Poolside Rails

I wish, when I’d been working on the Pola railway station and the Forces of Valor farm cottage, that I’d used epoxy instead of Plumber’s Goop. If I had, I could have yelled “epoxy on BOTH your houses!”  Alas, my wife would have said it’s an old joke and my seven year old wouldn’t have gotten it and my 18 year old daughter would have rolled her eyes but told her friends. Alas.

I’ve been thinking a lot about electricity…you could say my thoughts were fairly buzzing! Getting it from Paris to Peking will be quite a challenge, but I think I’ve come up with the Power Pole Design that will serve:

I bought a bunch of 1/4″ dowels for something…I think it was actually for building these power poles.  It’s funny…I’ve been using them for so many things I rather forgot that I bought them for this project! Anyway, they’re three feet long, so I can get two power poles from one dowel. I reckon I’ll Rust-Oleum ‘em to keep them from warping.  If they’re 18 scale feet high, that’s twelve real inches. With six inches stuck into the ground, that’s a half of a dowel right there. I figure Zorro the Wonder Dog can’t knock ‘em over if they’re six inches into the ground!

I actually built one of these things, sort of.

Now, back when I was thinking all excitedly about the locomotive conversion I’d gotten myself all worked up over 1/4″x1/4″ strip wood…sticks? I actually started on a combine in 1/18th scale, using the strip wood for the cross bracing on a plywood chassis. Yes, it looked cool, but now I know a chassis built to the monstrous dimensions I cooked up will never fit on the railway.

There’s an adage about looking before one leaps: forget that one. Just jump right in there with both feet and let the chips fall where they may, that’s my motto! Scale shmale! Clearance shmearance! It’ll all work out in the end.

Anyway, now I have a nice supply of 1/4″x1/4″ sticks.  Ahem.

I routed out a nice little curvy schwoop in the back of a 3 inch piece of stick and epoxied that to the pole. I thought it would be more scale like to drive a nail through the crossarm and into the pole. CRAACK. On my second attempt, I drilled a hole into which to drive the nail. But my nail is smaller in diameter than my drill bit…I know, it sounds like a personal problem…and my nail fell out. Lord, why does this have to be so hard?

The real problem comes in getting the bead insulators to stick to the crossarm. I figured to drill a hole in the crossarm and thread a tiny wire loop around the insulator. The insulator is epoxied to the underside of the arm for strength while the wire pokes through for show and stability.

Look at this little gem of a plan here:

I thought and thought about how to get electricity into the China Section using these power poles, and that, my friend, is my plan. Pretty cool, huh?

The next challenge: figuring out how many of these darned things to make.

Epoxy on both your houses. That’s pretty good…

The China Mountain is Finally Planted!

What’s the first thing you know about garden railroading? Well, it takes place in a garden! That’s why they call it that!  Until this weekend we’ve been Brown Dirt Railroading…not much fun!
“I say, Brown Dirt Railroading,” sniffs the CEO. “I don’t quite get it.”

“It’s a joke,” the CFO mutters drily over his brandy. “It’s emphasizing the fact that we haven’t planted anything in the garden.”

“Well I’m not certain I get it,” the CEO coughs slightly and cleans his glasses on his napkin.

“That don’t surprise me much,” chuckles the Chief Engineer. “The  only thing I’ve ever seen you get is drunk!”

“Oh, now see here…” the CEO is flustered.

“Gentlemen,” the secretary interjects “…the narrative.”

All go silent again.

Yes, on a whim and a prayer my darling wife, the very love of my life, the Maintenance Operations Manager (or MOM, as my daughter calls her),  planted plants over the China Mountain. Now, for the very first time, the China Section is planted!

The plants, for those of you who know plants, are of the Creeping Charlie variety. They’re green, have leaves, and, well they’re there, in the garden, so to speak. Horticulture was never my subject.

Now, planting plants in the middle of existing trackage is clearly a little difficult, as the  pictures will attest.  Getting the various elements of planting to the planting zone itself was obviously a challenge; dirt appears to have gone everywhere, and water was imported from a hose rather than a judicious little watering can. But I don’t care! I’ve got Plants!

And some of the landscape features that marked the China Section have changed just a little bit. Little features like the road, which when buried by the Wonder Dog (I wonder what he’ll destroy next?) tended to disappear, must have looked like prime planting ground. And gone is the little flat spot I had cleaved (cloven?) out of the China Mountain for the quaint Chinese cottage which had, again, been modified by Mr. Zorro to the point where it just looked like a ducky place to plant a plant.  But I don’t care! I’ve got plants!

And that tunnel we so carefully blasted underneath the roadbed so that the now disappeared road could continue offstage…well, that’s filled with dirt now, and looks more like a cave.  But I don’t care! I’ve got plants!

The Tunnel Appears Plugged!

I’m joking, of course. It’s a wonderful thing MOM did by planting all that greenery, and suddenly the China Section has character. Actually, the China Section at the moment is under a web of Anti-Wonder Dog Netting. My wife and I agree that Mr. Zorro would have a field day in our field of green, digging and rooting and just having too much fun!

Anti-Wonder Dog Netting

“I can’t tell,” says the CEO. “Is he happy or not?”

“He’s groompy, ye windbag,” said the Chief Engineer. Stout number five is just finishing up, and the Chief Engineer tends to forget his manners.  “He’s a groompy sourpuss today.”

“Let’s not print that,” says the PR Guy. “That’s bad press.”

Yes, I am a little grumpy, but I am DELIGHTED to have greens in my garden. It feels so…gardeny!  It’ll take some time for the little suckers to get a hold, and there will be watering and all that stuff. But soon, my friend, soon you’ll see a garden in our garden railway!

Now, on the HO pike in your basement, you get your white glue and your little piece of lichen and, boom, you’ve got a plant. But garden railroading is real railroading, and, in this case, is real gardening! There’s watering and weeding and trimming that has to be done. I’m not sure how the rails will hold up to all of that. The dirt can be swept away…it’s the mud I’m worried about…there’s going to be mud.

We’re down operationally until the Anti-Wonder Dog netting is removed, but that’s okay. Between the Bachmann Not-So-Big Hauler, the damage to the Piko station platform, and stringing of electric wires, I’ve got plenty more railroading to do than just run trains!

But soon I’ll be able to run ‘em through a GARDEN!

Warped Boards!

As you well know, there’s an adage that says it never rains in Southern California. There’s another one that says an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. There still one more that says stupid is as stupid does.

Well,  you probably know we Californians are dying for rain…after all these years of drought, we’re down to putting on galoshes and pulling out the bumbershoots when we see a cloud! So we were delighted to welcome this most recent deluge last week!  Even though it wreaked havoc on the house…it’s been a long, dry year…it was wonderful to have water fall from teh sky so early in the fall!

The roof leaked over my son’s room, and he’ll soon be the happy recipient of new drywall and flooring when I discover where the water got in. It also leaked here in my office…ol’ Bessie the computer almost got drenched. Almost.

Things weren’t so happy outside. Oh, the track held up – brass rails on plastic ties don’t care much about water.  The Forces of Valor Farmhouse held up just fine. The Pola railroad station building got wet but is now dry. That’s the good news.

It’s that deck – my beautiful hand-laid coffee-stir-stick masterpiece that took the damage.  Makes me, a grown man, father of three, want to cry.

It's Ruined!

What is particularly distressing about this tragedy is that I took the precaution of bathing, and I do mean bathing, the deck in waterproofing juice before I stained it. As you’ll recall, I actually was concerned that the waterproofing would repel the stain!  That was my ounce of prevention.

But, in thinking about it, I seem to recall my wife watching me splash on the skim-milky looking waterproofing stuff…Thompson’s Water Seal, I think. She watched for a while as I slathered it on.

“Don’t you think that’s rather thin?” she asked with arched eyebrow.

Now, it’s a guy thing, I know it, but I was three quarters of the way through with the project. You’re a guy…you would have said the same thing:

“Nope, it’s fine.”

“I think you’re supposed to mix it up, like paint,” she said before she left.  She has her Master’s Degree in Russian literature…she knows BS when she sees it.

“Nope, it’s fine,” I replied.

The can of water seal was stored outside, see, for, like, a long time. The lid had rusted onto the can. I had to use a pair of vise-grips to get it open, and you can just imagine what those vise-grips did to the thin steel cap of the water seal can. Mangle city! Now, this is one of those gallon sized rectangular steel cans with the easy-pour spout and a handle and everything.  Because the pour spout is only two inches wide, you can’t get a stir stick down in there to shake things up. Because I’d screwed up the screw top to the can, it won’t go back on, making shaking the can itself a very messy proposition.

I knew the stuff wasn’t right, but I’m an optimist in addition to being a somewhat dim bulb. I figured there was probably some degree of water protection in the milky effluvia in which I bathed the platform. And then I stained it with something that said it had a varnish in it. That should have worked, shouldn’t it?

Well, it didn’t.

It seems to me it took just about forever to cut down all those coffee-stir sticks and glue ‘em down and sand the crackers out of ‘em.  Looking in my account of free time to rework something on which I’ve already spent a gajillion hours, I find there are precious few minutes there. Hmph.

Oh, sure...the bad roof's just fine!

To add insult to injury, take a look at the roof on the Forces of Valor Farmhouse. Do you see how the rows of shingles form columns, too? Now go take a look at any shingle roof…hey, those rows are offset from one another! When I was done shticking those shingles down I nailed the roof with a quick coat of Rust-Oleum brown. That’s when I spotted the mistake.

I’d be willing to redo that roof because of the error, but of course that roof held the water out just fine!

So my pride and joy, the one piece of woodworking I’ve ever done in my life that actually looks half decent is wiped out.

My favorite battle in World War II is Midway. I’ve always been fascinated by the intricate timing and the seemingly unbelievable coincidences that led to the American victory. I often think about what happened over in the planning room of the Japanese high command when they found out that four of their six carriers, the very backbone of their strategy for the entire war,  were now gone.  I’ve often wondered what it’s like to find your resources suddenly swept off the board.  Now, there’s no way to equate the damage done to my little platform with the incredible sacrifices of both fleets at Midway, and this is an improper reflection. Please disregard.

So, it’s back to the drawing board. What do you think of this? Scrape off the stir sticks and replace ‘em with unwarpy ones, and then spray the crackers out of ‘em with Rust-Oleum brown, and then sand away the tops to accept a stain and a coat of varnish? In theory the paint would provide a nice water seal all the way around the boards, and the varnish over the stain would protect the tops and make ‘em look purty. The seams would looked caulked between the boards, too!

So what lesson did we learn?  Well, it doesn’t rain on your HO layout in the basement, does it? You can make roofs out of toilet paper and they’ll last a decade!

But out here in the yard we must never, never forget: Garden railroading is REAL railroading!

As you know, the Bachmann Not-So-Big Hauler, the classic 4-6-0 locomotive I’ve converted into a 4-4-0, has been undergoing the Europeanification process for quite some time now.

The reason behind this entire process is quite simple: we need a heavyweight, battery-driven locomotive in order to run the rough rails in the China Section. The New Bright 2-6-0, although operational, carries the batteries in the tender, eliminating their value as traction-generators. It bobs and weaves through the China Section like Sugar Ray Leonard, but doesn’t have the weight to combat the gauge issues and therefore pops off the track about every six inches or so.

The Bachmann Big Hauler carries the batteries in the locomotive, but has too long of a wheelbase to negotiate the four foot diameter curve of the China Loop. The little LGB 0-4-0 runs exquisitely through most of the loop, but electrification issues abound, and the loop is incomplete.

So, we must modify the Big Hauler. I’ve shortened the pilot truck so that it fits under the new shortened boiler, which hangs over the new 4 drive wheel configuration. Just to make sure there are no gauge-crash issues, I placed un-flanged wheels on the forward drivers. The only flanges that touch the rails are on the pilot truck and the rear drive wheels…haven’t tested that one out yet. The more I think about it, the less enthusiastic I am about the concept.

Now, I’m not an engineer…

“Ye got that right,” the Chief Engineer mutters into his stout. “Ye’re a moron.”

…I’m an artist. But to make this dang railway run, it takes a ton of engineering skills that I’m having to pick up on the fly.

“Now, now, let’s watch our language,” says the CEO.

“‘Dang’ doesn’t sell,” says the PR Guy. “Try ‘gosh-darn’.”

“Ye’re all a bunch of lily-livered cowards,” the Chief Engineer mutters, and then mumbles a stream of invective that would make sailors blush.

The biggest issue I can’t resolve on this modification is the angle of the driver rods. The valves sit outside the frame, of course, which means they sit outside of the drive wheels. As designed, the driver rods stretched back to the rear drive wheels at a nice, subtle angle. When I shortened the wheelbase, however, I moved the rear drive wheels much closer to the valves. Now the angle of those driver rods is pretty wicked! They still move smoothly enough, but rather lack the elegant prototypical correctness of the Big Hauler.

“‘Elegant prototypical correctness’, I’ll use that!” says the PR Guy.

“Elegant crap, if you ask me,” says the Chief Engineer. “That steep angle’ll will give you friction problems all the way doon the line, you ruddy ape! You’ve made a mess of it!”

That's One Steep Angle!

I thought about moving the valves closer in, but they’re already against the frame. I guess I could fabricate new valves, but, as you’ll see from the pictures of the tanks, I’m an artist, not an engineer.

“You got that ruddy right,” the Chief Engineer pours himself another stout. I think it’s number three, but I lost count. We know it’ll be a fistfight after number 6.

Anyway, the railway runs from Paris to Peking, and the Big Hauler is an American locomotive, not European. That’s where the rest of this conversion comes in.

I’m happy with the round windows at the front of the cab, and with the groovy schwoopie side windows. Now we’re tackling tanks.

“‘Tackling Tanks’,” says the PR Guy. “I’ll use that, too!”

“Bunch of Nancy boys,” mutters the Chief Engineer.

Following the advice of my brother, who is an engineer, I split a piece of 2×4 to form the base of the tanks. I lack the finesse for such finesse work, and the result rather lacks in finesse.

It looks better in the dark!

“Ye’re a ham-fisted baboon,” says the Chief Engineer. “I’ve seen better work done by my drunk grandmother.”

Well, be that as it may, the tanks are tentatively tacked on. I like the look. I used gnarly drywall screws to hold the tanks on temporarily for the Kodak Moment above. I’ll epoxy ‘em on tomorrow, using the same screws to anchor ‘em while the epoxy sets. Once that’s done, I’ll be able to drive smaller screws into ‘em from the inside. The big drywalls will conflict with the batteries, otherwise I’d leave ‘em in.

Yes, the tanks look crummy right now…

“I thought ye said ye were an artist!” laughs the Chief Engineer.

“Never show a child or an idiot anything half done,” clucks the PR Guy. That was not a wise comment. Insulting the Chief Engineer when he’s into his stouts is a dangerous proposition.

…but once I’ve added sheet styrene cladding they should look pretty sharp.

So, we’ve got the cab reconfigured. We’ve got a good start on the tanks, and will have them looking sharp by week’s end.

Now, there’s just one problem that remains: That long boiler held a very sophisticated circuit board. Very nice. Came right out with a couple of snips of the wire cutters. Hey! I seem to have removed the On/Off switch! I can get the beast to run forward by twisting together a couple of wires…

“Idiot’s switch,” yells the Chief Engineer. He’s got the poor PR Guy in a headlock.

…but of course the thing screams down the rails at full speed because there’s no remote control to moderate the speed.

So, my wife and I were at Pic-N-Sav…I mean Big Lots!…this afternoon and I spotted a nifty looking radio control pickup truck for eight bucks. We were buying cheapo Halloween decorations for the house, which meant I couldn’t get the $8 justified to the Budget and Finance Committee. When I sell my book, which, incidentally, goes to market on Wednesday, I’ll go buy that truck. The radio should fit inside the locomotive.

So, we’re moving forward on this project. I want to get it done so I can get back to my overhead wiring system. I’m telling you, that’ll be really cool.

“I’m telling ye ye’re an idiot!” bellows the Chief Engineer.

The CEO adjourns the meeting just in time, as the Chief Engineer has ordered his sixth stout and the PR Guy is hiding behind the CFO.

Wish me luck on the book!