no longer make cross-traffic turns on Aurora, so you need to be going southbound (so you can make a right-hand turn into the church driveway immediately after passing the Deseret location).
Meetings are the first Thursday of each month, except July and August. In June we usually do a tour. For regular meetings enter the lower level of the church from the parking lot at the rear. Doors open around 7:00 PM and the program starts about 7:30.
Remember the next meeting is April 5 and the one after that is May 3. Hope to see you there or at least sometime on down the line.
Our next meeting is Thursday, March 1, 2012. Time and place are at the end of this piece. The topic will be CADrail. You’ve seen the ads, now you can see how the software works.
Dennis T did a mini clinic on building N scale Kadee couplers from the kits. Dennis did it this way, instead of buying them ready-built, because he needed a bunch of them for locomotive conversions. There are lots of little pieces, but they all go together just fine, if you take your time and keep referring to the instructions.
Dennis built a little jig (on a big piece of wood) to help with the assembly. The size of the wood was immaterial, but it did make the jig appear more impressive. Basically the jig was a small post to align the parts of the coupler as it is being put together.
There was lots of variety during show and tell. Guest David C brought along some little dioramas with some nice looking evergreen trees. His explanation of building them turned into its own mini clinic.
David uses what he calls the “Low Bucks Railroad” approach. When he started doing the trees the trunks were used chopsticks and the foliage was a fern like moss that grows all over Western Washington, especially near the rain forest. How he whittles the trunks from whatever is handy. He drills tiny holes in the trunks to accept the little moss “branches.”
The trees were over 5 years old and had held up well. David says the fern gets pretty brittle when it gets dry (like in Eastern Washington) but bounces right back when the humidity climbs.
David says that for deciduous trees he has started using maple suckers for the trunk/branch structure.
CJ Riley showed a HO boxcar made with preprinted cardboard car sides like those that used to come in the old NMRA Bulletin. From typical model viewing distances the car still looked pretty good.
Dennis T showed an N scale coal load that he had enhanced with additional real-looking “coal.” Chris F displayed some grain cars he was working on building/painting.
We meet at the Ronald United Methodist Church, 17839 Aurora Avenue North, Shoreline, WA. That is on the west side of Aurora (State Route 99) between 175th and 185th Streets and more specifically, between the Cadillac dealer on the south and Deseret Industries to the north. You can no longer make cross-traffic turns on Aurora, so you need to be going southbound (so you can make a right-hand turn into the church driveway immediately after passing the Deseret location).
Meetings are the first Thursday of each month, except July and August. In June we usually do a tour. For regular meetings enter the lower level of the church from the parking lot at the rear. Doors open around 7:00 PM and the program starts about 7:30.
Remember the next meeting is March 1 and the one after that is April 5. Hope to see you there or at least sometime on down the line.
Our next meeting is Thursday, February 2, 2012. Time and place are at the end of this piece.
Robert “Bob” Stafford was our January clinician and the topic was weathering structures. Bob says structures seem to be the last thing modelers weather, yet buildings near real railroads were always pretty dirty. And Bob should know, since he worked for the prototype for many years.
There were lots of little tips in Bob’s presentation. Here are a few from my notes:
Bob left us with the observation that structure weathering is not hard, you just have to pitch in and “do it.”
Show and Tell was initiated with a home-built resistance soldering unit, however yours truly failed to get the builder’s name. The workmanship and appearance of the final product was very clean. Apparently the plans for this were the subject of a clinic some years ago.
Michael P showed a watch that once belonged to a street car conductor. Chris F had both a powered and a dummy Athearn GN diesel in the same blue and white color scheme with the same cab number. The number wasn’t so unusual as was the fact that the colors didn’t really match, nor was the lettering applied the same. It would appear that they were from 2 different production runs.
Tom had an un-built Vau-pe cardboard building kit from the late 50’s or early 60’s. He also talked about the evolution of European kits paralleling the rebuilding of their industrial base following WWII.
Dennis T talked about his recent experience doing coupler conversions on some locos he acquired at the clinic mart a couple of months ago. He will expand on this at the next meeting.
We meet at the Ronald United Methodist Church, 17839 Aurora Avenue North, Shoreline, WA. That is on the west side of Aurora (State Route 99) between 175th and 185th Streets and more specifically, between the Cadillac dealer on the south and Deseret Industries to the north. You can no longer make cross-traffic turns on Aurora, so you need to be going southbound (so you can make a right-hand turn into the church driveway immediately after passing the Deseret location).
Meetings are the first Thursday of each month, except July and August. In June we usually do a tour. For regular meetings enter the lower level of the church from the parking lot at the rear. Doors open around 7:00 PM and the program starts about 7:30. Hope to see you there or at least sometime on down the line.
Remember the next meeting is February 2 and the one after that is March 1.
Seasons’ Greetings to you and yours. Our next meeting is Thursday, January 5. Time and place are at the end of this piece.
Show and Tell was a bit slim at December’s meeting. Bob S had a couple a nicely done structures. Both were from the same kit, but didn’t look at all alike. Bob has graciously agreed to talk about his weathering techniques at our next meeting. Come prepared to learn about looking old and used. Of course, a couple of us do that sort of naturally.
Di Voss was back to wrap up his piece on Digital Command Control. This section was mostly about using Decoder Pro to set, and reset, and experiment with configuration variables (CVs). Wow, this sure is a lot easier than setting the codes for each individual CV.
For illustration Di showed how to customize a locomotive’s bell, whistle, and speed response. He also covered how much easier Decider Pro makes dealing with the multiple use variables, like that pesky CV 29.
I ran out of time to include any pictures this month, but I will try to get them in the next installment.
We meet at the Ronald United Methodist Church, 17839 Aurora Avenue North, Shoreline, WA. That is on the west side of Aurora (State Route 99) between 175th and 185th Streets and more specifically, between the Cadillac dealer on the south and Deseret Industries to the north. You can no longer make cross-traffic turns on Aurora, so you need to be going southbound (so you can make a right-hand turn into the church driveway immediately after passing the Deseret location).
Meetings are the first Thursday of each month, except July and August. However, in June we usually do a tour. For regular meetings enter the lower level of the church from the parking lot at the rear. Doors open around 7:00 PM, announcements at 7:15, and the program starts about 7:30. Hope to see you there or at least sometime on down the line.
The next meeting is January 5 and the one after that is February 2.
Di Describes DCC
At our meeting on Nov 3rd, Di Voss gave us an introduction to setting up a DCC system using a Digitrax Zepher system. He also brought other command systems from Lenz, NCE and said that all will work. He also said that all decoders should work with different command systems. During his presentation, Di primarily used the Digitrax Zepher and Digitrax decoders.
When modifying, remember to isolate both leads of the motor from the frame before installing the decoder and to find a good location for the decoder or modify the loco frame. A simplified wiring diagram (courtesy of www.ppdnmra.com) is below.
Click for larger image
Di showed examples of programing decoders using DecoderPro, a free program. After programing the decoder, he demoed running the loco on a test track and also ran two different locos on the same track.
Next month, at the December 1st meeting, we will continue the DCC discussions, hopefully getting into sound decoders and locomotive programming.
We meet at the Ronald United Methodist Church, 17839 Aurora Avenue North, Shoreline, on the west side of Aurora (SR 99) between 175th and 185th Streets, between the Cadillac dealer on the south and Deseret Industries to the north. Enter the lower level of the church from the parking lot at the rear. Doors open around 7:00 PM, announcements are at 7:15, and the program starts about 7:30.
Remember the next meeting is December 1 and the one after that is on January 5.
Show and Tell:
Norm C - HO T-TRAK Module
Stu R - N Scratchbuilt Buildings
Bob R - Utility Poles and Mold
Dennis T – N T-TRAK Modular Layout
Our next meeting is Thursday, November 3. Time and place are at the end of this piece.
Jim B in his role as chief cook and bottle washer of Sound & Northwestern LLC brought along the box for the company’s next kit. It is a GN Standard Portable Depot and should be available next month through the Great Northern Historical Society. Apparently the railroad pre-built these in their carpentry shop, loaded them on flatcars, and delivered them wherever they needed a small town deport.
As promised we assembled the first T-Trak “layout” using only models built by Seattle-North regulars. Dennis T and yours truly supplied the trackage, which ended up more of an oval with a branch line than a simple loop.
Rob J showed some N gauge cabeese and a lovely Hiawatha set in that scale. Dennis T had an HO “Piker” he built from an old Walthers kit. Wow, that brought back a bunch of memories. But the stars of show & tell were three Canadian prototype HO diesels brought by Greg, who was attending the clinic for the first time. Nice work, Greg, and we hope you’ll be back.
Rob's N Hiawatha
N T-TRAK Module
Greg's Diesels
We started an informal discussion of Digital Command Control (DCC) to sort of judge everyone’s knowledge of the subject. And we got a range of feedback. A couple of folks were experienced in applying custom settings to locomotives and a couple could hardly spell DCC. So, when we start learning about DCC in earnest, we’ll make sure we start at the beginning.
Speaking of the beginning, when was the first product sold to allow remote (non-wired) control of electric trains? Well, according to Kalmbach’s book DCC Made Easy by Lionel Strang, that would be sometime in the 1940’s. That is when Lionel came out with a two-channel, frequency control system that allowed you to change the direction of the train.
Our exploration of DCC will get more formal in November when Di Voss will be on hand as our expert clinician. And we’ll see is anyone can top those HO diesels that showed up for last meeting’s show and tell.
We meet at the Ronald United Methodist Church, 17839 Aurora Avenue North, Shoreline, WA. That is on the west side of Aurora (State Route 99) between 175th and 185th Streets and more specifically, between the Cadillac dealer on the south and Deseret Industries to the north. You can no longer make cross-traffic turns on Aurora, so you need to be going southbound (so you can make a right-hand turn into the church driveway immediately after passing the Deseret location).
Meetings are the first Thursday of each month, except July and August. However, in June we usually do a tour. For regular meetings enter the lower level of the church from the parking lot at the rear. Doors open around 7:00 PM, announcements at 7:15, and the program starts about 7:30. Hope to see you there or at least sometime on down the line.
The next meeting is November 3 and the one after that is December 1.
Our next meeting is Thursday, October 6. Time and place are at the end of this blog.
If you like HO, last month’s meeting had one of the best marts seen in some time. A variety of rolling stock, motive power, and structures were all looking for new homes.
Seattle-North’s first operational HO gauge T-Trak modules were shown. Jeff brought his newly-built straight and corner with just the inside track installed. The first “train” run on them was a test drive of a locomotive being offered at the mart. Jeff is thinking that if no one else is going to build in HO, maybe he’ll convert these modules to a On30 diorama.
October’s meeting should see the first complete layout loop of Seattle-North N gauge T-Trak modules. We did this once before, but had to borrow a couple of corners to make it work. This time it should be all Seattle-North and you’ll see a few modules you have never seen before. If there is something you have been wanting to run in N gauge, bring it along and we’ll work out a dirt cheap right-of-way leasing agreement for 5 or 100 minutes.
We’ll start our discussion of DCC in October as well. This will be an introduction and Q & A to determine just what we want to have covered at later meetings. For that we have a clinician lined up – we just need to tell him exactly what we want to learn about DCC.
We meet at the Ronald United Methodist Church, 17839 Aurora Avenue North, Shoreline, WA. That is on the west side of Aurora (State Route 99) between 175th and 185th Streets and more specifically, between the Cadillac dealer on the south and Deseret Industries to the north. Most of the construction along this stretch of Aurora is now completed, but you may no longer make cross-traffic turns. You need to be going southbound (so you can make a right-hand turn into the church driveway immediately after passing the Deseret location).
Meetings are the first Thursday of each month, except July and August. However, in June we usually do a tour. For regular meetings enter the lower level of the church from the parking lot at the rear. Doors open around 7:00 PM, announcements at 7:15, and the program starts about 7:30. Hope to see you there or at least sometime on down the line.
The next meeting is October 6 and the one after that is November 3.