Green Mountain Railroad Layout Build

[Guilford Railman]

Update time!!!

Not a ton of progress to report but progress nonetheless!

I soldered all the feeders to the rails over the last couple days and used heat shrink tubes for the wires between the power track feeder ties and the wires themselves.

Soldering the feeders was big on the to-do list so that I could continue with wiring. I will go around and clean up the soldering a bit with a mini dremel and sanding wheel some point later on.

I also soldered the PCB ties to the lift gate track.

My plan is to solder guard rails on top of the PCB ties as well. Here’s an example of what that’ll look like:

It’ll only be soldered to the track on the right half of the image so the track can lift up.

I also began placing the frog juicer feeder wires into the foam and down towards the bus wire.

I also used heat shrink tubes over the solder joints between the wires on the Peco turnouts and the 22 gauge feeder wire I purchased.

One issue I’ve been having is that the wires on the Peco turnouts for the frogs are VERY fragile. The wires can’t be manipulated too much otherwise the wire will snap. I’ve already had that happen once. Once these go into the foam, they need to stay there which means my methods for glueing the track and painting it will have to change. More on that later!

A few other smaller projects I completed were making the power feeder wires for the frog juicers themselves, including more heat shrink tubes around the plugs.

I used a regular lighter and some of these tubes got a little toasty lol.

One other task I completed was to spray the truss bridge with Testors dull cote. The results are much better!

I still have a few areas where the powder is caked up too much and has “crystallized” and turned white. I must have missed these areas from before. My plan is to use some vines or some kind of scenery technique or detail in the future to mask those areas.

That’s all for this week. I need to finish installing frog feeder wires and then I’ll move on to additional work with T-taps. It should just be a few more weeks and I’ll hopefully be able to test a train on the layout

 

[Guilford Railman]

I completed my first test run this week using one of my locomotives and as I explained in another thread, I had issues with one of my feeders on the lift gate. That issue has since been resolved and all things electrical are powered and working as they should

I also indicated in that post that I planned to do some additional work to the bridge track and lift gate. I decided to replace the hinge system and bridge track. This would allow a better functioning lift gate and therefore less of a gap in the tracks on each side. Here is a before and after of the hinge system.

These hinges are above the level of the rails which is required to be able to have less of a gap. This is something I learned well into the construction of the initial lift gate and bridge track. I was planning on using the first design for a while but decided it was better to do it right before I started running trains.

Since I had to redo the bridge track and make it slightly longer to close the gap, I decided to make the curve going into the lift gate a little more broad. I didn’t like how tight it was.

This of course now means that the track is slightly off the roadbed but I can use some kind of material to compensate for that.

Lastly, I reshaped the guardrails that go over the lift portion of the lift gate.

These are not soldered in place yet but I’m hoping to do so tomorrow if time allows.

I’ve gone ahead and ordered some styrene sheets of various thicknesses which I will be using to super-elevate the curves on the mainline for a touch of realism.

That will be the project for next week

 

[migalyto]

I’ve gone ahead and ordered some styrene sheets of various thicknesses which I will be using to super-elevate the curves on the mainline for a touch of realism.

That will be a nice touch, well worth the effort (IMO). I wish I wouldnt of been in such a hurry to lay the full loop and done some of these extras.

Looking great, keep it up!

 

[Guilford Railman]

That will be a nice touch, well worth the effort (IMO). I wish I wouldnt of been in such a hurry to lay the full loop and done some of these extras.

Looking great, keep it up!

Thanks! I read about the idea in one of the books I bought and thought it would be something new and different to try that I haven’t attempted before. That’s my personal “theme” for the GMRC build, stepping far outside my comfort zone and trying many new things

Is your track permanently adhered to your layout or can you change things up?

 

[traiNscale]

great work you did there!

 

[Guilford Railman]

great work you did there!

Thanks!

 

[PMW]

Nice work!

 

[KriegslokBR52]

Nice clean job. I see you have the same problem i've had on my first functional layout-making lift gate on a curve. The apartment i was living in had quite a bit of temperature changes from cold to warm seasons and that caused the trackwork at the gates (had two of them) to fluctuate, which of course caused an occasional derailment. Your points are definitely less crude than what i did, and i hope they will give you trouble free operations. One suggestion, have you considered an automatic block of some kind at the opening? I almost lost some expensive locomotives few times when i wasn't looking and left the gate open.

 

[Guilford Railman]

Nice work!

Completely missed your comment, sorry about that! Thank you tho

 

[Guilford Railman]

Nice clean job. I see you have the same problem i've had on my first functional layout-making lift gate on a curve. The apartment i was living in had quite a bit of temperature changes from cold to warm seasons and that caused the trackwork at the gates (had two of them) to fluctuate, which of course caused an occasional derailment. Your points are definitely less crude than what i did, and i hope they will give you trouble free operations. One suggestion, have you considered an automatic block of some kind at the opening? I almost lost some expensive locomotives few times when i wasn't looking and left the gate open.

Didn’t see your comment until now, my apologies! It’s definitely been tricky getting everything to work right but I’ve finally got it where I want it (I think).

I have thought about a block but haven’t done anything with it yet. It would be a good thing to do though! I will most likely add some kind of safety system in the near future.

 

[Guilford Railman]

The last couple weeks have been slow on the VTR/GMRC build but I managed to complete a few projects.

I installed some screw eyes underneath the plywood to help secure the wiring and the frog juicers. Here’s an example of what that looks like:

I’m also going to use some double-sided foam tape to fasten the frog juicer chips to the plywood directly.

I also completed 85% of the installation for the styrene strips and the super-elevated curve project.

Here’s one section of that:

The order I received was actually partially incorrect and I received .060” x .060” styrene as opposed to the .030” x .100” I needed. It worked out though because I ended up not needing that styrene and found a use for what they sent me lol.

In the track planning book I read that suggested to super elevate the curves, the recommended length for each incremental height increase (.010”, .020”, .030”) was 8-12” each and then followed by a decrease in height of the same on the opposite side of the curve. Since my curves weren’t nearly as large or broad, I could only manage 6-8” of .010”, 6-8” of .020” and then followed by another 6-8” of .010”. The effect won’t be as noticeable but it still looks somewhat decent!

The last project I did was complete the lift gate guardrails.

As you can see, I’ve decided to cut the guardrails at the lift gate joint and solder them in place on each side. I originally planned to let them overhang and rest on the Chester module but it was flimsy and I didn’t like the rails sticking out over the edge when the gate was upright.

On a different note, I purchased two locomotives a while back and I don’t recall if I ever showed them on this thread so here they are

Even tho I bought these in January, I just tested them today. I think this was a mistake! Granted, I didn’t have operational track to test them on (not even Rocky Valley) which is also a mistake on my part but I should have done it sooner. 206 turned out to be a disappointment. In addition to some warping on the shell, which I don’t know how to fix, the front headlight doesn’t work and it had a broken handrail. The unit works great otherwise but unfortunately I’m welllll past the return date.

I can probably fix the headlight issue but no clue on the warped platform.

Any ideas?

I was so excited for this locomotive and would love to get it looking a little better if possible.

That’s all I’ve got for this week

 

[KriegslokBR52]

Take the locomotive apart and see what has caused the warping. Was it heat, or mechanical issue maybe with how it's mounted to the frame. On a different note, Vermont Railway had in possession an RS3 back in the day with the same cool looking red paint scheme, any chance it might be on your railroad someday?

 

[Guilford Railman]

Take the locomotive apart and see what has caused the warping. Was it heat, or mechanical issue maybe with how it's mounted to the frame. On a different note, Vermont Railway had in possession an RS3 back in the day with the same cool looking red paint scheme, any chance it might be on your railroad someday?

I took a quick look at the locomotive earlier and it looked like the rest of the frame was aligned properly but sometime this week I’ll take a closer look.

In terms of the RS3, I haven’t seen that locomotive before but if it’s got a VTR paint scheme, I’m sure I could find a home for it on the layout. I’ll have to look online and see what I can find.

 

[Guilford Railman]

Oh boy! It seems there are more problems on the GMRC layout.

Finally after about 8 months, I opened all my rolling stock and began testing each piece. Most worked, except for 4 of them. I had purchased a 3-pack of the TILX 55’ 25,500 gallon tank cars for my ethanol transfer facility in addition to a 60 ft TBOX boxcar. These four have had trouble negotiating the curves entering and exiting the mainline section that crosses the lift gate, including the S-curve in the middle. The TBOX doesn’t derail but you can hear it scraping the chassis as it gets forced through the curves.

The TILX tank cars are even worse and derail, particularly at the S-curve coming out of the truss bridge. I guess these curves were tighter than I realized

Here’s a view of the couplers as the tank cars exit the curve into Chester.

Definitely tighter than they should be!

Well after careful consideration, I’ve opted for an overhaul of the mainline section from the Bellows Falls yard to Chester, including a repositioning of the truss bridge which will be required to get a broader curve on each end.

I have spent the last few hours carefully dissecting the track, electrical components, and roadbed in preparation for the new work ahead. Here’s where I’m at currently:

The photos below are the new positions of the roadbed and bridge, temporarily in place so I can make adjustments and test each curve individually.

As you can see, the bridge has been shifted over approximately two inches closer to the backdrop. I still need to fill the new area in with plaster like I had done previously.

Some quick tests with a piece of flex track on each curve and both the tank cars and TBOX boxcar shows significant improvement! The tank cars have no more issues but there is still some slight scraping occurring with the boxcar. I may just have to live with it but it is certainly much better than before!

I was rather discouraged when I learned about this issue as I thought I had compensated enough for 60 ft cars on the curves when designing the layout but I suppose this is a good learning experience for the future. Interestingly enough, the passenger coaches are 60 ft as well and have no issues but I believe the trucks are not as spread apart as they are on the TBOX so I’m sure that makes a difference.

Oh well! I’ve got some work ahead of me but I’ll keep chugging along

 

[Marlin39]

Much better! Did you go with 22" or 24" radius?

 

[Guilford Railman]

Much better! Did you go with 22" or 24" radius?

I honestly have no idea lol, as I didn’t measure it and just made the curves as large as possible to avoid any issues in the future but I would say these are 22” or close to it. I will have to get a precise measurement next time I’m down in the layout room.

 

[Guilford Railman]

I’ve continued with the overhaul on the mainline section between Bellows Falls and Chester.

The bridge section has been leveled out entirely and the truss bridge is positioned where it needs to be. I’ve also glued down all roadbed and cut, soldered, and laid down all track.

I was able able to reuse part of the lift gate track from before including the PCB ties but since the angle of the track was different on the other end, I will have to redo the other side with a new set of guardrails.

I will also have to reinstall new styrene strips on the mainline as well for the super elevated curves as these had to be removed when I tore up the old mainline.

Still some work to be done but it’s much better than before! Occasionally the tank cars have been derailing but I’m not sure why…possibly because of the couplers perhaps? I will have to investigate further but for the most part everything is working okay

 

[Guilford Railman]

Just a quick update!

I’ve had good luck with the new mainline placement after having completed the rebuild. Ran a few quick OPs sessions and had a chance to finally experience the layout at full capacity.

With the basic track work completed, I decided to begin working on getting the locomotive fleet tuned up.

VTR 206 was really bugging me so I decided to tackle that locomotive. Turns out that both issues, the front headlight and coupler/bent frame were really easy issues to fix.

Once I removed the shell and had a look inside, I determined that there was a tiny piece of black tape blocking the opening to allow the LED light to shine through and illuminate the headlight and number boards. The circuit had no issues at all!

Not sure why this tape was put there…

The coupler/bent frame issue was a simple matter of properly setting the shell into its respective pockets in the chassis. Whoever put it together beforehand didn’t do a good job.

I’m glad it was an easy fix! Happy to have VTR 206 working the line with the others

 

[Guilford Railman]

Another quick little update!

I’ve managed to get another locomotive on the rails and ready to be put to work, well sort of. A while back I bought an old Athearn GP9 from another forum member. The motor wasn’t great which is no problem. It was an older unit, probably from the 80s or 90s and I didn’t pay much for it. I decided to convert it to a dummy locomotive, at least for the time being.

I removed the motor and the gears from the trucks to allow the wheels to move freely. I would like to have an operational headlight in there at some point if possible but I’ll have to do research on how to achieve that with a dummy locomotive.

For now VTR 751 will be used in conjunction with others to provide “power” to the road jobs bringing freight up north.

Another side project I did was paint my first GMRC coach!

I started stripping these late last year and primed them earlier this year but progress came to a halt as I focused on the layout build itself. I finally took some time to paint one of the coaches. I need to touch up a few areas but it’s not bad for my first ever DIY painted rolling stock!

 

[Guilford Railman]

I continued with some work on the GMRC baggage coach. I installed some coupler pockets and Kadee #5 couplers to the underside.

As you can see, I’ve also installed new trucks. I had to add some spacers and I thought about trying to find some smaller washers to fit between the chassis and the trucks but I had some foam tape and figured I’d give that a shot. It seems to work well!

I’m planning on priming and painting the underside but I wanted to get all the components fitted properly before doing so.

Another project I started was the stone arch bridge between North Walpole Yard and Bellows Falls Yard.

Due to space constraints, I had to keep the riverbed narrower than would be found on the prototype. Therefore, I could only include a single arch over the river instead of two like I originally wanted. I’m okay with that though because this model railroad isn’t so much about replicating the prototype exactly but more about capturing the feel of it.

I will need to add some filler material to fill the gaps and make this piece sit snug in the riverbed but this is what I’ve come up with so far. As far as carving the stonework, I will probably etch the stones onto the foam and paint the bridge to look like stonework.

More to come next weekend