Poolside Rails

Yes, you read right, my friend. If you saw the earlier post called Tough Times you’ll know that the Bachmann N-S-B-H took a dive from about three feet and landed with a horrific CRAACK on the concrete walkway. After picking ‘er up and checking things out I found no major physical damage, but the motor, she no work. Headlight works. Motor: nope.

I don’t mind telling you I was a trifle dispirited by that turn of events.  Here I hadn’t even finished the tank modification and I’d already blown up the radio.
But this weekend I decided to take the bull by the tail and face the situation.

With my trusty GE multimeter in hand I tackled the beast, trying to figure out what went wrong.  It turns out the problem had to do with the battery door …if you’ve ever seen the battery door on the Bachmann Big Hauler you’d be amazed at how robust that thing is. The batteries, six D cells, are stored in the boiler, so the battery door is actually the back end of the boiler itself. It has thick lugs that look like they were adapted from a submarine hatch that hold it in place.  Anyway, one of those broke off. Actually, it didn’t so much break off as the cement joint broke and it popped off. Two-part, five-minute epoxy put that sucker back on. All fixed!

So, whilst I was at that fixing thing, I decided to finish the modification…I know, that seems radical, but I decided what the hey: it’s taken long enough already. The grating over the top of the tanks is made from plastic canvas (stolen from my wife’s sewing basket…shhh, don’t tell!) and is glued down with more of the five-minute epoxy. I made the little hatches out of sheet styrene and stuck ‘em down with CA glue.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: you stuck the details onto a pre-painted piece of plastic? Are you nuts? You know that you can’t use acrylic glue on painted surfaces because the glue sticks to the paint, not the surface.

Well, the plastic canvas is made of polyethylene, which, as you know,  is the slickest, bendable-est, most difficult plastic to work with on the planet. Here’s what I did; I laid down a thick sheet of epoxy goo on top of the tanks, and then seated the canvas in it so that the epoxy gushed through some of the holes in it. This, when dry, rather locked the canvas into the epoxy. Then I sprayed the crackers out of it with black Rust-Oleum. The CA glue I used is a gel, and, like the epoxy, reached through the coruscations (it’s a word: look it up) in the canvas. The paint eliminated the slickness of the plastic whilst the gel anchored around the canvas. This is brilliant, if I must say so myself, and I must, for certainly no one else will say it.

Now, don’t be put off by that groovy purple paint. I just wanted to see what she’d look like with a black boiler nose and running gear and a colored everything else. The purple part of the loco will be either Chinese red or that rich chocolate-pudding brown we started with. Pretty cool, huh?

Here’s the kicker: IT WORKS!!!!

Now, in Southern California it doesn’t rain much. In fact it hardly rains at all. So when we get a rainstorm, it’s a big deal, and it reminds us that garden railroading is REAL railroading.

If you’ve been following along, you know that we were able to get a small deal of electrification via overhead wire in the Parisian Loop…not a lot, just enough to test the theory. We were able to install some nice looking telephone poles, too.  They weren’t permanently mounted, of course, as they were really installed just to test the theory of overhead electrification in a garden railway setting.

You’re probably also aware that we installed that nifty Styrofoam road bridge down there in the China Section, and planted the new hill down there, too. Yessir, we’ve made some improvements on the old Paris to Peking Railway.

And then the rains came. And then The Idiot Came. And then it rained again. And then King Louis the cat dashed through the power lines. And then it rained again.  Then Polly Pockets wanted to play in the pool inside the DRG&W gondola. And then it rained again.

On real railroads, everything is build to withstand the rain, because it rains on the real railroads. It snows on ‘em, and a myriad other things happen, too.  When I had my HO scale roundy-round in the basement, I made a nifty little section that simulated a rainy day…glossy streets, puddles, etc.

On the Garden Railway, of course, one must prepare for rain as well. Otherwise one gets that which I have gotten; a mess!

Now, I can deal with the gon filled with water…that’s my mistake for leaving it out there…didn’t even think about it until I spotted my nice brown car pool (get it? Car? Pool? Eh, it’s been done!).

The warped boards in front of the Pola railway station actually look most realistic…somebody should fire that maintenance guy!

But it’s the power poles, one of which got broken during a fray between King Louis and The Idiot, that have rather sunk my spirits. It’s tragic.  I’m pretty sure Godzilla didn’t break any power poles…remember that scene in the original movie where he gets all tangled up in the Tokyo power grid? It was the wires, my friend, not the poles, that did him in.

And then, just to make sure I really messed everything up, I decided it was a good idea to test the Bachmann Not-So-Big Hauler on the short Parisian Section…that’s the part where there is no track because Mr. Ding-dong got all excited about replacing the rails and ripped up the roadbed, track included. Then the money ran out. Oops.

So, zoom of zooms, the little black-painted 4-4-0 dashed through the Parisian Turnout and down the short straightaway…I reversed the wheels before I hit the end of the track, because,  hey, you don’t want to run off the track. But the tracks were still wet, you see. There was a glorious dive , and then the CRACCCCK of a heavy-gauge locomotive landing on its temporary sides on a concrete walkway from a height of about three feet. Ouch.

Tough times, my friend, tough times.

This post is unique in a number of ways, but most importantly that it was written on a Blackberry. Oh, how 21st Century-ish!

It seems Old Bessie the Desktop Behemoth has picked up a bit of a bug…darn thing won’t boot up without incessantly running CHKDSK after starting Windows. It was annoying the first time, frustrating the second, and INFURIATING!!! the third!

Well, I’ve shown Old Bessie! While my Windows OS disk spins merrily away in the E drive I’m sitting next to the heater with my wee little Blackberry, typing away as happily as you please! Hey, Bessie! CHK this DSK!

But that’s not the point of this post…nosiree Bob! Just looka those pics and tell me what ya’all see!

Those, my friend, are tanks…nice, rectangular tanks, carrying water and fuel oil and perhaps oolong tea…

Dang! I just “repaired” the Windows installation, and now it wants to boot up again! Grrrrrr….stupid Windows! Sure it works great for, like, 99.9% of the time, but I’m sleepy, I want to get this done, and, frankly, I’ve gotten a better offer! Well, we’ll just reload old Mr. Windows on Old Bessie and see who checks who’s disk!

So, take a guess as to what material your skin-flinty Mr. Turner used for those tanks…take a good look and you’ll see it…Cassette case? Nope, too small. CD crystal case? Nope, too thin…tick, tick, tick…BZZZZT! The correct answer: video cassettes!

Video cassettes are made out a nice, heavy plastic that, when taken apart, exactly match the depth required on the Bachmann Not-So-Big Hauler. Not only that, but they’re big enough that you can cut opposing sides of each tank from the same cassette. Better yet, you can reasonably eliminate a video tape you’d rather not have your kids see…ahem.

The left side tank came from a video of stupid stuff I shot 20 years ago when I thought I was a hotshot videographer. Talk about embarrassing footage! The right side tank is an annoying Veggie Tales video that was bad in 1992. The “edited” video cassettes make a nice, trim little tanky-looking package, don’t they?

Hot Dog! Back on the PC again…I opened Windows in Safe Mode and ran System Restore. Whatever I loaded, and I think it was, of all the things, updated software for the Blackberry…ah, insidious technologies!…must have tangled up the Windows OS. It’s better now!

Anyway, I unscrewed the video cassettes and broke them into two halves, and then cut the proper profile out of opposing corners of each half. By rotating the corners and gluing them together, I was able to acquire nice, smooth(ish), industrial-looking tanks.

They are glued to the sides of the locomotive body…no, they’re not as heavy as blocks of wood, but they’re plenty secure.  A quick coat of black Rust-Oleum, and, voila, tanks!

Now we have a radio controlled, short wheelbase, European profile 4-4-0 tank locomotive! The only problem now is that the coupler on the back end of the Bachmann is really just a big ugly hook. And the darn thing is so close to the locomotive’s frame that it really cinches the following car up tight! Have to work on that!

“What’s this about a spy?” gags the CEO on his brandy, “in our midst?”

“Yes,” the PR Guy shouts, “a SPY in our yards! Just look at these scandalous photos!”

“I’ve seen better,” mutters the Chief Engineer.

“Well, now, I say, that’s the Bachmann Big Hauler, isn’t it?” asks the CEO.

“Not so bloody big-hauler,” say s the Chief Engineer.

“Yes, yes it is,” stammers the PR Guy in his excitement. “But look again…it’s changed. That SPY must have gotten right next to it!”

“Is that masking tape?” queries the CFO. “Cheap masking tape? I hope so!”

“Isn’t it MYSTERIOUS?” asks the PR Guy.

“What’s mysterious is why you still have a job,” mutters the Chief Engineer.

“Who could these SPIES be?” continues the PR Guy, his spirits undampened by the harsh and thoughtless Chief Engineer.

“Frankly, I don’t see why you keep yelling the word ’spies’”,  says the CEO. “We get the idea; some blighter has taken photos of our Bachmann Not-S0-Big Hauler.”

“But look, Chief,” says the PR Guy, “look at those tanks! Doesn’t that pique your interest?”

“I’ll pique your nose with my fist if you don’t shut up,” says the Chief Engineer. He’s well into his fifth stout.

“All right you guys, come on, now,” whines the PR Guy. “You guys aren’t playing along on this thing at all.  The word SPY is supposed to generate interest in our readers…make ‘em pay attention to what’s going on in the yards at the Paris to Peking Railway, see? Spies are edgy… cool, you know?”

“Oh, I get it,” says the CEO, “it’s a publicity stunt, like cramming college kids into lemonade stands, or pitchers, or something like that!”

“Yes!” The PR Guy is delighted someone gets it. “Exactly like that! If our readers think we have spies in our yards, they’ll think we’ve got something cool to talk about!”

“Let ‘em talk aboot this,” slurs the Chief Engineer. “You’re an idiot.”

After a lot of researching and head-scratching, we have finally struck upon the answer of how the return switches were wired by the previous administration!

“I’m sorry, but what did he say? He lost me at that vulgar ‘head-scratching’ thing,” mutters the CEO, taking a sip on his brandy.

“We’ll be sure to leave that head-scratching part out when we report it to the papers. It sounds like a reference to lice,” replies the PR Guy, quickly taking notes.

“When you chuckle-heads arre quite thrrough,” rumbles the Chief Engineer over his stout, “I believe this is crrit-ickle information!”

Many months ago, back when I was philosophizing about ways to overcome the polarity issues, I had joked that maybe the way to accomplish it was to simply hardwire the turnouts so that trains can only go one way through them.

The problem, you see, is that the Paris to Peking Railway is a long dogbone-style layout. The train starts in Paris, passes through the Paris Turnout and heads south on the main line through the Ukraine and crosses a bridge at Kazakhstan, then passes through a second turnout, this one in China. The China Turnout sends the train around the China Section, which is really just an oblong loop. At the end of the loop the train comes back through the China Turnout again before heading north toward Paris. The Paris Turnout sends the train around the Parisian Loop before admitting it back onto the main line for its southern journey. You get the drift?

Heading south, the right rail on the main line is, for giggles and grins, the positive rail. If we head straight through the China Turnout, the right rail remains positive all the way around the China Bend until we approach the same China Turnout from the other side. The China Turnout admits the train back onto the main line in the opposite direction. The right rail should be positive, but now we’re heading north, and  that rail was negative when we were heading south. See the problem?

The way to fix the problem is to have a switchlike doohickey that flips the polarity on the main line based on the location of the train. LGB makes just such a doohickey.  It senses the presence of a train passing over it and flips the main line polarity. If you had two such doohickies, you could, in fact, complete a loop without touching the polarity on the main line yourself.

Well, after some digging around, it turns out that the previous administration had mounted exactly two such doohickies on the Paris to Peking main line, about a foot inside either loop from the turnouts.  These guys are LGB 1015 K and U units, and the switches are mounted on the main line inside the loops, while the sensors are mounted on the other part of the wye in turnout.

To make ‘em work, however, the train must always travel down the wye of the turnout to trip the sensor. A train traveling through the turnout on the main line passes  the doohickey but not the sensor, so that when it travels down the wye and through the turnout, the main line is set in the wrong polarity.

So, that’s great news!  The LGB engine is now officially able to make a circumnavigational journey of the Paris to Peking Railway!

That is, of course, when I finally get my hands on some straight rails for the Paris Loop.

“I’m not sure I understand all this polarity jibber jabber,” says the CEO after his fourth brandy.

“You dunna need to,” says the Chief Engineer. “’at’s my job.”

“All we need to know is that track electrification issues have all been solved,” says the CFO. “Now, if we can just get more track!