Stand-ins

The drug store project has led me down a path I hadn't intended to take just yet.  Well, two, actually, but one (LED lighting) is the subject of another post.  I put the under-construction drug store in place on the layout only to find its presence altering the way I perceived the rest of the scene.  That is, I'm really happy with how it looks, where it looks; a tall, ornate gem on a prominent corner where the detail can be appreciated.  But Strickland's Service Station suddenly didn't look right across the street.  The Purina building adjacent to the drug store didn't fit right either.  Hmm.  

Two things were at play.  I had grown accustomed to seeing the Purina building and Strickland's on their diorama.  That setting was more rural and both structures were in different orientations to their respective streets as well as having a bit more room to spread out, so to speak.  On the Pine Branch Park layout the orientation was different and the setting more urban.  Strickland's sat on a corner on the diorama and that suited its odd porch/drive-through design.  The Purina building was on a dirt lot, set back far from the road.  

The white demitasse cup stands-in for the bandstand. Note the trolley on the street.

It was an easy decision to replace Strickland's with a bandstand.  I had already found great photos of Winter Haven, Florida in which a city park, complete with bandstand, is bisected by the Atlantic Coast Line main, complete with station.  A block of storefront businesses stands nearby.  I can put the (Campbell) bandstand at one end and the old horse-car at the other.  Voila, a trolley park located along the Orange Avenue line.

On the left, pool hall, lunch counter, ice factory.  On the right?

But the Purina building...that's harder for me to imagine a replacement.  Both structures could easily find homes on future versions of the Ocali Creek.  But the problem remains; what to do about the current situation?  In order to help me parse out a solution I decided to bring in some old structures I've been storing from previous layouts and, well, lay them out as stand-ins.  That's what's shown in these pictures.  

The tan paper behind the Purina building is the instruction plan for a pipe yard.

Each structure has its own story and some will get dedicated blog posts, no doubt.  But even this hurried-together approach has shown me I want to push the scene into a more urban direction.  Sure, in many towns there was a feed mill right near downtown, so there's good precedent for keeping the Purina building as is.  But even pushed back from the street it just doesn't fit.  What this location needs is a rail served business with a storefront that faces the street(s), right on the sidewalk, preferably two stories tall.

I haven't forgotten my previous post on fitting in the Chero Cola bottling plant somewhere, so maybe this is the spot.  That was back in April of 2021.  My, how things have changed since then.  Things are likely to change again a few times before structures get mounted in place.  Stay tuned.

Pine Branch Park Redux

 ...or, back on track, again.

It is that time when I reflect on the accomplishments of the current year and look to the goals of the next.  However this moment, this time around, feels oddly familiar.  It occurred to me that I've been here before, in a way.  Let me explain.

Back in 2018 when I started building my current railroad I wrote the blog post, "Pine Branch Park" (click the link to read the post).  In that post I discussed the name itself and showed a revised plan laying out the track, street and structures, but the bulk of the remainder was devoted to a sort-of inspiration I found in a series of articles in Model Railroader back in 1991, "Just for Beginners".  

In that seminal series the MR staff and contributors built the Cripple Creek Central.  I was inspired not only by the railroad itself, but more so by the progressive, sequential way in which they constructed it.  So often these project railroads begin with that glamour shot of the finished road and the declaration that you too can build this!  But not the Cripple Creek.  No, this was an evolving, changing project, altered by the whims of its creators and guided by the shape of the thing itself as it grew.  

I like planning, but I also like that evolutionary approach.  The dioramas I've built over the last two years are proof of that.  So too the Pine Branch Park model railroad.  The layout is bound to change as new ideas come along and new ideas come along as the layout changes.  New vistas open up for possibilities unseen before that moment.

In 2018 I speculated that I could complete this railroad in two years.  Five years later and it looks much as it did in 2019 - bare soundboard with mostly ballasted track, well edged for a clean presentation, and some cork strips in place where the paved roads will go.  But I still believe it can be completed in two years.  Not as some deadline hanging over my head but as a matter of consequence from continual effort (fun) spent bringing that world to life.

We all know what came along in 2019 (yes, public acknowledgement didn't really come along until 2020 but the virus was called COVID-19 for a reason).  And personally that was a challenging time - a challenge which I met and overcame thanks to the support of my family.  The death of my father in 2020 followed by helping my mother move in 2021 and then again in 2022 now feels like a rapid succession of events in hindsight.  

But while the work on the layout stagnated, model making did not.  In fact, the first NMRBO diorama I built included structures which will soon find their homes on the Pine Branch Park layout.  Building those dioramas in the midst of a major transition was instructive.  It reminded me just how much I love building highly detailed scenes that tell a story.  

So that's what I'm going to do, and that's what this blog will focus on.  Reviewing this blog itself reminded me of the importance of one aspect of "blogging", that is, keeping a web log as an archive.  So if for no other reason than that I will keep sharing my progress though perhaps not as frequently.  I've kicked around the idea of making videos but my hobby time - as generous as it is - is still somewhat limited, and editing takes up far more time than the model making itself.

But I'm not complaining.  I'm caught in the middle between caring for teens and a parent with some health concerns, but I'm surrounded by a wonderful family.  I've got a long list of honey-do home improvements but we live in a neat old house in a nice community.  I don't make much but I do get paid to make music two or three times a month instead of being stuck in a miserable job.  Each challenge comes with a blessing.  

So too my hobbies.  I've been able to make good connections with like-minded folks around the miniature war-gaming community and while I haven't found any folks in my town with an interest in trains, that's okay.  I'm genuinely happy in the quiet moments of the morning sitting at my workbench building a model, or stealing time during the day to run a train.  And of course sharing my progress with you, dear readers.  Thank you for your continued support of this blog, and best wishes for your own hobby endeavors in the coming year.

The afternoon winter sun, low in the southwest sky, shines on Ocali Creek box car 1603.

Time to Think Again

It has been over a year since I wrote the post, Time to Think.  There I pondered what to do with the space I have been blessed with; a garage.  Since then I have determined that space is not so good for model trains.  In fact, it needs more work than I realized even though it isn't a bad space for a workshop and storage.  It will be a fine place to build Halloween props each year, work on home improvement projects or generally make a mess I wouldn't make in the house.  In fact, I built this year's NMRBO diorama in that space and the Pine Branch Park railroad has lived there since we moved in.

Can you find the diorama in this image?

But the trains can't live there much longer.  The winter was indeed cold and damp.  No leaks in the roof, but seepage from the concrete floor needs to be addressed eventually.  The summers have been hot and dry but thanks to our evening lows the mornings are pleasant and the garage can be used for a few hours.  If the weather is mild and the evening breeze picks up it is downright enjoyable with the garage door open (and a cold beverage!).  The spiders aren't too bad, nor the dust, and so far - knock on wood - no sign of rodents!  Still, it is a hostile environment for vintage craftsman structures and rolling stock!

So where will the trains go?  As I mentioned in my post "New Digs", this house has a second living room we call the den.  There I'll be sharing the space with my son's computer desk, a bookshelf with display cabinet, and a TV area.  The bookshelf was built last fall and just in the last month I installed new lighting.  My son's computer area is well established and he regularly plays VR games in that end of the room, wildly swinging his arms, working up a sweat!  The workbench has been moved to make room for the trains.

Percy enjoys his new bed atop a Helmer cabinet between my workbench and the sliding glass doors overlooking the back yard.  We both enjoy the natural light and the view.

 
All that remains before the trains come inside is to build some legs for the railroad.  In the garage, both this one and the last, it rested on metal shelving and that will remain in the garage.  In the den it will need legs with wheels; not that it will be rolled around that often, but it will be convenient for photo shoots and cleaning.  Beneath the benchwork will be space for rolling carts.  These will hold paints, supplies, tools, etc. that don't fit in the Ikea Helmer drawers at the workbench.

I'm also going to make some shelves to go over the workbench.  The lowest will include a section of cork board for tacking up instructions (or maybe a metal strip for magnets).  As I've used this smaller bench I have discovered the need to set large plan sheets and even smaller instruction pages...somewhere.  Now that the cat is sharing the space, there's really no good place to put pages of plans.  My desk lamp seen in the photo above will be relocated and strip lighting will be attached under the lowest shelf.  This will not only give me a few more inches on the work surface, but the shelf will provide a place to attach a camera looking straight down onto the bench, should I decide to shoot a video or two.

Hopefully all this will be accomplished in September because October will be for building new Halloween yard haunt props and that time will be here soon!  Feel free to leave comments or questions down below and thanks for reading!

Horse Car Revival

Since the early planning stages of the Pine Branch Park pike, I have endeavored to tell a story.  That story is about the changes in transportation and its effects on the culture of 1920s Florida.  This transition period - not the steam-to-diesel transition period of oft modeled by so many - saw the shift from horse-drawn to horseless carriages.  By the late '20s the horse-drawn streetcar had been replaced by a horseless car of another kind, still on rails, but drawing power from overhead wires.  If not, then it was replaced by the automobile and its tracks in the street pulled up or simply paved over unceremoniously. 

Neatly paved street track in Jacksonville, 1920.

That ripping out of the old was what I sought to portray on the main street of Ocala Springs.  I had plans for a street crew to be digging out bricks (follow this link for inspiration in that regard) and loading them into a wagon, and rail being put onto a truck for delivery to the scrap dealer. This would be an interesting scene in itself, but when another wagon's wheels got bound up in the street track and tipped over its load, a traffic jam ensued - naturally, at an intersection, to cause the most chaos.  Now we're talking.  Humor and interest.  The old Horse Car was not to be scrapped, but instead purchased by that entrepreneur, Strickland, and placed on a display track as a tourist trap roadside attraction where visitors could have their picture made as a souvenir.

Horse car in Ocala; appears to be broad gauge.

But recently I've been considering the disposition of dioramas.  Last year's NMRBO entry was built around a brick street with the horse-drawn streetcar modeled in service, rolling down "Orange Avenue".  What if that track never went out of service?  Sure, the last horse car ran in San Francisco in 1913, and my diorama was set in 1914, but the Ocali Creek is set in the late 1920s.  Did horse cars survive that long?  According to J.H. White Jr., "...New York, had a few horsecars running until July 1917. Pittsburgh ran its last hay burner in 1923, and Sulphur Rock, Arkansas, shut down the U.S. horsecar era in 1926."  Well, horse-puckey.

So now I'm faced with a wonderful dilemma where both options are interesting.  Either I live with the anachronism and keep the old nag pulling her coach, or I proceed as planned and show the line as being removed.  In these sorts of cases I tend to look at the pros and cons for each scenario and make a decision after I've mulled it over a while.  In this case, I'm in no hurry, but this is the best time for this sort of cogitation, when there's no rush.  So I drew up a plan, or rather, modified the existing plan to include a rough indication of the functioning (or not) horse car line and a car barn with attached stable.  Here 'tis:

Click on the image to see it larger.

The horse car track is shown in red.  The curves are a bit sharp and would likely be eased a bit.  Though the car itself actually rolls, this won't be an operating model as I haven't perfected the miniaturizing gun to work on living tissue, beyond the odd pigeon, and I'm not sure what you'd feed a miniature horse.  The car barn and stable shown in orange would probably be either an ornate affair with some gingerbread or a simple shed.  There would also be a passenger platform (not shown) near the station so the horse car could make connections with local branch passenger trains.

Of course some of you may have already hit on the compromise I may inevitably take, to do both.  That is, to lay this track including a now-shuttered car barn and depict the line as being removed by the road gang.  But there is another option still.  I could install overhead wires over the main street portion in front of the businesses and place a cute little Birney there, as if the line were still in operation now converted to electricity.  Hmmm...maybe I'll have a bowl of oats then hit the hay and think about this in the morning.  Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.

Sub-Roadbed for Streets, Ditches and More

I decided to use cork sheets for the base of the streets in Ocala Springs, aka Pine Branch Park.  The wider road uses 3/16" thick material while the narrower road uses 1/8".  Note the cork is cut wider than the road surface to include the sidewalks, shown here in their raw, gray resin state.  These are herringbone station platforms from Frenchman River which I will cut and modify as needed.

Speaking of station platforms, I will also be using a herringbone brick pattern there but this one is laser-cut material by RS Laser Kits.  The base under the station platform and parking area is 1/4" cork and will be slightly sanded and shaped before the area is scenicked more fully.  The plan for this and the streets in general is to use spackle, though that may change as I consider other options.  There's more to be done before that step.

That gouged-out mess in the second photo is going to be a drainage ditch.  Drainage is THE most important element of track laying on the prototype.  Here I used a Dremel with a cutter attachment to rout away the press-board sub-roadbed surface.  Once contoured and scenicked it will not be so ragged.  Pipes will be used at the track to convey the water away.  Not sure yet what kind of pipe I'll use.

I also painted the track using Espresso - not the coffee, the paint color by Rustoleum.  I like their UltraCover Paint + Primer.  It claims to cover wood, metal, plastic and more; ideal for track.  The finish should be 'Satin', but appears glossier than that to my eye.  That's okay, as it will be dulled down with further color applications.  Ties will be painted with various shades of brown and gray, then washed and dry-brushed, before rail and tie plates receive a coat of rust color and grime.  I may take one section all the way through ballasting to see how it looks.  We'll see.

Scenic Start

With the tombstone project out of the way until warmer weather arrives, I turned my attention back to the railroad.  The paper mache' clay I use for the stones is very similar to Sculptamold or Celluclay.  Not wanting to waste it, I decided to install the terrain along the creek.  The leftover clay is wrapped in two layers of plastic wrap in the first picture.  By this time it is a few weeks old, going on a month.  With the no-flour recipe I use there's very little to mold or turn sour.  Not sure how long it would stay workable but I didn't use it all on this project so I've wrapped up the rest and will check periodically to see how it looks.  Anyway, I used a block of floral foam as a substrate and applied the clay over that.  It takes a while to harden but I'm in no hurry.  Once it is good and dry I'll rout out the bottom of the creek a little deeper before applying additional texture.

Early Morning Imagineering

Got up early this morning to putter around with buildings on Pine Branch Park.  I like the quiet when the family is still asleep and the garage is still cool.  Won't need the heater anymore this year, but the time is coming when I won't get more than an hour or so before it gets a little too warm for comfort.

In the top center-left of the image you can see the Union Ice Factory, still under construction, on its siding.  Following that track down to the lower-center there are two buildings.  The one closest to the track is a scratch-build (of sorts, using DPM wall segments).  The one next to it is an actual DPM kit, a Carol's Corner Cafe, if memory serves me right.  The kitbash will be a bar restaurant (prohibition, remember?) and the cafe will become a pool hall.  My Dad really enjoyed shooting pool, so this one will have a highly detailed interior.

Across the street from the pool hall will be the brightly colored Purina Mill, with spots on the siding for grain loading/unloading at the silo and doors for unloading into the main building.  But there are a few blanks along this dead-end industrial drive, and I'm not sure what I'll put in them.  Oh, I have ideas, but I'm open to suggestions.  It may be tricky to imagine the streets here, so let me fill them in using Gimp:

Site A between the businesses and the ice factory will likely be a kitbash of the Pola brewery, the brick version of the pickle factory.  I've got one from who knows where and it'll need to be disassembled before kitmingling can begin.  There's a picture I found and stashed away in my Florida 1920s folder of a neat soda bottling plant, in Ocala no less:

Delightful and Famous.  That'll be the title of the blog post if I build this, or something like it.  I think the brewery is a pretty good starting place, and what drew me to it was the arched brick windows similar to the ones in the brewery.  Unfortunately the brick on that Pola kit, well, calling it brick is charitable.  But it may work.  I do have more DPM wall segments, and that could be good too.

In Site B I'm thinking a small coal & oil dealer.  I had a coal dealer in mind for the spot the (former) bar and pool hall will occupy and was disappointed to lose it when I put those two structures there.  But they really seem at home in that place so I went with it.  But now, seeing the Purina building laid out and knowing what sort of room I have across the street from the ice company, I think I could put it in there.

Again, if anyone out there has any ideas - keep in mind I'm modeling Central Florida in the 1920's - then leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Power Plank...Position? Placement?

Pick your own word.  The idea is, I put the plank in place.  The place is not permanent, but it works well there.  Most of the switching is done at that end of the railroad, and the DCC throttle cord is long enough to reach halfway down each long side of the benchwork.  In this way I can keep hold of the controller while uncoupling, etc.  I do have to set it down to do anything at the other end of the line. 

I purchased an MRC extension plate a while back but realized afterwards that I'd need two in order to put one at the other end AND be able to plug in at the base station.  So, for now, I'm happy as is.  When I run a DC locomotive I have to either operate with a partner as brakeman/conductor or walk back and forth between the train and the throttle.  That's okay too.

Two more things - the color is Mudstone, same as the fascia frame and the whole thing is switched on and off at the power strip, not pictured but just one shelf down and to the left of the plank. 

Flash Tip

The classic Woodland Scenics metal kits are (in)famous for their quality - both positively for the wonderful amount of detail included in the parts, and negatively for all the flash and general cleanup involved in making them look their best.*  I enjoy them and have spent many happy hours painting them.  Recently I began preparing the parts of the Diamond T Flatbed Truck kit.  It will feature prominently in the "streetcar track deconstruction" scene planned for Pine Branch Park.

So here's the tip:  Leave the wheels on the sprue to clean out the flash from the spokes and around the tires.  THEN cut the wheel from the sprue and dress the remaining flash/sprue remnant.  I use Xurons to get a clean flush cut without damaging the tire but if you cut too deep into the tire, just dress it with a file and make that the part of the wheel that sits on the road.  I removed and cleaned two wheels before realizing how much easier it would be to leave the wheels on the sprue and do this work.


*Granted, there are some early runs that don't have nearly as much flash to trim as more recent runs.  I think - this is just my hypothesis - that the older castings are cleaner because the molds are newer.  Is this the case?  Regardless, I tend to look for older kits for this reason and find them to have less flash to remove and fewer casting defects.

No Visible Means of Support

Look closely at these three photos and see if you can tell what is different:

If you said the garage looks cleaner then God Bless You!  It is, somewhat, but no, that's not what I'm highlighting.  The title might be a clue or maybe not.  Okay, okay, here 'tis:

This was a birthday present back in May.  This tripod can elevate the camera high enough to get the first two shots, then lower to allow the closeup in the third.  Naturally I can bring the leg extensions in and make it even shorter.  It will live inside next to my workbench most of the time, though I hope to have many more reasons to bring it out into the garage in the days ahead.

Red + Yellow =

I need an orange grove in this spot.  Maybe, just maybe, one morning I'll come out to the garage and find it.  Magical plastic cross-pollination?  These days I think anything is possible.  Who knows?

Framed!

Notice anything different?

Look closer...

Closer...

And here's another corner:

The railroad has been framed!  Finally.  The 12 foot long trim strips have been laying on my garage floor for FAR too long.  The color is my favorite, Mudstone.  I had the Home Depot color match a quart from a sample I brought in.  These images make it look washed out but it is really much darker in person. 

The concept I am developing is that of a picture laid on its back with the three-dimensional interactive painting rising out of the frame.  I debated on whether or not to consider it a plinth on which a sculpture is created, but that doesn't suit the concept.  The frame around traditional paintings serves to isolate the world of the painting from the world of the viewer whether in a gallery, restaurant, office, or in my case, garage.

This frame is complete - there will be no throttle doo-dads or operational whatsits attached.  To my mind that's just visual clutter, no matter how useful.  (My garage is already cluttered enough!).  DCC fortunately reduces the need to rely on a massive control panel of switches and lights.  That said, there will still be a panel for the throttle power supply and controls for lights; it will be on a separate board on a shelf beneath the railroad.

More on this concept in later posts.  I am not the first to pass this way, but not many have...

Station Details

Some old, some new, some no longer available except second hand.  Scale is HO.

The chair is from Vector Cut, and is laser cut taskboard.  Brilliant little kit; too bad the company is on hiatus with no sign of returning anytime soon.  The spitoon (cuspidor) water cooler, stove, desk lamp, typewriter and clock with signs are all Scale Structures Limited.  I scratchbuilt the little table beneath the water cooler.  The signs I will scan in and whiten in Gimp, while the clock may be a candidate for Oyumaru and Milliput reproduction, keeping the original as a master.  The benches are Atlas, I believe, but I can't be sure.  The calendars, Chero-Cola signs and election posters are all found online.  Lastly, the pattern at the bottom of each shot is a tin ceiling tile image I found and 'tiled' using Gimp image editing software. 

The station has been under construction for far too long now.  It is time to push forward and finish this structure, so look for more posts in the weeks ahead.

Turnout Trials TWO + Tools

More turnout work, but this time with tools.

On another blog (I forget which one right now) I read about track tuning and checking the level across the rails.  Sure enough, the curve coming into this turnout from the left is banked slightly towards the center, which is fine, but the turnout is flat through the points.  Actually, it was slightly banked away from the center, so I could see how that sudden change in level might cause trouble for certain finicky rolling stock or locomotives.

My solution was to shim the turnout, seen above as the white strip beneath the ties in the lower center of the image.  This did the trick, eliminating most of the incidents of derailments in this location.  The only thing remaining that might cause an issue is the funky taper on the ends of the point rails.  Atlas clips the corner off the top of the point rail, which is already a pressed-metal quasi-rail to begin with, so it becomes a tricky thing to file without doing damage.  A gentle touch is required.

Work continues on a mini scene for a Railroad-Line forum challenge, and when that is complete sometime before tax day I will return to the benchwork for this railroad in earnest; hopefully sooner than later.  Also on the wish list is helping my oldest son with a project this week that might become a post if we get anywhere with it, and maybe even some rolling stock work.  We'll see.

Mainline Mimicry

...or, how to pull off big-time ops on a small railroad.

A cut of cars await pick up by the eastbound time freight.

I've been playing a sort of operations game that lets me model a snippet of the bigger railroad picture.  My railroad was designed to be a model of a small industrial area served by a short-line railroad with tight curves, a few spurs and a siding that serves as a runaround track.  However, when I planned the track arrangement I included a full loop of track in order to just let trains run from time to time.

 The eastbound arrives and the conductor checks his manifest.

Also, while the industries I selected allow for a limited variety of rolling stock, there are still cars I wouldn't include in a typical operating session when running the railroad as designed.  Same goes for locomotives.  Typical power serving the 'park' is all smaller steam with short wheelbases. 

Lanky Mikado 480 backs down into the siding.

Recently I got the itch to run a longer train.  I pulled out the one and only brass engine I own (and only oil burner), a custom painted beefy 2-8-0.  [There's a whole 'nother blog post about this engine coming eventually...]  I hitched her up to a string of 9 cars and a matching caboose and let her run.  Add a cup of coffee (or something stronger) and a stool to sit on and I'm blissfully unaware, for a time, of all the world's calamities.  After I'd run that engine a few days, I selected 2-8-2 #480, typical power for the Christmas Tree train - again, not a loco you'd expect to see pushing cars down spurs in this setting.

 Three cars are heading east today.  The remaining car will go west.

This is fine for a while - longer than, really - but I wanted to plus the experience.  So, I imagined my 'long' train as a time freight hauling cuts of cars from division point to division point.  I imagined my solitary siding as a place to set out cars for a local to work later or perhaps a town switcher to shove around the local industries, and likewise, to be a place for that time freight to pick up a few cars to forward on to their next destination.

 With the pickups added to the train, the setouts are shoved into the siding.

The local crew will deliver these cars to their industries.

To make this pickup/setout game a bit more random, I chose to employ a simple generator - I flipped a coin.  First flip, heads = odd, tails = even.  Second flip, heads = 1 or 2, tails = 3 or 4.  This determines how many of the cars on the siding I pick up.  Since the siding only holds a max of 4 cars, once I subtract how many I'm taking I can flip again to determine how many I'm setting out as long as it is equal to or less than the number I just picked up.  I may take all 4 cars and only set out three.  Or, I may take one and leave one.  Depends on the flip.

 Their work complete, the crew heads back to the caboose while the engine pumps air into the train.

To complicate things further make things more interesting, I add one more flip to determine if I'm setting out cars from the front or rear of the train.  This shuffles the cars in the whole train, not just the first few behind the engine.  This is also a bit more true-to-life, as cuts of cars would be blocked for just such a set-out according to the order of towns the train passes through and may be anywhere in the train.  The conductor would know which ones were to be put where.

Two blasts on the whistle and it's time to roll.  This is a scheduled freight after all.

I'd love the room to build a railroad where I could model a division point yard, or a major terminal where big steam power is coupled to long trains, which then roll over a long mainline at high speed.  But that's just not possible at present, and I'm okay with that.  I can still have a little taste of that action in minature, so to speak, right here and now.

Turnout Trials

One of my long-put-off tasks on the railroad has been tuning the turnouts, or switches.  This includes filing any rough corners or edges that wheel flanges might 'pick' and cause a derailment, checking the gauge and tolerances throughout the points and frog area, and securing the throw bar to keep the points held in place.  On that last point I have finally left the starting gate.

 The strip of white styrene has been temporarily slid into place beneath the throw bar to provide friction.  The piece is an HO scale 4x12, though the thickness is only important if, like me, you are using the same type of Atlas turnouts.  What matters is that it is enough friction to hold the points in place without regular operations causing them to move but not so much that it becomes cumbersome to slide the points over to throw the switch.

When planning this railroad and how it would be operated, I chose to make all the turnouts accessible in order to throw them by hand, whether with some sort of switch stand or by the 'finger flick' method.  Peco turnouts have a spring mechanism built in that locks the points against the stock rail; Atlas turnouts do not.  In the past I have used the popular but grossly oversized Caboose Industries ground throws.  Wanting to create a more fine-scale appearance on this railroad, I decided against using them here. 

Should this friction method work as well as I think it will, eventually I will glue the styrene strips in place when I balast the track.  I have beautiful little switch stand models that will live next to each turnout but they will only be decorative.  There are operating switch stands that either throw the turnout when you move them, or move in response to the throw bar sliding.  In the interest of time and simplicity I decided to not use those this time around.

I will report how this method works in a future post.  However I am already seeing results as I operate a locomotive that seems to derail at a couple turnouts.  After I inserted the strip, the engine has run right through without a hiccup.  Below, Pan Handle Rusty Route #225 rolls over the Icing spur turnout without derailing.  Note the white styrene strip seen beneath the tender.

Design Intuition

Something just didn't feel right about the eaves of the Fallburgh, er, Pine Branch Park station.  I decided it might need a strip of trim along the joint where the wall meets the overhang.  After a bit of searching I discovered my intuition was correct.  Where board and batten siding meets the roof, on Victorian-era structures, there is indeed a simple trim board, most of the time.

The fancy filagree gets the attention out along the edge of the roof and this kit allows for that with some fine little castings.  But where it is deficient is, interestingly enough, in a rather obvious place.  Or, perhaps, not so obvious.  Maybe that's why it wasn't included, as the designers felt it wouldn't be seen and so decided to save stripwood and the modeler's time by leaving it out.  The definitive, authoritative source (Fallberg's collection of Fiddletown & Copperopolis drawings) shows the station in several scenes but sadly, all portray the structural element in question in deep shadow.  No doubt he'd have drawn it in if it had been necessary, as his attention to architectural detail is impressive in other places.

In these images below the trim is far from complete but enough is in to show the obvious difference.

Caption This Photo

This is the Jordan Highway Miniatures Old Farm Wagon.  I'm building it to be placed at the team track in Pine Branch Park, across the street from the station.  Of course, in that setting both horses will be in front of the wagon. 

Anyway, I have thought of a few funny captions for this image, but I'd like to hear your suggestions.  Leave them in the comments below.

Aziz, Light!*

Original two lights, both two the left of this image:

Next, adding the new light directly ahead beyond the railroad:

Finally, the other original light, behind my right shoulder: 

Much better.  This level of light is adequate but still not ideal.  However, it will suffice for moving ahead on scenery.

Now I can truly say, "There are FOUR lights!"**

* Even if you didn't care for the Fifth Element or have never seen it, you only have to watch a few minutes to get to this quote.  I suppose, thanks to YouTube, you can just find that clip if you're really in a hurry.

**No, really, there are FOUR lights.  Okay, eight if you count each tube within the double tube florescent fixture.  The reference is from a Star Trek TNG episode.  Poor Picard.  Though, in his defense, no other person would be sane after enduring just half the stuff he had to go through.

New Year's Revisions

Make sure you read that right - it says Revisions, not Resolutions.  I do have a few resolutions but they have more to do with growing our savings and losing pounds, standard fare.  We actually did both in the previous year and have a solid plan for doing so again this year.  I like achievable goals!

Rather than go through a what-I-did and what-I-hope to do for last year and this, respectively, I decided to focus on the Pine Branch Park section of the Ocali Creek Railroad (aka "the layout").  Apart from ballast and the occasional paint and glue, I shouldn't need to purchase anything for the railroad this year.  I intend to begin setting aside my monthly stipend for a rainy-day fund, or, heaven forbid, a DCC system replacement fund, though the MRC system I currently use is still chugging along.  Still, I've had to send it back once already and it would be foolish to think it will last forever.  And, should I ever expand the railroad to the point at which multiple operators becomes desirable, I'll want a second throttle.

With that said, here are the focused goals for the railroad, including a revised plan.

I've moved the Gas Station away from the team track.  This is to give more room for each scene and has the bonus of providing an additional industry.  I can spot a tank car between the gas station and the orange grove.  That section of track really is the "continuous run connection" for when I just want to watch a train run.  During an operating session it can be a spot.

In order to move the gas station, I had to eliminate the residences that were going to reside there.  In that space I have planned a small honey stand.  It will be a tourist attraction of sorts, as the stand will be made from an old horse-drawn streetcar.  It will sit on a small stretch of track, complete with a dummy horse attached.  Folks can have their picture made at the "Strickland Street Car" and buy some "Horse-drawn Honey"  The remnants of the old streetcar line will run down the street, truncated by the tracks which cross it and paved over in spots.  Ocala, Florida, actually used to have a horsecar line in the late 1800s.  I've only seen one blurry image:

This should be a neat little scratchbuilding project.  The name Strickland comes from our old neighbors when we first moved to Ocala in 1980.  They were beekeepers and sold honey from their screened porch.  Interestingly enough, my youngest son is learning about beekeeping through 4H, and we each got protective bee suits for Christmas.

The station is nearly complete and I'm itching to build the Purina Feed Mill.  Along with the mill I'll rebuild the three Laconia Ventilated cars I've collected and a Woodland Scenics Diamond T truck with Purina lettering.  My plan for this railroad has always been to complete each scene fully - that means structures, accompanying rolling stock if applicable, vehicles and figures.  And, each scene should in some way contribute to the story of the railroad with either era specific or location specific details, or both.

But before then I must finish the cabeese I began back in the Spring of 2018.  Look for a post on these early this year, hopefully within a month.  The station scene will likely be next, followed by the Purina scene.  Somewhere in there I'll lay out the streets.  The benchwork still needs trim and painting.  Finally, by the end of 2019 I hope to have all the track painted, detailed and ballasted.   "All the trackwork" sounds like a lot, but keep in mind the overall size of the railroad is 4'x6'.  I could paint, detail, and ballast the track all in a week of evenings.  Relatively reduced time spent on any one task is one reason I limited the scope of this project.

I've also renamed the staging connection to "Main East" and "Main West".  Tony Koester advocates this practice of locating your section of railroad on a larger network by calling staging something more bound to geography.  In my case, the main line heading east runs towards Deland, FL, and the main west heads into town (Ocala) where the railroad's main yard and shops are located.  For operators, that means little right now as those physical connections off-the-table don't go anywhere...yet.  But it does add to the sense of story and place and when I do eventually add staging yards, they won't just be tracks on a tabletop, but representations of destinations.

Finally, a word of thanks to all my readers.  Thanks for following along, and Happy New Year!