Monthly Archives: March 2024

Moment of Truth

CV Local near top of grade
Here’s a representative CV Local with an RS3, 11 hoppers, and a cab nearing the top of the grade

With a portion of the upper-deck benchwork in place, I was able to complete the connector track from the top of the helix to the top of the grade along the back of the layout. The moment of truth had arrived where I would figure out if a key assumption I had made would hold true. My helix is aggressive: 24″ radius and 3% grade! At the top of the helix is an S-curve into another 24″ curve in the opposite direction and a short straight section to reach the top of the grade. Based on experience with the first helix (also 24″ radius and 3% grade), I estimated my lightest engine could pull about a dozen empty hopper cars and a caboose up the helix. The lightest engine is an Athearn RS3 used on the CV Local, and in the 1960s and early ’70s, this job only hauled a handful of cars onto the St. Charles Branch, perhaps 6-10 on a given day.

S-curve at top of grade
Here’s the track where it exits the helix and continues up-grade to the right through the upper-deck benchwork

I loaded up an RS3 with 12 cars (including 3 really heavy Tangent cars) and headed for the first helix. With the Tangent cars, the RS3 stalled out on the grade–uh oh! I removed one hopper and tried again. Thankfully it was able to climb the first hill, albeit with the throttle at 1/4 speed and the Tsunami2 howling at run 8! After a brief respite of relatively level track in St. Charles, the train attacked the second helix to the upper deck. Three-and-a-half turns and 20″ higher, the train exited the helix and entered the S-curve, coming to the crest of the grade without stalling. So, 11 cars is my current limit, and while it’s slightly less margin than I had hoped, it’s good enough that it won’t restrict my operating scheme.

Southern mine run at top of grade
Two Southern F-units have no trouble pulling 33 cars to the top of the 3% grade

Just to be sure, I latched a pair of Intermountain F7s to 33 Southern hoppers and tried the same thing. No problem! Two locomotives have plenty of power to haul more than enough cars up the grade. It was cool to see trains actually running on the upper deck, even if the section they’re currently in will be hidden by hills.

Let There Be Light!

… And there was light. (Genesis 1:3)

Layout Lighting Installation
The first layout lights are in! Here’s the “cool white” that I like for daytime

While my light is nowhere near as impressive as God’s light in Genesis, it still makes me glad to see a little more light on the trains in the basement. Now that I’ve got some upper-deck benchwork in, it opened the way to try out the layout lighting I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I’ve looked into LED strings and other bundled lights, but in the end, I’ve settled on using individual multi-color LED “smart lights” I can control with my phone. It’s not the cheapest solution (about $7 a bulb, and my layout needs 40), but it’s bright, and they’re customizable for a dizzying array of colors and brightness!

This is a more modern evolution of the lighting on my last layout which used cheap plastic fixtures and compact 40W lightbulbs. I was able to recycle the fixtures and wiring for this project, but the technology is so much better than my previous little analog dimmer. Not only are the LEDs brighter, but they run cooler, only use 9W each, and I can get a nice “cool white” that looks a lot more like sunlight than incandescent lights. I was also able to play around with the colors and dimmer, and a wide range of effects are possible including a nice moonlit night and a warm sunrise/sunset. It’s also easy to “group” them so one command changes all the bulbs simultaneously.

Layout Lighting Nighttime
The dimmable, multi-color LEDs can give a lot of different moods like this “moonlit night”

I’ll keep playing with them to try to mitigate the glare spots and shadows. I’m also going to figure out a way to automate going from nighttime to sunrise to day–I’m sure it’s possible with all the Smart Home controls out there now. One thing I hadn’t counted on is the lit portion of the bulb is about 2″ further out from the fixture than the old incandescents. For now that’s creating more shadow along the front of the layout than I’d like. When I put the valance in for the upper deck, I’m inclined to move it out over the aisle a few inches to try to improve this, and I might mount a few of these in the overhead fixtures as well. For now, I’m calling this experiment with 8 bulbs a success, so now I’ve ordered more to keep working around the rest of the layout.

Layout Lighting Fixture
The fixtures for the lighting are simple plastic screw-in bases
Layout Lighting Smart Light LEDs
Here’s what I’m using, TreatLife 60W equivalent (9W actual) multi-color LED smart lights

Hopper Class of March 24

Hopper Class of Mar 24
Welcome hopper class of March 24!

I’ve been on a hopper kick lately, so following close on the heels of the hopper class of January ’24 are these 13 cars comprising the hopper class of March ’24. They were actually built at the same time as the previous hoppers, but these were all custom paint jobs, so it took a while longer to paint and decal them. Among this class are several unique cars including two exact cars I’ve wanted to model since I first saw a picture of them. The first is Central of Georgia war-emergency rebuilt hopper 21781–there’s a photo of this car on railpictures.net at in a line of “yellow ball” hoppers Appalachia in 1978. The other car is Interstate 9234, a hand-me-down offset hopper of unknown origin with arched ends and an 18″ height extension to increase its capacity.

Interstate hopper 9234
I’ve wanted to build a model of this car ever since I saw it in Ed Wolfe’s first Interstate Railroad book. The Altas offset hopper makes it easy

Most of the cars in this class represent old 50-ton cars relegated to “yellow ball” captive service between local mines and the huge coal transloader at Appalachia, VA where the St Charles Branch joined the Southern mainline. A few cars are regular offsets and war-emergency rebuilds including offset 112773 which spent a lot of time against a 100W lightbulb getting “beat up” to look the part! In addition to the Interstate car, there are four other cars with scratchbuilt height extensions including three offsets and a war-emergency rebuild, representing cars which received their height extensions in the mid-to-late ’70s.

Southern extended height hopper in-progress
Athearn 34′ offset hopper with an 18″ extension made from sheet and T-shape styrene

The class includes a couple unique Southern 70T cars as well. The first is a “standard” hopper from the large 70300-73749 class in its original black paint scheme. The first 3,000 or so cars were delivered in black and made it into the mid-’60s before being repainted. Another hopper, 73921, is a Pullman Standard PS3 70T hopper clone that’s been repainted in the more modern Southern scheme from its Railroad Roman scheme. This car, along with the L&N PS3 70T hopper in this set, were kitbashed from Atlas 70T 9-panel hoppers, one by me and one by Patrick Tillery. These were built before the Tangent model was released and have been sitting on the shelf for years–I’m happy to finally have them on the layout! Rounding out the class is an L&N PS3 50T hopper from an old Train Miniatures / Walthers kit representing a repainted car from the late ’60s.

Southern PS3 clone in modern paint
A Southern PS3 clone and L&N PS3, both kitbashed from Atlas 9-panel 70T hoppers

The red cars were painted with either Tamiya NATO brown or a mix of Tamiya NATO brown and flat red–this mix will probably be my standard in the future, and I intend to vary the mixture to get variety in future cars. Never in my life have I done this many decals in one stretch. All told, there are more than 600 individual decals on these cars! Most of them are from K4 decals with a few Mask Island sets. The L&N hoppers are from a Great Decals set and a Curt Fortenberry set I got many years ago. Some Microscale small lettering and ACI labels rounded things out. Most received pretty heavy weathering since most represent non-interchange cars in their last years of service. I’m happy with how these cars turned out, and I’m happy I’ve got 9 more “yellow ball” hoppers to augment the fleet that’s been needing some help for a while.