Links page updated

I updated my links page, adding pictures as well as some new websites. I included a link I really wanted to include a long time ago. And this is Charlie Comstock's Bear Creek and South Jackson RR.

Painting tracks

Track needs as much care in laying as it needs in appearance. Before any ballasting work, I like to paint the tracks with Polly Scale Railroad Tie Brown acrylic color. I used an airbrush, which speeds up the work.

I painted both rails and ties, but I placed a small strip of masking tape on the tunouts' points connection to keep paint from flowing into it. Here is where a brush will come in help.

In order to distinguish the main line from sidings and yard tracks I will use weathering powders: grimy black for main line, a brownish color for siding, a tan color for yard tracks.

Painting all the layout tracks wasn't much of a problem. The real pain in the &%# was to clean all the rail tops! It took a lot of work with the bright boy. Now I want to meet modelers who say acrylics don't stick well to metal.

Here is what I called my arm extention for three evenings:

It is a cleaning pad (aka bright boy in the USA) I bought at a train show in Germany last year. It is very fine, compared to its abrasive companions sold by model trains manufacturer and it cleans track without scratching the rail tops.

Roofwalks, ACI Labels, Consolidated Stencils...

A bit of RR history
I always find intriguing trying to understand all of the lettering applied to freight cars sides. Since I model the early 1970s (unofficially, I model the month of May, 1974) I need to pay attention at how my freight cars look.

• In 1966 all roofwalks and hig hand brake wheels were required to be removed by 1974, and new cars delivered after 1966 were required to be built without rookwalks and with low brake wheels.
• In 1968 ACI labels (more on that in a moment) were required to be applied no later than 1970.
• In 1972 the Association of American Railroads (AAR) started a program of Consolidated Stencils (more on that in a moment) to be applied to new or rebuilt cars only, which later in 1974 applied to all freight cars.

ACI Labels
Automatic Car Identification labels are colored bars applied to all equipment in interchange service. Track scanners were installed along the tracks and equipment was scanned as it passed the scanners. This system was abandoned in 1978 since dirt, scratches and vandalism all made the labels unreadable.
I need this labels on at least 90% of my equipment. MicroScale sells decals sheet for this purpose.

(Photo by Clack Bauman - source: railpictures.net)

Consolidated Stencils
Consolidated stencils are applied in the lower right side of a car in interchange service and they contain information on built or rebuilt date, inspections,maintenance date, etc... Since they were mandatory in 1974, I need 90% of my rolling stock to display these info. Again MicroScale comes in help with suitable decals sheets.

(Photo by Joe Rogers - source rrpicturesarchive.net)



Precious sources of information
www.icrr.net/aci.htm
www.hosam.com/mod/rsdet.html
www.hosam.com/grd/dates.html
and of course www.google.com

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First operating session

Yesterday night, the first operating session took place on the SP Coast Line in N Scale! Enzo, Sergio, Alex and Marco came over and we run an amazing amount of 4 trains :-)

Two manifest freights, and two locals. The manifest trains had some cars to deliver at industries near Guadalupe, so they made set outs on a yard track while the Guadalupe switcher (a couple of GP9s) took care of those cars and built locals to actually spot the cars on the right spurs.

All went smooth, apart from a couple of minor issues which I'll fix soon, and we all had a lot of fun!

Here is Sergio, playing the Guadalupe Yardmaster role:

Alex and Enzo (barely visible on the left) are respectively engineer and conductor of the CME (Coast Merchandise East) train no. 374 to Los Angeles. Here they are approaching Callender siding:

Here it's me (red T-shirt) hanging around the yard...

Alex and Enzo are entering the Guadalupe yard:

After having Yardmaster permission, Alex is quickly switching a couple of empty refeers to deliver to the SMVRR:

Here is Sergio pointing to an SP covered hopper, asking me info on where to deliver the car - I showed him its car card seconds later

Here Marco and me forming the crew of the CMW (Coast Merchandise West) train no. 373 to Oakland/San Francisco exiting from a tunnel (not visible on the right) on the only partially scenicked scene of my layout so far.

CMW entering the Guadalupe Yard:

After getting Yardmaster permission, Marco and I started switching our train:

Alex and Enzo leaved Guadalupe yard, passed through Surf and ran their CME south to LA:

Right after parking their train on a staging track, Alex and Enzo were assigned to the Surf Local which is seen here running into the Lompoc Branch at Surf:

Again, after parking our CMW train in the staging yard, Marco and I were assigned to the Guadalupe Local, a turn to Callender. We swapped our roles: Marco was engineer, while I was the conductor.

Running the Surf Local

A couple of shots of the Surf Local running along the Pacific Coast just south of Surf

Re-shaping terrain contours

After watching at the terrain for a couple of days, I realized there was a spot I didn't like at all. Simply, it was too steep. I don't want to regret the choice of not doing anything and keep on watching the same awful spot for years, so I added more carboard strips to give the rough shape, covered it with masking tape and then I applied the putty + diluted white glue + crushed nut shells mix.

See how it looked before:

I left only a small portion of steep, vertical rocks as this area will represent a tiny part of the Pacific Ocean. Here is the scene after the reshaping. The new area is covered with powdered paint + plaster mix, described in this post about scenery.

The learning point here is: don't be afraid of re-do something.

Tunnel Portal installed

I scratchbuilt a tunnel portal out of 5mm (about 0.20") thick cardboard. I used some prototype drawings and pictures I found online, then I painted and weathered the portal with acrylic paints and dirt powder mix (powder paint + plaster).

I then applied some plaster + diluted white glue + crushed nut shells mix to fill the empty space arund the tunnel portal and blended the terrain again with the dirt powder mix. Here is a shot, the track is still protected by masking tape.