Lost Continent Railway

Back to work!

2010-03-14T14:31:00.000-07:00

The track gang has been at work again!

Trains leaving the platform would have to negotiate a tight S-turn (to the right, behind the pail of spackle) that's been torn up in favor of re-routing the exit track to the left around a much more train-friendly thirty-six inch curve.

To lay track along the broader curve, the gang filled the gaps between the old roadbeds with plenty of spackle. When it's try, the new track will be laid around the broader curve to meet up with the road bed in the foreground, about two inches from the edge of the table top.

2009-04-26T14:03:00.000-07:00

Laying the last length of track in the terminal yard. Books hold the track flat to the cork roadbed while the glue dries.

It works better if you use books about railroads.

View from the crossing tower

2009-04-26T12:52:00.000-07:00

A look down the yard throat into the terminal yard. A trio of number six switches have been installed to replace the number four scissors switch that impeded traffic into the yard before. A single track leaves the yard where once there was a double track.

And the track gang was strongly encouraged by the chief engineer to clean up all the crap that had collected in the yard, after he promised to put a fifty-dollar tab on the bar at the Buffalo Nickel Tavern in exchange for a job well done.

I was hoping that a five-pack of Blue Point switch machines would arrive Saturday so I could install them before the weekend was out but, as it happens, UPS doesn't deliver on Saturdays or Sundays, so no luck there. Not wanting to wait any longer I glued the switches down and a length of track leading away from the throat through a tight, twenty-four inch curve.

A new way out

2009-04-20T18:48:00.000-07:00

The track gang's been at it again. After a long winter spent mostly in the dark, smoke-filled back rooms at the Lost Piranha Tavern, they managed to rouse their lazy butts from their bench seats and get some work done reopening the yard throat.

These #6 switches will make it possible for all the engines of the Lost Continent Railway to come and go, from the big steamers bringing in a big drag from a cross-country run, to the short yard goats, spotting passenger cars along the platforms. That's the dream, anyway.

The longest locos have had no trouble at all to date crawling through these Code 83 Atlas Super turnouts, when last we ran trains along the road. This time around I'm taking as long as necessary to prepare the roadbed, cutting holes for the switch machines, and fixing the track to the bench.

Plans to hand-lay track along this stretch were set aside in favor of getting the road up and running. Perhaps next summer we'll give the PCB method a try, but I'm hoping to have big steam pulling a string of streamliners around the bend before April's over.

Scissors beats steam engine

2008-11-16T11:46:00.000-08:00

No matter how slowly and carefully I try, I can't get the big steamer through the crossover at the yard throat. The geometry's too tight for the steamer's long, rigid wheelbase.

This is serious.

I haunted e-bay for weeks to get that crossover at a good price, but if the line's flagship steamer can't get through it, it has to go, no matter how much it hurts to tear it up.

Scissors beats steam engine

2008-11-16T11:43:00.000-08:00

... the track gang made short work of the offending crossover once the order was given.

Scissors beats steam engine

2008-11-16T11:40:00.000-08:00

I used flex track to help plot the geometry for the planned crossover.

Scissors beats steam engine

2008-11-16T11:37:00.000-08:00

To lay the track for the new crossover, I'm going to try soldering rails to PCB ties.

I have no local source for these ties, and I wanted to get started right away, so I drove down to Radio Shack and found they had 4x5 sheets of undrilled PCB, so I took one home and cut it up with a hand saw.

This is a lot more trouble than it's worth, believe me, and the cost is about the same. I got thirty-one ties for my five-dollar investment. Fastrax will sell me one-hundred ties for eighteen bucks and save me the trouble of cutting them up. The won't be this long, but now that I've got all the long ones I need, I don't care.

A Control Panel for the LoCo

2008-08-10T18:37:00.000-07:00

I thought it might take all of an hour to cobble together this control panel. The cover is a recycled shelf I built years ago, the angle braces were cut off the ends of cedar I found in the scrap box, and the underside is a piece of MDB left over from another project. It was all nearly ready-made; how could it possibly take longer than an hour to put together? I figured I'd be playing with trains all afternoon.

It didn't take an hour. It took four. I still don't know how.

But it's all together now except for the soldering. The flip-top makes it much easier to get at the electrical components than when they were all hidden under the bench top and I had to crawl underneath to get at them. I'm still not happy with the bracket for hanging the hand-held, but that's something I can improve later. It works for now.

Today's Project

2008-06-29T15:18:00.000-07:00

The paint shop after further upgrade.

A bathroom exhaust fan draws air into the booth and out the back. A few layers of t-shirt cotton stretched over an old picture frame will be fixed against the hole to filter paint from the air.

I still have to cut out a pane of plexiglass to tack over the upper half of the paint box opening.

Switching maneuvers

2008-06-29T13:03:00.000-07:00

Today's project: Upgrade the paint shop.

The Paasche air compressor was a lucky find at an estate sale. I think I got it for less than ten bucks.

I've played around with it and an air brush I bought on e-bay but what I really wanted was a switched plug for it and an exhaust fan. Today's project was to wire the switch and plug.

The shelf they're mounted on is just off the floor under the spray booth that's built into the work bench above it. The hose for the air brush will easily reach the front of the booth.

The End's In Sight

2008-06-08T18:00:00.000-07:00

The track gang has put in a good day laying rail in the terminal yard, and the gang's boss, Dominic, has hauled them all away in the back of the company flatbed for a round of drinks at The Thirsty Camel to show his appreciation for their hard work.

2008-06-08T09:42:00.000-07:00

A rainy day, combined with a recent payday, gave me the time and resources to stay in the basement and lay roadbed in the terminal yard.

I'm spreading a bead of an inexpensive acrylic caulk that works well to glue down the roadbed. It starts out white but dries clear, an improvement over the brownish caulk I was using before.

After the roadbed was laid, I spread spackle between the cork to fill in the yard. I'd highly recommend it over laying a wide sheet of cork. The spackle's easy to spread, fills in completely and is easily repairable.

2008-04-27T18:55:00.000-07:00

After sawing off the roof I had to square off the top edge of the walls. I suppose there's an easy way to do that, but I did it by cutting the walls apart at the corners, then pressing them against a sheet of sandpaper and gently sanding away the bumps until I had a smooth edge. When the top edges both looked nice and straight, I got ready to glue them back to the floor ...

But first, I cut away a thick plastic flange along either side of the floor that used to help hold the shell on. Didn't need that any longer. I also cut a piece of sheet styrene and glued that over the floor to make for a clean, flat working surface.

Finally, I glued the sides back in place. When I checked this morning, the glue had set up firm and tight.

I didn't have enough time to day to do much more than think about how I wanted to arrange the interior, although I did cut and paste together some card paper strips to rough out the rooms I wanted.

2008-04-26T13:08:00.000-07:00

Today the chief engineer was scheduled to oversee some tracklaying, but something else caught his eye: an observation car at a bargain price! Just the kind of rolling stock the chief had in mind for his personal business car.

Almost none of the passenger cars on the LoCo have interiors because they're nearly all bargain-shelf Athearn models -- not that there's anything wrong with them. On the contrary, at the prices commanded by commercially-available finished models, there wouldn't be but a tiny handful of rolling stock on the roster if it weren't for the bare-bones models from Athearn, which the management of the Lost Continent Railway finds perfectly presentable.

The body shop at Dog Water Flowage is still under repair after its nearly total destruction in a conflagration triggered by a short in the heating element of an unauthorized distillery hidden under the floorboards, so the chief engineer began to assemble the car on his own, normally a very quick and easy task of screwing the wheel trucks to the floor, then the weights. Windows snap into the openings and a few extra bits of detail like the brake wheel and the railing around the observation platform would finish the car in just a few minutes.

But the head end of the car has no bulkhead for the vestibule, so the chief cut one from a piece of .020 polystyrene using the rear bulkhead as a pattern, carefully tracing the windows for a doorway and cementing it to the sides with some scrap styrene strip.

"That was pretty easy," the chief thought, wondering how long it would take to add a couple rooms and a side passage. The trick, he realized after eyeballing the job, was that the sides and roof of Athearn cars are cast as a shell that clips over the floor. It would be much easier if the roof came off. How difficult could that be?

Only one way to find out.

2008-04-26T12:57:00.000-07:00

I started the job of trying to cut the roof off by carefully scoring just under the rivet line with an X-acto knife. After about five passes I began to understand why modelers go straight for their Dremel tools when they start a kit bash like this one.

Still, I was hesitant because I knew a cut-off wheel would melt the plastic even at the Dremel's slowest speed, so I practiced a bit by cutting the roof off an old Tyco caboose, and the results were promising enough to let me dare to move on to the observation car.

It's nearly impossible to make a straight cut, and the burr of melted plastic makes the cut look like hell, but I took my time, kept at it, and found it doesn't turn out nearly as bad as it first looks once the burr is carefully scraped away.

Cutting with the Dremel tool revealed what the X-acto knife only began to hint at: These models are made with plastic so thick it could deflect bullets! Battleships don't have armor plating this thick! Even after going all the way around the roof with the Dremel's cut-off wheel I had to use a utility knife to finish cutting through the thickest parts of the plastic.

2008-04-26T12:49:00.000-07:00

With the roof finally sawn off, the job of building up the interior begins to look much more conceivable than before.

Before I begin on the interior, however, there's just a little more work with the Dremel tool to do: I'll have to saw off the head end of the car so I can lay the sides out flat on the work bench. That way I can square off the upper edges of the sides so the roof will sit flat on them.

After the sides are squared off, I can glue the bulkheads again, then glue the whole kit and kaboodle to the floor

Spotting cars

2008-04-13T17:12:00.001-07:00

The track gangs have finished laying two more switches in the terminal yard of the grand central station yet to be named.

As a test of their proficiency, the chief engineer has spent the afternoon spotting a few spare cars on the spurs. He declared the ride through the switches to be so smooth that the first round of drinks at the Thirsty Camel are on him.

His announcement was met with three cheers, and the track gang carried him off on their shoulders, leaving these cars littering the yards.

More of the track gang's handiwork; these three spurs will serve the commissary yards at Hollow Leg. There's a nasty kink in the outside curve at the far left that the chief engineer hasn't found yet, and Dominic Fraboni, boss of the track gang, aims to keep him ignorant of it.

Compare this photo with a shot of the same ground back in December. The work is coming along slowly, but it's coming along just the same.

Gone Round The Bend

2008-04-13T13:32:00.000-07:00

The chief engineer takes a two-car special for a spin around a newly-completed stretch of track along the main line up to the terminal throat. The crossover switches haven't been wired for operation yet, so he backs the special through the s-turn and stops for the photographer.

2008-04-13T07:57:00.000-07:00

Payday! And the chief engineer had some money left over for track and roadbed, so tracklaying into the terminal yard continued this weekend with the inbound main track and two spurs graded past the switches.

Here, the track laying gang uses a row of books to hold a switch in place while the glue dries.

Bringing the cars in

2008-03-31T16:26:00.001-07:00

By Sunday night the grade leading through the terminal throat, and to the switches along the south side of the terminal yard, had been leveled and made ready for track.

"There's no frigate like a book to take us lands away ..." A row of heavy, hard-backed books holds track in place as the glue dries. Standing them up allows air to circulate and the glue to set more quickly.

The track gangs have finished laying the switches into the southern terminal yard and a pair of cars, one standard diner and a heavyweight baggage, are used to find the hairy spots through the crossover.

Tracking progress

2008-03-30T08:28:00.001-07:00

The LoCo track gangs have been hard at work through the weekend preparing the grade for these switches that will bring traffic in to the road's Central Terminal.

With the road bed laid and the right of way readied, only the track is needed. Unfortunately the chief engineer has run up against a shortage, so the track gangs may be shifted to routine maintenance on another stretch of the line.

Using the T.L.A.R. method to line up switches.

(That Looks About Right)

May I See Your Pass?

2008-03-26T04:00:00.001-07:00

Trouble on the LoCo RR yesterday when the chief engineer's private car tried to squeak past a two-car limited waiting on the other track.

It seems the track gang wasn't paying close enough attention to the specs when they surveyed this portion of of the road and, as a result, laid the two tracks a tad bit close to one another. There is every reason to believe that alcohol might have been involved.

A board convened to look into the matter, but in the meantime the corner of the baggage car will have to be carefully pried away from the chief engineer's car, which in turn will spend the weekend in the body & paint shop at nearby Dogwater Flowage. The chief engineer is anything but happy as he and some of the boys were going to watch the game on the big flat-screen he recently installed in the car's spacious parlor.

He's a teensy bit irked about the track geometry, too, and has already begun plans to tear up this corner and tighten the bend just enough to open up the clearance between cars. The stretch of track should be open again by Monday morning.

On the road again

2008-03-16T18:37:00.001-07:00

I finally bagged a couple of #5 switches in an e-bay auction. They're a lot harder to find that I would have thought. Lots of people post #4's and #6's but hardly ever a #5. For all the time I've put into waiting for one, I probably would've come out ahead just buying it new.

The #5 came in the mail last week, so this is the first weekend I've had a whole afternoon to myself to plot the geometries needed to make the turnoff into the commissary yards in the foreground.

I carefully pinned down the cork roadbed to use as a guide, traced it with a china marker, then spread caulk adhesive in the outlines with a putty knife. The caulk has a high enough tack to hold the cork in place without making me pin it again.

Besides laying out the commissary yards I ran the other end of the roadbed a little further toward the future site of the terminal.

On the Bench

2008-02-03T07:28:00.000-08:00

It's built mostly of scraps, but it's beginning to look a little like the hobby bench I've pictured in my mind's eye when I started almost two years ago.

I had enough scrap wood to extend the table top and found a bit of peg board in the back of the work shop that was just the right size. After a trip to the hardware store this afternoon I'll be able to hang some tools up and finally clear away some of the clutter on the bench top.

Paving the road

2008-01-20T14:57:00.001-08:00

Another payday, another box of ceiling tiles to lay over the hardboard on top of the benchwork.

Now I can concentrate on purchases of track, switches and roadbed.

The LoCoRR, Lower Level, Smaller Scale

2008-01-06T15:19:00.001-08:00

Tearing up the N-scale tracks got me thinking about the second, unused level of the bench work, and now that I had the knack of putting it together I knew it would take just an afternoon or two to get it fixed up.

This is the result of two afternoons of cutting and gluing. I still have to cut a piece of hardboard to cover the second half. I'll do the same with the lower level off to the right eventually, but this will do for now, just to get things started.

Now you see it ...

2008-01-05T20:07:00.000-08:00

Today I did a bit of untracklaying.

This N-scale layout, the beginnings of an earlier version of the Lost Continent Railway, will disappear and a hardboard sub-floor will take its place:

Voila! The LoCo's Grand Central Hauptbahnhof will materialize here eventually.

Bridgebuilding continues

2007-12-27T18:08:00.001-08:00

The kludge goes on as I bridge the gap between the two-foot extension (in the background) and the original bench work (in the extreme foreground).

The approach is straightforward and, for once, no screws or power drills have been used. All the pieces are glued into place.

A Boxing Day Update

2007-12-26T19:38:00.000-08:00

One of the steamers poses for a photo on newly-laid track.

Clearances are a bit close, but still the long passengers cars manage to slip past one another.

Today's impulse bade me work on the long-overdue bridge so the yard throat can cross to the main bench. Track will come round the curve on the extension along the wall to the bench in the foreground where the as-yet notional terminal will be built.

The bridge is a kludge like the rest of the bench work, but it's turned out okay in spite of my questionable abilities as a carpenter.

Laying Track on the LoCo

2007-12-23T13:35:00.001-08:00

I still use carpenter's glue to fix the tracks to the roadbed ...

... and utilize the most high-tech methods at my disposal to spread it evenly, ensuring a high tack and consistent adhesion.

Track fixed to the roadbed and pinned into 24" S-curves, the approach to the yard throat and the station.

Back On Track

2007-12-23T12:15:00.001-08:00

After a lapse of about nine weeks, for no reason other than I was pursuing other interests, I found myself with a few hours alone in the basement and satisfied the urge, which came out of nowhere, to lay down some cork roadbed and, just maybe, if I have enough time today, some track, too, although I don't want to get ahead of myself at this point.

I've always used white glue as an adhesive to fasted the roadbed before this but today I used an adhesive caulk, mostly because it was handy but also because I'd read that it was better than white glue. And it is, inasmuch as it's got enough tack to hold the cork in place that I don't have to pin it, although I did pin the ends to keep them bent around the curves.

I'm so tiled

2007-10-14T11:08:00.001-07:00

I topped off the bench work with a layer of medium-density board, and covered it with a layer of acoustic tiles. If this doesn't make for a quiet-running layout, screw it. At this point, I'm committed to laying track.

I spray-painted the tiles with some red primer (Number Two Son says it's pink; whatever) because they were so white it hurt my eyes. I wanted some kind of undercoat to make landscaping easier. The cap on the spray can looked like a dirty brown and it was cheap. So it's a salmon color. Oh, well.

I fixed the tiles to the MDB with a tube of latex adhesive caulk. There was just enough in the one tube to lay it on thick. After the tiles were all laid down, I spackled the joints to leave a more-or-less level surface, then walked away for the rest of the day to let it dry.

Later in the day, I finally won an e-bay auction for a Shinohara double crossover after stalking the auctions for three weeks. With any luck at all I'll be laying track before next weekend.

Nap Time

2007-09-30T12:15:00.001-07:00

Foam pulled up.

Stingers knocked out, re-installed at a height more conducive to straight and level running.

Hardboard and ceiling tiles fetched from hardware store.

One more sheet of hardboard fetched from hardware store because you can't go there just once and expect to get everything.

Ceiling tile pieced together experimentally, cut to fit special locations, set in place (nothing glued down yet -- got to think about this a bit).

I need rest.

Fixer-Upper

2007-09-30T08:06:00.000-07:00

The resale on this chunk of benchwork is effectively nil, due in large part to the fact that I change my mind about the layout more often than I change my underwear, the result of which is that it's as irregular as a three-dollar bill.

Just for example, the leg of the benchwork that I refer to as the "three-foot extension" is in fact thirty-seven and three-quarters inches wide. Try to find a piece of stock hardboard to fit that. The layout's been through so many permutations that I have no idea anymore how it ended up this wide.

Here's another excellent example: It may not be obvious from this photo, but when you eyeball it face-to-face, as it were, you can plainly see that the stringers supporting the foam board on the left are obviously higher than the stringers on the right. They are, in fact, almost three-quarters of an inch higher.

I know how I did that, but I'm too embarrassed to explain it right now.

Today's project: Begin to fix these screw-ups. There's no way I can adjust the width of the three-foot extension now, but I can pull out and lower the stringers, which I'll have to do to execute my next fix: Replacing the foam board top.

An article in Model Railroader led me to believe I could lay track directly on the foam board, which could be laid directly on the bench work. Which is factually true: I really could very easily do that, but when I ran a couple locomotives across the track to see them go, every one of them made enough noise to stampede a herd of longhorns. It damn near stampeded me.

So I'm going to put an old-fashioned layer of hardboard across the stringers and an old-fashioned layer of ceiling tiles over that, then lay track on a cork road bed, just as I should have done from the beginning.

Missing Man

2007-09-23T20:06:00.000-07:00

The hobby bench has been dark this past week. I've been a little under the weather.

A Painting Primer

2007-09-15T10:59:00.001-07:00

To give the first coat of cream a bit more strength, I thought I'd try a primer coat of white, applied around the windows of this coach. The results below: one coat on the right, two in the middle, three on the left. I honestly couldn't tell you if the game was worth the candle.

Here's one weird thing about painting this particular coach: I ran across a patch of plastic where the acrylic paint turned instantly to sludge as I applied it, making a smooth, even coat impossible. I scraped it off and tried again with the same result. I've never seen a reaction like this, but then I've never used acrylic paints on plastic models before.

Given the slip, part 2

2007-09-09T14:12:00.001-07:00

Taking a deep breath, I fluxed the first two or three ties, held the outside rail down with a probe and soldered it in place. A quick poke with the probe confirmed it was held fast, and I could see it wasn't a cold joint. Flush with success, I pressed on. Flux, solder repeat.

I filed useless angles into the ends of three rails freehand before I got the idea to cut a jig to hold the rail an the correct angle. All I have to do is concentrate on holding the file straight.

My first frog.

The soldering work is more than a little messy because I've never seen this done before and am working out the kinks as I go.

For instance, I knew that the two kinds of solder I had in my tool box melted at different temperatures, but I had no idea why that was significant until I tried to carry a bead of solder to the rail while the iron was too hot for it. The low-temp solder falls off a hot iron; the high-temp solder sticks to it like cookie crumbs to a toddler's face. And I figured that out how? I grabbed the high-temp solder by mistake.

Given the slip, part 1

2007-09-08T12:27:00.000-07:00

About seven or eight years ago, I bought a kit from a vendor at a train show for a double-slip switch, and it's rattled around in the bottom of a tool box ever since. This week, I finally get around to giving it a shot.

The ties are made of PCB strip that must be cut to length, which I marked with a chisel. The kit was made by Scaleway, a UK company, but the template is downloaded from the Fast Tracks web site.

Then on to the tedious job of hacking all those ties up. An easily-made cutting board with a fence gave me a stable work surface that held the PCB so I could saw through it in one stroke, speeding the task up quite a bit.

Once all the ties are cut, I smeared the template, protected by a layer of packing tape, with white glue and pressed the ties into place.

... then set it aside to let it dry.

Next: Cutting and filing the rails.

Tim Warris' Bronx Terminal

2007-09-07T20:34:00.000-07:00

Tim Warris is modeling the Bronx Terminal. I ran across his web page while I was searching for tips and how-to's on laying track by soldering them to PCB ties, a technique I'm trying to earn. Warris is using the same technique to model the terminal's intricate track plan, and he started with what looks like the most insanely complicated triple-lapped turnout ever conceived. He even modeled it in N-scale just for display!

If you go, be sure to click on the link to take you to the earliest post. You won't be disappointed.

Putting My College Education to Work

2007-09-05T19:15:00.001-07:00

Yours truly holds a bachelor's degree in the liberal arts, and of the electives I took to earn that sheepskin, several involved dirtying card paper with acrylic paint.

Now, decades later, I was faced with the problem: How do I paint the roof of this RPO when the commercially-produced Tamiya paint I bought for the job sucks? (It really does. Don't waste your money.)

As it happened, my tool box held several tubes of acrylic paint I bought from an art shop to paint some signs, probably for a garage sale, and there was still more than enough Mars black to see if I could still remember how to mix paint with water.

You know what? This stuff is leagues better than bottled paint, and a teensy dab goes a long, long way. Fussing with getting the right mix of paint to water is hardly any trouble at all, and even rewarding when it comes out just exactly right.

Of course, it's pretty easy for me to brag when I'm using black straight out of the tube. I'd probably be a frustrated wreck sucking on a bottle of grain alcohol in a dark corner if I'd tried to mix maroon on my quaint little tea saucer.

It's my first baby step.

2007-09-02T13:52:00.001-07:00

Switches are a perfect example of how I suck at track planning.

I drew the curve, then the tangent, and measured the divergent angle. It's a #6 turnout. If I place my Shinohara #6 turnout over the sketch with the frog at the tangent point, it looks like it ought to be a number six. But if I connect the flex track to the switch and try to make it fit, there's no way.

I haven't the slightest idea how to figure out what number switch I'll need without physically owning the switch, connecting it to flex track, and laying it on the bench. Then, and only then, will I have a solid idea what number I'll need to make everything fit. It's the Lionel method of track planning: Piece it together until you find what works.

Turn, Baby, Turn!

2007-09-01T19:02:00.001-07:00

A four-coupled Niagara can just barely squeak through this turn, which is so tight the main drivers of the engine are pressed to the absolute limits of their considerable side-to-side movement. At the tightest point of the curve, the driving rods thunk-thunk-thunk with each revolution of the wheels against the plastic body as the engine crawls along.

I tweaked this curve quite a bit trying to make a Shinohara switch with a #6 frog fit the curve, but it's simply not going to work. It needs at least a #5, or more probably a #4. To find out which will work best, I'll rip the track up, draw a curve with a 24" radius and measure the divergent route.

The plan called for a 24" radius in the first place. Moral: Develop a plan, then stick to it!

Slow and Steady ...

2007-08-29T20:30:00.001-07:00

... a few more squares of foam pared to fit around corners and against each other ... glued to the stretchers and held until morning by carefully balanced stacks of books ... track soldered together into nine-foot segments ...

Scotty! Give Me All You've Got!

2007-08-28T19:31:00.001-07:00

"That's every book in the ship's library, cap'n! I cannae gi' nae more!"

You can own every work bench gimmick made, and when it comes to holding a sheet of foam down flat against glue-slathered wood runners, nothing will do the trick like stacks and stacks of heavy books.

Tonight's sixty-minute trip on the Lo Co combined some bench work with painting. After scrounging around for a half-hour or so I managed to piece together enough blocks of pink foam to provide a base for the track work. When I was reasonably sure it was laid out in the pattern I needed for the notional track plan I had worked out, I marked the positions of the pieces, moved it all away, squirted a little glue across the supports and voila! The mess you see here.

And I painted a dining car and an RPO. Photos to follow.

Not Much, How About You?

2007-08-27T20:28:00.000-07:00

Eked out just a half-hour tonight to do a little painting, a second coat to the cream color along the top of a diner car. No photo, barely enough time to get the brush wet as it was, but I wanted to get back on that bike after a weekend spent running off to a bed & breakfast with My Darling B to celebrate our wedding anniversary. I didn't ask, but I had the feeling she might have objected if I'd taken a model and a jar of paint along.

On Sunday my time was entirely claimed by yard work, now that the midwest seems to have won a reprieve from the never-ending rain, which naturally means that I was propped up on the sofa in limp dishrag mode Sunday night, unwilling and very possibly unable to lift a paint brush.

But I'm back! to trying to visit the work bench every night and keep the Lost Continent Railway alive.

In The Beginning Was The Plan

2007-08-24T16:55:00.000-07:00

Just Kidding. I don't have a plan at all, and never have. What I have would more properly be called a "hope," or even a "wish." I've never been good at drawing up track plans. When I see the plans other people have drawn for their pikes, I weep for want of ever conjuring up anything nearly that imaginative and detailed.

That's my track plan, such as it is, in the foreground. It's a sketch drawn mostly freehand on a crude grid, and it's about as detailed as the crude sketch drawn with a pen on the foam board laid out across the bench work.

I've read all the John Armstrong articles in every issue of Model Railroader from 1950 to 1969. Fascinating stuff. And I can easily see how important a well-thought-out plan is to the success of an operating layout.

I learned to plan a layout by piecing together six-inch lengths of Lionel 3-rail track, though, and I don't seem to be able to get any more sophisticated than that, unless I'm allowed to count using flex-track and a soldering iron.

So this is how it starts: A crude sketch, first on paper, then on foam. Eventually I start playing with the track to see if I can match it up to the sketch. We'll see.

Stirred, Not Shaken

2007-08-23T16:22:00.000-07:00

I used to shake all my paints to mix them up, but They say you're not supposed to do that because of the air bubbles. That doesn't bother me as much as the clotted crud that builds up on the lid and inside the neck of the bottle.

They say you're supposed to stir your paints. I tried that, but never did find a tool that would thoroughly mix the paint up with the solvent.

As I sat down to paint one night I thought, You know, I stirred it up just last night so it shouldn't have separated all that much, and I gave it a little swirl like this. Mixed it up just fine, so I thought I'd share this little tip with you.

Just Like Starting Over

2007-08-22T19:50:00.001-07:00

Daunted. That's the way I always feel when I start painting a car body. I know that after a few nights of persistent painting it'll shape up nicely, but that first coat looks so mousy, no matter what color it is or the method I use to apply it. I'm grateful the camera can't clearly see how both the cream and the maroon look thin and runny, as though I wasn't even trying.

I sprayed the cream on (see previous post), but I probably won't use the airbrush again on this model, mostly because I don't have the time tonight to clean it up, and especially not to mask off the parts where I don't want any more cream color. Besides, I want to hold a real brush. There'll be plenty of opportunities later to try masking for a complete airbrush job.

The work is slow, particularly where I have to use the point of the brush to mark off the boundary between the maroon and the cream. There's a line of rivets there as big as soft balls, but if I methodically pace myself the results are gratifying as well as relaxing, believe it or not.

Dig the grampa glasses. Fifteen dollars at Walgreen's. It's the only way I can focus on the details so as not to slop paint where it's not wanted. I've got one of those hooded things that goes over my head with the thick lenses, but I never could adjust the band so they'd stay on when I turned my head, and they're so uncomfortable I've used them only a handful of times. Reading glasses are the bomb.

Let Us Spray

2007-08-21T20:41:00.001-07:00

As much as I hate cleaning the furshluginner thing, there's nothing that matches an air brush for sheer speed. I put a first coat on these two cars in less than the time it took to write two quick sentences about it.

But the second coat went on with a brush, because it's better that way. The first coat can go on any old way, but I need more control after that, and a brush is the only way to paint that makes me feel as though I'm in control. The air brush blasts paint all over the place, as you can see, unless I mask off the rest of the car body. Athearn molded these cars with rivets that stick out about six scale inches, though, which makes masking a bit of a problem, and I'm still trying to work it out.

If it seems as though I'm spending a lot of time painting, it's because I'm trying to decide on a scale. This makes a little bit of sense, so please bear with me.

I conceived of the Lost Continent Railway as an N-scale layout. I even laid a respectable amount of track for it, but when I began to paint the rolling stock I realized that there was no way I was made to work in that scale. Maybe I could have at one time, but now I'm wearing the strongest reading glasses available at the drug store for the up-close work, and they're not helping all that much in N.

In HO I feel I can actually see what I'm doing. I can get my hands around the car body and hold it still. The brush isn't as big as a vestibule door. Painting the larger cars takes longer, but satisfaction is up.

I'd love to try working in O, but we don't have enough room in our basement to give up for a layout in 1:48 (not that I have a layout now). I dabbled briefly with the idea of building in S, but my research showed me that the available rolling stock, track and building kits are priced far outside my budget. HO is at my upper limit of affordability, habitability and visibility.

But what to do with all that N-scale equipment?

Transformations

2007-08-20T20:38:00.000-07:00

The "decorated" dining car as delivered by Athearn, and a diner in the livery, sort of, of the Lost Continent Railway. The "decoration" on the upper car consists entirely of the words "New York Central," "Dining Car" and other gold lettering. There's not a spot of paint anywhere on it, not even the roof. Conversely, there isn't a single letter anywhere on the painted car. I haven't worked out how I'm going to do that, yet.

The decorated car has had three or four coats of cream, I forget exactly, and one coat of maroon over an old coat of lighter, glossy maroon. Oddly, both the old and new coat are both supposed to be "Milwaukee Road Maroon" but aren't even close, unless you squint, and turn off the lights. The cream color is what makes the livery good-looking, if you ask me, but I love to say "maroon" so much more than "cream."

A Day Behind The Paint Brush

2007-08-19T16:20:00.001-07:00

Like all barbarians, I still paint my rolling stock with a brush. It's an especially ironic choice given that brushing on several coats takes hours, while the reason I don't like to use an airbrush (I have three different kinds) is all the time spent cleaning them out, not to mention that fiddling with masking tape frustrates the hell out of me.

The first coat is usually so discouragingly thin it makes me want to chuck all my paints and find a very simple hobby I might be good at, such as picking my nose or counting my fingers. It's particularly disheartening when I'm applying a light color on a dark background, just about all the time at my work bench because of all the cream in the livery of the LoCoRwy.

After applying just one more coat, applied just an hour or so after the first, the results are encouraging enough that I feel good about moving on.

An Expanding Universe

2007-08-18T16:50:00.000-07:00

It was a rainy day today, so I went downstairs to frown at the nonlayout, my kludge of three cobbled-together benches standing in a loose u-shaped formation. How sad, I thought, that I didn’t have the forethought to make this bigger from the start. Expanding it now would be a real bitch. I went ahead and moved things around to start expanding it anyway.

The two-foot extension went against the wall, about two feet away from the original bench and roughly twelve inches to the left. I left the three-foot island attached as planned, forming an L-shaped island. Now that it’s further from the original bench, there’s more aisle space. I’ll just have to dink around with some kind of extension to joing the two together, but as I mentioned before, it’s a kludge already, so what the heck.

Then I made a run to Menard’s and came back with twenty-four feet of pine cleating and cut it up for stringers, which I spent the rest of the afternoon gluing up in the three-foot island to finish off the bench work.