Pinto Heights

     Okay, so 'heights' isn't exactly the best descriptive word I could use for the little hillside above the tracks, but it'll do for now.  As part of the Railroad Line forum's 'choices' challenge to build something off the shelf, (and my own resolution to finish more projects than I start) I selected one of my un-built structures from my 'digital shelf'.  A couple years ago I bought and downloaded the Clever Models Company House just for this location (the dark gray building with the pinkish add-on in the center-right of the photo above).

     Pinto is a sort-of company town.  The mill isn't in Pinto, but rather a few miles up the Big Tujunga Lumber Company interchange which connects to the Ocali Creek at Pinto.  The Clever Models company house comes with several 'textures' from which to choose; various colors of Insulbrick, or clapboard, different shingles or rolled roofing, and even a variety of brick colors for the foundation.  This means I can make a few slightly different houses, all of the same basic design.  OR, I could just print multiple copies of the textures I like and mass produce one style.  I haven't decided which way I'll go, but I'm leaning toward different colored homes.
     The company houses will also appear on the backdrop.  Another nice thing about paper models, besides the ability to print multiple copies, is that I can reduce them a slight bit and print up a smaller structure to force the perspective.  These smaller copies will be false fronts with minimal detail, built as 3-d flats set right in front of the backdrop.

     But the company houses aren't the only structures in Pinto Heights.  I have also mocked up the Classic Miniatures Queen Anne house (where the foreman lives, on the left in the above photo) and the AHM 'Speedy Andrew's' (aka Ma's Place) as a home, not a business (sorry Mr. Moore).  For a while I tried putting the latter across the way from the former, but it just didn't look right.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  For a while there was no road across the tracks.  Once I nixed the idea of a loading platform in the fork of the siding (where the road now runs near the freight house) then putting in the road was easy.

     Once the road was in place, and I had shifted structures around on blocks for a while, I remembered the old photo of the church at Caples, WV.  Now that prominent corner across from the Queen Anne cottage will have a church - mocked up for now using an older building I had stashed away.  That stone church may end up as a middle background structure in Watson, someday.  Caples church was wood with lovely gothic arched windows.  If I build this structure this year, I'll need to scratchbuild those windows.
     The final 'structure' for Pinto is actually another old photo I found.  It will live where the yellow false-front is standing in at the end of the street.  I spent a little time recently learning how to colorize black & white photos using Gimp, a free photo editing software.  What fun that is!  Now I can adapt just about any structure I find on Shorpy or elsewhere, to use as a backdrop image.  There are a few other structures, cut from magazines or calendars, and even a few of my own pictures, that I will use on the backdrop.
     Hopefully these photos give you, dear reader, an idea of what I have planned for Pinto.  There is one more foreground structure to mock-up, and that will be the subject of a future post.  The current backdrop images are merely stand-ins to give me an idea of what I'll paint there.  I will be detailing the build of the company house on the Railroad Line thread linked above, and who knows when I'll get to any of the other structures.  For now the mock-ups and stand-ins are doing a good job.

Pinto Potential (and Problems)

Pinto is one 'end' of the Ocali Creek Railway.  Fictionally, it is the place where the OCRy interchanges with the Big Tujunga Lumber Company.  Functionally, it provides switching opportunities and off-layout traffic.  Trains will be shoved up the hill to Pinto from Watson, the next town down the line where trains will typically be turned for their return trip to staging, and Pinto will be worked by a once or twice daily turn.

However, this post isn't about the operational characteristics, but rather the potential projects to be done at Pinto, and the scenic problems the physical location presents.  This image illustrates the point:

The first problem is lighting.  The hallway light in the top right of the image is a different 'color' than the rest of the layout room lighting.  This makes for challenging photography.  I have a solution - I recently purchased more bulbs that match the color intensity of the layout lighting, and I'll change out the hallway lights...eventually.


The second problem is depth.  The layout here is 24" deep - plenty for many, but challenging to try and squeeze in all the scenery and structures I want to include.  But therein is the potential for some creative construction and forced perspective.  As you can see I have been playing with photo cut-outs (from old NS train calendars - Thanks, Paw Paw!) for the backdrop.

In place are two structures kitbashed from one source kit.  Bonus points if you can tell me the kit!  Here's a closeup of the passenger depot:

 

Can you see the color difference?  Look at the orange-ish cast on the far right wall vs the brighter, blue-er color on the rest of the scene.  Hopefully the new lights will help.

There is great potential for detail in this scene.  I had 'poured' some Durham's water putty, planning to carve some brick detail into the platform, but changed my mind when I found some great Herringbone laser-cut material, and have since changed my mind again and plan to make the platform a timber frame with tamped cinders inside.  Beyond just this scene, I have several structures to build, scenery to place, a backdrop to create, and loads of detail to add.  Hours of fun!

Finally, I leave you with a link to a set of videos I have watched several times; a clinic given by Earl Smallshaw about using forced perspective to create a town in a small space.  Earl Smallshaw's wit and wisdom shone through his modeling on his Middletown and Mystic Mines Railway.   Thanks to Model Railroad Hobbyist for putting this clinic online.  Perhaps there's some potential to use these techniques at Pinto?

Next month I hope to not only write a blog post, but there's a special project in the works...pictures...that move!

The Saga of Shay #5

I finally got around to working on my Bachmann Spectrum 80 ton three-truck shay.  If you have one of these, you may have an idea already what I mean by 'working on'.  Ha.  When I bought this little beauty almost 15 years ago, it ran like a Swiss watch.  I really ran it hard on the Orange County Module Railroaders layout, much to the chagrin of folks in the club who wanted to follow it around the layout with another train.  The engine's top speed was a crawl compared to the standard steamer or diesel lash-up, as it should be!

But I think that caused some excess wear on the gears and maybe pushed the motor too hard.  Since pulling it out of storage it has had an excessive whine.  Also, I noticed that it has the same problem as many (most?) other Bachmann shays - cracked drive shaft gears.  A couple years back I purchased a NWSL regear kit, anticipating sitting down with the engine and changing out the cracked gears on the drive shaft.  Over the Christmas 2013 break I finally set out to do just that, and perhaps determine the source of the whine.

Before changing the gears, or even opening the NWSL package, WATCH THIS VIDEO.  If the link is broken, please search Youtube for 'DCC HO Scale 3 truck Shay upgrade 4-1-13' by tsgmultimedia.  Then, read the directions that come with the NWSL kit, then read them again.  You decide if you are comfortable pushing on plastic parts with pliers and possibly breaking them, OR pushing them out of their press-fit holes and possibly breaking them.  Slippery is an understatement!  Fortunately good old CA superglue will glue them back together, whatever choice you make.  Ask me how I know.

So I got the gears changed and installed a DCC decoder in the engine.  Easy peasy (the decoder).  Put her on the rails and she ran well.  But that whine was still there.  Think 'tie-fighter' and you've got it.  So after stepping away from the project for a day I decided to go ahead and dismantle the engine and clean the main internal gears.  Sure enough, plenty of white factory grease in the gearbox, but black residue on the gears and very little grease.  I cleaned out the old grease, cleaned off the gears, and applied some Labelle 102, my go-to gear grease. 

After a frustrating reassembly, I put her back on the track and the whine was...reduced considerably.  In fact, the whine is gone, but there remains a grinding growl.  I am now left wondering if there is further internal gear damage, slop in the internal gears, or motor damage.  I am not in the place where I can bench test this thoroughly - my power supply is attached to the layout on the opposite side of the room from my workbench - doh! - so I'll just run it for now and enjoy switching Pinto when I need a train running fix.

The other work I've done on the shay was to letter the water tender for the 'Big Tujunga Lumber Company' and put a great big number 5 on the coal tender.  Some of my dry transfer lettering was a little older than the rest, and had a tendency to pick up bits from letters I'd just put down.  GRRR.....  But after a few sessions, little by little, I managed to create this:

On one side I actually had to create the 'M's from parts of an N, a V and an H, in that order.  Eventually I'll touch up the paint on this engine and weather it.  I've got a decent fireman figure for the cab, but could use a nicer engineer - both need to be standing, based on the cab setup.

This is a beautiful engine, but a real challenge to repair and maintain.  Good luck with yours, if you've got one in need of repair.  Email if you've got questions or comments.  Thanks for reading!