MORE HOUSEKEEPING - UPDATED LINKS

 I added the links section when I first started this page, and probably haven’t updated it since.   About half were dead links, so sorry about that if you were trying them.   Some haven’t been updated for many years, but still exist, and still have good photos and info on them, so I didn’t take them down.  

I only got around to adding one new link - Steel Mill Modelers Supply.   If you are looking to heavily upgrade your Walthers Steel Mill kit, or if you are scratchbuilding a mill, this is the place to go.   Steel mill modeler, Kevin Tully started this business some years ago using 3d printing technology,  when most of us were still working with molds and resin casts to sporadically make parts for steel mill modeling.   His products are well researched, well drawn in 3dCAD (not an easy task),  and printed using high quality printers (ie expensive).   

I tried to post a link to the Facebook Steel Mill Modelers group that Donald Dunn moderates, to no avail.   Maybe I can’t post Facebook links on here.   If you are on Facebook, you should be able to find it - just make sure the moderator is Donald Dunn.   He also has two associated groups on real steel mills and selling steel mill stuff, which you should also be able to find.   Donald does an excellent job at keeping these sites focused on their subject matter.  He also puts out a quarterly steel mill modeling ezine (is that even something anymore)  which has excellent articles.  I will try to find a link for that an post.   

I’m also going to add a bunch of links for O Scale and PROTO 48, but I’ll see if I can organize these things better.  

Jim

PROTO 48 LAYOUT #5 - THE SAWMILL

 There is still work to be done sanding, priming, and painting the backdrop, prior to installing ties, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to get them cut.  

The bag on left has the “standard ties”, with the enough turnout ties in the right bag for six #6 turnouts.    

Just to refresh - I’m using basswood, as opposed to white pine.  I buy basswood in roughly 5”x8” blocks, 8-10’ long.  They are rough cut, so you need a jointer to flatten and square up two sides prior to any ripping operations.    A single block will last me a decade in model trains, even with this tie cutting operation.  My many years as a professional woodworker has taught me that, the lighter and smaller the piece, the more dangerous it can be to cut.  There is a lot more to ripping and cutting this material than a table saw and a chop saw.  You need to make jigs and temporary fences to keep the material supported, and your hands away from the blades.  

PROTO 48 LAYOUT #4 - BENCHWORK

 This layout resides over my workbench at a height of about 55” from floor to railhead.   I wanted all 20’ linear feet of the workbench to be accessible by a rolling chair, as I have different stations along it - painting, electronics, assembly and build area, machining, parts storage,…etc..   This meant no legs to impeded my lateral movement.  Additionally, I didn’t want any vertical supports between the layout and the workbench to obstruct the work space.   The bench and the layout would have to be cantilevered off the wall.   

You can see the framing for the layout and workbench on the left.  They are both supported by the same vertical “legs” spaced about 4’ apart.   The radius arch horizontals don’t interfere with legs, while moving back and forth, and also don’t interfere with the work area.  They are actually handy for storing clamps.

As you can see from the photo, there are plywood stringers, with a L front assembly to strengthen the edge.  Everything is made from 3/4” maple plywood.   The work bench has steel Unistrut stringers for sturdy support without sacrificing leg room.  

The “sandwich”    Unfortunately the seam fell just at the end of a piece of roadbed and the chunk of homasote on the right is only a 1” triangle.  

The layout surface is a sandwich of 3/4” foam core maple plywood,  two layers of 1” foam, and 1/2” homasote.    The whole thing is an effort to keep the weight down on the layout.  Everything put together, including the homasote was probably around 30-40 pounds.  

Foam inlay cutouts for homasote roadbed.

The maple foam core plywood was secured to the framing with washer head cabinet screws from underneath.    While it would have been more economical from a material standpoint to utilize full sheets of plywood and foam, I cut all the layers in three equal length sections.   The idea is that someday, it would be easy to remove the sections, by just cutting the rail at the seams between.   Since this is as much a diorama as a train layout, I sort of intend on changing it in the future and building an entirely different scene.   

Homasote roadbed pressed into foam

Since the layout was drawn full scale in CAD, I used this and a CAM program, to create cut files for a CNC machine, and everything was cut out on that for accuracy.  If I was using flex track, I could have attached directly to the foam, but since I’m hand laying the track, and based on experience doing this as a teenager, Homasote is an excellent base for this, and holds the spikes well.  Again, with keeping the weight down, I figured on only placing the Homasote exactly where I needed it.  Fortunately my CAM program has an inlay feature.  This feature generates the cut file for the pocket in the foam, and the file that cuts out the Homasote.  It’s actually more complex than it seems.  Since the CNC machine cuts with a round bit (1/4” in this case) the cut in the foam would leave a 1/8” radius on the inside corners, but this same corner on the Homasote, would be an outside corner, and would be cut sharp.   The program figures all this out, so you get a perfect fit.  I programmed in a 0.020 allowance on the cut, and everything fit perfect but I had to tap them in slightly.  Doing it again, I would have gone with 0.030.   I could have set this pocket to any depth, but since I’m modeling well used industrial track, I wanted the bed almost flush with the surface.   Another nice feature of using the CNC - I used a v shaped bit to cut a barely visible centerline in the roadbed.  

PROTO 48 LAYOUT #3 - TRACK EXPERIMENTS

 I want to have almost everything concerning the handlaid track work dialed in prior to actually building any on the layout.   I plan on cutting the ties myself, since this is relatively easy to do accurately in 1/48 scale.  The two most common materials used for O Scale ties, are white pine and basswood.  Both of these are soft enough to take spikes without splitting, but hold them well.  It will come down to which looks closer to the prototype after finishing.   

This is a block of basswood I had laying around my shop.   Although my supplier has a variety of thicknesses of basswood, most are 4-6” thick.   In woodworking, basswood  is used primarily for carving, so bench the thicker slabs.  

I’ve cut the basswood into more manageable blocks and then cut the tie materials.

Glued to a board.  The pine at top, looks more prototypical prior to stain.

The basswood absorbed stain better.  I’m using a water based Walnut stain made by General Finishes as my base coat.  It’s a black-dark brown-grey stain combo.

Some additional fiddling around by selectively adding some Dark Brown Dye Stain (also General Finishes) 

Testing the ties with some “ballast”.   The ballast is actually cat litter - another test.  Probably somewhere back in past posts I’ve discussed my dislike of Woodland Scenics Ballast (I like their other products)   Woodland Scenics ballast is made of walnut shells that tend to float more than I would like during the glue phase of ballasting.   Scenic Express sells ballast made using real stone, however, I have avoided purchasing anything from them since around 2007 when I asked them for a catalog at Timonium and they said only if I bought something.  We were at Timonium for the weekend with the Free-Mo group, and was actually planning on buying a lot from them, but just wanted to go through the catalog first and then before the end of the two day show make my purchase.  Rubbed me the wrong way, so I find my scenery elsewhere.   The cat litter is a clay product and is fairly close to what was probably coming out of the local trap rock quarries on the CNJ.  Perhaps slightly on the light side.  I’m going to experiment with adding some Woodland Scenics cinder ballast in small amounts to the mix.  I also need to see if there is any issue with this material being affected by the glue and water when I actually glue down.  I did sift out the larger chunks, and have since made an even finer sifter that gets the rock size to where I want to be.   Again, just fiddling around. 

Finding the right tie color is difficult.  If you look at the prototype, most are either newer, very black/brown ties, thanks to upgrades by railroad, or, on unused or little used lines, sun bleached old ties, typically very whitish grey, with some brown.  I’m modeling a heavily used, but likely poorly maintained, branch line, where the majority of the freight was liquid petroleum or chemical products.  I’m going to probably go with a darker black/brown color, and the ballast will be heavily weathered, darkened.  

COMMENTS - My bad….

 Besides neglecting blog updates, I’ve completely neglected the comments.    I’ve tried to go through and post the non-span  non-anything not related to trains and steel.  Sorry if I missed yours.  I do appreciate them.   There is too much spam for me not to moderate, and also the occasional political or other comment that has no place here.  

Also - please hang on if you are steel mill modeler.  I know most of the last several years has been O scale or book reviews, but steel mill modeling will be making a return soon.   The layout is done being used as a storage shelf and is up and running again, dusted, vacuumed, and ready for work to resume.   Specific long term projects, need to be finished, and there are a few new ones to be started.  

One other matter or light housekeeping - the blog was coming up as unsecured, which maybe kept some folks away.   I think I corrected this, but if you are having trouble getting on, or anything else, please let me know.

Jim

PROTO 48 LAYOUT #2 - THE SETTING

 I’ve explored a few different prototypes to model on this small layout, and eventually settled on a favorite environ of mine - the industrial conflagration of central New Jersey, along the Turnpike Corridor.  This is at it’s most intense roughly between Newark and Perth Amboy.  As a youngster, traveling between my home in the very bucolic Westchester County, NY and our beach home, in the equally bucolic Avalon, NJ, my favorite part of the four hour ride were the sights and smells along this portion of the New Jersey Turnpike. Activity was everywhere - planes, trains, automobiles, and ships.  Smoke and haze all over.  Refinery flare towers lighting up the night sky.  

The inspiration - the southern end of the CNJ Sound Shore branch in the mid 70s.  By the way, the plant in the foreground is a copper refinery/smelter and had an extensive 2’ narrow gauge plant railroad, with a dozen or so locomotives.  

At my O Scale club, I model the Penn Central, and initially my plan was to do the same at home, however, as I am now modeling in PROTO-48, and my home locomotives and rolling stock will not be useable on the club layout, I am no longer tethered to this specific railroad.   This frees me up to model a portion, of one of my favorite sections of rail - the Central Railroad of New Jersey’s, Sound Shore Branch.

The Sound Shore Branch, is a small, five mile long branch line that diverges from CNJs Chemical Coast Line at Bayway (Linden); and then runs roughly parallel to it, but along the edge of the Arthur Kill.  The Arthur Kill is a waterway between New Jersey and Staten Island, NY.  Besides being used to access the industries along both of its shores, the Arthur Kill is a secondary way for vessels and barges to enter the NY/NJ seaport, from Raritan Bay, and the Atlantic Ocean.   For the first half of the branch, while there were passenger stations and trains, literally, no one lives there.   The stations were for industrial complexes.  The branch crosses the Rahway River, a tributary of the Arthur Kill,  via a swing bridge, and enters the very industrial town of Carteret, NJ, it’s terminus.   There are perpendicular connecting branches back to the Chemical Coast Line at Carteret and Tremley Point.   Most of the land that the railroad traverses is tidal marsh.  Factories were built on dredge fill, and the tracks were barely above the water line, and in some cases, partially submerged under a mix of water from the Kill, and “other” liquids.  To give you some idea of the volume of traffic on this branch, in the early 1950s, this five miles of track had a half dozen or so daily passenger trains, and at least a dozen local freights.  The entire branch was operated under Rule 93 - yard rules, ie. The entire branch was considered a yard, so just look out for the other guy and work it out.    

An interesting feature of this branch is that the first industry at Bayway it served was a large Phelps Dodge electrolytic copper refinery, and the last industry in Carteret, was the even more massive, US Metals electrolytic copper refinery and smelter.  The US Metals Plant had the largest smokestack east of the Mississippi until it was razed in the 1990s.   New Jersey was the largest producer of refined (99.9% pure) copper for years, with four large plants within about a 10 mile line all on the Chemical Coast - the two I’ve mentioned on the CNJ Sound Shore Branch, and Anaconda in nearby Perth Amboy, and American Smelting and Refining in Woodbridge.  Besides copper there were at least three large oil refineries, and the Dutch Boy White Lead works.  Heavy heavy industry.   All of the copper refineries had very large in-house narrow gauge railroad systems.  

Tremely Point - DuPont in foreground, GAF behind.  If you look close you can see the volume of traffic, almost all tank cars, with some covered hoppers and boxcars.  The DuPont plant alone has around 40-50 cars spotted or waiting spotting.  

The section of the railroad known as Tremely Point, is going to be my specific local.  Tremley Point was the home of three large chemical plants, and several tank farms.   GAF (General Analine and Film),  DuPont, and American Cyanamid, all had large plants on Tremley Point.    I will either model the twilight of the CNJ in the mid 70s, or early Conrail in the late 70s.   

We are roughly over the GAF and DuPont plants looking south.  You can see the American Cyanamid Plant in the upper left corner.  The Arthur Kill is at upper left and the Rahway River is in the center top.  You can see the Sound Shore Branch Bridge crossing the Rahway River and entering Carteret.  By the time this photo was taken, the bridge wasn’t being used anymore, and the Carteret portion of the Sound Shore was accessed by the perpendicular connecting branch from the Chemical Coast Line in Carteret.  Also note the track curve of the Sound Shore and the partially submerged tracks.

Twenty feet in O scale, equals about 1000 feet in real life, so there is going to obviously be extensive selective compression, and partial modeling.   When I started steel mill modeling, I spent a lot of time researching and understanding how all the processes worked, what pipe carried what gas, etc.   While I’ve tried, the chemical industry, and it’s infinite number of processes and configurations, has me completely stumped, so I don’t plan on going neurotic and trying to model every pipe and pump and tank correctly. (So don’t call me out on this)   I am also not going to specifically model the GAF/DuPont/American Cyanamid plant structures exactly.    Photographs of this area are not plentiful.  

The Sound Shore Branch at upper left and the south end of the GAF plant.  The dyestuffs and other chemicals produced at this plant, generated millions of gallons of industrial waste.  Tremley Point was an ideal place for this, as no one lived there (the town of Tremley Point, where people do live is a mile or two away on the other side of the NJ Turnpike) , and you could just dig a ditch, like the milky grey one in the center of the photo and your problems would disappear in the tidal flow and eventually into the Atlantic Ocean.   While from our modern sensibilities this sounds, maybe horrible, it was quite common practice back then. Some of these plants had permits to haul acid waste out to sea in barges daily.  Believe it or not, the above is vastly preferable to what many of the inland New Jersey chemical plants did - fill up unlined lagoons and retention ponds, that leached into the groundwater and did cause harm to many.    There is some green, in this photo, but suffice to say I won’t be buying a whole lot of static grass.   I am excited about the modeling challenges with these murky, muddy, polluted ditches and creeks.

I’m going to stick with my hybrid freelance-prototype rule that I’ve used on my steel mill layout, to free myself up.   This rule is that I don’t need to stick with a specific prototype, but whatever I model, has to have a prototype - hopefully that isn’t confusing.  Basically it means I could build a model of a chemical plant using inspiration from many different prototypes, but that everything has to have existed.    I’ve found this will produce an accurate looking model, but without some of  the drudgery.  

PROTO 48 LAYOUT #1 - So long Leroy Jenkins…

So begins my newest diversion into the world of Proto 48. For those unfamilar, Proto 48 is a modeling subset, of the already small O Scale 2 rail modeling population. Eons ago, when people began modeling in O Scale 2 rail, manufacturers decided it would be simpler to just make O scale mechanisms, and rail, an easy to remember 1 1/4". In 1/48th scale, this of course, is 5', not the prototypical 4' 8 1/2". So you wonder, what does this 3 1/2" difference look like in O-1/48th Scale - 0.073 inches. Not a whole lot visually, but honestly, regular O Scale 2 rail track does look a little wide, if you have been looking at railroad track for years, like me. Besides correcting this rail spacing issue, Proto 48 also addresses flange and wheel profiles, and other prototype fidelity issues, but maybe more on that in future posts. You have to be a bit of a masocist to delve into Proto 48. There is little out there in way of commercial products, and 99.9% of the O Scale locomotives produced, didn't offer a Proto 48 option. So, just to get some motive power, you are looking at reworking the wheelsets, axles, electrical pickups,...etc. And then you will have to adjust the truck sideframes. Freight and passenger trucks also will need to be reworked with new wheelsets and bolsters to readjust the sideframe spacing. In the truck department, there are commericially available Proto 48 versions of most of the popular designs. They are nicely detailed and made, but also cost in the $50-65 range for a pair. Again, there will be more on the motive power and truck rebuilding in future posts. If I was building a basement sized layout, there is no way I would go Proto 48 - I don't have enough years left, or money to do so. But, since my layout will be a simple 18"x20' shelf, with a minimal number of turnouts, and only large enough to hold a single locomotive and maybe a half dozen-dozen cars, I'm giving it a shot. The layout, though operational, will be built as more of a diorama. I intend the trackwork to be as detailed as the freight cars and factories.

It starts with a bad sketch and lots of erasing

Who is this Leroy Jenkins fellow? If you are asking that, odds are, you are older than 35. Leroy Jenkins was an online gamer that gained popularity maybe 15 years or so ago. Leroy was part of a team playing the World of Warcraft online. They had stopped their characters at a door to a game environment that was particularly difficult, and that had defeated them before. They spent a good five to ten minutes formulating a complex strategy to prevail, whenwhile, and unknown to the team, Leroy had went to his kitchen to make chicken fingers, and when he sat back down at his computer, he screamed his name, and just ran through the door. What follows is a comedic nerd meltdown by his unprepared teammates, and fairly quick deaths of most of the team. You can probably find the original video on Youtube. My layout design process from my teens, upto my present age of 55, has been "Leroy Jenkins" - just go in guns blazing and figure it out later. This of course, has let to many renovations and reworks of my HO layout, although overall, it isn't a totally bad thing, since I've been modeling a 1950s integrated steel mill with roots pre-1900. These mills, like Bethlehem home plant, or Johnstown, had tight footprints, and upgrades to the mill would be typically complex and a bit disorganized. This time, I wanted to actually refine a plan, before I started laying track.

 

TREMLEY POINT LAYOUT - Initial CAD plan

I started with a sketch - pencil on paper.  I’m not that creative, and have appropriated sections of the former Glover Road HO layout, featured in the Boomer Dioramas YouTube channel; and the O Scale Cleveland Flats shelf layout.    After the sketch was tweaked a few times, and I was in the ballpark, I moved to CAD on the computer.  This is a bit complicated, and not something that readers will be able to access readily.   The initial drawing was done on a program called V-Carve Pro, by VETRIC.   It’s a CAD/CAM program, primarily used by people working with CNC machines or Laser Cutters.  After getting all the basic lines in V-Carve, I export the drawing as a 2d vector file and then import it into Corel Draw.  It would be easier to just do it all in Corel, but the bottom line is I’m just not proficient enough with it, compared to V-Carve.  I also find V-Carve to be more of a linear, geometric, mechanical drawing type arrangement, where as Corel is more about creating art.  Corel is useful for this process in adding scenery and structures to the plan, and also, for printing.  (I am unable to print well out of V Carve) 

The full sized layout printout

Speaking of printing -   The layout is drawn in full scale, ie.  1” on the drawing is 1” on the layout.   So this drawing is 18” wide by 248” long.  Fortunately I have an ink jet printer that takes 24” wide rolls of paper, and I was able to print the entire layout out on one sheet of paper.   The layout benchwork perimeter was cut out by scissors and I was able to place the entire plan on the benchwork.  This allows me to see how it looks; check clearances; identify problems; whatever.  I will use this CAD drawing for cutting the bench top, foam, and road bed.   If you are scratchbuilding cars, or structures, or whole layouts in O Scale, or HO for that matter, having one of these printers is helpful.  They are cheaper than you are probably thinking - mine was around $600, and the paper is cheap, and ink jet cartridges are reasonable.   Yes, it has a built in cutter that trims the sheet.   It cuts wherever the printing ends, so in a way, conserves paper.

Test fitting on benchwork - adding a printout of a #6 turnout

Next post - the prototype environment I’m modeling