Poolside Rails

Now, I’ve come to realize that most of these most recent posts have been filled with whining; whining about the rain, whining about the dogs, whining about the fact that I’ve been whining.

Well, here we are, a brand new day, and by George I don’t have anything to whine about! In fact, things are sort of looking up, sort of.

That rainstorm, a whole week of rain it was, inches and inches coming down so fast it overwhelmed the swimming pool drains and caused her to overflow her banks…that rainstorm did nothing, zippo, nada, to the Paris to Peking Railway!

Oh, sure stuff got wet. But there were no catastrophic mudslides, no failed retaining walls, no vast yawning caverns opening under the rails. Even my power lines stayed up!

What’s more, as the rain caused us to focus on our indoor selves (using our indoor voices, we reminded our cooped-up eight year old), yours truly was forced to buy himself a new soldering iron – a cool Weller gun-shaped jobby with a gazillion little tips and stuff.

My brother gave me a Cold Heat cordless solderer a couple of Christmases ago. He used it during the installation of the radio in the Bachmann Not-So-Big Hauler and found it to be quite useless. I failed to advise him that I had used the thing extensively in trying to solder a piece of jumper wire to a rail. Here’s a news flash:  Garden Railway Rails Discovered to be World’s Largest Heatsink. I may have burned the little guy up trying to heat about fifty feet of brass rail on two AA batteries! I replace the batteries, but I don’t think the Cold Heat soldering iron has ever forgiven me!

So now I have this nifty Weller Solderin’ Arn, and it’s pretty cool. I can hardly wait to go solder something.

Maybe I’ll use it to fix the horn in my trusty old Isuzu Rodeo. Bad enough it sounds like a clown car horn, now it’s taken to beeping whenever I go over a bump. This morning the darn thing started blaring at exactly the same moment some guy was diving in to cut me off! He jammed on his breaks and let me go by…thank you, o bumpy road and ever-prescient clown-car horn!

“Here, now, what’s this?” the Chief Engineer grumbles in his thick Scottish brogue. “This dunna baffle me a’tall!”

“Well,” the PR Guy says, “be that as it may, it makes a much better story than ‘Garden Railway Chief Engineer Says Oh, I Get It’!”

“What baffles me is why ye still have a job!” The Chief Engineer goes back to his stout.

The Bachmann Not-So-Big Hauler ran great, forwards and backwards (unlike the locomotive in Polar Express that could be driven from side to side…it’s not a question of how they did it, but why you would need that in a locomotive). The NSBH responded nicely to the radio control. It was, in a word, cool.

And then, one fine winter’s day, it quit working. Well, those six D cells have been in there for a long, long time. Fresh Duracells (bing, bing BING) produced exactly the same result: nothin’. Well, that 9 volt sucker in the transmitter has been in there for a long, long time.  A fresh Duracell 9-volt (bing, bing BING) produced exactly the same result: still nothin’.The little headlight turned on and off only sporadically when commanded from the remote. Hmmm, something’s fishy. What IS it?

“Ye’ve got a short, y’idiot!” bellows the Chief Engineer. As if I didn’t know that.

Well, that was a fine winter’s day about a week ago. I decided to back-burner the thing because some other tragedy had befallen the household…I believe it was the Dreaded Event. Then came the rains, and the puttin’ up of the hardware before the storm of the century.

Just for giggles and grins, I snapped on the transmitter and pushed the throttle.

Now, you have to understand, I’ve spray-painted the crackers out of this locomotive. I’ve been trying to eliminate the Bachmann Big Hauler look from it, with all those gaily painted wheels and stuff, and I’ve blasted it pretty heavily with Rust-Oleum. Brown was the first color of choice. Then I nailed it with black to make the various new bits and pieces look merged together.  I haven’t quite gotten around to cleaning up the running gear on it yet, so when it runs, it has a lot of Rust-Oleum-Resistance to overcome.

But, it ran. Sure, it groaned and squeaked, but it ran! The headlight blinked on and off relative to commands from the remote. The thing trundled down the track toward the Kazakhstani Bridge, pushing the Troublesome Trucks before it. It came back…

Well, it came part of the way back. It got next to the cypress tree and decided to not run anymore. I thought perhaps we’d burned out the radio…it was designed to be powered by two AA’s, not six D’s.  But the light still responded to my commands (radio, not verbal).

And then there was a cool wind with a hint of moisture in it, and I knew I had to move my tail to get the thing out of the elements. I switched the batteries off in the locomotive, verified by the light no longer responding to the remote control, and parked ‘er in the train cabinet (the one I carelessly built over the outlet that houses both black widows and the GFI button).

Strange, huh? Dr. Voltmeter will have to take a look at our continuity when the rain lets up.

“Now, that dunna make no sense at all,” the Chief Engineer mutters.

I bought this cool little device for five bucks on the after-Christmas-closeout aisle at CVS Pharmacy. Fifty percent off, and batteries included…how cool could that be? Part clock, part hygrometer, part calendar, part weather glass…it’s the cat’s pajamas, I can tell you!

My oldest daughter sighs and says “dad’s toys.” My younger daughter looks at it and says  “it’s just a clock!” My wife looks at it and shakes her head. “It’s your five dollars.”

Well, the little picture at the top of the thingie shows rain clouds…the outlines of clouds with little dashed lines pointing down that looks like digital rain. My brother tells me “oh yeah, this is a big one. Expecting four inches here in Ventura, twenty up in the mountains.” Four Inches? It’s a flood!

Knowing how just that sprinkle last week created chaos, I had to step into EMERGENCY GEAR to get the railway ready to meet this devastating monsoon!

Target #1: all rolling stock inside.  That means the troublesome trucks, and all the GI Joe guys lying inside ‘em. That means the Bachmann Not-So-Big-Hauler and its remote. AND that means the funky tinplate stationary locomotive given to me by my younger sister at Christmas. It’s pretty cool looking; it’s a slightly undersized American with an insanely wide track; those folks in India got the look right but the dimensions all wrong! Anyway, that thing came in, too.

Target #2: all tools inside.  I’ve been working on the railroad, most of the livelong day! And I’m a slob! So, time to go find those three pair of needlenose pliers, the Linesman’s Pliers, the steel rulers, the hand brush, the measuring tape, the voltmeter, the fourteen Phillips screwdrivers and ten slotteds, and all the other stuff I toted from one corner of the yard to the other to work on the track, the cars, or the landscape, and tote ‘em all back into the garage. I had wondered why I didn’t have any screwdrivers out there!

Now it’s all clean, and all quiet. All quiet before the storm…the storm of the CENTURY! Well, okay, the first storm of the second decade of the century. Loses a little something, there…

Here in Southern California we’re affected by the El Niño system. I had been considering writing a piece about the El Niño and its impact on garden railroading, but everybody kept predicting a week system. How embarrassing to write a piece about a predicted fierce storm, only to find out it’s a wiener.

Well, BRING IT ON, my friend! We’re ready. I’ve hosed away the mud from that part of the China Curve where the track was lifted,  only to find that someone, probably me, has stepped gleefully and forcefully upon rails that were not anchored to the ground. Boom goes the gauge, crack goes those little lugs that hold the ties to the rails, and sproing, one rail goes up, the other down. Heck with it! Let the mud come! This is WAR! Well, anyway, it’s a rainstorm.

As you know, Garden Railroading is Real Railroading. Just like the big fellas, we have to be good stewards of our rolling stock and equipment. And I do believe that this may very well be the first real rain we’ve seen in years!

Now that we’re in the New Year, we need to consider new options, new ways of doing things. New designs, new ideas. Let’s move forward, shall we?

As you know, we had the Dreadful Event on Saturday last…the cremated remains came home today in a little gray plastic box. Of course we had to look…it’s not grisly in the least, but something in that ashes-to-ashes thing got to me, and here I am back in the garage hiding…I mean, writing this post.

Anyway, that was Saturday. Sunday we took a trip down to Chinatown in downtown Los Angeles to take our minds off of our troubles. If you’ve never been to the LA Chinatown, then you’ve missed something pretty cool. You have to be in the mood for Chinatown, and, Mister, that mood was there.

There’s a really cool store down there called Wing Hop Fung…it’s kind of like a miniature Walmart except you can’t buy tires or wedding dresses, but, man, they have just about everything else. Well, everything else in the housewares, tea, pre-packaged foods, and fascinating Chinese objet d’art sort of stuff.  They have this horse…the thing is about twelve hundred bucks,  is about the size of big dog, and is simply astounding to look at. It’s made of cast resin, and, somehow, the artist was able to weave a huge number of different colors within the casting…eh, you had to be there. I looked in my wallet – sorry, no $1200 today. Maybe tomorrow.

We were goofing around looking at stuff, and my daughter pointed out this model pagoda. Okay, think of a model pagoda: Sits on your desktop, gets dusty, goes in the trash, right? Ehhhh, wrong answer! This sucker stands a good eight feet tall.

Now, my daughter just lost her best friend. Many’s the time we’d hear voices in Grandma’s room while we were up responding to Nature’s call in the wee small hours of the morning (wee small hours, get it?). Our little one would be sitting in bed with Grandma, and the two of them would be laughing about God only knows what.  On the day of the Dreadful Event she sat with her mother, aunt and I in Grandma’s room and laughed and reminisced about the great lady whose remains still lay in the bed. After a while the little one told us Grandma was getting a little creepy, as she was turning blue. Not long after that the mortuary guys came and toted her away.

Anyway, this spunky little kid says “Look, Daddy, that would go great on our railroad!” What an amazing little person! Moreover, she was right! Looking at the doorways and walkways, my goodness if it didn’t look like it was right around that 1/18th scale mark!

So, I took a couple of shots…fuzzy, yes, crummy, yes, hard…what is this, Bag on Bill day?

Knowing what we know about BLUE Styrofoam, not the white, chippy stuff I bought but the densely packed blue insulation foam, a structure like that would be a piece of cake! The lightness of the foam means you don’t have to worry about structural weight…if you built a simple dowel structure down the center it would undoubtedly stand straight for just about forever! And that densely packed foam should hold the details rather well.

I’ll let you know as soon as I get my hands on the blue ‘foam…the good stuff!

I been thinking about that horse…too small to ride, too expensive to put in the closet, too…Chinesy?…to put on top of the piano. Maybe it looks best in the Wing Hop Fung!

Many is the time we’ve said that Garden Railroading is Real Railroading. I believe it’s safe to say that the analogy goes forward into other aspects of the garden railroader’s life. If it happens to the railroader it must somehow affect the railroad, too.

Mother-in-law Marjorie passed away this past Saturday.  She was a resident here at the Turner residence, a loved and respected member of the household.  Her bright and effervescent spirit will be deeply missed.  She was the life of the party, the fun of the game, and a great joy to be around.

She came to live with us nearly four years ago for what was to be a short visit while she recuperated from a recent hospital stay. My wife and I moved into the garage, yielding up the master bedroom so that she would be more comfortable.

Our offices are out here, now, too, and we’ve rather made an adjustment to this accommodative lifestyle. Even my workbench is out here. Until Saturday, so was our bed! Cold? You betchum, but we didn’t mind.

My wife and I moved immediately back into the house in order to provide a comforting presence for our eight year old daughter, who lost her top-of-the-A-List  best friend.

Marjorie almost made it to ’91. When she was a little girl, refrigerators had yet to be invented. McDonald’s, even Disney, were just glimmers in people’s eyes. Her world was a quieter place – that’s for sure! She lost her parents early in her life, and her growing up wasn’t easy.

She eventually married Ed, an underage recruit in the U.S. Army who named his mule Margie after his best girl when he was serving in Panama. After they married the military took them all over the world, although, oddly enough, they ended up in Lancaster, California.  She saw times and places at which one can only marvel.  Her husband knew Chuck Yeager personally.  That story about the bear? That’s his story….if you look under  the post called “Birthday Bash Beleaguers Railway Reporting” you’ll see it.

Anyway, the point is that we’ll sorely miss Miss Margie. She brought a terrific life to the household, and her loss is keenly felt here in the Turner homestead. She was a terrific, terrific person, and if you didn’t get the chance to know her, you have really missed something special.

“Gentlemen,” the CEO stands at his chair in the posh Club Room at the luxurious Hotel Americain in Paris, “this is a momentous occasion…an epic occasion.”

“What,” mutters the Chief Engineer who looks oddly like a penguin in his tuxedo, “ha’ ye changed yer socks?”

The room bursts into wild laughter as all of the board members and senior shareholders  clap one another on the back and yell “huzzah!”

“No, no, you simpletons!” the PR Guy leaps to his feet. “This is the 100th Post on the Paris to Peking Railway!”

The room bursts into thunderous applause and even more “huzzahs”.

“Thank you, thank you very much,” the PR Guy blushes and sits down.

“I don’t believe the applause is for you,” the still standing CEO says.

“Oh, of course.” The PR Guy blushes even more deeply.

“The Railway is moving to an important new phase,” the CEO continues. “Where we were in a test and trial mode, trying theories and testing ideas, we are now moving into the production phase…putting it all together to build the railway and get it fully operational.”

“What?!?” the Chief Engineer sputters into his stout.

“But first,” the CEO continues, “let us look at the theories and tests we’ve conducted in these 100 posts:
-Converting the long wheelbase western profile Bachmann Big Hauler 4-6-0 locomotive to a short wheelbase Not-So-Big Hauler 4-4-0 with a European tank engine profile;
-Using the remote control from an inexpensive RC car as a remote unit for a locomotive;
-Building robust structures from insulation Styrofoam;
-Using simple 26 gauge and dowels to model a functional overhead power grid;
-Slicing and dicing the Pola railway station to create a large, open-backed flat structure;
-Testing an finding appropriate retaining wall materials;
-Using inexpensive miniature Christmas lights as a source for structure and street lights;
-Testing the interaction between rail quality and locomotive design;
-and, finally, creating fine looking woodwork with craft and popsicle sticks!

“The list is impressive, my friends, but nothing compared to what comes next! Next we will see …
-Completion of the rails themselves, and complete electrical connection from P to Shining P;
-The rise of the magnificent city of Paris, glittering with electrical lights, from what is now a festered miasma of railway detritus;
-The replacement of the out of scale trestles with  fine stone edifices carved from stacked Styrofoam layers;
-The forestation of the China Section;
-People, animals, and every manner of realistic flora and fauna the hardy traveler can expect to see between Paris and Peking;
-and the development of the finest fleet of rolling stock one can imagine!”

The room bursts into wild applause, and the air is filled with cheers.

Well, I’ve got my work cut out for me! The time has come to quit goofing around testing ideas and start applying them. I believe that’s what you’re going to see in the next 100 posts.

Thank you for riding with us so far along the Paris to Peking Railway. We’ve enjoyed sharing these 100 posts with you, and can only promise even more fun in the next 100 to come!

“I’ll believe I’ll be having another stout,” the Chief Engineer mutters.

Remember that story about the grasshopper and the ant? You know, the ant works his keester off while the grasshopper goofs around, hopping over grass. Then the winter comes, and the grasshopper needs shoes or something like that. I forget how it goes. Really, who cares?

Anyway, the point is that winter has descended on the Paris to Peking Railway.  Mind you, winter in Southern California isn’t quite like winter in Nebraska or Maine, but it does pose challenges to us garden railroaders.  Rains fall, winds blow, and the days are shorter and colder. And the mud flows.

I ran the Bachmann Not-So-Big Hauler 4-4-0 Tank locomotive…I know what you’re thinking: it runs? Yep. It runs pretty good. Well, that’s an overstatement.  Fact is, the darn thing wheezes and squeaks more like an army tank than a precision piece of engineering. I think the problem is that some idiot spray painted the running gear black and hasn’t lubed a darn thing.

Anyway, the point is that I ran the Bachmann NSBH across the strikingly unrealistic bridge in the China Section…fortunately, the bridge is finally starting to fall apart. There’s a great article in this month’s Garden Railroading Magazine about building a bridge out of Styrofoam by stacking up layers of foam – ninety degrees different than how I built my people bridge. As soon as I get my nerve up, some blue foam, and a bunch of free weekend hours, I’m going to replace that cruddy wooden trestle that spans a scale 108 foot gap with no center support and is alive with termites.

Anyway, the point is that I got the Bachmann NSBH across the bridge and around the first leg of the China Curve when the thing threw itself off the rails. Now, it was dark, and I was pushing the two LGB passenger cars directly rather than through the couplers because I hadn’t yet  replaced the coupler on the NSBH.

By the way, the Bachmann NSBH coupler replacement was a piece of cake. I had an extra hoop from a different piece of rolling stock. Now, this sounds really stupid, but I built a hutch for my eight year olds’ 4H rabbit project: well, actually the project’s name is Gersham and he’s a lop, or slop, or something like that.  That hutch took up all of my nut and bolt sets. When I finally got around to replacing the coupler, I had no nut/bolt combo with which to accomplish the task.  Instead I connected some cotter pins together to hold the hoop in place. It seems to work.

Anyway, the point is that the track down there in the China Section has lifted off the roadbed due to an insidious flow of mud from the recently planted China Hill.  It was a mountain for awhile, but the landscaping effort reduced the lofty heights down to knollish lumps.

When the sun came up on Sunday, after we’d taken the dogs for a hike along the Goleta Slough and I’d run out of nuts on the hutch and it was now late in the afternoon, I decided to take a gander at my China Curve. I believe these pictures rather tell the story.  Next Saturday, or probably Sunday, or possibly the weekend after, I’ll get the hose out and clear the floe, reseat the track, and figure out some degree of a retaining wall.

But it’ll be tough, because it rains, the mud flows, and it gets dark early.  That’s winter for you! There! That’s the point!

When I had my HO roundy round in the basement, I was the master of the universe.  I had control over lights, over sound…even electricity flowed only at my command.  Want to take a picture? Turn on the lights over here, over there, light up the structures…2 in the afternoon or 2 in the morning, it didn’t matter.

As you may have heard, Garden Railroading is Real Railroading. The sun is pretty hard to simulate without a bunch of expensive equipment. And, as you may also have heard, I’m cheap.

My backyard has a nice patio on the northwest corner of the house, a nice little side yard that runs on the southwest side, and a swimming pool in between. The Paris to Peking Railway runs on the west side of the pool.

There’s a gate that separates the pool from the patio on the north and another that separates the side yard on the south.  My wife has been testing the theory that the dogs will be willing to stay on the patio if we close the patio gate. But the dogs can go through the gate, so she’s been sliding heavy potted plants across the gate.  I’ve been working on the railroad today, and ran rather late, and so had the gate open.

What I had in mind was a really nice evening shot of the railway, with the little lights on and the Bachmann Not-So-Big Hauler locomotive in front of the station, all lit up with the nice blue of the falling evening. With my hands full of locomotive and power pack I leave the house, cross the patio, and find it’s blocked because in the time it took me to go get the camera and put it in my pocket and pick up the locomotive my wife had closed the gate and slid the plants across it. And she’d turned on the garden hose to water the plants.

So I went through the house…each of my daughters has a door that opens into the backyard. My older daughter’s opens right onto the pool, but she’s “in a mood”, so that door was off limits. Instead I had to go all the way through the house, out my younger daughter’s door, through the side yard, and around the pool to get the locomotive on the rails and the power supply plugged in.

But there’s a GFI hooked up somewhere on the power line that supplies the outlet for the garden railway, and it was popped. So I had to go and find the outlet that had the tripped GFI. I remembered that I built a nifty little shed at one corner of the house in which I place my railway hardware…Mr. Wizard seemed to have built the shed directly over the outlet with the GFI. I had to go around the pool, down the side yard, through my little girl’s room, through the house, across the patio, and, black widows and brown recluses be damned, reach up into the dark corner of that shed and fumble around in the dark until I could push the little red button in the middle of the outlet.

I traveled the three hundred mile route back out to the pool and plugged in the power pack. I hooked the quasi-mangled overhead wires to the power pack…nothing happened. Is it the GFI? Is it the Power Pack? Is it the overhead wiring?  It took a moment, but I found that the overhead wiring wasn’t connected at the station platform. Blink, on came the lights!

I pointed my Blackberry at the scene…little green flashing light on the Blackberry? What? Low battery?

Another three hundred miles into the garage to find the charger for the Blackberry, trekked that thing all the way through the house, now losing enthusiasm for what is fast becoming a night shot, when, in the hallway, I see my older daughter’s door open…Ah Hah! I cut through her room, eliminating what seems like a half an hour from the walk through my little girl’s room and down the now dark side yard.

Plugged everything in, got my shots, relaxed for a moment and enjoyed the little lights twinkling on the pool. This is, after all, what model railroading is about. Wait a minute…that’s the wrong pool!

While I’m taking pictures my wife’s watering of the potted plants has run over the pots and is flooding the pool deck because the drain must be plugged! I can’t reach the plugs for the power pack and the cell phone charger without standing in a two inch deep puddle!

So, instead of enjoying the sparkly lights on the pool, I’m getting the garden hose and fishing it through the deepening water before it dumps itself into the pool to find the drain. I find it, shove the garden hose down it to get it clear, and am ultimately successful…the water gurgles down to a little whirlpool. Phew.

Now, I’m not complaining. There are plenty, plenty of people who don’t have it as good as I do, and I am thankful for every blessing I’ve been given.

But there are times when circumstances rather stack up to take the magic out of the moment. When you look at these pictures, therefore, imagine them lighter, and you’ll see what I hand in mind!

Okay, well, maybe it’s not a tragedy per se, but it’s a great picture, huh?

Today is very first day of January in the Year ’10, and my wife and my littlest one went down to Pasadena to watch the Rose Parade. Unlike the gazillions of people who brave the predawn hours and freezing cold to be the first to sit on the coooollllldddd concrete sidewalks and gawk and stare at the floats, we usually leave our home in Ventura at a respectable 8:30 in the morning. It takes a little over an hour to get to Pasadena from here, but the Rose Parade moves very slowly. By the time we get to our spot, which is about two miles from where the parade starts, it’s about 10:00, and the parade is just arriving! The crowds are thinner, the parade is still going, and everybody’s happy. Except this time, when we left a little bit late, and the offramp we always use was closed! We missed about half the parade…believe me, the parade is very cool to watch, but a little of it goes a long way, so no hearts were broken.

Anyway, we didn’t get home until late this afternoon. It being the very beginning of a new year, I decided to try the Bachmann Not-So-Big-Hauler in the China Section. The rails are a little dirty what with the plantings and the rain, but a quick skaboodle with a paintbrush at least got the leaves off of ‘em!

But the China Turnout proved to be a major challenge.

As you may have read in a previous post, the coupler on the aft end of the Bachmann NSBH (Not-So-Big Hauler) isn’t  a coupler at all but a down-pointing hook which lies too close to the locomotive for the LGB passenger cars’ loop coupler to attach. To fix it, just for today’s run, I used a piece of wire, tied around the LGB’s coupler and formed into a loop for the NSBH’s hook. It worked okay going forward, but going backwards, of course, the wire collapsed…rather like pushing a rope, I’m afraid.

The wire was still acceptable until we reached the China Turnout.  The Troublesome Truck, the red coach, popped over the frog in the turnout and rolled off the rails.  Now, it could have just slipped off the rails and stopped. That would be a nice thing to do. No sir, that didn’t happen. It slipped off the rails all right, but then it rocked from side to side and pitched itself off the raised railway and down the 3 or so feet to the stone walkway below. Kapow!

The problem with the turnout, which I cleaned thoroughly with a paintbrush, turned out to be dirt. Not between the rails, mind you, but underneath, outside the rails, where the actuator bar travels. Dirt built up under there and counter-acted the spring in the switch mechanism, leaving the closure rail just about 1/64 of an inch open…just enough to pop the LGB off the tracks!

Well, no harm done, really, beyond a significant increase in the engineer’s blood pressure and a hint of blue air from all of the French Invective released by yours truly.

After a good little digging with the back end of the paintbrush the problem was cleared up. As you can see, the LGB coaches and the NSBH made it safely across the China Bridge safely.

See? What’s a new year without a little tragedy, a little swearing, and a happy resolution?

Happy New Year to You! I hope all your tragedies are little, and can be resolved with the back end of a paintbrush!