A New Switchstand

The switch stand I had installed was from Grandt Line. It was a good looking plastic switch stand, and it could actually move the points. But it did not lock the points in place, and being plastic it felt a bit vulnerable. So I sat out to find something else, and finally found a brass switch stand from Red Cliff Miniatures.

After quite a bit of fiddling I managed to install it, and have it move and lock the points. The hard bit was to get the point end of the throw-rod to move just as much as needed to move the points, and at the same time allow the switch stand end to move a larger distance in order for the handle to reach the position where it locked.

Red Cliff Miniatures has a solution for that problem - a throw bar with a spring that takes up the excess movement. But I did not want to use it since it would look out of place and non-prototypical. Instead I managed to construct a two part throw-rod where a "hook" in one part could slide inside a groove or run in the other part.

Here is the new switch stand installed, painted and weathered.

 

Points are thrown by lifting the handle, turning it, and lowering it back into the locked position.

 

Bitumen

I have heard that track laid straight on foam causes a lot of noise from the trains. So even if I do not want much of a roadbed profile I think I need some kind of noise dampening to go under the rails. I am also afraid that the foam will not withstand the pressure when spikes are driven into the ties, so I want something between the ties and the foam for that reason also.

I then came to think about an article by Pelle Soeborg in MR a few years ago, where he showed how he used bitumen mats as a sound dampener. Bitumen, as in the stuff used for sound dampening in for instance cars. Since I have no experience of bitumen I did not know if it would be soft enough to drive spikes through it, and at the same time not being to soft so it would do not do any good when it came to protecting the foam.

Well, I simply had to try it out to find out! So I went to an auto parts dealer (Biltema here in Sweden) and bought a pack of 4 bitumen mats. Here it is.

It turned out it is soft enough to cut with a knife, and also soft enough to drive spikes into. It also seems stiff enough to protect the foam from the pressure from the spike driving process. Here is a slice of it, the same width as the track and ties.

 

 

A successful test so far.

New wheels

I have know received the new /115 thread wheels from North West Short Line, along with matching bushings. Dave at NWSL was very helpful. I just told him what I wanted to achieve, and he suggested suitable parts. Thanks Dave.

To be up and running again (pardon the pun) was a simple matter of removing the old wheels and bushings from the axles, and sliding (or pushing rather) the new ones on. Some careful track gauge matching got them rolling nicely through the turnout.

New wheels to the left, old to the right.

 

Test roll.

The new wheels are pre-weathered which was an improvement in itself.

A nice fit between the guard and stock rails.

Posing on the new shelf. The turnout assembly will not sit on top of the foam, but will be lowered into it, while new track will be laid on the foam.

Building a shelf

Now that I have an O scale turnout and a car to go with it, I might as well realize that I want to go further down the O Scale path. So I went ahead and threw out my never finished H0 Three Yards Yard layout. I have not done anything on that layout for a year and a half! That if anything should have been an indication of that I had lost interest and needed to start on something new.

Well, with that one gone I had an empty wall with already mounted wall bands for an Elfa shelf system. Those are wall bands left there from my former Tehachapi Summit layout (Comment 17 September 2022: the blog describing this layout no longer exists). Since I had brackets laying around as well, getting a new shelf up would not be problem.

But I started by attaching my old backdrop, used both on the Summit and Three Yards Yard layouts, as seen in the picture below. It needs a fresh coat of paint, but apart from that it was all ready to go.

Next I built the shelf itself. I wanted it to be light-weight and slender looking. What I did was to attach a frame of 8 mm x 67 mm (1/4" x 2 3/4") lumber around a layer of 50 mm (2") extruded foam. And that was it. A sturdy but where light shelf, placed on the brackets. Like this:

 

It is no problem to just lift it off the brackets and down to the cupboards below when I shall work on it, if I find its normal height to awkward.

 

The O scale turnout gets company

I could not resist the urge to see some rolling stock accompany the newly built O scale turnout. So I ordered an Atlas Master series PS-4427 low side hopper which arrived today. O scale really is  impressive!

Click to get a closer view

As expected, the gauge is "correct", in the sense that the car and the track "agree" on it, but the car cannot negotiate the guard rails. Also as expected, since the guard rails are more on Proto:48 distance from the stock rail. I want to keep it that way since it looks a lot better. As a consequence, if I am serious about getting the car to roll through the turnout, the next step is to order some replacement wheel sets.

But the bearing caps are actually rotating! Cool!

An O Scale Turnout

My modeling efforts have been scarce these days, and not consistent when it comes to scale. My last contribution to the hobby is a turnout in O scale!

Click to get a closer view.

How come? Well, it started when I happened to run into Mike Cougill's book Detailing Track. Since I have always been more or less a nerd when it comes to realistically modeled track, this book really got me hooked. I just had to try this for myself! So I decided to build an O scale turnout, using the techniques outlined in Mike's book, and with the hardware details he recommended.

This is my parts list:

To use pine for the ties was not a very good idea. The pine is to hard to allow the spikes to be just pushed down. Instead I had to pre-drill every spike hole. Not very funny! Basswood is not readily available here in Sweden., but in retrospect I now know it would have been worth the effort to order it from overseas.

 

Some more photos:

Thanks for looking.

A Tree

I seem to have become an armchair modeler, doing nothing but reading magazines and blogs, and visiting on-line forums.

But all of a sudden I got an urge to actually model something - a tree. I have recently seen a number of examples on people doing trees using twisted metal wires to form the tree armature, and I wanted to give that a try. You probably know what I mean.

Anyway, here is my attempt at a more or less bare tree, in late fall or early winter. What kind of tree? I don't know. A generic deciduous tree, I guess.

This is the tree when all the wires have been twisted.

Next step was to cover the stem and parts of some of the branches with spackel (lacking any other more suitable material such as modeling paste). It has also been painted with a gray primer out of a rattle-can. And it got a light dusting of black.

Last i added some dry leaves by first spraying the branches with hair spray and then sprinkle on some crushed real oak leaves. I am happy with the result.

Thanks for stopping by.