Movin' Tracks

You will notice that I said Movin' Tracks, not Movin' Trains.  Last night I imposed upon friends to move my layout to the new train room.  Thanks Kevin, Jeff, Steve, and Scott!

Looks like a tight squeeze!

The StillMeadow Guys moving mountains

Mountains of Progress

After a few marathon evenings, I finally got to the fun part of mountain building --  rocks and ground cover.  Here is the progress:

A little paint, some ground foam, a little rock painting, and Voila!

Making Mountains out of . . .

I'm busy making mountains and a tunnel with white styrofoam that was headed for the landfill.  The key is using a hot wire foam cutter.  It seals the surface as you cut, so you don't get 10,000 little white beads.  This is pretty time consuming, but hey, the real ones took 90 Million years, right?

At a recent train show, I participated in a demo on carving and painting rocks using blue or pink styrofoam.  It really turned out well, so I plan to try it on the blue layer.  I will be adding some molded rocks as well.

Trains are a-runnin'

After tweaking some turnouts, both mainlines are open.

Power, Lights, Action!

I assembled and installed the Control Panel last night.  It went very smoothly - the parts fit together the first time!  It is nice to finally have full control of blocks and turnouts.

Corporate Logo

The BFC RR is pleased to display its new corporate logo.

BFC = Blue Foam Central   : )

Why, switch?

I have almost finished wiring the control panel.  It was time to light this candle (or at least power up the LEDs).  Looks great, right?









Well, sort of . . . You may notice that the lights are lit the opposite way the switch is thrown.  You would think that the left terminals of the switch are powered when the toggle is thrown to the left.  You would be wrong.   This  is a cruel joke.  Why, switch?

Now all I need to do is unsolder 12 LED leads and connect 12 criss-crossed jumper wires to fix this.  Gee, only 24 solder joints to go . . . Grr!

Control Panel

Here is the Control Panel with block and turnout controls in the center section, and room for transformers and accessory controls on the side sections.  I put it together with some old pine boards, masonite, a table saw and patience.








Even though I plan to use DCS and TMCC command control, I have concluded that it does not necessarily replace block wiring if you want to run conventional locos as well.   There are times when you want to be able to shut off power to a block.  So I am wiring to allow for command and conventional.  So much for keeping it simple.

Backlit to show the LEDs

Since I need block controls, I decided to splurge on the control panel.  I am wiring up the panel with 2 LEDs in each block (one red and one yellow) that indicate which “cab” (if any) is powering that block.  Also the controllers) for the z2500 switch machines (mounted on the panel also) have red and green LEDs which indicate which way they are thrown.





I did the track diagram with Microsoft Paint, printed it on photo paper, and sandwiched it between a masonite base and a 1/16" plexiglass cover.  The most tedious part was drilling holes in the masonite for the toggles switches, buttons, and LEDs, and cutting out rectangles to insert the Z-Stuff 2502 switch controllers.  The 2502s will be mostly hidden:  only their buttons and LEDs show.  The plexiglass only needed holes for the toggle and pushbutton switches.  On the paper diagram, I cut out circles for all the LEDs and switches with 3mm, 6mm, and 8mm disposable punch biopsies (think cookie cutters).

Paper template to lay out the holes and cutouts

Cutouts for the 2502 Controllers 

So the soldering begins. One half of the DPDT toggles select CAB A or CAB B for its block, and the other half lights up the corresponding red or yellow LED.  The LEDs will be powered from a 4.5V DC power adaptor through current limiting resistors.






This panel will be so cool that you won’t even need to look at the trains . . .

How do you glue down Gargraves track?

After a few weeks of testing (ie., running trains around and around), I decided that it is time to glue down the track.  I am using the Woodland Scenics tacky glue.  It was a big pain, since I need to pull the track up about an inch or so (with the feeder wires attached), paint the glue on the underside of the ties, and then push it down and weight it down, all before the glue dries.  I could only do about 5 feet at a time.   How do you keep the track  down?  You weigh it down with an MTH Allegheny, of course.  And then any heavy object you can find.  Eventually, I figured out that it works better to apply the glue to the roadbed.  I have already covered all the ways NOT to do it, so it is going smoothly now.

Then I got to the crossover . . .
So, this was a pain, lifting up the crossover (with 4 tracks attached).  Of course, both center rail power pickups pop out (remember all my failed attempts to feed the center rails?).   Well, this was not going to work.  So, out comes the soldering iron.  Yeah, right!!  Did you know that the blackened center rail is the only metal in the universe that solder will not stick to?  Back to the drawing room.  Finally the solution comes to me:  Drill a hole through the vertical part of the rail, loop a copper wire through, and solder it to itself.  Success!!  And the solder even stuck to the drilled bare metal.

I fed the switch machine wires down through the table to wire them up, and then remembered that I don’t yet have a control panel.  So, that will be the next project while I am waiting for each section of glue to dry.  Fortunately, I have a borrowed Z-4000 to properly size the control panel.  I am going to try to keep the panel size down to somewhere less than half the size of the layout . . .