Wpf 10-21/10-27

[jeffrey-wimberly]

 

[enjineerbill]

Nice stuff Jeffrey. Love the 'S.L.O.W.' billboard!

Well, if you saw the other posts from me over the last couple of days, you see I'm doing an O scale Greenbrier Presidential Express. While I await
approval from the board to move forward, Thought I'd share some quick shots of how the cars are progressing. I am waiting on placement of a few other decals....

All 15 cars are named for Presidents who have stayed at the Greenbrier Resort...

Observation Car # 4 the "Chester Arthur"

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Coach #5 the "Rutherford B. Hayes"

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Have a fun weekend...

Cheers,

Johnny

 

[GrampysTrains]

West bound GP7's. DJ.

 

[ho/ttothemoss]

just messing around!

 

[Selector]

That's a nice layout, Jeff...it's looking very prototypical.

I haven't taken any images of my layout in weeks, but I got the hankering tonight to try one. So, here is an NYC 2-8-2 steaming into Seneca Falls with a mixe freight.

 

[irocinblue89]

First time posting in WPF. Finished up my home made coal loads for some of my cars. Got them all weighed properly. I'm going to take them to my club Sunday and see how they run.

 

[jeffrey-wimberly]

 

[kbkchooch]

 

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Nice scene Karl. I've always been partial to F units.


Here we have Ezra Johnson's gas station, garage and home.

 

[Rico]

Once again, nice stuff Gents!
Found the Spencer Shop crew getting ready for the coming snow.

 

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Ain't no moss growing on those boys!

 

[nwdrummer379]

 

[V&AL]

I did 2 things tonight: tried my hand at adding a swamp to my new layout in an effort to "southernize" a generic-ish layout (the current foliage says Pacific-NW)... Nothing like a weed-choked swamp to put it in its new location. PLEASE give me honest feedback, and constructive criticism, I know it's a few shades too green; could be yellower, and I'll be adding some debris soon, (and ballast after I hand-lay the track.) AND I need to pick out all the brown bits of ground foam that got caught when I was grading the greenage... Perhaps I may actually cut out and drop the area, but for now, since it's just decorated plywood, I'm stuck working in 2 dimensions for ground scenery...

The other thing I did was dig up the chassis for, and install a decoder in, and ancient P2K BL-2... The perfect BB&G oddball right out of the box!!

(Yes, that's Ghostbusters on FM 1983 in the background...there's a reason for that!!)

 

[TrinityJayOne]

I think you've already got it covered. Dropping it down would really do wonders, even if you just bored out a few mm of ply it might be enough (thickness of the ply allowing).


In other news, I spent a few hours today getting DCC into the F45s I pictured in last week's WPF. I'd love to meet the person at Athearn who decided that having the couplers bolt directly onto the frame would be a good idea! Having to remove them just to get the shell off really complicates what should be a very simple process, and reinstalling them is about the most fiddly thing I've ever had the misfortune of doing. I think I may now be a qualified neurosurgeon after doing 6 of the bloody things total. The decoder install itself was not easy either, as the "drop in" TCS K1D4 required a lot of troubleshooting to work. One loco worked first go, but the decoders wouldn't read on the others. In the end it came down to really poor contacts to the frame. I salvaged some of the copper terminals from the original DC boards and wedged some cut-up pieces inbetween the decoder terminals and the frame, with a small tab sticking out for easy removal with tweezers should the need arise.

All that aside, the model train gods have smiled upon me with these babies. I didn't want to use TCS' "automatic" BEMF so was disappointed initially that their version of Torque Compensation did not seem as good as NCE's, but now that I've actually tried their BEMF I couldn't care less. Admittedly it is slightly noisier, but the performance is just stellar! I put the F45s in the same consist they'll be running in on my layout and they will happily play together without any speed table adjustments. As evidenced in the video below they'll pull 14 cars up a grade I calculated as 5.8% (70mm rise over 1200mm) without any noticable loss of speed, and then run back down the other side without being pushed along by the load (the cowl body really allows for some really nice weighting compared to my other locos). I could see the BEMF in action as my Powercab showed the mA rising on the uphill then falling off on the downhill.

[youtube]SiAvpxypBdw[/youtube]

My only complaint on the performance side is that the headlights are dim on one of the locos, but it was doing that before the decoder install as well so it's probably just a loose lightbar. Future projects will be to fix this (tomorrow), add rooftop beacons (soon), and then sound (once I have an actual layout). Athearn also sell a version of these with sound pre-installed, so there's already room for a speaker in the frame - no milling required.

 

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Lower it and add some stumps, logs and some cypress, pine and willow trees. Living in rural Louisiana I see swamps all the time. There's a lot of green and greenish yellow mosses, muddy weedy shores choked with reeds and cattails and much of the water is tinted by green, black and yellow algae. Sweetgum and tallow trees also do well, oaks not so well. Not a place you'd want to spend your honeymoon in. I know of such a place nearby and can post some photos of it if you wish.

 

[V&AL]

Modeling the omnipresent Loblolly Pine is on the agenda... About 95% of the trees on the layout now are the cone shaped pine. Thanks for the idea about the cypress trees... I need their knobby stumps sticking up- I'd forgotten them, its been too long since I was back home, wandering the back woods, swamps, and cricks of the gulf coast...

I don't own a router, and I'm hesitant to cut into structural board... What suggestions do yall have for lowering the swamp?

Oh, and does anyone know where to find a good HO scale gator, besides inside the fridge of the above caboose?

 

[jeffrey-wimberly]

The swamp area can be cut out if you use a somewhat larger piece of plywood screwed into below the resulting hole. I've done it many times. The top of the lower piece becomes your swamp base and you can build up the scenery on it however you want.