First OP Test!!!

Once the roof raising was complete, I could get back focused on the lower level track install.  I needed to add feeder wires for under the upper deck and marked the spots in an easy to reach place for my first "live" solder work.  I've gotten a little better but no were near the level I'd like to be.  It's sort of like when we did USN aircraft repair.  We may need a BFH & it might not be Blue Angel pretty, but they would fly.  Same goes for my first feeder work.  At least all of my initial learning is under the upper deck and a great practice spot.  I dove in and added the four needed feeders.  As I said, not the prettiest, but - they get the job done:

So looking at the picture, I can really only see the bottom two wires.  The top two were much cleaner.  Maybe it's easier to "pull" the solder towards the rail than "push" it against the rail.  In any case, no one connection required more than about 15 seconds with a file to be sure all was smooth running.  Then hooked the wires to the DCC controller and:

OK, not very sexy but I was damn glad to see it move!!!!!  Onward!

Proper Planning Prevents....

There I was, cranking along.  Lower level road bed in, track going down - what progress!  I had a box car on the track to roll along and make sure everything was smooth, as the track was being nailed down.  Suddenly, I looked down....... Wow, that car is looking really tall.  I laid a piece of scrap foam across a couple of the upper deck supports and rolled the car under the foam......  That doesn't look good....  Really tight......  I grabbed both of my ready locos and checked them.  The GE C30-7 was even tighter than the box car.  Next, big boy, the EMD DD40AX.  Nope, it's just not going to work that way.  Apparently, I failed to take in account the additional height of the cork roadbed when I set the height for the upper deck supports.  Well, I think that may be considered a little set back and a HUGE lesson learned.  Time to cut some 1/4" shims for all the supports, rework two ramps and rework the side of the "mountain" as it meets the upper deck surface.......Definitely a one step forward - two step back moment.......

So, after some rework I ended up with Shim City.  Added 1/4" shims to all the upper deck supports:

That was the easy part.  Next, it was time to rework the ramps.  I found out that the Woodland Scenics foam cutter (hot wire) can actually be used as a "fixed" height cutter.  I set the wire height on the hoops, then feed a left over piece of tapered foam ramp through.  Ended up with a nice "cap" for the two ramps:

The only down side is that will add a little more elevation grade to the end of the ramps but I have good locos & the math still wasn't too crazy.  Only thing left is to putty & sand.

LARGE lesson learned but "raising the roof" made a big difference:

Ramp it Up!

The original layout had the Atlas plastic trestles used to lift the track sections up to the elevations required.  First, they really look sort of cheesy and toy like.  Second, I just didn't have enough of them.  I'd been looking at some of Woodland Scenics products online & really like their structures.  I noticed that they had a foam ramp system that comes in 2%, 3% and 4% grades.  The entire package of 3% grade is about $15 and runs from 0" to 4 1/2" in a 12' length.  It comes in 24" long sections so 1/2 of the package worked nicely.  I ordered my first (notice the word first) set from Model Train Stuff who is a great vendor with great prices.

Atlas plastic bridge trestles

Foam ramp with "destroyed" plastic trestles

The next step in the ramp process is to use the Woodland Scenics Sub-Terrain Foam Putty, which works a lot like spackle but is a lot lighter & easier to sand.  It took about 1 & 1/3 tubs (at 16 ounces per tub) to fill in all my ramps (remember when I said "first" a little earlier in this post).  They sanded nicely and the Woodland Scenics hot wire (another blast from the past model making days) was a great addition to my tool box.  Here's the finished ramps:

I've decided that I will end up finishing these with a combination of terrain built up to them, or a stone facing on the side of the ramp.  All in all, much better than the plastic trestles for sure!

Bridging the Gap

I've mentioned before about the area where I will have a custom built curved bridge, but I also realized as I progressed with the initial building that a single Atlas Plate Girder Bridge was too short.  Two of them together were too long.  Hmmmm - easy day.  Break out the X-Acto razor saw & miter box.  This bridge will be right after then curved bridge and, since the track below is at a pretty acute angle, it needs to have enough length so that it clearly spans over the track below.

The nice thing I found was the track is not permanently fixed in the bridge.  It's a standard piece of 5" straight, pressed in with a couple snap clips to hold it in one place.  Easy day to remove and then cut the bridge down.  Once that was done, I glued them together and patched the gap at the bottom.

I got finished, checked the alignment and everything fit.  At that point my years of working with Charles Kendrick (my professional model builder buddy & friend of nearly 30 years) had the typical affect on me and I realized, this was just a space filler and would need to be redone.  A few of the instant things I found wrong:

1.  Why in the world did I not cut equal distance of each bridge end so the joint would be in the center?

2.  Hard to see in the pics, but these little bridges actually have rivet and panel details.  Wouldn't it have made sense to match those up?

As I said, it's a learning process and I absolutely learned on this one!

DCC Decoder Dilemma

So one of my great Christmas presents from Sheila was a Kato C30-7 loco in the Santa Fe Warbonnet paint scheme.  It was "DCC Ready" and she got me the Digitrax decoder to go with it.  I watched Mike Fifer's How to install a Digitrax DN163K0E in the new Kato E5A video, figuring that it was reasonably similar.  Actually, it wasn't; however, the basic concept seemed to be the same.

I pulled the shell off the Kato and studied the interior along with the instructions that came with the Digitrax decoder.  For those not familiar with DCC (Digital Command Control) on train layouts, the best example I heard was that DC is like a slot car track while DCC is like radio controlled cars.  Here's what the decoder actually looks like:

So, I pulled the spacer out, added the Kapton tape (a special high temp electrical tape) - the key here is I installed the tape where I THOUGHT it should be.  I reassembled the loco and fired up the DCC system for a road test.  First, I was able to rename the loco address, which told me that the system was communicating.  Next, I released the brake and applied throttle.  Nothing........ well, not really nothing - I heard the engine making the typical electrical whirring noise - but no movement.

Now, I've mentioned him a couple times and I can't say enough about Mike Fifer of Fifer Hobby.  He is truly someone who is dedicated to the hobby.  I had emailed him before I started and he gave me some advise regarding my old DC locos.  When my install stalled (pun intended) I sent him a couple pics of my work:

You can see the Kapton tape as the yellow bands at about the 1/3 points.  Well, Mike wrote back and said: "Just based on the pictures the tape is in the wrong place and you may have it stuck to the flywheels, not letting the motor turn. You need tape on the frame under the motor tabs."  I did some more reading and found out that the Kapton actually insulates the decoder chip from heat build up from the motor and the chassis.  So I cut the tape back, put the loco back on the track, released the brake and off it went!  Not to mention, this is my first Kato loco & this thing is sweet! Smooth and silent.  Here's the final outcome:

Time to stop planning and time to start building....

After a lot of trial and error, the layout is where it needs to be and it's now time to move onto laying the roadbed and attaching track.  I had ordered a couple of really great structures by N Scale Architect from Internet Hobbies.  Great customer service and some seriously good prices.  Erring on the side of caution, I held off on the track install until the Eagle River Mine and the Shue Cement Company arrived.  Good thing I did!  The spur I had planned for Eagle River wasn't really needed since one side is served by an ore track (much smaller than the main line track) - more lessons learned.  Shue Cement worked out great where planned but it was still good to have the full size plan to verify.

"City Planning" for the rest of the layout relied not only on my architect's eye, but also Sheila's experience in laying out her Christmas "Village".  Much to my admiration, she didn't just line her village pieces up - she planned the layout!  It flowed & made sense.  We really like Woodland Scenics DPM line of buildings and actually have 2 or 3 already waiting in the wings.  I made some paper footprints and we spent one evening last week working our "town".  Now that we've got that worked out, it's time to mark out the track (plan on painting the track brown while in place), pull it all up and laying down the cork road bed.  Also need to do a little trimming work on the Woodland Scenics foam ramps (which are far better than the Atlas Bridge Trestles you see on the layout now).

Left Side of the Layout

Main Street

Industrial Area

Shue Cement Company

Right Side of Layout

Eagle Rive Mine Area (Foam ramp needed for track in back area)

Custom Tunnel Portal using 2 Woodland Scenics Portal Kits

Site of future custom made 130' curved bridge

I know what some folks are thinking ... seriously, a 130' curved railroad bridge.  Sure, what fantasy land do you live in.  Well, I've said it before - N Scale Net has everything.  Including, in discussions on curved bridges, a link to Vivion Chemical in Portland, OR.  Using the reference & Google Map - there it was & I was able to "walk" all around it thanks to Google Maps street walking function.  Here's a shot of what will be the sample for our bridge:

Vivion Chemical - Portland, OR

At the same time we build this bridge for our layout, we'll add a little jazz to the Atlas Plate Girder bridge that's already in place on the layout.  It's a little technique I learned form my buddy (and professional model builder extraordinaire) Charles Kendrick.  I can only hope to hit about 50% of his talent level!

So there you have it.  Time to log off the lessons learned blog and get back to work ..........

Feeder Wires versus Solder

In reading a lot of background (in an effort to mitigate rework) I have seen nearly everyone, with a lot more experience than me, solders the track power feeder wires rather than use the Atlas wired terminal connectors.  I decided to dive in and give it a try on some old scrap track after watching a video I found online.  It looked really easy..........

Now I knew that it couldn't really be this easy from the start but I went ahead and got a soldering iron & some solder.  Oops - probably should have got some flux but Home Depot was out.  My first few attempts actually did attach the wire to the track but I had to clean things up with a file, before a car would roll smooth across the connected area.

This was the second attempt and the wire nut was simply a way to energize the circuit for an op test.  I did my first solder test with just a small piece of wire rather than the real feeder wire length.  The wire is 20/2 from Home Depot at $0.24 a foot versus $3.00 for a pair of Atlas Wired Terminal Connectors.  With 65' feet of track, and a connection required about every 3', the cost savings really sold the solder argument pretty quick.

So, as I said - not pretty but the wire was on.  Then came another post from N Scale Net directing me to Mike Fifer's video:

How To Solder in Model Railroad

Mike owns Fifer Hobby Supply and has a huge online reference How To section.  Using flux (as all the NSN folks recommended) along with adding the solder to the iron first, both worked well.  Now, time for more real practice before I dive into solder on the real layout.  It's all about the learning......

Benchwork - Seriously, it doesn't fit?

Layout complete - time for benchwork.  A quick trip, OK a couple trips, to Lowe's and I was ready to go.  I'm fortunate to have a great wife who, over the years, has gifted me with multiple tools.  It was definitely nice to have a chop saw, table saw, jig saw and Ryobi lithium-ion battery powered hand tools.  XTrackCAD also has a benchwork feature so I had everything laid out before the first board was cut. I built the entire set up in our garage.  All 8 legs were bolted to the table top, along with their diagonal bracing.  From start to finish, it was about a good 5-6 hours.

I was lucky that our son Josh was home on leave (USN) and was available to help move the table top up the stairs to the spare bedroom.  At least, that was the plan.  At the top of the stairs, 10 minutes of multiple maneuvering revealed that there was no damn way the 8' long table was going to make the 90 degree turn at the top of the stairs.  Back down to the garage.  Day 2 resulted in partial disassemble, cutting the top, reworking the framing and reassembling into two halves.  At least they were an easy move upstairs.

Since we know we'll be in this house for at least a year, a wasn't too concerned about moving forward with the layout but I did split the foam at the table joint.  The cut out plywood became the upper deck.  Thanks to my buddy Dan for his left over spray adhesive, the foam work went relatively quick.

Also learned that the insulation foam has a film facing.  Fortunately, I split the 4' x 8' piece at Lowe's in order to get it into my SUV.  Sheila & I were able to peel the foam so any paint should stick.  Now that the benchwork and foam were down, it's time to start laying some track out.

Layouts - Which way do I go?

Armed with multiple layout books, massive web searches and a definite list of things we'd like to have (lots of activity, multiple trains running, a small town, some industry and opportunities for various scenery) I began the process of wading through no less than 6 false starts!!!  Finally, I decided that Atlas' N16 - Atlantic Longhaul Layout would basically work.  Here's their version from the Nine N Scale Layouts book:

I took the Atlas plan and started laying it out in XTrackCAD.  I immediately discovered that book layouts don't necessarily work out exactly in a CAD layout.  There were a few places that didn't look like they worked, including the double 90 degree crossings, but I also knew there was likely enough give in the track so I wouldn't have any serious problems.

Let me pause here and put in a plug for what I consider to be one of the best N Scale resources on the web - N Scale Net (NSN)  I have yet to come across any question that I couldn't find answered on this site.  Best of all - it's a free membership.  Do yourself a favor - JOIN!!!

So, after posting a few questions on NSN and making a few trial runs with real track, we ended up with the Yorktown M & S layout ready to go into construction:

Novice Blog for a Novice Layout

After spending over a month working on my first real N Scale railroad layout, I decided to start a blog about the adventure. Why not?  I hope it will serve to capture lessons learned, since this is the "learning layout" and I'm sure there's others out there who may benefit from this journey.

Why "YORKTOWN M & S"?  Well, we needed a name for our railroad - or at least felt like we needed one!  We were married on the USS Yorktown and that name has historic significance in our area of Colonial Williamsburg.  M & S - Mike & Sheila.  After all, even though this is mostly my hobby/project, Sheila still enjoys the process and is a definite design contributor!

So there we were, hanging out with our friends Dan & Terry when Dan & I were kicking around ideas for some sort of "hobby".  Dan & I work at the same place and both needed some sort of stress diversion.  Dan mentioned model railroading and I said that I had some N Scale train stuff in storage.  I always liked N Scale since it allowed for a lot more layout in less space than HO Scale.  I went home and pulled out two banker boxes pretty full of N Scale stuff.  As I emptied the boxes, I realized I have about 40 pieces of rolling stock, 9 locos, a bunch of track, 24 motorized turnouts, two power pack/throttles and several other miscellaneous things.  Off we go!!!!

As an architect, I can frequently suffer from paralysis from analysis.  I waded through multiple layout books I had and downloaded XTrackCAD for some track designing.  Armed with plenty of ideas, room for a 4' x 8' layout and CAD software - I headed off into layout design!