The realization that it’s only now a couple of weeks until Hickory hit hard, and I am way behind schedule. I promise to post an update on the turntable and engine house very soon.

Note: There are a lot of images in this post, so the images on this page are pretty small. Clicking on them will open them in large-sized viewer.

Late yesterday, it finally came to me — I’d build a partial retaining wall from locally quarried stone. With a selection of both rigid and flexible stone wall on hand, I set to work. The area that’s shown at right will have a bank sloping down from the bottom of wall to the creek.

Of course, at the ends of the trestle, the rock-work will go all the way down to the creek bed level. But, before the abutments could be placed, the roadbed had to be cut away. To do that, I used a hacksaw blade, cutting up from the bottom until I reached the bottom of the ties. Once the roadbed was gone, there was plenty of room to finish the stone-work.

With most of the stone retaining walls and abutments in place, I started on to the trestle itself. To prepare, I removed the plastic pieces between the ties, so that there would be room to slide the rest of the bridge ties into place. One note here. Pictures of many of the trestles on the Maine two-footers show that the bridge ties look to be the same as regular ties, simply placed closer together.

To built the trestle, I started with two curved stringers aligned beneath the rails. To make installation a little easier, I pre-curved them while they were still slightly damp from being stained. I waited until the stain was pretty much dry, and then spread a very thin layer of clear Elmer’s glue along the top edge. The curved pieces were then inserted into notches that had been previously cut into the top of the abutments, moved into position and clamped. While the glue was still wet, the extra ties were slid into place between the molded plastic ties.

I’m now working on the trestle bents which, like the prototype, are of a very simple design — three pilings beneath a single support, with a pair of diagonals to provide some rigidity. There will be nine of these bents on the bridge, spaced approximately every eight scale feet. Once all the bents are in place, there will be additional diagonal braces set between each bent.

The result will be a trestle similar to this one on the Bridgeton & Saco River.

By the way, you may have noticed the “clothespin” clamps in a couple of the pictures. And, you may have thought, “I thought this was an O-scale layout. Either those clothespins are really small, or that’s one helluva big trestle!” Well, you’d be right — they’re half-size clothespins! I’ve been searching for small clamps for several months now, and couldn’t find anything that satisfied me, until now. The coin is a U.S. Quarter, so you get an idea of the size. They’ve got a decent grip, but aren’t so strong as to crush basswood or balsa parts.

No. 10 idles in front of the Corinna freight house on an overcase morning.

Another four feet of basic scenery done. It’s amazing how much more quickly things go once you’ve collected up all the tools and supplies you need…

• I really don’t like working with foam for scenic forms. I’m going back to nice, easy, conventional scenery techniques.
• After the trip to Hickory in September, I’ll go back to carrying one of the “standard” module sets.
• The rest of the layout will be built using more “conventional” construction. It’s not going “on tour,” so why bother with light- or medium-weight modular construction when “chunks” will do.

Why fly in the face of the “new order” in scenery and go away from foam? Basically, there are a couple of ways to shape foam — hacking and grinding, or hot-cutting. Hacking and grinding is messy, and hot-cutting will kill you.

And, there are 24 feet of unused module just hanging around, doing nothing except taking up space.

Anyway, I’m feeling woozy from the foam fumes, and it’s past my bedtime. More later, when I can form a more coherent thought.

• Finish the intra- and inter-module wiring
• Smooth out the “south” end of the module set where the Homasote was overhanging the module frame
• Lay the track all the way out to the interfaces
• Devise a temporary set of legs
• Devise a safe method of carriage for the module set

After having to take my car to the body shop on my way home from and then eating some dinner, I was able to complete the wiring tonight, and get the track finished out to the “south” end of the set (that included smoothing out the end) before running out of energy for the evening. Not bad, but still a lot to do.

That opens up some other interesting possibilities for “section” shapes. For instance, I could do two 40″x24″ units, 9″ tall. Or, four 40″x12″ shelf sections. Those could either make a long, skinny switching layout or a 40″x64″ or 52″x52″ continuous-run layout. A scenic-only-section could fill the open space in the middle.

Conway, Broomshire & Hill Town Railroad Track Plan

I got thinking about this perspective thing after stumbling across this plan for the Conway, Broomville & Hill Town Railroad somewhere in my travels ’round the ol’ internet.

Could something with this character fit into the confines of two 40″x24″ panels and still be made with continuous running, while still using basic Atlas snap-track components?

The short answer is, “Not likely.” But, I’m at least going to look at it, as I really like the look of this arrangement.

Of course, I could also adapt it for a part of the Corinna & Searsport On30 layout. Yeah. That’s a better idea!

If you’re using a turnout with a spring to hold the points over to one side or the other, you’ll most probably need to remove it. If you’re using the Micro Engineering turnouts, this means that you’ll have to remember that the hold-over spring also supplies tension needed to hold the points in place, and you’ll need to install the switch motor so that the new throw linkage provides that pressure. Otherwise, the points will fall out of the switch and/or you’ll “break” the electrical connection between the points and the wing rails.

The next task will be to start installing the seven servo switch motors and controls to power the turnouts.

These images are taken from Vol. III of Gary Kohler and Chris McChesney’s excellent Narrow Gauge in the Sheepscot Valley book series, and show the ringless turntable “pit” and the “bunks” that the end of the turntable rested on when it was aligned for a particular track. They also give a clue as to the unique deck construction.

Based on Jeff Bissonnette’s excellent drawings, also included in the book, it becomes apparent that the entire deck is built from 12″ x 12″ lumber, with the only metal parts being used to construct the spider (and, of course, the steel suspension cables). This design all but eliminates most of the finicky bits of building and installing a model turntable!

The siding for the freight house / depot, the turntable lead and the caboose / MOW tracks still need to be put in, but that should take a fairly short time during my next session. Then, it’s on to my least favorite part of the endeavor — wiring.

I’ll also need to take one of the turnouts out and possibly make a repair. The switch to the caboose / MOW track has a problem with its point tension spring — or the spring is missing altogether. The biggest issue this can cause is that, if I’m not careful when installing the switch machine, I could create a condition where the machine will literally pull the heel of the point out of the joint. Of course, this would happen to be a switch that’s on the main line!

You can see by the two pictures of engine 9 that there’s good modeling in the lighting, and details are visible right up to the layout edge. The light level is comfortable, and unless you’re really leaning into the layout, you don’t cause a solar eclipse! Anyone who’s much taller than I may bump their heads, though. Future purchases will include smaller cans.

I did also manage to get by The Moose Caboose and pickup my cork roadbed, but I didn’t get the Homasote glued to the benchwork yet. In any event, I should be moving into trackwork by sometime on Sunday!

BTW, I promise to start using a better camera than the crappy one in my iPhone…

I’d seen in the past where people had successfully used Christmas lights for lighting in “shadow box” style layouts. With the advent of bright, warm-white LEDs, I thought that using them for layout lighting could be a “good thing,” given that we have some really neat LED lighting gear at work. Unfortunately, it was a pretty monumental failure — at least my first attempt.

I figure that in order to get the kind of lighting I’m looking for, I’d need to cluster approximately 60 LEDs in a 2′ x 2′ area. At seven bucks for each 60-light strand, Corinna alone would need $42 in lights, plus I’d need to build something to hold the LEDs and reflect any spill towards the layout.

Or, for a whole lot less money, I could use warm-white 14W CFLs in a strip box or some sort of reflector fixture. I tried that on a really small scale (I had one CFL bulb and one small reflector light handy) and that worked really well. At this point, I’m really inclined to go that route, and give all those nifty LED Christmas lights to Donna to decorate with…

Tonight, visits to The Moose Caboose and Lowes are on tap for cork roadbed and a couple other goodies, as well as more lighting “research.” I’ll also see if I can get the Homasote attached to the benchwork.

Middle section of the Corinna benchwork, mostly framed up.

Of course, everything takes longer than planned, and we only got the center section completed. Since the last section to build is very straight-forward, I figured I’d bring home everything that’s done, if for no other reason than to get it out of Kevin’s way. We’ll finish up the last section tomorrow, and then I can move the rest of the construction home.

I did, however, decide to mount the two modules on the wall tonight. All that’s involved is sliding the modules over the shelf brackets, and running a couple of bolts through each module interface.

Two of the three Corinna sections mounted on the wall.

I’ll post more detailed shots of the sections soon, including the wall mounting. In the mean time, it’s late. I’m off to bed!

We decided to build the most complicated piece first — the part that contains the turntable — and I also decided that a stream should run through the end to provide a reason for the yard tracks to end where they do. While this added significant complication to the module benchwork, it will also add a lot of character to the scene. One big challenge, though is that the stream will cross from the end of the Corinna modules into the next section of railroad. Yes, the stream will continue through the module interface!

Here are a couple shots of tonight’s progress. There are a few innovative features here that I’ll detail in my next posting.

As promised, a few snaps from our session laying out Corinna. We also cut the Homasote to the basic shape, and I set the sections in place on the shelf brackets to get an idea of the scale.

Corinna, she a big girl — really a bit bigger than I’d expected/hoped, but I’ll be able to take advantage of the far corner to build a good-sized low-relief mill complex. Should be very cool.

I had to steal a bunch of ceiling tiles from the train room to finish out the shop, and initially, I was planning to replace all the ceiling tiles in the train room with Celotex (they’re currently fiberglass). However, there’s so little clearance between the top of the ceiling grid and the bottoms of the joists that I don’t think I’ll be able to angle the stuff Celotex tiles into place, so it looks as if I’ll have to use more fiberglass tiles. Time for another Home Depot run…

The next steps in the shop are paneling the side wall and putting in storage, putting down the flooring and installing the new bench top. At some point, I’ll add the back wall.

The shop flooring might go in tonight. I was just going to lay down a couple of rugs (which I’ve already picked up), but I’m thinking I might splurge and put some dense foam padding underneath to cushion and insulate a little bit. That concrete floor is cold and hard, and the benches are all going to be stand-up height to save my back a bit.

Meanwhile, it looks as if actual benchwork construction for Corinna will begin in Kevin’s shop on Friday after work. Corinna’s public debut will be at the Great Scale Model Train Show in Timonium this coming February.

Corinna Final Arrangement

This version is divided up so that it can break down and fit into my car for shows, although in our grand plan we’ll usually be renting a cargo van to carry my modules and Kevin’s, if we’re going any distance. I didn’t account for legs or supports when I measured the car, but I do have a roof rack…

You should be able to Corinna (still under construction, of course) first-hand at the February Great Scale Model Train Show. I sincerely doubt that this will be anywhere near ready for the November Holiday Show, although the new MADModules group will be making an official debut there.

Kevin Hunter came over late in the day, and we made some final decisions on the placement of Corinna in the room and marked and measured the locations for all of the metal shelf bracket supports that will eventually hold up the “north” end of the layout, the backdrop and the lighting valance.

Maryland Minibunch Module Track Plan

We also mentally roughed out the location of the peninsula and I decided that an optimized version of the Minibunch modules will live along one side of the peninsula.

Maryland Mini Bunch Module

Adjustments will include moving a couple of tracks, eliminating the crossing and “modularizing the ends of the section set so that they could be taken “on the road” if desired. The overall flavor of the scene, with it’s small wharf and the approach to the small mill over the low trestle will remain.

I’m actually thinking that this particular location will be the next one built, and we’ll “tour” it for a while just as we’ll be doing with the Corinna scene over the coming year.

I also showed Kevin the new switch controls from TAM Valley Depot as well as the printed output from the Model Maker software. Finally, old Choptank & Southern Shays 7 & 8 departed with Kevin in trade for materials to be used in Corinna.

All in all, a good, productive day in my miniature Maine.

The “Y” cables can serve two functions — either one channel output of the Octopus can drive two servos (for situations like crossovers where two turnouts will always be thrown together) or, they can be used to allow control of a turnout channel from two locations (handy for throwing a switch from two sides of a module, or making “local” and “remote” controls).

As I mentioned in an earlier post, there’s a significant cost savings in using the servos and these control electronics over more traditional Tortoise switch motors, or Bluepoint throws and the associated pushrods. About the only thing not a part of the package I ordered were some method of switching frog polarity. I have a whole slew of micro-switches I plan to use, however, TAM sell nifty little relay boards that plug in to the Octopus board that can also do the job for about $5 each. As much of a pain as micro-switches can be to align and keep aligned, I may end up with relays in the long run.

Annotated Corinna Track Arrangement

Although my last note to Kevin indicated that this was pretty much good to go, I think that it may need to be shortened up a bit — about 18″ to be exact — to leave space for something that’s supposed to be “south” (left) of the yard area.

I ran some additional curve tests tonight. I ran across a box of Kato UniTrak that I had spirited away (okay, I went and dug it out) because I knew that there were 24″ radius curves in there, along with a bunch of straights. There were also a batch of 19-5/8″ radius curves. I ran a very thorough series of tests on both the 24″ and 19-5/8″ curves, including S-curves.

These were actually tougher tests than those I ran on the 26″ curve, and the Forney-and-30-foot-boxcar combination worked perfectly on the 24″ curves. I can’t say quite the same for the 19-5/8″ curve — trying to run even the loco through the S-curve by itself resulted in a most Maine-like derailment.

T-Pro Mini Servo SG-90 9G Servo

Another thing I’m getting excited about is the use of radio control micro-servos along with the control electronics from Tam Valley Depot. For under $100, I can control up to eight turnouts with tiny slo-motion motors. That’s roughly half the cost of using Tortoise machines. More on all that later — all I’ll say for now is that I’ve ordered a few more Micro Engineering Code 70 On30 switches, and I’ll place the order from Tam and the order for the servos in the next couple of days. (Gotta get some more flex track, too…)

Corinna modules

As drawn, the parallel track spacing is a touch wider than I was planning, and he’s used #6 switches (I’ll be using #5). the gray dotted line near the turntable represents the “usual” track route for our modules, and ends with 30 degrees of 26″ radius curve. The curve shown in red is where the actual track might go, and is 30 degrees of 48″ radius. We may tighten that up a bit — or not — in practice, and go to 60 degrees of whatever the new curve is.

A couple of other minor track shifts are required to accommodate various features I’d need, but otherwise, this is just about good enough to start construction…