First Fast Tracks Turnout; Train Show Acquisitions; a PRR vintage model

Desperate to build something model railroad related, I finally broke down and bought a Fast Tracks #8 Turnout Jig in Code 83. I also purchased the #8 Point Form Filing Tool for Code 70-100 rail along with it. I did not buy the Stock Aid Filing Tool. Sorry Tim Warris, but at $75 that will have to wait.

For those who may not be schooled on it there are three main items that make up the Fast Tracks "system". There are certainly many other items available at Fast Tracks; really all you need though to build a turnout is a jig, a Point Form Filing Tool, and a Stock Aid Filing Tool. I did not use a Stock Aid Filing Tool and although I did have a bit of a hard time filing the point recesses in the stock rails, it was certainly not impossible without the tool.

If you want to buy the minimum recommended items to construct a turnout with, you would buy the jig for the desired turnout geometry and rail size (in my case #8 in Code 83), a Point Form Filing Tool that matches the turnout geometry and rail size (again in my case #8, Code 70-100), and a Stock Aid Filing Tool to match your rail size. Fortunately, one Stock Aid Filing Tool is all you need for any size turnout, but you do need to get a Point Form tool to match the size jig you want to use.

I would probably not buy another jig just to make the same turnout in Code 70; I dry-fit some Code 70 rail into the jig and it seemed to work just fine.

Here is my first #8 turnout built with Code 83 rail in a Fast Tracks jig. It is complete minus the two guard rails and the rest of the ties of course.

I won't go step by step here on the construction process but I will present an AAR for my first turnout. The photos above depict the nearly finished turnout with all rails soldered to the PC board ties and the points soldered to the throwbar. There are no guard rails installed yet.

First I must mention that my soldering skills besides sweating some copper pipe in the house are limited to what I learned building this turnout and also a few decoder installations that I've done in the past few years. I think I way over-soldered this turnout.

The standard Kadee RP25 wheelset (the one sitting on the rails) rolls through both legs of the turnout quite smoothly with no clicking or jerking. That is without frog guard rails installed! RP25 wheels are Code 110 (.110" wide) wheels and are pretty much the standard wheel size with any rolling stock purchased today.

The other truck (the one not sitting on the turnout) has Proto:87 wheels from Northwest Short Line installed on it. Proto:87 wheels are true scale size. The wheel is only Code 64 (.064" wide) and the flange profile is also scale size. This truck does not make it through the frog at all. It dips down into the gap between the wing rails and the frog and derails at that point. I expected this would happen before I even tried it because Proto:87 wheels require scale dimensions for the flangeways at the wing rails and the guard rails because those parts actually perform their duty just like on a prototype turnout. All of those dimensions are much tighter than standard NMRA dimensions which is what the Fast Tracks jig is built to. Of course I will try the Proto:87 truck again once I get the guard rails installed, but I don't think they will help much.

That being said, do I even need to worry about the Proto:87 wheelset derailing in this turnout? There was a day when I considered modeling in Proto:87 but researching the topic revealed that it is beyond my skills or desire for such a negligible payout for all the hard work. While a car definitely looks better up close with scale wheels on it, your trackwork also has to be very tight to use P:87 equipment. Maybe if I decide to get into photography I could build small dioramas to Proto:87 standards, but I think if I was going to get into model railroad photography to that extent I would probably go for Proto:48 (O Scale Prototype) so that I could really go all out on the details that scale allows. For everyday operation, I think NMRA standards in HO scale are more than enough accuracy. As a compromise though, NWSL does make Code 88 (.088") wheelsets that look better than RP25 wheels but perform better than P:87 wheelsets. That could be worth investigating.

Anyway, back to the turnout. In short, my main lessons learned are that I need a better soldering iron and I need smaller diameter solder, and I also need to improve my soldering technique because I think it was quite sloppy. My soldering iron is a 40w Weller but it is the "economy" model that you can get at Hobby Lobby for about $20. I probably need to invest in the better quality Weller model that runs about $40-$50. Even though mine is 40w it just doesn't seem to get that hot. I'm also using .040 diameter 60/40 (60% Tin, 40% Lead) solder, but I need to get some .020 diameter instead. The .020 is what is sold on Fast Tracks website. The larger diameter solder I used created some huge blobs of solder that probably would have been easier to control with smaller diameter solder.

Bottom line - I like the Fast Tracks system overall. The biggest concern when handlaying track is gauging it but I didn't have to worry about that at all here because the jig does that naturally. As far as cost, Fast Tracks is high cost up front but it pays for itself after building just a few turnouts. Considering that a commercial #8 turnout can run anywhere from $25-$35 each, after building a half dozen turnouts the Fast Track jig would pay for itself. Rail, PC ties and wood ties are an expense as well but if you buy that stuff in bulk it will make dozens of turnouts.

Train Show Acquisitions

I went to the annual Kirtland Model Railroad Show (in Kirtland OH, duh...) and made a couple small purchases. This show is sponsored by NMRA Divison 5.

Since Spruce St is a PRR facility, I need to build up my PRR fleet. While I do have a decent amount of both heavyweight and lightweight passenger cars in PRR livery, I have very little head-end equipment, which I will need a lot of for modeling Spruce St and CUS. I picked up a 2-pack of Walthers PRR express reefers in wartime livery. These were limited run and have since been discontinued, so I was happy to find them and even happier to find them well below MSRP. I'd like to find more of these, and Walthers made them in pre-war, wartime, and post-war paint schemes.

The best find though was the Walthers Modern Coaling Tower kit. The NMRA Division 5 folks had their own table set up at the show and I was quite surprised to find the coaling tower still in shrink wrap for $30, which is less than half what the kit retails for. This will make a nice representation of the Spruce St coaling tower which served four parallel tracks in real life.

My PRR Heritage...

You wouldn't really know it from reading my blog, but my earliest interests in railroading and model railroading were of the PRR. Not quite sure what made me a PRR fan, but it has stuck.

I recently dug out my old "favorite locomotive", which is a vintage (1970's) undecorated Atlas SD35 that I painted and decaled into PRR livery myself. The road number is authentic too for a PRR SD35. I was probably around 14 years old when I did this, which would have been around 1977. I painted it with Floquil Brunswick Green using a Badger airbrush and a can of air propellant. The locomotive still runs in DC (barely) and would need a major overhaul to make it run smoothly, but I remember back then this thing ran great.

PRR Spruce St Yards in HO Scale

Here is a 1937 Franklin map of the PRR Spruce St Yards in Columbus, Ohio. Today the Columbus Clippers stadium is just south of here and the Arena District is just off the lower right corner. I-670 partially follows the Big Four right of way behind the roundhouse.

In the 1940's though, this is where PRR had their passenger locomotive service facilities, a coach yard & repair facility, a Pullman yard & service facility, and the diner car commissary. There was also a power house and machine shop annex to the roundhouse. Freight locomotives and cars were serviced at the St. Clair Av shops which were about 2 miles east of this location at the main PRR yards in Columbus. Columbus Union Station is just under 1/2 mile east of this location.

Depending on sources and time period, the roundhouse here at Spruce St had around 36 stalls. It ceased operations starting in 1952-53 as PRR consolidated their operations over at the St. Clair Av shops in an effort to save money as PRR started to phase out steam locomotives. By 1956 the roundhouse here was torn down and the former locomotive service tracks at Spruce St were turned into the "bone yard" for steam locomotives on the way to the scrap yard. It appears PRR continued to use the coach yard facility for a few years more but as passenger operations were phased out so was use of Spruce St.

Here is my rendition of Spruce St in HO scale. It is compacted in size but not by much; I reduced the overall length and number of tracks but otherwise it is semi-scale. You can see how this fits into my overall 13' x 27' space; it nearly fills up the entire room. I'm actually OK with that though.

This could be a fully operational layout on its own without actually having to model anything else. There would be plenty of switching operations just in and out of the locomotive facilities and the coach yard and Pullman yard. The PRR mainline to Chicago and the Columbus Union Station would be staging and could connect for continuous running if so desired.

In reality, the PRR mainline to Chicago through Columbus depicted in the plan (called the Bradford Line) only saw a few trains in the 1940's - 1950's. Most of the PRR passenger trains through Columbus used the Little Miami Line which split off from CUS and ran a few hundred yards south of this location. Columbus was on the PRR Panhandle Line and most trains through Columbus were headed to Cincinnati or St Louis and used the Little Miami line to go that way.

Nonetheless, I think the above plan would make a great starting project on its own and could eventually be expanded as time & money permit. This would be a great opportunity to get my feet wet building structures and laying track, and it would be all flat so scenery would be fairly simple.

Kreg Jigs and Model Railroad Benchwork

I make no attempt to conceal my ulterior motives from my wife when it comes to home improvement projects that may directly or indirectly benefit my model railroading hobby.

For instance, I recently built this set of shelves to go at the bottom of our basement stairs to store extra kitchen stuff that doesn't fit anywhere in the kitchen and that only gets occasional use. I'm going to build another identical set of shelves to go to the left and butt right up against this set. You can see part of the glass block window in the upper left corner of the photo; the second set of shelves will frame that window perfectly. Railroad benchwork will begin just a few feet to the left of this window.

My ulterior motives for this project were twofold; I wanted a place to put some of this stuff to clear out room along the basement wall to the left of this location for railroad benchwork, and I also wanted to buy a set of Kreg Jigs.

For those who are not familiar with Kreg Jigs, they are a system of woodworking jigs and accessories for quickly and accurately drilling pocket holes. I haven't seen much writing on the Kreg Jig in the model railroading community, which actually surprises me. I didn't know much about the Kreg Jig until I happened to stumble upon a YouTube video where they were being put to use. From that moment on I had to have a set.

I for one was aware of what a "pocket hole" is but I had never used them and was completely in the dark on the benefits of using them in woodworking.

The shelving unit above was completely constructed of 1x4 dimensional lumber and MDF using Kreg pocket holes with the exception of the Spax screws that attach the shelves to the vertical sides of the shelf. All of the shelves use pocket holes to hold the shelf sides and backs to the shelf. Not really visible in the photo, but under each shelf there is a 1x4 crossmember that supports the shelf; these are attached to the vertical sides with pocket holes also.

Kreg actually makes many products but the heart of the Kreg Jig system is the jig unit below. The set I bought for $100 at Lowe's came with the jig (the blue contraption), the special quick release drill bit & collar, and also a square head quick release screwdriver attachment. Lowe's was running a special where if you bought the set they threw in a 500-ct of Kreg screws for free ($20 value).

The Kreg Jig is the blue contraption

The quick-release Kreg drill bit with adjustable depth collar

The quick-release Kreg square drive screwdriver bit and a 1-1/4" Kreg screw. Kreg makes the screws in many lengths and also in coarse thread (shown) and fine thread, allowing you to screw into different types of wood.

The parts above are all included in the standard set and are really all you need to drill perfect pocket holes quickly.

Here are some in-progress construction shots of my shelf project:

Kreg makes many accessories for the jigs. One of the more useful ones is this clamp that fits in one of the pocket holes and is used to hold the work together to drive the first screw. Once the first screw is in, the clamp can be removed.

Once you drive the screw in the empty hole, it will pull the joint together very tightly and the clamp can then be removed to drive the other screw.

The Kreg Jig can hold any size & shape lumber for drilling pocket holes. The jig is depth-adjustable for drilling into different sizes of lumber.

I know what the skeptics are thinking. This is all just a gimmick and why spend the extra money.

After talking to experienced cabinet makers and reading about woodworking methods, I discovered that the traditional way of building model railroad benchwork by driving screws through the face of a 1x4 into the end of another 1x4 for crossmember joints, or through the edge of a 1x4 into the end of another 1x4 for corner joints is the weakest way of making a 90 degree joint. Cabinet makers can't drive screws through the face of the lumber anyway so they need to be able to hide the fasteners on the backside or underside of the work, hence the alternative methods of joining lumber like the pocket hole joint. Not only do pocket hole joints look better, but they are much stronger. You can also make joints at angles other than 90 degrees easily with the jig.

The shelf project was built as a test and I have to say it was a breeze to build it and not only that, the thing is very sturdy. I didn't use any glue at all, just pocket hole joints. Using the Kreg Jig was fast and easy. The screws would actually pull the joint together tight in a way I have not seen by just driving screws in the traditional way. I think it was totally worth the money.

Not So Wordless Wednesday on Thursday #18

The PRR T-1...

The Pennsylvania RR by the 1940's had lagged behind most of the other major railroads when it came to passenger steam locomotive development. The K4s 4-6-2 was the front line passenger puller for Pennsy in the 1930's to 1940's but it lacked the pulling power that other railroads had for their premier passenger trains. Passenger trains were getting heavier and heavier and the K4s just didn't have enough power at high speed like the NYC Hudsons (4-6-4) or 4-8-4 Northerns from other railroads did. In the 1930's Pennsy devoted most of its resources to electrification and electric locomotives (i.e... the GG-1) so it fell behind in the steam passenger locomotive race. Anything they did to improve electrification didn't mean a thing west of Harrisburg, PA though, so the New York to Chicago or St. Louis trains of Pennsy were not winning that competitive timetable race. Diesels started appearing in the late 1930's but the Pennsy was slow to get on that train so to speak, and with WWII putting a damper on new diesel locomotive production, the Pennsy was still stuck with its huge fleet of K4s pulling nearly all their passenger trains when the war ended.

Enter the T-1 locomotive. The T-1 was a 4-4-4-4 duplex drive non-articulated steam locomotive built by PRR at Altoona and Baldwin in Philadelphia exclusively for PRR. The one-of-a-kind streamlined design of the locomotive was by Raymond Loewy, who in the industrial engineering world is considered the father of streamlining.

PRR T-1 #5533. Unknown photographer, Creative Commons license.

Two T-1 prototypes were delivered in 1942 and the trials on those two locomotives prompted Pennsy to order 50 more which were delivered in 1945 & 1946. At the time, the T-1 was arguably the most technologically advanced steam locomotive ever built. It was not articulated like other split-driver locomotives and because of this was nicknamed the "rail straightener". The T-1 had more than enough horsepower to pull a 16-car passenger train at 100mph or more on flat terrain. 120mph was easily achievable and there were unofficial reports that some had reached 140mph. The Pennsy never tried to go for a world speed record with the T-1 though, which it probably would have easily set back in the 1940's. 

There was of course a downside to the T-1. First, it was prone to wheel slippage even at high speed on the rear driver axles and it took a highly skilled engineer to run it at high speeds. Most importantly though, it was very complex and expensive to maintain. The driver rods for instance are roller bearing rods instead of friction bearings common on most other steam locomotives. Violent wheel slippage at high speed could be very dangerous and could cause poppet valve failure.

In a sense, the advanced technology of the T-1 actually led to its downfall and caused the Pennsy to push for dieselization across the entire fleet. Pennsy management eventually realized that the T-1's only made it a couple thousand miles before requiring expensive maintenance overhaul, when at the same time the few diesels on the roster were routinely making it 50,000 plus miles before requiring overhaul. As the 1940's ended, Pennsy was ordering dozens of new EMD E7's and E8's to replace all steam locomotives in passenger service. T-1's were taken off passenger service and lived out their final days pulling fast mail & express trains.

In the early 1950's all of the T-1's were taken out of service and by 1956 all 52 of them had been scrapped. The T-1 had a very short but very profound life.

The T-1 Trust

The T-1 Trust is a non-profit group with plans to build a fully functional T-1 (#5550) from the ground up. From their website, their goal is "To provide mainline steam excursion service and to set the World Speed Record for a steam locomotive".

Check out their website to see their progress.

Columbus Ohio 1953

I think I finally found my Holy Grail.

With all the research I have done in my quest to find a prototype passenger station to base my model railroad on, to date nothing has had as much of what I am looking for in one place as Columbus Ohio:

1. A small Union Station (small enough to model with 4 platforms) but plenty of trains stopping and passing through. Starting in the 1950's as we all know, passenger train travel in the US was on the decline due to the rise of the interstate highway system and airline travel. However, in Columbus Ohio even in 1954 there were still 38 passenger trains a day that stopped. 

2. A good assortment of railroads with PRR, B&O, and C&O being some of them. I have a decent inventory of HO scale PRR passenger cars already, followed by some B&O and C&O equipment, so I have a head start. The B&O had 2 trains that stopped in Columbus, N&W 2, C&O 2, NYC 10, and PRR led the pack with 22.

3. Co-located coach yards, passenger car servicing and maintenance facilities, express and freight service, and locomotive servicing.

4. A good mix of transition-era steam and diesel use.

This photo from the USGS Earth Explorer website shows the central Columbus area circa 1953. CUS (Columbus Union Station) is dead center. Visible in the photo are all 5 railroads with yards & facilities, freight houses, express and mail, and also the lines used by each to converge on downtown Columbus.

Here is a zoomed in view of the area just west of CUS.

Besides CUS itself, I'm thinking the PRR roundhouse, coach yards, and locomotive facility will be a key feature on my layout. That may even be the starting point before anything else.

I don't envision any long mainline runs on the layout, I simply don't have room for that. The focus will be switching operations fed from hidden staging/fiddle tracks and the traffic control operations in this area that was managed by several towers in close proximity to each other. 

Stay tuned!

(Not So) Wordless Wednesday #17

Columbus, Ohio Union Station in 1949, looking west. Fourth St. Viaduct over the rails center photo, North High St viaduct over rails very top of photo. The Columbus Convention Center today sits where the station is located. Photo from the Columbus Citizen-Journal (defunct since 1985). Retrieved from Central Library Consorium, https://catalog.clcohio.org, accessed 18 January 2017.

I haven't done a Wordless Wednesday in a long time, and I think #16 was the last one way back in June 2016. Since it has been so long, I feel compelled to include some commentary. Hopefully Lance Mindheim reads this blog, most of my esoteric rambling below should be right down his lane...

If you have followed this blog at all (I commend you if you have), you have seen me basically bounce all over the place with potential topics to model. Passenger operations, steel mills, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, etc. That continues to today, and this post is no exception as the photo above indicates.

Some model railroaders know exactly what they want to model, they plan it out in a few sketches and maybe a CAD design program and they get right to it and they don't waver from their goal. At the other end of the spectrum you have those who have an idea what they want but don't do a lot of planning and they "fire and adjust" (military term from my days as a tanker) as they go, preferring to get tracks down as soon as possible then solve the Rubik's Cube of layout design while they build it.

I am a meticulous planner which is why I have been in armchair modeling mode for so long. Probably because of my background in military operations which has been part of my entire adult life. The US Army doesn't take a dump without a plan, but for good reason. This lesson has been learned over a couple hundred years and has been paid for with the blood of thousands of servicemen.

But, I digress - back to model railroading. With money, time, and space being at a premium, I have chosen not to cut lumber (with a couple minor exceptions...) until I have a plan down on paper (and/or pixels) that I am satisfied with and know will work. That White Unicorn continues to elude me.

Some modelers use the concept "givens and druthers", unfortunately for the reader due to my military operational planning background I use terms like "constraints", "facts", "assumptions", "critical tasks", "implied tasks", "specified tasks", and the list goes on. Same idea, different terminology with much more detail involved in each term.

As an example, in military planning a Critical Task is a task that must be performed to accomplish the mission according to the Commander's Intent. In my model railroad, I am the Commander (and the planner). The big Critical Task I can't get out of my head is passenger operations.

What that means in lay terms is, I just can't seem to abandon the concept of building my layout around passenger operations. I've tried, but it is the one subject that keeps coming back no matter how hard I try to do something else. Time to embrace it.

One of the constraints I have dealt with is the size of my layout room, which is 13' x 27'. A size that at first I thought was enormous, but have come to realize is really quite small. Another constraint that dovetails into room size is the fact that 85' passenger cars in HO scale need very broad curves to operate reliably and to lose their toyish appearance in a curve. MRH ran an article back in 2009 where they determined that model railroad locomotives & rolling stock need to have curves 5x their length (or more!) to operate most reliably and with the most realistic appearance. With an 85' passenger car in HO scale being around a foot long, this would be a 60" radius curve. Coupler mating for 85' cars on a 60" curve is essentially the same as coupling on straight track. Fortunately though, the HO equipment today is capable of operating on tighter curves than that, and with some smoke and mirrors you can also reduce curvature and still have a fairly realistic appearance in a curve. MRH determined that 3.5x length (about 42" radius for our foot-long passenger car) is about the minimum you can have to achieve smooth operation and have the cars look decent from the inside of a curve.

Recently I have come up with some ideas on how to work within those constraints and I will go more in detail on those ideas in future posts.

There is one other constraint worth mentioning here because it leads me to the end of this post. The big one is the fact that I already own several hundred dollars worth of HO scale passenger cars in the Pennsylvania RR, C&O, and B&O paint schemes.

To conclude this post, recently I decided to take a look at the Columbus Ohio Union Station, which is the photo at the beginning of this post. I took a look at an Ohio railroad map and noticed that five class-I railroads ran to Columbus in 1950, something I really never paid any attention to before. The PRR, B&O, C&O, N&W, and NYC. Then I googled Columbus Union Station and one of the photos I found was the one above. In 1950 there were nearly 50 passenger trains a day that ran through this station, with PRR having the most. What really caught my eye though was the fact that it only had four platforms with 8 tracks. Compare that to Cleveland which had 25 platforms, Cincinnati with 16, and Toledo with 8. PRR didn't use Cleveland or Toledo Union Stations.

I've been down this road before though, so I am not getting too excited about Columbus just yet.

Kudos again if you made it this far reading this post! Lance, where are you???

Construction Report 01/03/2017

I normally don't make New Year's resolutions because they are usually forgotten by Groundhog Day.

That being said, this year I am determined to get my first module built.

A while back I posted how I bought a 4' x 8' sheet of 3/4" plywood at Home Depot and started ripping it into pieces for my first 2' x 8' module benchwork. I planned from the beginning to use plywood for most if not all of the benchwork in lieu of dimensional lumber. The module bench is nearly complete and within the next couple days I plan on finally turning it up onto its own legs so it can stand freely.

After buying this pathetic bundle of 1x2's at Home Depot - and this was the best bundle they had and the only one still banded together - I decided to make it all out of 3/4" plywood. The 1x2's are mainly for leg bracing and will work fine for that, but I was going to also use them as the short girder on the L-girder legs. The contractors get the pick of the litter at Home Depot and the rejects are what you see on the shelves. Next time I think I'll try Carter-Jones lumber to see if they have anything better.

The basic frame of the bench and my template for all following modules. The cross-members are 2' from the ends, and there will be one more cross-member in the center that will actually be laid flat and flush with the table top. The bottom table top layer will be 1/2" MDF which I have a few 2'x4' sheets of, so I will need the center cross-member to lay flat so I can screw the MDF to it at the joint. The legs will be attached to the frame at the vertical cross-members with screws or bolts (haven't decided which yet) so they can be removed, and the table top will also be attached with 1-1/4" drywall screws for removal. The frame and L-girder legs can be glued and tacked together because I don't see the need to disassemble the legs or the frame.

The bench frame is glued at each joint and tacked with 1-1/2" finishing nails from my air nailer. To hold each joint in place while I glued and nailed it together, I used this handy 90 degree clamp I got at Harbor Freight for under $20. Double checking the angles with my framing square showed that the clamp is dead on the money at 90 degrees.

In an earlier post I mentioned how after cutting the 4" planks I also ended up with two planks that were 3-3/4" instead of 4". These 3-3/4" planks are what I am using for the legs of the bench. Having decided to use plywood for everything, I ripped one of the remaining 4" boards into two 2" planks (actually about 1-7/8" after cutting) to form the short girder of the L-girder legs. The L-girders were also glued and clamped and then also tacked with more 1-1/2" finishing nails.

The whole process so far has been quite easy to do, mainly because the plywood is straight as can be and also because I was extra careful to make all my ripping cuts accurately. Taking the extra time to make accurate cuts cannot be understated. As I glued and tacked the legs and the frame together, everything lined up perfectly and nothing was out of whack like it would have been had I used dimensional lumber.

This bench is going to be quite sturdy and probably overkill in hindsight for a 2' x 8' bench, because this 3/4" plywood is very strong. The only downside I foresee is that it may be a little top-heavy at 48" tall due to only being a 2' x 8' bench.

One thing I have noticed about this Home Depot plywood is that it is not as good a quality as I originally thought, even though it is their best plywood. It is 7-ply plywood but the sanded outside veneer ply is paper thin and splinters easily on cut edges. I am going to shop around at Menard's and Carter Jones Lumber in the future to see if they have anything better.