Along the Right of Way ...

Finding a New Home for the Trains...

When I finally decided that I wasn't going to work on the old layout any more because it simply didn't do what I wanted, the next project became finding a home for the new layout.  Like I said last time, moving wasn't really an option as we were satisfied with our house and its location relative to places that we wanted to go.  At that time, I was working downtown, just a short five minute walk away.  Besides, our house had appreciated in value, so we would be spending at least what we had in value to get the same thing... it didn't make any sense.

I had been to a county fair someplace and had seen a nice club's model railroad built in a trailer.  The trailer was probably about 8 feet wide and maybe 20 feet long.  It was air-conditioned (and I assumed heated) so I could use it all year long.  I even thought that if someone else could take their trains on the road, so could I. 

I'm not sure who I talked to, but I even went so far as to get a quote for one that would probably fit my needs.  The price, $8,000, didn't seem too bad when I compared it to other options and I seriously considered it.  But in the end, something told me that I didn't want my trains set up in a trailer that would be parked behind our house.  Back to the drawing board...........

Our house is built on half a basement... the other half is a crawl space for access to heating, wiring & plumbing.  I had looked at a small area in the basement previously so looked at it again.  The area was carefully measured and more than one ream of paper was wasted in sketching how my grand railroad empire might fit in an area only 12 x 8.  In a nutshell, it wouldn't.  Besides, the basement has had water in it and wasn't the cleanest, dust-free area in the house either.  Back to the drawing board.... again.

Perhaps it was an aligning of the stars or just simple fate, but things began to happen that, well, pointed in a different direction.  One day, I was out in the garage and noticed that there were some plaster chips on the roof of the car.  I didn't think much of it, but a few months later, I saw some water drops mixed in with the plaster dust.  Uh-oh, a leaking roof.  Upon closer inspection, the metal roof had deteriorated to the point where it was leaking... and there were a few other places where it would be leaking soon as well.

I had noticed that the people door on the garage was also getting harder to close.  That was caused by the whole frame shifting a little, binding the door at the bottom.  A while later, a friend pointed out that water from melting snow on the car in the winter had apparently run under the walls in the garage and the wooden base plate was starting to rot in several places.  Some kind of animal had taken up residence under the porch and that caused a big stink... literally, when he "expired" there.

We knew that our daughter would be getting older and would want her own car... our existing garage only had room for one.  And, Mom and Dad were frequent house guests but we only had one bathroom, located on the second floor of the house.  Climbing stairs had become a little more difficult for them, so a bath downstairs looked like a good investment as well.  So I got out some paper and a pencil and went to work on some new drawings... not of a future model railroad, but of a new, two-car garage with a bath downstairs.  But... there was that window at the top of the stairs that "could" be converted to a doorway... and a second story "bonus room" wouldn't add all that much to the project...  maybe, just maybe, the trains would find a new home after all.

Until next time...

dlm

That Second Layout... Final Thoughts

For a while now, I've been promising to visit that second layout one more time but then something comes along and I get off track.  So, today, I'll finish thoughts on it and move on.

When it comes to model railroaders, there are two basic camps.  There are those who like to do a lot of switching cars in and out of yards & sidings, then there are those who simply like to set up a nice train then let it meander around the layout and simply enjoy watching it go.  I tend to fall into the "watch 'em roll" crowd.  Oh, I like to do a little switching to keep things interesting, but I find simply watching trains to be enjoyable whether they are the little ones on my layout or the big ones in real life.

But my little shelf layout simply didn't afford me the opportunity to watch the trains struggle up hills or cross bridges so, in the end, it wasn't what I really wanted.  I'm not disappointed that I built it because it did offer me several things:  first, it was fun.  It allowed me to try some different things and learn some different skills that I would use later.  It gave me the chance to build some buildings that would find a home on a future layout and it filled the gap until a better space for a bigger layout could be found.  So I would strongly suggest that anyone who is planning to build a mode railroad layout should start with a smaller project for the reasons mentioned above.

Like I said, the only drawback was that it didn't let me watch my trains roll along.

When a couple goes house hunting, SHE often checks things like the kitchen, baths, guest rooms, decorating possibilities while HE heads for the garage to see where he will be doing guy things.  When a model railroader looks at a new house, his primary concern is, "Where will my new layout go?"  After visiting a place but before even talking to the bank about a loan, he has already done some drawings on where the trains will fit in the basement or spare room!

But we weren't in the market for a new home, the guest room was just that and our daughter was still going to be at home for another 10-12 years... what is a model railroader to do??!?

We will talk about that next time.  Until then...

dlm

They Spelled it Wrong!

Dog-gone it, they spelled my name wrong!  Actually, this is a wooden express reefer car that is produced by Roundhouse Products.  Roundhouse is a division of Horizon Hobbies, but for many years, they were independently owned and produced many fine locomotive & rolling stock kits.

As it turns out, I have a contact with the company, so I emailed them to find out about the origin of the car.  There actually was a Merkle Dairy in the Chicago area during the 1920's-1940's.  Someone sent them a picture of the actual car.  Since this was before the dawn of color photography, the picture was in black & white.  They had to guess at the coloring and probably did it so it would fit in with passenger cars of that era.  Reefers like this were often part of a passenger train since the higher speed / higher priority meant that the milk got to the dairy quicker.

After doing a little more research, I found out a little about the dairy... I even emailed the owner's granddaughter.  Since she was not even born when the family sold the dairy, she didn't know much about it but it was fun to communicate with her anyway.

The cars came out last year so I had to have Santa Claus bring me a pair of them at Christmas. 

When people see them in my collection or on the layout, they sure do raise an eyebrow.  They are another fun part of the hobby.  One of these days, I'll tell you about a couple of the "prank" cars that I created for some friends of mine.

So next time guys, remember, it's "M-E-R-K-E-L!"

Until next time...

dlm

Fire!

Things are generally peaceful on my model railroad layout.  As far as I know, everyone seems to get along pretty well.  The townspeople are content, the merchants sell their wares and the factory workers do their jobs with a minimum of complaining.  But this was not always the case...

A few years ago, some rabble rousers came to town to try to stir up some trouble.  Generally, the townspeople ignored them... oh, some of them would listen to what they had to say, but then went about their normal day-to-day business.

One night, people were awakened to the smell of smoke, the shouts of "FIRE!" and the screaming of fire engines' sirens as the fire department raced to the scene of a fire at the local offices of the Nickel Plate Road!  Since the fire had been spotted by an alert night yard crew and the firemen did an excellent job of getting the flames extinguished, damage was kept to a minimum.  While the cause of the fire was never officially determined, some locals pointed a finger at the rabble rousers who haven't shown their faces since.

Actually, the building is a kit designed to simulate a burning building.  It comes complete with smoke generators and little red & orange lights that flicker & blink randomly to simulate a burning fire.  The burned window frames and smoke stains were also part of the building kit.  All I did was to assemble it according to the instructions and add the name plate at the top.  It did take a little wiring to get the lights & smoke generators to work, but all in all, it was a pretty straightforward project that added an unusual point of interest to the layout.  It also made for the origin of a pretty good yarn!

Until next time...

dlm

More on that Second Layout...

In a previous post, I promised some pictures of the warehouse backdrop that I made.  If you missed that one, I described how I took a line drawing from MODEL RAILROADER, had it enlarged to HO scale, then cut it out, mounted it, colored it, added some detail and finally placed it on the layout.  It looked pretty good, even though it was relegated to the background areas.

In case you are interested, here are a couple of pictures of it...

This is the building as it appeared on the older, second layout.  It was placed back against the backdrop and I parked some freight trailers in front of it to make it look like it was generating business.  Normally, one would have a rail line going into it; otherwise, it might be considered as wasted space on the layout.  I chose not to as there wouldn't have been an easy way to get a track back to it.  Since it was on the back wall, it didn't take up much space at all.  The buildings in the foreground helped conceal the fact that it was only about an inch thick.  All in all, it worked out pretty good.

Here is the same building backdrop at home on my new layout.  There is still a lot of work to be done on this one, but you can see that I already have a government building in a prominent place in town.  That is there because of the nickname I have been given on one of the railroad groups that i frequent.  The name?  "The Guv!"  Perhaps that story is best saved for another post, but it does point out why I think model railroading is so much fun.  That title was bestowed upon me by a guy whom I've never met other than through the group and some telephone & email conversations.  You may recognize the foreground building as Independence Hall from Philadelphia.

I mentioned that a track might have been appropriate in front of the warehouse to allow for switching freight cars into and out of the building area.  In this case, there is not a track planned for there at this time, but it would be pretty easy to add one if I wanted to.  Time will tell...

That will do it for now... until next time.

dlm

I'm in the Movie Business.....

Well, not exactly, but I did get your attention!

In my last post, I mentioned that I'd have some final thoughts about my second layout, but since that time, something else came along.  So, for the time being, that promised segment is "on the siding."

For quite some time now, I've been planning the city section of my current layout.  I have a big loop of track that goes around the entire area, doubling back on itself as it climbs a 2% grade.  This has left me a circular area about five feet in diameter to fill with city buildings.  I've always liked city buildings as opposed to just houses so this has been a lot of fun to get the kinds of buildings that I like & will fit the scene.  It also gives me a bit of room to do some scratchbuilding since the area is laid out on a bit of a bias with some unusual street angles.

When we visited Disney World several years ago, I paid particular attention to the city areas.  I noticed several things that I tried to incorporate into the layout of my town.  First, the streets weren't straight.  They had a curve in them.  This made it much harder to see the street's end.  This made the street look much longer too.

Second, the cross streets weren't on a 90 degree angle, and in some cases, the cross streets weren't straight either.  This effectively hid their shorter length as well.  Finally, at the end of each street or cross street was a "T" intersection.  You had to look very hard to find a place where you could see beyond the street's end to some other area that didn't "fit."

I've tried to incorporate these things into the layout of my city so I'll need some buildings built at odd angles to fit into the lot spaces available.

Most cities that were the size of mine had a small theater in the downtown area.  I've been looking for one for quite some time that looked right.  A recent check on Ebay revealed that someone had picked up some used buildings from Walthers; one of those buildings was the Walthers Palace Theater, complete with some fancy electronics that provide chase lights & kind of a neon effect from the starburst behind the marquee.  All in all, it looked pretty good and the price was considerably less than the $80 - $100 for one that was brand new.

Thursday afternoon, I was notified that I had won the bidding on the theater and Friday, the seller had told me that he had shipped it to me.  The package arrived Monday.  Lunch just had to wait as I carefully unpacked it and gave it a try... PERFECT!  It worked just as advertised.

What I know about electronics, one could put in a thimble and still have room for their finger.  But in this case, the fine people at Walthers have already done all of the electronics work for me.  All I need to do is to plug it in and watch the lights dance their magical dance.  There are even stick-on letters to put the title of my favorite movie on the marquee.  So, I guess that puts me in the movie business... or perhaps more specifically, the theater business.  Now, on most any night of the week, the inhabitants of my city will have some place to go for entertainment!

My thinking is that advances in electronics is the next frontier of model railroading.  We are already seeing engines with DCC (Digital Command Control) controls that allow us to do things that we couldn't do before... things like controlling train direction independently of the track, special lighting, etc.  Now, many engines (and even train cars) are coming equipped with sound specifically matched to their type.  In some cases, the sounds are based on actual recordings of the prototype engine sounds.  That is a far cry from the old chug, chug, chug some of us may remember on those early train sets.  The Walthers Palace Theater only adds to the progress with the special lighting effects created by the advanced electronics.

Well, I can smell the popcorn & people are lining up outside... guess I'd better get busy selling tickets.  Until next time........

dlm