Saturday, March 9, 2024

Ciment St-Laurent - Part 2

Ciment St-Laurent is a slow burning thing... we thought it would be fast, but such a large structure do require some serious thought to assemble. But we all know how putting a deadline on layout projects is generally a waste of time.


That said, we have made some interesting progress, mainly related to the bagging plant which may be considered one of the simplest part of this industrial complex.

1950s rolling doors are made of corrugated paper

The MDF structure core was built years ago, but required some touch up. A new 1/4" high foundation was added under the core so the conveyor structure linking the bagging plant to the silos would sit at the right height. A new loading platform and an overhung roof were also glued in place according to prototype pictures.


Another feature is the doors location which, contrary to our initial assesment, were centered but are offset toward the right. This is a strange arrangement, but it probably means so industrial equipment was located on the left side of the warehouse. On the other hand, this offset location creates a more dynamic facade to this otherwise very boring building.

As with the cement plant itself, the structure is cladded with extra fine corrugated cardboard mounted on thick paper strips to replicate the overlapping effect. Even if the bagging plant isn't complete yet, once on the layout, it instantly improves greatly the industrial appearance of that scene! I can't help but see the entire cement plant done soon!


Sunday, February 11, 2024

Ciment St-Laurent - Part 1

Life has been busier than I could expect in recent weeks and several unpredictable events unfolded... some sad, some happy. That said, I forgot for a while this blog but modelling has been active, both on Monk and the Murray Bay Subdivision.

The new structure is a 1:1 replica of the real plant

One of the biggest step forward is our commitment to complete the large Ciment St-Laurent plant in Villeneuve. The current (now dismantled) structure was a half baked mockup that needed to be replaced by something more permanent. Learning from our initial mistakes, we have greatly improved our construction methods and the new cement plant is both more realistic and practical.

Rails embedded into 3/4" thick MDF

It was decided to start from scratch, including the sub-roadbed. We wanted to replicate the loading track embedded into the structure concrete pad and it called for a new slab of thick MDF. After fiddling around and finding out the layout was not level due to warping caused by our decade ago sloppy craftsmanship, we decided to screw the pad to the wood dowel columns to create a strong and sturdy assembly. It seems to work!

Fixing the MDF concrete slab to the structure

Another hurdle was dealing with cladding. On several buildings on the layout, we have been using white extra fine corrugated cardboard. This is a very useful material to replicate old asbestos corrugated sheathing from the 1950s. Unfortunately, it's getting very hard to source and three previous attempts miserably failed from several suppliers: what they advertised has extra fine, was in fact fine... and don't be fooled, by fine, I mean OK for O scale. Another option was using corrugated styrene, but it's extremely costly and it's a pain to glue on MDF without using a lot of CA or epoxy. Didn't want to go that route.

Working with paper cladding is easy, simple and efficent

Finally, frustrated, I decided to give a second look at scrapbooking suppliers and found one, Doris from Germany, that claimed to sell extra fine corrugated cardboard. The listed dimensions fitted what had been used on Donohue and I ordered a bunch. Several week later, it was a joy to discover it was the right material and the cement plant project could go forward.

Laying thin cardboard strips to create the overlap effect

As for cladding the building, I like to overlap the individual rows of sheets. You can't do that in HO scale due to the cardboard thickness, but a way around that is simply to cut the row to the correct length and glue a thin 0.25mm cardboard strip at the bottom. It creates a subtle yet realistic overlap that brings some relief to the surface. When all glued in place, you get a very neat appearance and it only takes a few minutes to assemble because MDF and cardboard bond together quite fast when using regular carpenter glue.

A completed wall!

For vertical lines between individual sheets, I will use a dark pencil and draw them. I don't see the need to model these joints in real. If I was dealing with corrugated paper or tin foil, that would be another matter!

Thursday, January 11, 2024

3D Printed Curved Track Templates

Track templates to lay curved tracks are notoriously expensive. Metal ones are great for sturdiness and plastic ones such as Peco Tracksetta are quite versatile with their various slots for nailing tracks. Unfortunately, they have two main shortcomings: uneconomical and available only in a very few radii that aren’t always suitable for our needs.

 

I have no issue with costly specialized tools when they are extremely useful and that the efficiency gained covered the expense in a meaningful way. You accept to pay a little bit more to save time and get better results. It makes sense. But selling plastic injection templates that have been out there for decades, are the results of very little engineering skills and don’t offer flexibility makes just no sense to me. If you need to lay several curves of a fixed radius, they may make sense, but if you track plan requires several different radii, these tools make no sense.

 

Hence, I decided to make my own template. The radii I need are 27’’, 28’’, 30’’, 37’’, 38’’ and 40’’. Let’s just say these aren’t standard! I made mine by drawing them in SketchUp and 3D printing them. They are similar to the metal ones, but I could easily see myself adding a few holes here and there to give more nailing track options.


Printing and cleaning them took 2 hours for 6 templates and cost a little bit under 25 cents (Canadian dollars, mind you!). At this price, there is no excuse not to print them even for smaller jobs.


With these useful tools, I was able to improve the track flow in the staging yard by bumping the minimum radius at 27”, which provides for much better running performance with full length passenger cars. I will still have to improve (read surgery) for some cars to track better over the 24’’/28’’ radii curved turnouts. That said, there will probably be a restriction for long passenger trains having to run only over the larger radius on these curved turnouts.

 

Making templates is another way that 3D printing can be used. It could be very useful for special trackwork or as a kitbashing template. I expect to explore more of these options as I built the layout.

Wednesday, January 3, 2024

Monk Subdivision - Mike Confalone Was Right

 I've always been a planner at heart and this is no surprise my line of work is architecture. However, when dealing with a hobby, time rare and spending it by the dozen over things that don't move forward is both uninteresting and self defeating. I recall reading a few years ago that Mike Confalone confessed to be a poor planner, having little patience nor talent for it. That said, he compensated by working directly on the workbench, making countless mistakes he could have resolved before and finding solutions as he went ahead. What a haphazard way to build a railway empire isn't it?

For sure, we could say that Mike is somewhat dumb to not have learn his lesson after all these years... but upon further investigation, Mike isn't dumb. He has just found that making a mistake and correcting it takes less time than over planning a bulletproof ideal theory. It's not a call to not plan, but to recognize that moment when you have worked your main ideas well enough to commit to build. With a clear picture in your mind and a good step by step approach, you can move forward at an incredible pace.

Countless mistakes were made... but all were resolved in a morning

The reason why I'm writing about that subject is because I spent very little time behind the computer lately but a lot at the benchwork. In many case, I wanted to make sure the solutions to implement were perfect, yet, without the computer, I had no other choice than commit myself and cut some lumber. Bear in mind, I made a lot of mistakes even if I've been planning that layout for four years now... (yeah, you read that correctly, four years of doing very little). In many case, making the mistake generally took less than 10 minutes and correcting it was done before the hour mark. Let's recall a few examples:

When I cut the holes in the walls, I had a good idea where the tracks would punch through it, yet, I made them too big and too high. Cutting holes took about 5 minutes and making them right took less than an hour, including paint. At one moment, I went to the computer to check a few things on XtrkCAD and a good 45 minutes was lost and I learned very little that I didn't know from cutting wood in the basement.

Later, I found out the benchwork was installed 1/4" too low compared to the original benchwork on the other room. I was devastated after spending a day building it perfectly level... Yet, unscrewing the entire thing and raising it up took about 45 minutes, which is less time than checking your emails and Facebook.

Few days later, I installed the roadbed in the wrong angle in the yard. A mistake of 2 degrees that made the minimum radius in the area to be too sharp. I took 15 minutes to understand  how I made the mistake and how I could correct it. 30 minutes later, it was all done.

Finally, today I found out a lot of things weren't right with the swing bridge I built 2 years ago. A quick level check made it clear the vertical post holding the hinges wasn't vertical at all. It could have been a big task to correct it, but in fact, it was done in less than 20 minutes. Later on, I cut a hole for the track in the curved backdrop. As expected, even if I did measure it twice, I made a mistake.. no biggies, I corrected it and made a filler piece were I cut too much material. Once again, it was a matter of minutes.

I'm certainly not apologizing for poor craftsmanship. But at the end of the day, this is layout building and not layout agonizing. I know myself and in most of these cases, I would have hesitated for days before cutting anything, then after realizing I made a mistake, I would have gone back to over planning. These things would have consumed several days, if not an entire week. Now, let's do the math and you will see that making and correcting about 5 mistakes in the last week took about 5 hours at best and the project moved forward at an incredible pace. 

It's always down to an effort/effect ratio. Committing to your actions will always be more proactive than curling up in a corner and overthinking what are at worse very basic carpentry issues that are better resolved with tools and some positive thinking.

Sunday, December 31, 2023

Monk Subdivision - Moving Forward

As the year comes to a close, I take some time to reflect upon what as been accomplished over the last twelve months. In the case of the Murray Bay Subdivision, the layout progressed once again at a steady pace and has reached maturity. No need for words, since deeds and pictures do speak for themselves.

A nice and welcoming room

I have also been able to complete a few personal projects such as Stanstead that can be considered as a forerunner for Monk Subdivision and a way to push my skills further. Speaking of skills, I also had the pleasure to see my article on extreme weathering that documents my custom CN snow plow be publish under the care of Scott Thorton who has been a joy to work with him. I think he has some other ideas in store for me and I may soon take up the challenge. Model railroading is indeed taking me where I would have never thought I would go... In a sense, I'm glad to have picked up that hobby when I was a kind.

Building the benchwork piece by piece

That said, the big elephant in the room is indeed the Monk Subdivision. A lot (too much) have been said and written about this tentative layout, but little has been accomplished. The biggest hurdle has always been to deal with the stating yard. To move forward, I built a new 7-1/2 feet x 10 feet room in the basement just for that purpose and it explains why I was relatively quiet over the last week even if there was a lot I wanted to share. It was indeed a battle against myself, procrastination and relying too much on others to do the odd jobs I don't feel comfortable to tackle done by myself. We all know these feelings and sure, I can spend many hours fanning over some great layout build by master modellers but I won't reach that level if I don't put the effort in it. And thus, I cut Internet for a few days to make room for my hobby.

Two holes leading toward a wonderful project...

It started a few weeks ago when it became clear the new room was almost ready, i.e. plywood walls and drop ceiling. It didn't look pretty and felt oppressive. No surprise the architect in me decided to crank it up a few notches to make to make it a nice and comfortable space you want to be for long hours. Why? It had to be bright and cheerful. And also, it will probably be dual purpose to display and operate my small dioramas and modules.

This old Rapido Supercontinental coach is unforgiving!

Building the room took about 2 months and at the end of the day, I elected to wainscot the entire thing, add a few custom made mouldings and install a drop ceiling with powerful LEDs. Honestly, I'm not regretting a single minute my decision to go to such length with this lowly basement room. Because, indeed, I've been spending a full week now building the staging benchwork. Working in a nice environment made it much more interesting and felt less like a chore. I'm also starting to imagine how I will display models in the room and set the storage.

Standardized curves mean standardized roadbed pieces

The benchwork took about 2 days to complete and is made of 1" x 3" pine fastened with pocket screws. I was surprised how fast it went. The next morning, I found out that I made a 1/4" vertical alignment mistake with the main layout in the other room. Fortunately, due to my semi modular approach and use of screws, it only took 30 minutes to realign everything and I was back on schedule. I spent the next few days cutting plywoods, adding shelf brackets and cutting fiberboard. As I worked, I updated my XtrkCAD plan to improve track flow and remove short radius curves as much as was possible, setting a minimum radius not below 27-28".

Joffre yard is taking shape

Laying track was also a straight forward process, even if I redid long sections to increase the radius. My biggest fear was using Walthers Code 83 curved turnouts with 24"/28" radii. I wish I could have used larger turnouts and if possible, Peco ones, but that was a compromise that needed to be done. Fortunately, even my largest 2-10-2 and 6-axles locomotives run fine on them and let me tell you I tested them at full speed and tender first! They aren't not as great as Peco,  but they have solid rail points and decent quality inherited from Shinohara. I also tested them with Branchline heavyweight cars and first generation Rapido Supercontinental cars, both products known to have serious truck issues and they perform OK. Take into account they are really poor runners, so having them naviguate decently and without derailing through the curved turnouts put my mind at ease.

The 2-10-2 didn't mind the curved turnout!

At the moment of writing these lines, Only 4 flextracks remain to be nailed down to complete the first staging yard that will represent CN Joffre in Charny. Louis-Marie has already started to develop a design to control and automate the yard with various electronic modules and detectors. Switch machines are in the mail and should arrive in early January. I can see a lot of experimentation waiting for us, but that's a meaningful challenge I looking forward to.

This refurbished BLI SD40 is testing the yard throat once again...

Also, while thinking about it in the last few days, it has become clear that Mon Subdivision isn't a layout centered on operating a train, but rather about operating a small piece of railway. In some way, this is closer to the European way to do things. And can easily imagine someone in the staging room that acts as a dispatcher and send orders at the station in the main layout room. The person there doesn't "operate" trains, but manage the meets at the station, receiving order, controlling the turnouts and making sure that trains meet as they should and safely. In some way, this isn't surprising because my limited knowledge of Monk Subdivision is generally based on pictures showing train meets, dreadful accidents caused by mistakes in traffic control and the fact it was also a line that received a poorman's ABS signal system that made an impact on local railfans.


I'm also convinced my concept of having only one town on the layout is worthy. I was recently visiting Yvan Déry and I was absolutely convinced that the less you have, the better you are. A single town is immersive and has less compromises, which creates a realistic setup. I remember starting a discussing about one-town layouts many years agon on MRH forums and which was revived and expanded upon by Jim Six. Jérôme who often speaks highly of La Mesa club layout in California had an influence on me because years ago, I watched a very long tour of their layout on YouTube. That feeling of running trains in the middle of nowhere made a big impression on me. We all wish we could have that space for our layout, but we forget that we can get a part of that action by simply modelling a slice of it. I've seen plenty of modellers doing that in recent years, which confirms me it is a viable option.


With all that said and done, I wish you all a Happy New Year and hope that 2024 will be a year to nurture your skills and make that hobby a meaningful way to create and grow. The last few years have been quite hard for most people and we should be glad to participate in a constructive hobby that can soothe the mind and steer us away from idleness. This is indeed, a priceless gift!