Author: Rich Blake

Article and Photos by Rich Thom

Readers who have crewed on my HO-scale Coldwater Creek & Cascade RR during the past eight years have been greeted when entering the layout room by the scene in Figure 1—a granite defile spanned not by proper bridges but two pieces of ½” plywood subroadbed.  When I started my layout in 2008 (having been away from the hobby since 1962) I sought the advice of local experts about the construction sequence for a layout designed for operations, which was entirely new to me.  All advised laying track and beginning op sessions as soon as possible, leaving scenery and time-intensive structures such as bridges until later, so that the operation scheme and track plan were debugged first.  It was good advice, but I didn’t quite follow it.  Unhappy with my bare plywood empire I charged ahead and completed the scenery next, leaving the plywood spans in place where bridges would be, well, “someday.”  That left the conundrum shown in Fig 1: scenery 90-percent finished—but no bridges.  I had two choices here.  I could cut away the temporary spans, removing the track, cork roadbed and subroadbed entirely, then build the bridges the usual way, from the ground up.  However, I had seen an article in Railroad Model Craftsman (“Building Trestle at North Crags” by John Olson, Dec 1978) in which the author described cutting the subroadbed away, but keeping the rails in place, then building the bridge and abutments underneath them.  More or less bass-ackwards!  The advantage, especially for a bridge or trestle on a curve, is the preservation of smooth curvature as well as precise level across the span.  That seemed appealing so I have built most of my bridges in this manner.

I’ll use the example of my Silver Falls Bridge, the upper span in Fig 1, to describe the construction sequence.  The 1:87 pile driver crew came out to the site to have a look at the sheer granite walls on each side and, after a few unkind words about the railroad’s surveyor, announced that no piles could be driven there.  Some sort of single span was needed rather than a pile trestle.  My modeled year is 1928 so I could have prototypically selected a steel girder span—I have them elsewhere on the layout and it would have been far easier—but since this was a foreground model I chose a timber deck truss bridge, with its fussy tension rods and nbw’s.  I used a Kalmbach publication plan, shortened by one panel to fit my 50-foot span.

Building the deck truss bridge used standard methods at the workbench (Fig 2).  Stripwood and bridge ties are from Mt. Albert Scale Lumber (now distributed by Fast Tracks), pre-stained with Micromark Bridge and Tie Stain.  Having tried several glues, I use Aleene’s Tacky Glue, either standard or fast-grab variants depending on whether the workpiece is held tightly in a jig, or needs the fast-grab action.  Nbw’s are from Tichy Train Group.  Tension rods are 0.028” brass wire or 2.4” in HO, just slightly oversize but easier to see.

Now for the fun part!  First the plywood subroadbed and cork roadbed were cut away (Fig 3) using a Zona 5” saber saw blade.  The granite rock faces by the way are Cripplebush rubber rocks, which though more time-consuming to paint than plaster or resin alternatives, I am very pleased with.  I presented a Skagit Valley & Whidbey NMRA clinic on their use in 2016.  Next the flextrack plastic ties were removed.  The blue painter’s tape marks ties that are to remain in place; these will be set in ballast on the concrete abutments. 

The next step, Fig 4, was to carefully clamp the pre-fabricated span to the rails.  None of the clamps in my toolbox was quite right for the job, so I jury-rigged the pair seen here.  Alignment is important; to get it right I drew pencil lines on the bridge ties for locating the rails. 

The next step was to build the abutments below the suspended bridge span.  I used basswood and artist’s mat board to simulate concrete abutments, sealing the mat board well so that it didn’t warp with subsequent applications of acrylic paint.  This is the most tedious step in the sequence, requiring a number of height measurements from tie level to the pre-existing terrain.  In Fig 5, the abutments are completed and ready for painting.  They were blended into the existing rock terrain with Sculptamold, which was then carved with striations to match the features of the rubber rocks.  All was then given a coat of white acrylic gesso.  I used gesso liberally in my scenery coloring as an undercoat, to even everything out over varying materials and increase reflectance and brightness, a trick I learned from my artist son.  The white stream below the span is a coat of gloss mod podge which will dry clear; this was unrelated to the bridge work and just done at the same time.

The bridge span was repositioned into place and rails spiked to the bridge ties.  Guard timbers and their nbw’s were added as a final step.  The completed Silver Falls Bridge is shown in Fig 6, with the CC&CRR’s heaviest loco—a 2-4-4-2—giving the bridge an axle-load test; it passed.  I sized timbers and other features for an E-55 rating, or slightly lower.  The abutments were weathered with India ink washes and Bragdon powders, and some simulated foliage and moss added.

I’m not recommending that you build your bridges this way, but having boxed myself in by largely completing my scenery before tackling the bridges, it worked satisfactorily for me.  There are several better ways, only one of which is illustrated in Fig 7.  The idea here is, when you build your basic layout framework—stringers, risers, subroadbed—instead of keeping the subroadbed continuous across your future bridge locations as I did, construct a removable “bridge frame,” highlighted in yellow in the figure.  It’s built of 1 x 3’s or 1 x 4’s or whatever your chosen lumber size is, and includes abutment and pier supports as shown.  Lay your track and begin op sessions and run for years this way if you want to—but don’t complete the scenery around the bridge frame.  When you’re ready to build your bridge or trestle, remove the frame, the top piece of subroadbed, and build the bridge on the frame at the bench.  Reinstall the bridge frame with its completed bridge and fill in the scenery around it.  Maybe on my next layout! 

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During this interesting time of following the “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” directive from the state, I am finding things a bit more challenging to avoid “honey-dos” since I’m in the house all the time.  Sure this may be a great time to work on house projects but what fun is that. 

So in order to get away from the world and especially chores for a while, I imagined a setup for my modules that could be used for testing and motivation to work on the real important home projects – model railroad stuff!

I am part of the Pacific Northwest On30 Modular Group and have six modules in my shop.  Most of the time however the modules are stored in their transportation configuration and are only set up if I need to fix track or plant a structure.  They share the shop with other vehicles and projects that usually get more attention and I normally don’t have a lot of time to work on them let alone set them up and run stuff on them.

Well the last few weeks have been a different story.  Being in quarantine and working all day from my kitchen table “office” on the phone and on the computer, I am pretty much toast at the end of the work day and need to get out of the house.  The only place I can go is the yard or the shop.  While out organizing some stuff in the shop while I was bored, I found some birch plywood that could be possibly be used make a couple 22 inch radius curves.  I thought, hey I’ve got four straight five foot modules that I could connect together and have an oval for continuous running.  And so was born the idea for the “Isolation Circle Central”.

A few evenings of chopping wood and laying track resulted in a seemingly basic circle to run trains around on my finished and work-in-progress modules.  There is no way my ol’ lady is going to negotiate that duckunder – so the “social distancing” part of the setup was an extreme success.

The layout is powered by a Digitrax Zephyr with a Digitrax PR3 to interface with a computer and run JMRI WiThrottles.  This way I can run two (or six) locos at once on the cellphone Engine Driver app.  I also modified one of my modules to provide a programming track for use with the PR3.  Normally we program locos “off layout” on a test track but since I’m using the PR3 for the computer anyway, may as well upgrade capability and use the direct programming feature also.  It is certainly much more convenient to program and test on the same track. 

For our PNWOn30 Group we use JMRI Operations Pro to provide switchlists for our operations under TT&TO rules.  My modules are already built up as locations with the appropriate spurs in the JMRI program for operations.  All I had to do was create a modified route to only include my four modules and select cars from my inventory to be used for operations.

So, with little effort I had JMRI setup to run switchlists specifically for my setup.  I designated one of the corners as a staging yard and run a route from staging to staging traversing all the modules and performing set outs and pick ups according to the JMRI generated switchlists.  Between each module “location” I do a complete lap around the layout to get some distance before the next module stop.  All told the “Circle Job” takes a little over an hour to complete.  That’s the time for at least one cup of a refreshing beverage and certainly supports the “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” directive. 

Have fun and Be Safe.

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By Rich Blake

In communication with our gracious venue host – Summerhill Assisted Living Facility – we have cancelled our March 12th clinic due to risk to residents and visitors during this time of the COVID-19 Coronavirus outbreak. In accordance with the Washington State Department of Health guidelines related to the outbreak emergency, Summerhill will be enforcing a “no-visitor” policy until further notice. SV&W respects and understands this decision.

We are still planning to have our regular clinic on the 8th of April at the Summerhill venue provided we have better news in a few weeks on this epidemic. In mean-time we are advising all model railroaders to be safe and observe good preventative measures.

Rich

Article and Photos by Rich Thom

Twenty-three gathered at Summer Hill in Oak Harbor for February’s SV&W NMRA Clinic, welcomed by Clinic Chair Rich Blake.  After reviewing the calendar, Rich to everyone’s delight showed some photos of Al Frasch’s new N-scale layout that he’s nearly completed in his new home near Tucson, AZ.  Al, a former long-time member, newsletter editor, and tireless booster of our clinic as well as model railroad operations in the area, built his new layout in less than two years.  Not unexpected from this energetic modeler—good work, Al!

For Show-and-Tell, Alan Murray brought in his O-scale road overpass (Fig 1).     

This is a work-in-progress and Alan will describe the overpass construction in detail at our March meeting.  He brought it this evening to show the details of the bents and stringers that will (by next month!) be hidden by roadway decking.  The overpass has a home: it will feature in one town on Jon Bentz’s in progress On30 layout in Freeland, joining many other scratch structures already in place.  Your reporter visited Jon’s layout recently and it will be a welcome addition to our clinic area’s operations-focused layouts.  Beta-testing will start this Spring; no pressure, Jon! 

The main subject matter at the meeting was “The World’s Last Woodburners” presented by your Grab Iron reporter.  That’s a rather sweeping title, because woodburning steam locos were scattered around the world here and there, on preserved railroads, in museums and so forth, but only in a very few places did entire fleets of motive power in everyday, workaday use still burn wood.  Your reporter visited two such places in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.  The first was the Philippines.  

The Philippine woodburners were found on the island of Negros, one of the country’s 7,000-plus islands.  Here were the majority of the Philippines’ Sugar Centrals, 45 of which were founded by American companies, most between 1912 and 1927.  Victorias Milling Company (Fig 3) was the largest of them all, at its peak grinding over 16,000 tons of cane each day during the milling season.  All of the motive power—in this case 0-8-0’s—burned wood.  Combined, the sugar railroads had over 1,000 miles of track fanning out like a spider web from the coast into the cane fields, on several gauges.  Victorias had the most unusual: 600mm, which at 1 foot 11 and 5/8 inches was essentially 2 foot gauge—but not quite!

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Article and Photos by Rich Thom Except as Noted

Clinic Chair Rich Blake welcomed 21 to our first meeting of 2020.  Rich was also the evening’s presenter giving, first, a comprehensive review of the 39^th National Narrow Gauge Convention held last September in Sacramento.  The four-day event featured 54 clinics; 7 modular groups; several special museum and shop tours; and 34 layouts open to convention attendees.  Rich’s photos of contest models, dioramas, modular layouts, and the 9 layouts he visited all displayed very high levels of modeling skills.

Rich’s California visit culminated in a very unique event indeed: a special railfan steam-up on the Niles Canyon Railway (www.ncry.org) commemorating the 150^th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad’s completion, featuring the newly-restored articulated logging locomotive the “Skookum,” a rare 2-4-4-2.  Niles Canyon’s Clover Valley #4, a 2-6-6-2T also recently overhauled, was steamed up and double-headed with Skookum (Figures 1 and 2).   

Many steam locos returned to service have dull histories, spending decades rusting away in city parks or museum backshops, but Skookum’s is especially colorful.  Baldwin built the 2-4-4-2 Mallet (compound) for Tennessee’s Little River Railroad (https://littleriverrailroad.org/skookum) as their #126 in 1909, but it was too heavy for their rails and they returned it to the builder.  Baldwin’s salesmen aggressively pursued northwest logging and short lines to unload their white elephant and in 1910 sold it to the Columbia River Belt Line Railway in Oregon, where the loco worked for ten years.  (The Skookum is currently lettered for this first northwest owner.)  After 1920 it worked on a number of Washington state lumber companies, the longest stint (1933-1955) with the Deep River Logging Co. as their No. 7.  There, in 1955, it rolled off a trestle into a muddy streambed and was abandoned until pulled out five years later by rail enthusiasts. It was disassembled piece by piece and hauled out of the woods to Snoqualmie where it sat for 30 years.  It was moved again at some point to Mount Rainier Scenic Railway’s grounds where it sat in a rusty pile for many more years. A succession of dedicated steam preservationists led by Chris Baldo of the Willits Roots of Motive Power team rescued the loco and Skookum was eventually restored by the Oregon Coast Railway shops in Garibaldi OR to running condition in March 2019.  “Skookum” is a Native American word meaning “powerful, brave, sturdy” and this old Baldwin product surely lived up to its name.  The first of its kind, Skookum encouraged Baldwin to market more articulated Mallets in the northwest, selling many.

HO-scale reproductions of Little River Railroad #126 were imported by Gem Models, around 682 of them altogether, over the course of four runs in 1962, 1963, 1964 and 1982.  Fig 3 shows one of the 1982 run, produced by Jonan.  This run featured can motors and supposedly more detailing than the earlier versions.  This beautiful example was painted and lettered by Dave Clarke, our clinic’s master of brass model rebuilds, after installing a sound decoder, speaker, and lights.  

Fig 4 is another 1982 Gem 2-4-4-2 that Dave Clarke upgraded with DCC and sound, painted and lettered for Tom Hawkins’ HO-scale Port Thomas and Southern Railroad (styled after the Olympic Peninsula’s Port Townsend and Southern).  Tom reports that it’s a beautiful runner. 

Your reporter plumb forgot to bring his “Skookum” to the meeting, but here it is anyway (Fig 5), photographed on his Coldwater Creek & Cascade Railroad.  Rich’s model is from the first 1962 run that Gem imported, made by Akane Model Railroad Co. of Tokyo, and was found in a consignment sale in Sacramento.  Gary Jordan, brass hat of the Gilpin Tram multi-gauge layout in Mukilteo, did the upgrade, replacing the open-frame motor with a can motor and installing a Tsunami decoder and 1-inch speaker.  It’s the best-running loco on Rich’s layout, with stunning sound.

In other Show and Tell, Jon Bentz brought in a very nicely-done On30 Fire Car (Fig 6), a kitbash of a Morgan Hill kit (www.morganhillmodels.com).  Good news: Jon’s new layout is nearing beta-testing for operations.  We’re pleased since we are down to only two layouts hosting regular op sessions on Whidbey Island and it will be exciting to have a third to encourage ops enthusiasts to ride the ferry to our pleasant isle.  No pressure, Jon!

Finally, since “Skookum” was a theme for this meeting, Rich Blake brought his On30 Bachmann 2-4-4-2 to couple up with Jon’s Fire Car (Fig 7).  It bears little resemblance to Skookum but at least it’s a 2-4-4-2 compound!  This loco is slightly weathered with a few added details and features a Tsunami 2 decoder with unique “articulated” chuff sounds. Does anyone know Bachmann’s prototype for their popular 2-4-4-2?

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Article and Photos by Rich Thom

Clinic Chair Rich Blake welcomed 26 to the November meeting, first reviewing the upcoming calendar.  Dec 11^th will feature our annual Wassail, a tradition dating back at least a dozen years, with all invited to bring a (finger-food) potluck dish to share.  The pre-clinic dinner at Alfy’s in Oak Harbor is annulled for this meeting only, and the starting time for the Wassail is 6:30 pm.  For the January get-together (Jan 8^th), modelers are invited to bring their latest models for detailed discussion of how they created them, and having their models judged (if they wish) for NMRA Achievement Awards.

Several clinic members have layouts in progress including Jon Bentz (Fig 1), who described the status of his Rio Como Railroad.  Filling the better part of a 14’ x 39’ room, the On30 pike re-uses many of Jon’s scratch buildings on all-new benchwork.  A car float operation is featured.  Helping Jon with the construction among others is Cliff Aaker and Alan Murray; Alan, for example, is building the overpass (Fig 2)—a work in progress—for a spot on Jon’s layout.

Ted Becker brought in a model for display (Fig 3), a Banta Modelworks HO-scale “Crick Hollow Hardware and Miners Supply.”  Ted has thoroughly re-purposed the structure and varied the details.

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The Anacortes and Fidalgo Model Railroad Club will host what may be their last open house this weekend November 2nd and 3^rd  from 10am to 4pm each day.  The layout is located in the basement at 419 Q Ave. in the beautiful seaside historic town of Anacortes west of Mount Vernon off HWY 20.

The club has been at this location since 1994 starting with a 500 square foot area and about 10 members.   Over the last 25 years the club has enjoyed a long and interesting pursuit of building and operating a detailed layout depicting many of the historic railroad features in and around Anacortes, Fidalgo Island and the Skagit Valley.

A lot of hard work and dedication has gone into the layout and it shows in the many finely constructed structures and scenery details.  The layout now occupies the full 1000 square feet available however the club must unfortunately move out within the next year.

Hopefully the club can find a new location to host their layout and equipment in the near future. Many members of the club are local PNR 4d NMRA members and regular attendees of both the Mount Vernon and the Skagit Valley and Whidbey NMRA Clinics.

A recent GoSkagit article about the layout is here

History of Anacortes and the local railroads is here

Map location of the club layout is here

Article and Photos by Rich Thom

Clinic Chair Rich Blake welcomed 26 to the first SV&W NMRA Clinic of the season.  This clinic was devoted to scratchbuilding; so without further ado, let’s get to it.

Area modelers were invited to bring in their scratchbuilding efforts, both completed and in progress, and most are on the table next to Cliff Aaker (Fig 1), who led off the evening with his presentation “Methods and Tools for Scratchbuilding Scale Models.”  Cliff discussed his general approach, in which he either copies a commercial model—to improve upon it by adding details and “personality” for his own railroad—or more typically working from prototype photos.  From photos he works out roof pitch and other dimensions using window, door and other features–for example, a standard door height of 6’10”.  Often he builds a paper or art board mockup for a project if it’s complicated or must fit a precise space; his first such was building a road bridge for the Anacortes & Fidalgo Model Railroad Club, whose members are long-time clinic contributors.

Like most everyone, Cliff uses a mix of purchased and scratch detail parts.  For his On30 reefer in Fig 2, brake wheels, roof hatches, turnbuckles—and of course couplers–are commercial parts.  Other details, door hardware, latches, stirrups, and grab irons are scratch.  Cliff passed around his grab iron bending and drilling jigs; the stirrups are fashioned from bent staples. 

Cliff’s box cars (Fig 3 shows one example) are built over a solid wood core, or plug.  This automatically keeps all car sides and ends square and provides the needed weight.  All car sheathing is Kappler Lumber scribed wood.  Roofs are either wood planks or ribbed metal.  Metal ribs are simulated with paper strips cut with a rotary cutter. The styrene door channels were glued to the carbody with “old” thick styrene glue, which Cliff found to adhere well to wood. 

Flatcars (Fig 4) are difficult to weight properly without unsightly lead weights glued to the underbody, or weighted loads.  Cliff solves this by using 1/16” lead sheet sandwiched under the decking.  The stake pockets are commercial parts, the stirrups scratch. 

The metal parts on the skeleton log car in Fig 5 were fabricated using concrete patch and latex rubber molds.  (Cliff described multiple uses of two types of concrete patch at our March 2019 clinic.)  The trucks on this car, available from Precision Vintage Classics (www.pvc-sn3.com), use 3D-printed sideframes.  The cars in Figures 2 and 3 also use PVC trucks.

Cliff brought two of his scratchbuilt O-scale buildings to discuss some of the construction methods used.  The copper smelter (partial view in Fig 6) was based on drawings of a smelter in Bodie, CA published in Narrow Gauge & Short Line Gazette.  Quickcrete Concrete Crack Seal was used to make the furnace and chimney.  The roofing is ordinary household aluminum foil cut with a rotary cutter and scissors, then shaped with a tool from Brunel Hobbies, their “Corrugated Iron Maker” (www.brunelhobbies.com.au).  Cliff uses all three readily available thicknesses of aluminum foil in his models.

The freelanced depot (Fig 7) was designed with a deliberately high-peaked roof, 12/12 pitch, to provide maximum elevation for an IR sensor which, in conjunction with a servo, battery and Arduino, operates a train order signal (not shown) using a TV remote.  During assembly, walls were kept square using a fixture constructed of Lego pieces.  The beautifully-executed roof is built with individual Western Red Cedar roofing shakes.  Thin wood sheets of cedar were cut into strips with a rotary cutter, chopped, and applied one-by-one with double-sided tape.  Fine work, Cliff, and a great clinic!

Other scratchbuilders in the group had the opportunity to describe their show-and-tell items.  Alan Murray brought two of his fine O-scale structures, including the oil tank in Fig 8.  Alan has discussed his techniques in several of our previous clinics, which include sawing all of his scale boards from sheet—no purchased (expensive) stripwood for him!  Note the N-B-W castings, essential for any model to qualify for an NMRA Achievement Program award.

Alan showed slides detailing the history of the train station in Olympia, and his remarkable reproduction of it in O-Scale.  The single photo of it here (Fig 9) can’t possibly do it justice.  It sits not on land, but a pier, and the pier (not shown) is just as well-crafted as the station.  Alan has featured his Olympia station module construction in previous clinics.

Iver Johnson showed off his water tank for a logging line, Fig 10.  Curt Johnson got the idea for his scratch shed, Fig 11, from a Walther’s Catalog.  Jack Tingstad built the replica of the Tennessee Pass Station, Fig 12, from plans he was able to obtain after he was unsuccessful in finding one of the original kits which had gone out of production.  Jon Bentz brought two of his O-scale structures, both freelance, a sawmill and a work-in-progress freight house (Fig 13).

Thanks to all for bringing in some fine models and describing some of their techniques.

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On July 13^th and 14^th 2019, the Pacific Northwest On30 Modular Group, participated in the “Clamshell Days” event at the Pacific Columbia Heritage Museum in Ilwaco on the Long Beach peninsula. 

  This was our 7^th year participating in this event and it is one of our favorites as the museum provides a great gallery space for our layout.  Since this is one of the less known “trainshows” there is considerably less spectator traffic than the big shows around Puget Sound.  This allows us to focus more on operations and having fun with our layout and equipment.

  We ran two days of TTTO operations and are now sporting a new station stop semaphore built by Cliff Aaker that is controlled by an Arduino CPU board and a servo.  The dispatcher also acting as station operator can now use a TV remote control to operate the semaphore to indicate stop for orders at the station.  It really adds a prototypical element to our operations.

  The group also had the good fortune through Paul Vaughn’s efforts of gathering a large donation of structures from George Chambers of Issaquah.  He graciously donated the items due to a downsize in living arrangements with the only caveat that the structures be displayed for all to enjoy.  We have several spots for these finely detailed structures and they really add a lot of visual interest and operational opportunities.  Thanks George!!!  

Everybody had fun and enjoyed a nice relaxing weekend.  This event runs every year on the 2^nd weekend in July so start planning now and maybe we will see you next year.