Category Archives: Model Railroad

(This article originally appeared in the Division 12, MCR’s newsletter “Builder’s Plate”)

Cincinnati Express MCR 2018 Convention report:

With great excitement and a little trepidation, I (along with our Division 12 superintendent) recently attended the 2018 MidCentral Region convention in Cincinnati, OH May 17-20, 2018. The convention was held in the newly-renovated Cincinnati Marriot North, which was an excellent venue for a convention.
Having never before attended an NMRA convention of any size, I was nearly overwhelmed by the event organized by Division 7.  65 open layouts, 35 of which have been published, 10 in Great Model Railroads; op sessions Thursday and Friday nights, Saturday morning, and Sunday morning; bus tours to said layouts; industry tours; 3 days of clinics; model and photo contests; Saturday evening banquet with Gerry Leone as the speaker; the choices were mind-boggling, and one could literally not see and do everything – hard choices had to be made!

I arrived in Cincinnati Wednesday evening, as things were going to kick off right away Thursday.

Thursday afternoon was a self-guided tour of Larry Bonhaus’ large N-scale layout, and Bob Lawson’s layout which showcased his many award-winning super-detailed structure models.

Bob Lawson’s Southern Railway CNO&TP Division

Being an “ops guy”, I would forgo some evening clinics for the op sessions, of course. Thursday evening I was lucky to run on Gerry Albers’ Virginian Deepwater District (http://www.deepwaterdistrict.com/). This is an amazing railroad that incorporates the Virginian Railway; with interchanges with the C&O, NYC, and Allen McClelland’s V&O. The website does not do it justice. I managed to draw two trains that ran nearly the entire length of the railroad, so I was able to truly get an appreciation for the scope of layout. The third and final run was a V&O work train, so I can check off a “bucket list” item and say I actually ran a train from the famed Virginian & Ohio.

Gerry Albers’ Virginian Deepwater District

Friday morning we did a minibus tour of several layouts, including the Eastern Logger’s modular layout, Ed Swain’s Pennsy layout, and Curt LaRue’s PRR Panhandle railroad. Friday afternoon I hit a few of the clinics presented during the day, including a roundtable discussion with the NMRA leadership including NMRA Pres. Charlie Getz, Board member Mike Brestel, VP for Special Projects Gerry Leone, Treasurer/CFO Frank Koch, and Marketing Consultant Christina Ganzer. Friday evening I returned to Curt Larue’s beautiful layout, and worked the Weirton towerman job for the entire evening. PRR steam and more PRR steam, oh my!

Curt LaRue’s PRR Panhandle Division

Saturday morning I attended a clinic for neophyte contest judges, and then immediately we set to work evaluating the numerous models in the contest room. This process took most of the remaining morning and into Saturday afternoon. I will have more detail about how the contest and judging process works at a future Division meeting or in this newsletter.
Saturday evening was spent at the reception, with string music provided by N-scaler and Cincinnati Civic Orchestra director Larry Bonhaus and his wife; followed by the banquet. The keynote speaker was NMRA VP and Model Railroad Video host Gerry Leone, who regaled the attendees with tales of his prior adventures in the advertising business, including hilarious clips of radio spots for various products, including milk.

The last event was a Sunday morning op session on Bob Bartizek’s O-scale hi-rail PRR layout. Luckily this railroad was on the route home north of Cincinnati, as by this time I was dead-beat from all the activity. It was worth the stop, however, as I had my doubts about how a “toy” 3-rail layout would work in an op session. The answer was “amazingly well”. It helps, of course, that the railroad is huge, befitting the size of the rolling stock; but those O-scale locomotives can conceal some really big speakers, and the sound of double-headed O-scale PRR L1 Mikados pounding upgrade with a long coal drag quickly made one forget there was a third rail running down the middle of the track.

At nearly 370 attendees, this convention was probably rivaled only by the national NMRA convention in scope, and I would guess the “average” regional is much smaller and less overwhelming. Even so, “a lot of fun” is inadequate to describe the experience, and I’m looking forward to attending more such events in the future, large or small. I would encourage any NMRA members to do the same. You won’t regret it!

Before:

Full strength white glue:

Fine ground foam as a base:

A little wet water:

Dilute white glue:

A little hairspray:

Mix of short Woodland Scenics short grass:

Mix of 4.5 and 6.0 mm Noch Autumn Grass:

Et voila!

Will look a little better after everything dries. Still will need some coarse foam bushes, polyfiber weeds, and some smaller trees here and there.

Part 1 here.

Continuing on from Towanda to Allentown, I hooked up with 3 other attendees for LSOPS 9. We were scheduled to visit 3 railroads on our visit, but one layout owner had to drop out due to unexpected illness. This worked out for the best, as we then spent an entire day at Jim Hertzog’s amazing Reading Railroad. First, though, we spent all of Friday evening at Larry Reynolds’ PRR Horseshoe Curve layout :

We spent nearly 6 hours at Mr. Reynolds’. I was assigned to the east end of Altoona yard, and was too busy to really get a good look at the rest of the huge layout!

The next morning we were up bright and early, and headed to Jim Hertzog’s for a crew brief and morning op session. After a break for lunch at an excellent nearby café located right next to the NS tracks, we returned to Jim’s place for an afternoon session. For the morning session, I was assigned a mine turn that ran from Shamokin to Locust Summit and back. For the afternoon session, I marked up on a coal drag from Gordon to Shamokin and back. All these trains were headed by Reading steam. (Hooray!!)

Jim Hertzog’s Reading:

A most excellent weekend. I would encourage anyone who is interested in model railroad operations to attend one of these events, even if you are relatively inexperienced. Most layout owners are very accommodating towards neophytes who are truly interested in “playing the game.”

Note: A slightly longer version of this write-up was published in the Division 5, Mid Central Region December 2017 “Trainwire” Vol. XIII No. 12. Full PDF of that issue here.

Made a decision back in May to try to make a major leap forward toward getting more scenery completed on the model S&NY. Knowing that scenery creation requires 50 square feet of mess, whether one is doing 1 square foot or 30 square feet of scenery, I figured I may as well take a big bite of it.

Also, each section I wanted to complete contained at least one bridge for a total of 3. Lifting even one bridge would take the railroad out of commission for op sessions, and doing things all at once would minimize the disruption.

That was the plan, anyway…

Bridges out:

Next, lots of cardboard webbing. A hot glue gun, clothes pins, and a heavy rubber glove help things go relatively quickly. I spent just as much time cogitating on how the landforms should look as actually gluing cardboard:

In the center of above photo, you can see I also fabricated a stream bottom and rough bank edges using foam and a hot-wire cutter. I felt this corner of the railroad would also need more lighting, especially once the trees were in place (I’ve found that dark green tree-covered hillsides tend to suck up a LOT of light), so I installed an additional 2-foot LED fixture back there.

Next came plaster bandages over the cardboard. The green foam is where rock castings will be affixed:

Then, I slopped flat black latex paint over the larger areas I knew would be covered with puffball trees:

The track in the above photo gets reeeeal close to the backdrop on the left, so I used rubber rocks from Cripplebush (http://cripplebush.net) hot-glued directly to the backdrop. Not sure I like the rectangular look of the rock wall, and I may peel it off and cut it to alter the shape a bit. I plan a farm scene with a typical Pennsylvania bank barn in the left foreground, and I made a foundation for the scene out of gatorboard which was hot-glued in place.

The black paint gives the mountainsides a “Mountains of Mordor” look, but that will be all covered up by trees. Eventually.

Also fabricated a new smooth stream base at this location from 0.060 styrene sheet, since the foam underneath was kind of chopped up. Trying to get the foam smooth with spackle was going to be a losing proposition.

Next is to start placing all the rock outcrops at the various cuts and other places.

Anyway, that where things stand now. I’m not using any amazing new or innovative techniques, and I may have bitten off just a bit more than I can chew with this much scenery at once, as it is certainly taking much longer to make progress than I anticipated. The scenes are also much, much deeper than I would ever build again; but hindsight is always 20/20, they say. The scenes should photograph well, once done, though.

Cutting up cardboard in a 95 degree garage is not very “model railroad-y”, but sometimes one has to do the grunt work to advance a project…

Started work on a major scenery project, part of which will encompass a relatively deep portion of flat benchwork just “west” of the town of Laquin. As part of that, I have to decide how far should the mountainside come forward toward the track and aisle. (Overall trackplan here.)

My initial thought was to use that flat empty space and add an additional spur off the main track, heading west back toward the town of Wheelerville:

I have a couple of Walthers curved turnouts in the stash, and used them to sort it out visually:

One of my regular operators has a bunch of Fast Tracks jigs, including curved turnouts, so getting a turnout to fit here is not a problem. There is also room under the benchwork to place a switch machine, and room on the fascia for another turnout control, so those issues were not a consideration.

The main advantage of an additional spur would be the increased operational interest of an additional car spot or two that would need to be worked during an op session. Laquin in real life had a number of industries that I did not include on the model, due to space constraints and other factors, so putting a plausible industry here would not present an obstacle.

However, after thinking it over, I decided not to place another spur and industry here, for purely aesthetic reasons.

The layout design, as is, allows for a progression of sorts along the line from Wheelerville, down the valley to Laquin, and once the turn is made into that town, both the train and the operators are IN Laquin. There are sidings to be worked in town, but with a runaround track in the town proper, there is no need to go back out onto the main until the work is complete.

If the proposed spur was added, the crew would be working backward around the aisle corner toward Wheelerville if eastbound; or going around the corner working ahead and “returning” to Laquin if westbound.

This back-and-forth, I felt, would subconsciously break the feeling of “going somewhere” and progressing on a journey up and over the mountains during a session.

Some might believe I am overthinking this and making more of it than is there. Perhaps, but the late Frank Ellison thought that a model railroad is a stage, and the trains players upon it. If so, then the players must tell a story, of sorts, and I think we must take that into consideration at some level in order to have a truly successful model railroad. If an extra bit of track detracts from, rather than adds to the story, leave it out.

This leads to the question of what to put in this “negative space” scenically. I’ve thought about that too, and have a few ideas. Time will tell….

Op session #16 was held 03/11/17. Only a couple of minor issues with a Bowser PRR F30 flat car and an older Stewart hopper derailing.

In the flat car’s case, I think it is a function of insufficient weight. The older Stewart hoppers I have do not track very well, possibly because the bolsters are not wide enough. I also think the coupler boxes are too wide, and when shoving these cars, the too-wide swing forces the cars off the rails. Will try to sort that out before the next session.

Aside from those minor bugs, the session was considered a success by all.

Included here are some videos shot by Jerry J.:

No. 6 upgrade at Masten Loop

No. 6 whistles for the Wheelerville grade crossing

No. 6 downgrade over the “Big Fill”

No. 7 westbound at Wheelerville

S&NY #112 pounds upgrade over Pleasant Stream sometime in September, 1939.