Telling a Story

With all the bench work, track laying, electrical gremlins, freight cars and trucks, and now you tell me I have to tell a story too? OK just kidding. Isn’t model railroading a diverse hobby!

One of the aspects I like about the O scale compared to my earlier forays in smaller scales is the larger figures allow one to tell a story. I am designing small mini scenes throughout the layout to tell the big picture. Too many layouts approach the detailing stage without a clear story. I think you need to leave "blank" space between scenes to better frame the story.

Another point occurred to me as I model the USMRR in occupied territory. To some extent I get short-changed in my ability to incorporate some of the normal everyday events of bucolic life. Since the civilian population has largely fled the area I model, what is left is akin to swarm of locusts trying to augment their army rations with local plunder.

This point really came to me when I visited Thom Radice's layout and saw many more trappings of regular life modeled on his layout, things like farms and busy town scenes. Even female figures would be rare in my layout, though the ones I do depict will have interesting stories. For example, this family of freed slaves heading north at Falmouth.



Hopefully the military activities I have to portray will be interesting enough. But I would love to try modeling a bustling town.  Now what was I working on....

A new house car

I built another house car. It was actually one of the first chassis I had started, but set it aside.  It wasn't in bad shape, so I decided to finish it.

The decals on this model were a real problem. I had to sand some of them off and try again. In the end I resorted to heavy weathering to disguise the decal glitches.

When is that bottle of Future Floor Wax going to get here?

You guys that can just go buy your freight car trucks and pop them on the car are so lucky. It takes me about 4 hours to build my trucks (albeit with working brakes). Multiply by 60 cars. On second thought, I'd rather not think that far ahead, at least not from that perspective.

Time for a new project. What should be it.....?

Ventilated Boxcar

Over the past few days I added another, and new type, of freight car to the fleet. This is a 28 foot ventilated box car, also called a combination box car. I based it on the Illinois Central car depicted in White's Freight Car book. I already offer this car as a kit in HO, so it was not too hard to upscale it to O Scale.

I painted it in a buff sand color. I used Vallejo Air paints to spray it. These are some of the best acrylic spray paints I have used. They cover nice and don't clog the airbrush. I have to mail order the paint as none of my local shops carry it anymore, mostly because most of the local shops closed. :(

Unpainted car

I elected to decal it as a USMRR car.  I made the decals on my printer and clear decal film.

This car has working brakes on wood beam trucks. After I took this pictures I realized I forgot to add the stirrups at the bottom of the ladders. I have since added them.

Link and Pin Drawhead Redesign

Now that I have a few freight cars, I've been doing more test operating. I have noticed that when backing cuts of cars, the pushing forces are sometimes are causing my cars to derail. As I study what is happening I see that the coupler offset on "S" curves (such as when taking the diverging route on a turnout) is causing a strong sideways force on the cars. It can actually lift the car off the track and cause a derailment. John Armstrong called this "lurching" and he developed a phrase called the "coefficient of lurch." My links and drawheads are causing a high coefficient of lurch.

Original design with internal plate

The photo at the right shows the lurch, or offset I am getting. The problem comes when the link hits the backing plate inside the drawhead. I designed the drawhead with this backing plate as I thought I would need it to keep the link from sliding too far into the draw head. I actually have to solder in a separate piece for this plate. It is a simple matter to leave off the plate. I built some drawheads without the plate and did a test.

Sure enough, the cars back up much more reliably without the plate.

Modified design without backing plate

Without the plates the link can slide completely into the drawheads when the cars are being pushed. This allows the two drawheads to strike face-to-face. This reduces the lurch as it allows the cars to come closer together. It also reduces the sideways force on the cars.

The cars pull normally. Without the plate it is a bit harder to get the link positioned in the drawhead as they can now slide all the way in and slightly sideways, but this is not bad and worth the improved reliability.

Now I need to retrofit the rest of the couplers and remove the backing plates.

I did some more testing and determined that shorter links also work well. I can make up a batch of shorter links using brass wire. This will allow me to avoid retrofitting existing drawheads.

Tool Shed

The tool shed has a home. I added a removable roof to make the interior detailing more obvious. I also added a second window to let in more light. I think it fits in pretty well in this spot. I had to move one of the chevaux de frise to make room for the building. For the bare spot in front, I added a detail of soldiers heading to guard posts along the entrenchments.

The figures have small 0.032 inch pins in their feet, so they are easy to move around for different views.
Note the  artillery men in the background are now in their final positions. They do not have pins.
They are just glued down.

Overview of the scene. Note how the soil color textured paint on the
fascia helps blend it in with the scenery.