A Long, Sad Month

January has been a tough month.  Cindy's mother passed at 90, and while it had been expected for a while, it still was a bit difficult for all the family.

We made the trip to west Texas for her services, and to participate in some of the usual family business over the next day or so.  It was a time of sadness, but of good cooperation among the six surviving siblings.

The truck showed 1018 miles, Tuesday - Friday.  Recovering from that has been a challenge, especially with the colder, wetter weather of late.

Note: COS - total change of subject here: ;-)

Today it's been warm (?) enough to spend some afternoon tome in the garage, working on trains.  In the past, I made three hot-wire foam cutters.  A friend in the train group in Lubbock named them the "Foaminators."  It stuck.  But they didn't. I don't know if I sold them, gave them away, or they are just MIA from the move. They are gone.  So, I'm making a new set, pretty much like the old ones.

As I am starting the scenery on the home layout, one thing I want is a little "vertical" scenery, trying to minimize the "plywood plains" look so common in TTrak modules.  Here's where I got to today:

The tool is made from 1" PVC pipe.  Power wiring, routed through the pipe (I forgot to do this the first time), is low-voltage wire for outdoor wiring.  It's a good size, giving a low resistance feed to the cutting wire.  My cutting wire is 22ga nichrome resistance wire, similar to that in toasters, etc.  Brass hardware is used at the connection points.  Personally, I like to have six to eight feet of lead from the bottom of the handle to the power source, with 10 feet not out of reason.

After marking the lines for the cut, it's time to crank it up.  Having an adjustable power source is imperative.  I ran this cut at about 1A current.  Voltage, I don't know.  It's low, but not important. It's the current through the cutting wire, heating it up, that does the work.  By the way, be sure you have plenty of ventilation.  I was working at the open garage door.

Here's the trench for the mainline tracks.  I'll be shaping the foam edges to form a sloping cut for scenery.  Now that it's rough cut, shaping is easy-peasy. I may even layer it tall enough to cap it, forming a small tunnel.  Kids (of all ages) at train shows seem to love tunnels.  That would give more hillside for small houses, forested areas, and . . . 😉

The small inner loop (for a trolley) will stay at this elevation.  It will have to slope down to a crossing (just off frame) but that's no problem, either.

It's easy to shape with Surform or similar wood tools.  In fact, I've even clamped the Foaminator in a small work table (a "Work-Mate" or similar)  and guided the foam around it.  There are no magic techniques here, just play with it.  Be sure you have plenty of ventilation.  A warm day in the back yard is perfect.

Don't throw away your cuttings.  They are useful for building hills.  Stay tuned for further developments.

Rain, and 15º to 20º F colder for the middle of the week, so it'll be the weekend before I can get out there again.  I'm soooo ready for spring!

Barn diving

Well, I spent today diving into the remote corners (not the remotest, yet!) of my barn.  In the process, I've rearranged a bit, placing related items (N, On30, etc.) together.

At the very end, in the deepest, hardest to reach place (which I'm sure I've searched before) I struck treasure!  There were a number of items that I was sure were lost forever in the moves we've made the past 3 1/2 years..

But, miracles of miracles, they showed up!  I fully believe the Law of Selective Gravitation has been at work here.  You know, when you lose track of something (generally by dropping it and it bounces away) it's because it time warped to the future.  That's why you can't find it now, but may find it sometime later, or not.

At any rate, you're aware of the home TTrak layout I've been puttering (sputtering?) on for a while now is to feature a tram line through the town.  It's been frustrating since the target trams were gone.  Guess what - "They're baaack!!!"  They are the Kato Hirshoma-Hanover trams:

It's good they turned up, I sure couldn't afford them now.  Especially the two I have.  I feel encouraged to forge ahead, garage temperature permitting.

The other main item I found was a stash of Tomix N Fine Track.  No big deal of itself, except that in the pile were two turnouts I've been aching to build into modules.  They are right-hand and left-hand curved turnouts: 

For TTrak, they are nearly perfect, being 317/280mm in radii.  And, a standard curved piece (just happen to have some ;);) ) completes the 90º corner. 

There were some other goodies found that I feared were lost, as well, but these are the crown jewels of the day.  Yea!!!

Mending Fences

No train work, physically, today.  But whilst on another task, I put in a bit of thought on the trolley loop on the layout.  I have an idea that, if I can make it work, will save real estate for structures. 

First, on to 'real' real estate.  We share a wood fence with a neighbor on one side.  Good people, great neighbors.  Recently, they bought a small travel trailer, and decided to park it in their side yard, behind the fence.  We have no problem with that.  They did.

They have a small steel barn on a slab back there (as do I, but that's not important.)  The trailer wouldn't fit, too long.  So, the decision was to pull the fence forward far enough to contain the trailer.  With no HOA (Yea!!!) and a very permissive city, they set out to move the fence line.

Before starting, they did talk with us about it, and were concerned with how the uneven fence line between the houses would look.  After a bit of discussion, they said they would move my short fence to maintain alignment with theirs.  Good, I said.

In moving the fence, my gate there, a wide personnel gate (the mower will drive through, but not a street vehicle) was repaired and rehung.  A side note here: these fences were of so-so construction quality.  I generally say that the developer/builder used the Crappy Fence Company.  I'll not say any more.

Anyway, my gate there was stuck partially open, and was sagging.  After they (he and his wife worked side by side) were finished, the new gate on my side works fine.  It was moved to a more level spot on the fence line.  It was still wanting to sag, since it did not have a diagonal brace on the back side.  Now it does, thanks to a 2x4 and some long wood screws.  Looks good, works good, job finished.

Their gate opening is extra wide, to accommodate backing the trailer into its spot.  The original gates are too short.  With the unevenness of the yards around here, they wouldn't have worked anyway.  They are working on a solution to that issue, but are happy for now that the fences are moved and all are satisfied.

On the other side of our house, we have a double gate.  It suffers from sagging and other problems.  For fence work, that's next on the agenda.  Not until warmer weather, but it's in the project queue.  Those gates will have to be removed, straightened, and have a working brace applied.  Then they need to have about 2" sawn off the bottom (the yard here is NOT flat,) some hinge and hinge mounting point repairs made and rehung.  I will require some muscles for some of this, as I certainly cannot even attempt it any more. 

A few pickets need a little attention, but that's just a few screws and my cordless driver.  Not a problem man.

Now, for the trolleys.  I think I've devised a scheme that would allow unattended loop-to-loop action, with no reversing controls, no DCC, no track position sensors.  I'm going to be working on that idea, and will share details once I have it working.

Here's an early doodle for the tram track plan:

Track joint vs. module joint is an on-going consideration.  It's gonna be fun.

The Rat's Nest

The wiring under the layout I've been working on could have been a headache, a proverbial "rat's nest."  But, however it looks physically, the wiring diagram I posted last time has proven valuable.  I made a couple very minor revisions, and here's the "final" version.  As of today. Yeah, right.

The first of the changes are (I won't ask you to hunt for them) moving Connection J from Block 3 to Block 5.  The other is Connection 7.  It doesn't exist, since I haven't installed a power drop on the C-module curved track.  Rather than delete it altogether, I'm preserving it should the need arise in the future.  Hence, it's shown as (7).  Some future drawings will have a need for this feed point.  Yes, even now there are expansion plans bubbling under the surface.

Also, I've turned the double-crossover's module around to move it away from the wye's turnout.  It probably would have been fine there, but it kinda bothered me, so, now's the time to do it.  In the (distant?) future, I'd like to replace it with single crossovers on each side of that module.

A word about the power connectors.  Kato and Tomix have differing styles of connectors, which was a small item to address.  What I chose to do was use Kato's through out.  Some terminal blocks, and a little snip - strip - screw down and the conversion was complete.  While I was at it, for now, Connections B1, B2, and B3 are tied to the Inner Loop power, as well.  In the future . . .?

The only place where the Tomix connectors are still used is in the tram loop system, at T1 and T2.  I made a small connector block (T) for them.  To my knowledge, Tomix doesn't.  It is simple to do.

The Tomix connectors (Neo series?) are 0.1" spacing two wire plugs.  That's a common size for computer and electronic breadboard, so a small piece was cut, pins soldered, and instant connection board!  I added a Neo pigtail to it so it plug into the Tomix power pack I have.  Simple.

Hopefully, modules will be joined tomorrow, and once again I'll be running trains.