The Man that Shot Bernie's Valance

Who really shot Bernie's valance?

Paul visiting the new section with COVID mask

Today marks the first time since lockdown I had a visitor to the Aquia Line. Up to now, any social visits we hosted took place on our front porch with appropriate distances maintained.  But, today Paul Dolkos stopped by to borrow some scenery items and to check on the layout progress. Our COVID Response Coordinator,  Alicia, AKA CINCHOUSE, deemed it acceptable that Paul could enter the house if we were all masked and did not get too close.


Paul got a chance to look at the new stuff, run some trains, and comment on additional planned expansion.  But, the big question of the day was about an extension of a valance above Stare's Tunnel.   On the left  is the view I am trying to restrict.  When folks enter the door to the front room, if they look right, they see the bright lights over the new part of the layout. This is something that always bugged me, even before the expansion.

I took a few photos of the mocked up valance and showed my friends via text. They were of mixed opinions. Brian Brendel in particular voted down the idea.  Alicia initially liked it, then changed her mind and then swapped back to her original opinion. So Paul's opinion would be the deciding vote. He said, "do it."  So Bernie's valance will survive the bullet wound. I mounted it by tension only, so if I need to, I can easily remove it.

New valance section painted and installed. It restricts the view of the lights above Stares tunnel as you enter the room, but opens up as you walk in.  I'd like to say the curve was carefully calculated, but I just eyeballed it.

View of the valance from inside the layout room is unobtrusive. 

One thing I am noticing on the layout is that I need to do a thorough cleaning. My track and wheels are dirty. Not surprising as it has been at least 9 months since I ran the layout. Even the scenery seems to have a fine coat of dust. I think the dust source was either the new plaster scenery, or the disk sander in the work shop or both. I have a dust evacuator for the sander, but sometimes I am too lazy to hook it up and put on hearing protection. The dust evacuator isn't too loud, but the air whistling through the disk sander is very loud. I cleaned the wheels of Haupt and Fury, but a complete maintenance session is needed.  I probably should wait until all the building is done though.

March Madness - a Snow Storm on the First Day of Spring

They say March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Well the lion got in a late roar and dumped abut 6 inches of heavy wet snow on our area. Late snow is unusual for Northern Virginia, but recall that there was a heavy snow storm storm when President Abraham Lincoln made his Easter visit to the Aquia Line in 1863, as well as several other storms that winter.

Of course the snow caused the local schools, many businesses, and the Federal Government offices to close down. With an unexpected day off, I tackled several miscellaneous tasks on the Aquia Line. Most of the tasks were in the maintenance and rebuilding category.

First, I tuned up several freight cars. Through test operation I found several cars that were derailing in various places. I discovered that some of my cast metal trucks did not have the king pin hole exactly on the center line. This caused the couplers to be offset too much on certain curves. The offset couplers then jam the links and caused derailments by lifting the car and wheels off the rails.

The off center problem  was due to the rubber mold wearing as I cast the metal parts for the trucks. To fix that problem, I cracked open  the offending trucks and replaced the bolster beam with new laser cut parts that had the king pin hole precisely centered. They also had consistent tabs to fit in the slots of the cast metal truck side frames. With these changes, those cars performed much better.

While I was doing freight cars, I also finished up the decals for a new box car. This is now the 28th car on the RR. I also built two more sets of trucks for cars 29 and 30.

But I still had some derailment trouble. All three turnouts to the wye at Aquia had problems. These are key turnouts and must work reliably. The easiest to fix was the switch on the Burnside Wharf side of the wye. My operators from last week reported that the stubs were not clearing the stock rails. Sure enough, one stock rail was too long. That was easy to trim.

The center wye switch had become tight in gauge after I ballasted the track, probably because I was too enthusiastic with dilute glue and wet-water  when I applied the ballast. The excess water caused some of the ties to wrap a little bit. However, I was able to salvage the turnout by slightly re-gauging the track without having to pull the ties and totally re-lay it.

New extended lead and switch stand WIP

The biggest problem was in the south end of the wye. The lead to the turnout was too sharp. While it worked most of the time, certain car-coupler combos still had trouble. The frog was ok, but the lead in the stock rails was the problem.

To fix it, I pulled up  the stock rails, added three inches  to the lead and and re-spiked the track. In the process, I was able to move the switch stand to the foreground, where is it much easier to access. It all works much better now.

One other niggling problem we had was that certain freight cars interfered with the transfer bridge on the car float. I was able to sand the transfer bridge post in the center that was causing the problem. Most cars now fit, except two flat cars with home made stake pockets. I was able to use my new Proxxon disk sander to take off about .040 inches off each side of the cars. They now fit and the cars still look fine.

I recently purchased the Proxxon sander. It has proven itself to be one of the most useful tools in my shop.  How I got along without it for so long is a mystery.  It's for sale direct from their website with feee shipping. And their price is lower than most discounters, like Amazon.

Finally, the USPS brought a package. I guess the, "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" is true. Anyway, the package contained an O scale 2-8-0 2-rail locomotive that Jeremy Drummler purchased for me at the 2018 National O scale Show in Chicago last weekend. Thanks Jeremy!

It is shocking to feel how heavy this loco is and how much bigger it is compared to a ACW 4-4-0. The engine weighs 4.1 pounds and the tender is another.  Wow.  The loco is for a new layout project for my next book. More on that later.

The week of DCC Comes to an End

The week of DCC comes to an end with the creation of a separate easy DCC zone for PoLA. I had ordered a separate Easy DCC Zone Master a few weeks ago, but finally got to install it today. The most difficult aspect of the job was running the bus wires from the central distribution panel under the bench work. The rest of the hook-up was pretty straight forward. Once I connected the wires and double checked everything, I flipped on the master power. Fortunately,  there were no sparks or smoke.  Everything seems to be working.

This concludes the to-do list of DCC items I wanted to finish. I still plan to add a third booster for Aquia Landing. That will be relatively easy, as I had previously installed the bus wires under the benchwork as I built it. I also have some wiring to do when I lay the Aquia Landing track, but that will be done incrementally as I work on the track.  All the steam locomotives have functioning DCC and sound. All but one have either batteries or current keepers.

Brad is watching Margaret operate PoLA

Earlier in the day Brad and Margaret Trenkamp visited the layout. They are new neighbors of ours as they recently moved into a striking modern townhouse in the Del Ray area of Alexandria, a mile from my house. Brad is building a Florida theme switching layout in a spare room of the house in the style of Lance Mindheim. It is great to have another model railroader near by. Lance was also scheduled to visit today, but the snowy roads caused him to abort.

Margaret got a chance to run a train on PoLA. She said it was the first time she ever got to run model train. She did a great job as she carefully listened and followed the guidance I gave her on operations. If only my normal operators were so meticulous.  Later Brad got to take Osceola on a run over the USMRR with 5 cars in tow. One of the cars derailed on a turnout in Brooke. But Osceola ran and sounded great. Afterwards, Brad and I discussed the next step in the layout plans.

After they left I checked the turnout and the wheel sets of the offending car. For once it was a wheel set with a wobbly wheel that was partially out of gauge and not my track work that caused the problem. Our the past two weeks I have been tweaking and tuning problems on the Aquia Line as I discover them. Things I have done included, adjusting some stub points to prevent interference. Humidity changes seem to affect them. I also fixed a few switch stands that had minor issues. I cleaned the track and wheel sets on the locos. That is the first time I have done that in probably two years.   The layout is operating better as a result. I did some dusting too, but the layout should probably get a thorough vacuuming. Another remaining task is to check all the cars for consistent coupler height.

I am running out of excuses to avoid layout track in Aquia.

I also did a bit of editing of the Osceola Silent Film Check it out if you have time.