A shot from the door of the completed upper-deck benchwork
The layout passed another milestone this past weekend–the upper-deck benchwork is now complete! Most of it was pretty straightforward, and the average deck height (top of benchwork) is 60″. A few sections required some creative engineering and some non-90 and 45 degree cuts. One tricky section was the top of the helix where the tracks transition through the upper deck benchwork. I used a piece of elevated benchwork and a plywood bridge to make this transition.
This was a challenging section to engineer–the track comes off the helix, ducks under a piece of elevated benchwork, then runs on top of the upper deck
Another tricky section was the last piece which holds the tail track for the switchback to Benedict at the end of the line. This piece goes in front of the basement breaker panel, so I had to engineer it so the door can be easily and fully opened and accessed, and I designed this section to be removable in case any major work is required someday. As you can see from the first photo, the lighting is in but very visible–these will be hidden behind fascia once the upper-deck trackwork is in.
This was the last piece of benchwork for the upper level. This piece allows the breaker box to be opened, and it’s removable in case there are bigger issues
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The fixtures for the lighting are simple plastic screw-in basesHere’s what I’m using, TreatLife 60W equivalent (9W actual) multi-color LED smart lights
Yesterday marked the fourth anniversary of the first piece of benchwork for the St. Charles Branch. I’m certainly not moving at any blistering pace, but it’s fun to look back and see the progress! Here’s a look at how one corner of the layout has progressed over those years. Mayflower is at the end of the Bailey’s Creek Branch and is the largest loader on the lower deck. I really like how the scene is shaping up!
Here’s the first piece of benchwork installed for the staging area under Mayflower on October 26th, 2019.
The next year was lockdown year, so by October 2020 the staging level was complete and the DCC system was up-and-running. I finished the last piece of the lower-level benchwork with this final piece that would ultimately support the scene at Mayflower.
By the middle of 2021, I was making good progress on the handlaid track. The track at Mayflower was the first to be completed, and by October of 2023, I had run up the helix from staging and was on my way to connecting the line from St Charles to Mayflower by the end of the year.
2022 was a productive year, and by October, I had finished the fascia, installed the backdrops, and was working on the scenery base. Mayflower was the first area to get its “paper shell” covering.
Here’s the scene at Mayflower today in 2023. Vegetation is still sparse, but in the past year, I’ve learned how to paint backdrops, finish the scenery base, and ballast track. I’ve also added some fun features like working crossing signals for major grade crossings and fusees for smaller grade crossings like this one at Potts Branch Road. It’s getting there!
For comparison, here’s a view of the prototype scene at Mayflower as it awaited the scrapper’s torch (photographer unknown).
Here’s what the layout looks like from the door as of October 2023–this is from eye-level, so you can see where the upper deck will sit
Just a quick progress update. This week I passed a major milestone by completing the scenery base on the lower level to the “dirt base” level. This is the minimum I wanted to complete before moving to the upper level, so now nothing stands in the way. I’m debating doing a little track ballasting and a couple more mock-up tipples, but it’s exciting to finally be at a point where I can start putting in upper-level benchwork! I found a pic from three years ago to show the progress over time. I’m sure not moving fast, but there’s definitely been a lot of progress!
Looking back toward the door and the Mayflower Tipple. If you follow the tracks back from Mayflower on the right, you’ll pop out at the far end of the aisle on the left
Looking along the St Charles yard with the wye ahead on the left–compare the progress in Oct 2023 to a similar shot from Oct 2020
Similar view as above from three years prior in Oct 2020
Here’s a look at last Saturday’s progress including finishing most of the lower level scenery base and painting the rest of the backdrop
I had a happy aligning of the stars on Saturday where my wife was gone for the day, I didn’t have any big “chores” to do, and I had just learned how to paint backdrops! All that combined into a day spent furiously trying to finish up the lower-level scenery forms so I could paint the rest of the lower-level backdrop. It was a good day, and I’m pretty happy with the results. I learned that the painting is my favorite part, roughing in the scenery with cardboard strips is my second favorite, and papering over the cardboard with section after section of red rosin paper is a distant third. Round 2 of backdrop painting went a little smoother than round 1 as I think I had a better grasp of the techniques, and the paint brushes seemed to work better on their second use. I liked the results of round 2 so much I went back and redid some sections of round 1.
The St Charles Local traverses the wye with the newly painted backdrop. It will soon descend through the backdrop in the corner, a hole much tougher to spot now
The scenery covers over the hidden track along the back wall that joins St Charles and the Mayflower section, so I decided to do a test run… I can now verify that I can indeed – by twisting at odd angles, reaching into small gaps, and fishing it out the last couple feet with a long string of hoppers – free a stuck train from the most remote part of my hidden track! Lesson learned–when you use hot glue for scenery, it tends to leave a lot of strings hanging down, and go figure, locomotives don’t pick up electricity so well when their wheels are covered in bits of glue string! A little wheel cleaning and some extra sweeps of the hand through the area (again at odd angles via small gaps), and trains now traverse this area nicely.
Where the two lower-level scenes transition–the backdrop on the right is lower than the left, hence less blue sky
I’ve only got one section left that still needs a backdrop and scenery forms, over the helix from staging. Painting the backdrop in the corner was the big barrier to adding this, so that will likely be the next step, and the LAST step before building upper-level benchwork… it’s getting pretty real.
Here’s where trains will leave the lower level and enter the helix to the upper level–I think the backdrop painting along with a few trees will hide the transition well
The finished scene showing the brighter foreground trees painted with yellow and mars black mix–what a difference the painted backdrop makes for the scene!
I collected art supplies to paint my backdrops many months ago, but like any project that intimidates me, they sat around in a drawer until I could get up the nerve to pull the trigger. I’ve done one painting my entire life about 30 years ago for an art class, so my experience level with this is just a hair above zero. I’d like to thank Jeff Kraker who sent me a link to a video series by Chris Lyon he followed on how to paint backdrops using a few basic acrylic colors and an impressionistic “blob” method. I learned a TON from this five-part series including the fact that you shouldn’t actually use green paint–how counter-intuitive is that? Having watched the series twice and armed with supplies, I finally jumped in! As you can see in the pictures, I’m no Michelangelo, but I’m happy with them for now, and I’m sure I’ll make some adjustments and touch-ups as I gain more experience.
Step 1 is to outline the distant ridges in chalk, and step 2 is to paint the distant ridges a bluish gray
My first step is to outline the top of the distant ridges. I actually used a low angle view from Google Earth to do this, so the basic contours are actually what you’d see standing in the actual scene. Kid’s sidewalk chalk is a good medium for this as it can be easily erased with a wet wash cloth. Next I painted my distant ridges–this was something the series didn’t cover as all their scenery was closer. One thing I wanted to do was to nail the color of distant hills. I live in the mountains, so every day I get to see that distant hills covered in trees are not green at all–they’re a shade of gray-blue, almost purple. To get a color close to this, I mixed some of my sky blue backdrop color with a little mars black, and a little cerulean blue which looks about right to me, though if anything, they’re not purple enough. I applied the paint using the techniques in the videos, just wet the brush (A No 10 round in this case) and dab, dab, dab, blob, blob, blob. I didn’t want distinct trees in the distance, so I mixed the paint pretty good, leaving just a little variation and shading.
Once the distant ridge is in, step 3 is to paint the next nearest ridge a little darker but still not bright green
Next, I added some primary yellow to the palette and started moving to the second ridgeline, still using a good bit of the sky blue but now adding more yellow which makes a nice Woodland Scenics-ish green when mixed with the mars black. Once the second ridge was in, I felt it didn’t have enough definition, so I dabbed the brush in some mars black and touched the base color without mixing it in and “blobbed” in some shadows. Finally I transitioned to the larger trees near the bottom. No sky blue, just a lot of yellow and a little mars black barely mixed and blob, blob, blob, again adding some areas of shadow with a little more black in the mix.
This is the one hard corner of backdrop on the layout–I think once I play with the lighting it will be a little less stark
The result is what you see here. It’s certainly no real art, and it doesn’t look nearly as nice as the backdrops in the video. Still, I think it gives a decent impression of a deciduous forest and Appalachian ridges that doesn’t distract from the foreground. I also think the color will blend pretty well with common light and medium green ground foam and foliage. I did about 15′ of linear backdrop in under 2 hours… not a bad return on time invested. I love what it does to the layout feel, as well. For the first time since I started building the layout, when you walk into the layout room it feels Appalachian. Looking forward to painting more and improving on my bare-bones techniques!
Part of the backdrop under the stairs involves a piece of the “sky” that sticks out
This is the first section I did. It’s amazing how much less noticeable the steps are with the mountains painted
Step 1 is to outline the distant ridges in chalk, and step 2 is to paint the distant ridges a bluish gray
Once the distant ridge is in, step 3 is to paint the next nearest ridge a little darker but still not bright green
The finished scene showing the brighter foreground trees painted with yellow and mars black mix–what a difference the painted backdrop makes for the scene!
This is the one hard corner of backdrop on the layout–I think once I play with the lighting it will be a little less stark
The 16 hoppers of the April 2022 class finished and ready for the next session
The St Charles Branch would like to welcome the Southern Hopper Class of April 2022 to the roster! The 16 cars in this graduating class are the largest group of cars I’ve ever finished at one time (and probably the largest group I’ll EVER attempt at one time). The 16 hoppers, including a foreign exchange student from the Clinchfield, represent cars across the layout’s range of ops session eras from mid ’60s (cars still in roman font) to the mid ’70s (brand new 100T hoppers). Consequently, all were weathered a bit differently from a 55T twin with dents and lots of grunge to brand new with just a little grime on the trucks and underside.
A Tangent 70T PS3 clone next to an upgraded Atlas Trainman car
A few of the cars (CRR 70T and 50T extended-height war-emergency rebuild) have been complete and just awaiting weathering for several years. Some of the cars have been running on the layout for a while but didn’t yet have their full set of details or weathering. The bulk of the cars are Atlas 70T Trainman hoppers, which I love because they’re relatively cheap but have good wheels and trucks and great paint for budget cars. Some Trainman hoppers got a full set of new grabs (did this a while ago). Most Trainman hoppers (along with a pair of Bowser/Stewart 12 panel hoppers) got the standard treatment of getting the grabs shaved down to a more reasonable thickness front-to-back using an X-Acto blade. Other added details include Kadee #5s, plastic bits for tack boards and door bars, wire grabs adjacent to the couplers, homemade tow loops, homemade train lines (copper wire from Cat 5 cable), and homemade coupler cut bars (bent from .012″ brass wire on a homemade jig). A few got dents added in the top sill by softening them with a 100W lightbulb. A few of the cars came with heap shields (correct only for a small number of ex Central of Georgia cars) that got removed as well. I also swapped out the trucks on the Tangent 100T cars–I decided I wanted cars that roll well more than neat spinning roller bearings.
Two of the more heavily weathered hoppers of the batch–note the dents in the top sill of 70439
All but one of these cars is factory painted which saves a TON of time. I changed some of the numbers by scraping them off gently with an X-Acto chisel blade (along with the later round “O”s on some of the Atlas cars) and replaced them with decals. Most cars received ACI labels (1967+) and a couple got lube plates (1974+). Before weathering, I covered some of the weight and shop stencils with rectangles of masking tape to represent re-stenciled cars. I ran them through a weathering assembly line that included coats of various thickness of airbrushed flat black followed by light tan. I then painted out a few more weight panels with fresh oxide red and added some stencil data in a different font to a couple cars. A few of the cars got some drybrushed rust marks too. Finally, most of the cars got a wash of flat black inside and out. Overall I’m really happy with how they turned out, but I don’t think I’ll ever assembly line 16 cars again… do you know how many wheel faces that is to paint? 16 cars x 8 wheels x 2 faces per wheel = a ton of wheels (that’s 128 wheels and 256 faces… don’t hurt yourself doing the math)! Still, it will be worth it to see coal trains with a lot fewer shiny cars in the mix.
The Tangent hoppers represent cars built in 1975 so weathering is minimal
Today I upped the operations realism a couple notches on the St Charles Branch by adding fast clocks!… Ok, with only half the tracks built and with only one partial operating session under my belt, it doesn’t take much to up operations several notches at this point, but the fast clocks are still really cool! While fast clocks are an important part of operating layouts, I was surprised at just how few good options are out there, especially for analog fast clocks. There are digital options available that work with your DCC system (nice feature), but modeling the ’60s and ’70s, I felt a digital clock display would be too gross an anachronism, and I’m working hard to transport operators back in time when they’re on the layout. I even played around with creating my own “analog” fast clock using MS PowerPoint which actually turned out pretty good for what it is–it works, but it was never intended to be a permanent solution. Feel free to download the “Poor Man’s Model Railroad Analog Fast Clock” (below) and play around with it–it will function somewhat online, but it works much better if you download it. You can read more about it and download a digital version as well here.
Regulator-style fast clock in the crew lounge. The FCC4 system let me retrofit this hand-made clock.
For the real solution, I needed a way to have multiple physical analog clocks all synchronized with an adjustable fast-clock ratio. I narrowed it down to two systems. The first was a WiFi system that offered both digital and analog clocks, but it was limited to a single style of analog clock, and I don’t really need MORE radio frequency waves in my house. In the end, I opted for Mike Dodd’s FCC4 fast-clock system. The FCC4 consists of a control board, three simple switches (run/stop, advance, and reset), and as many clocks as you need running off a two-wire bus. What intrigued me most was how Mike implemented the analog clocks–YOU buy the clocks, and he supplies the replacement mechanisms that will fit in just about any wall clock you can buy today. That feature enabled me to buy a clock for the layout room that had the style I wanted, AND it allowed me to convert a “Regulator” style clock made by my wife’s grandfather into a fast clock for the crew room (i.e., the rec room adjacent to the layout).
My temporary fast-clock control panel (the FCC4 is mounted in the background)
You can save some money by buying the kit version and assembling it yourself, but I decided to buy the assembled and tested versions of the controller and clock mechanisms, and everything worked like a charm (so refreshing in this day and age). I just needed to swap out the two clock mechanisms (a fun 30-minute project), add a few switches, and run several wires. Installation of the wires through the walls was the most difficult part of the project, but even that was pretty straightforward. In the end, I now have two fast clocks set to a 4:1 ratio that I can turn on and off, advance at a 17:1 ratio if needed, and reset to my session’s start time (5:30 AM for now) easily, and if I ever expand the layout into the spare bedroom next door, I just need to run a couple more wires and buy another mechanism to have another clock. I mounted the control board on a stud inside my helix space where it will be hidden from sight but easily accessible via a short crawl for troubleshooting or adjusting the ratio. The controls are on a temporary board for now–I’ll eventually install them in a recessed portion of the upper-level fascia to keep the switches away from little hands and wayward elbows.
If you need an analog fast-clock system, I would definitely check out the FCC4! Not only is Mike Dodd very responsive to questions, but he’s also a model railroader himself, so he’s designed this system from the perspective of an operations-oriented layout owner. I’m looking forward to my first operating session using the clocks where the times on train orders are more than just numbers on a piece of paper!
Fast Clock in the Layout Room
My temporary fast-clock control panel (the FCC4 is mounted in the background)
Regulator-style fast clock in the crew lounge. The FCC4 system let me retrofit this hand-made clock.
There is now a pale blue sky in St Charles, VA! This past week has been “backdrop week” on the layout, and today I finished sanding and painting the blue color on the backdrop. It’s amazing what a difference the backdrop makes in giving shape to the scenes. This is also a big step because it’s one step further than I got with my last layout before I had to tear it down–it’s good to surpass the progress of the previous effort.
There’s a vertical seam between two Masonite panels in the middle of this pick and an upper screw–can you find them?
The backdrop, like the fascia, is 1/8″ Masonite (or “hardboard” at some stores). I know a lot of modelers like Masonite because of its smoothness and flexibility, but over the years I’ve heard one repeated complaint: “it’s nearly impossible to fill holes and cover seams because nothing will stick to it.” If you’re worried about this, worry no more! I find that lightweight spackling compound (I use DAP Patch-N-Paint) works perfectly on Masonite. A couple of tips. First, make sure you countersink the screw holes so the screw heads are at least 1/32″ below the face of the Masonite to give enough depth for the spackle to work–this is tough to do without going through the 1/8″ board, but don’t worry if you have to patch an extra hole. Next, I apply a layer of the spackle over the screws and across any joints with a plastic putty knife to avoid scratching the Masonite. I clean it up a little with the knife, but messy is ok. After it dries for about 1-2 hours, I use a damp washcloth to scrub off the excess spackle. This usually leaves a bit of a depression in the holes and seams, so I put on a second layer of spackle. After this completely dries, I sand it with 150-grit sandpaper until it’s even with the Masonite surface and wipe it once again with a damp washcloth. Once painted, I have to look very carefully to see the seams, and the screw holes all but disappear.
For the color, I wanted a very light sky blue, enough to look blue but that kind of whitish and hazy blue on the horizon. I stood in Home Depot for 20 minutes with pictures of Appalachian scenes on my phone comparing the color to all the options Behr had to offer. I finally decided on this color in a flat finish (Behr calls it “After Rain”), and I’m pretty happy with it. If anything it’s a little more blue than I’d hoped, but the hue looks pretty natural, and it’s not too dark. Two coats with a roller gave the backdrop a nice even look. The backdrops are all ready to support some scenery forms now.
I must say, I’m going to miss taking pictures of the Mayflower Tipple mock-up with a nice white plastic insulation blanket as the backdrop… ok, no I’m not.
Lower level backdrop ready for paint
Lightweight spackling compound is great for patching Masonite board
1/8″ Masonite is very flexible and can be bent into pretty tight corners
I decided on this color because it’s very light and makes a hazy looking sky blue
Painted backdrop wrapping around the helix
There’s a vertical seam between two Masonite panels in the middle of this pick and an upper screw–can you find them?
Goodbye insulation background for the Mayflower tipple mock-up
The finished helix! From here it will traverse the concrete wall in the background before emerging at Turners Siding
Reached another milestone yesterday–the main helix between the main and upper levels is now complete! I have track reaching to 58″ off the floor. Like the helix between staging and the main level, I used what I call the “double pinwheel” method of building a helix (click here for a full write up on the double pinwheel helix). It requires only straight-line cuts, it’s very forgiving of non-precise cuts, and it’s rock solid.
The helix joins the town of St Charles to the towns of Turners Siding, Kemmergem, Monarch and Benedict on the upper level. The grade (3%) starts at the RR-west end of St Charles yard and continues up three turns of the helix. There will be another 15 feet of hidden track before the line emerges, so that’s effectively a fourth turn’s worth of elevation gain after the helix. Of course, when I built the base supports for the helix, I miscalculated something that had the initial grade into the helix closer to 4%. At first I was like, “well, maybe it will work.” I test ran a few locomotives up the first loop (all I had constructed upon discovery), and while my lightest locomotive could still pull 11-12 cars up the grade, I finally wised up and decided to fix it before it became unfixable. After dropping to 3% (lowering all the supports by 3/4″), the lightest locomotive could again haul 14 cars and a cab from a dead stop up the grade, the same limit as the helix from staging. I’m sure I will be glad I made this adjustment in the future! Measure twice, cut once… thankfully it just required loosening and reattaching some screws and only a few new cuts of supports to fix it.
It will be a little while now before I start the upper-level benchwork, but finishing the helix will allow me to install the lower-level backdrop, so the beautiful insulation pads will no longer be visible on the main level. I know that will be a big disappointment to many of you who feel the insulation just adds an extra layer of realism… ok, enough sarcasm. Building helixes isn’t fun for many modelers (including me), so I’m very glad this portion of the layout is now complete!
The first level of the helix installed before discovering I needed to lower it 3/4″
Continuing up the helix using the double pinwheel method
Helix almost complete
The finished helix! From here it will traverse the concrete wall in the background before emerging at Turners Siding
Lower level fascia complete and awaiting a few labelsPush rods can indeed be used for distant switches (48″ here) if properly guided and reinforced
This week’s project was completing the fascia for the lower level. I love the look of the curved black fascia and track diagrams. I’ve detailed fascia elsewhere, so I’ll stick to what’s unique here. While the switch mechanisms can be partially installed prior to fascia, it takes the facia being in-place to install the manual switch control knobs and push rods. While most of the mechanisms were pretty basic, there are three switches more than 30″ from the fascia on the “RR east” end of St Charles wye where the tracks emerge from the helix and staging. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to use the push rods for long distances, especially since two of the switches are beyond 36″, the length of the .062″ steel rods I use. The trick with the push rods is the longer they are, the more they tend to flex and bend (and, in turn, not throw your switch mechanisms). This can be partially rectified by using additional brass tube guides in wooden blocks along the rod’s path, about every 12-15″ or so. That was good enough for the first mechanism that was <36″ from the fascia.
St Charles wye has two insulated tracks where engines might tie up
For the longer rods, I decided to try connecting 2 steel rods using a 6″ piece of 3/32″ brass tubing and Gorilla Glue. I use the Gorilla Glue to attach the wooden knobs to the steel rods, so I know it’s got at least SOME game with metal. Since these rods will be hidden by scenery, I decided not to trust glue alone, so I lightly bent both the tube and steel wire about 1″ from the end of the tube on both sides–if there’s one thing I’ve learned, even a slightly bent .062″ wire does NOT want to pull through a 3/32″ piece of brass tube! Once I added the bends, the mechanism is solid as a rock! I’ve now verified that the manual push-rod controls are viable to at least 48″ from the fascia–not bad at all, and all remaining switch controls should be well under this length.
Another unique feature of the St Charles fascia is the addition of two SPST toggle switches that isolate two of the tracks from the wiring bus. A while ago, I detailed how I did something similar for my staging tracks so I could easily silence sound locomotives when they’re not actively involved in the operations. St Charles was often home to a mine run, so the pair of mine-run engines hung out on either the “house track” or aptly named “engine track” adjacent to the depot. Since these are the only tracks on the levels with scenery where I anticipate parking locomotives, I decided to give them the same insulation and toggle setup as the staging tracks. While I will likely rarely use these, I figured it’s SO much simpler to add them now than decide I need them after-the-fact.
Sometimes progress on a layout is painfully slow, especially for those in a stage of life with kids at home and full-time work. Time working on the layout comes in fits and starts as it takes a back seat (as it should) to other more important priorities. It can be discouraging to look at the accomplishments of a single evening or even a week and say “wow, I only laid three feet of new rail…” or “wow, all I accomplished was new Kadee couplers and cut bars on two hoppers…” I’m certainly not breaking any new philosophical ground here, but to really see progress, it’s important to look further back and see how far we’ve come.
First multi-train operating session in December 2021
While 2021 will be etched in my brain as “Year of the COVID – Part 2,” it will also go down as a significant year in the life of the St Charles Branch with many important milestones. When the year started, the layout was essentially a staging level, a helix, and a lot of benchwork for the main level–not a single rail had been laid on what will eventually become the part of the layout with scenery. By the end of the year, I had the first real operating session with multiple trains and all the paperwork. Here are some specific milestones:
All the rails on the lower level complete (not an insignificant milestone for 100% hand-laid track)
First “scenic” elements on layout (Bailey’s Trace bridges for St Charles wye)
Several locomotives completed (F3A, GP7, GP35, GP38AC)
Several unique hoppers completed (CofGa short-taper offset, INT “hand-me-down”, SOU 100T “articulated” hopper)
First mine run (Drew and Dan Bourque – Mayflower tipple)
First multi-train operating session (Patrick Tillery and Dan Bourque)
Like reflection on progress, goals for the future are also important. While the layout will always take a back seat to other priorities, here are the things I hope to accomplish in 2022:
Complete main helix between lower and upper level
Complete and paint lower-level backdrops
Finish benchwork for upper level
Build basic terrain for lower level
Lay track for at least one tipple on upper level
Have at least 3 more operating sessions to include first train to upper level
We’ll see at the end of 2022 how I did at meeting these goals. Even if I don’t complete them all, it’ll still be fun–Happy New Year!!!
Patrick Tillery stops at the St Charles depot while running the first-ever L&N CV Local
I’d like to thank Patrick Tillery for informing we he was coming over Monday night to check out progress on the layout which became the catalyst for the first multi-train operating session on the St Charles Branch! Despite some major obstacles such as having to reach under or across the layout to throw switches and a couple turnouts and cars that were acting up under their first real use, we managed to run 3 trains: the St Charles Local, the St Charles Switcher, and the L&N’s CV Local. These are the three primary trains on the layout during “busy times” across all eras of the layout–the timing of the trains may vary, but each serves the same basic function.
The St Charles Local is a scheduled train that runs between Appalachia/Andover, VA and St Charles. In leaner times, it serves as the mine run for the St Charles area branches. In heavier times, it serves to shuttle empty hoppers to the small “yard” at St Charles and pick up loads retrieved by the St Charles-based mine run. This is the “big train” on the layout and the only train to ever be assigned more than two locomotives.
The St Charles Switcher, known in some eras at the Black Mountain Local, is the mine run based out of St Charles that serves the area loaders. It picks up empties dropped off by the St Charles Local and plies the numerous branches and tipples dropping off empties and picking up loads. This train is the star of operations on the layout and the only train that will normally have a crew of two (conductor and engineer).
L&N CV Local runs around its empties at Mayflower with Patrick at the controls–the C420 is still in TC colors
The L&N Cumberland Valley (CV) Local is the only other scheduled train on the layout. This train works the old L&N mainline between Corbin, KY and Appalachia, VA including the modest coal loadings of the Middlesboro, KY area mines and the St Charles Branch. The L&N has trackage rights over the portion of the St Charles Branch from L&N Junction (Pocket), VA to the ends of the branches beyond St Charles which it reached via a short L&N branch between Pocket, VA and the L&N’s CV mainline at Pennington, VA. Despite several loaders in this area, the prototype CV Local never seemed to need more than a single locomotive, an RS3 or a C420, to handle the handful of hopper loads bound for the L&N.
Last night’s operating session took about 2 real hours. Patrick took the first train, the L&N CV Local, up to Mayflower to swap out 4 empties for 5 loads. Leading the train was Alco C420 400 still in Tennessee Central colors (it’s bound for the paint shop soon, but the L&N used ex-TC C420s on this line because they were the lightest on the railroad). The CV Local had to first stop at the depot track on St Charles wye to pick up an extra set of orders from the Southern dispatcher. This job took about 40 minutes from start to finish. After the L&N CV Local cleared St Charles, the St Charles Switcher with me as engineer showed up with 18 cars – 16 empties, a covered hopper of fertilizer for Mayflower, and a boxcar for the team track at St Charles. It took about 20 minutes to assemble the loads from the previous day and replace them with the fresh cars in the tiny 3-track yard. A derailment kept the L&N CV Local waiting for a few minutes until the superior train on the timetable was finally able to depart for Appalachia.
With the home rails now to itself, the St Charles Switcher left the house track next to the depot to serve four tipples with Patrick as engineer and me as conductor. We worked the two local tipples first, JAD Turner and Cavalier, before swapping out the boxcar for a now empty flat on the team track. With the locals taken care of, we swapped roles and picked up the remaining empties an the load of fertilizer and headed up the branch to Mayflower. At Mayflower, it took two sets of run-around moves to place the empties above the tipple and swap out covered hoppers on the tail track. One more run-around set us up to work the stub track at Baker before assembling all the loads and departing town. A little blocking back at St Charles yard rounded out the job which took nearly an hour.
All told, we got 2 hours of operations out of just 1/2 the layout–not bad! Despite working out a few kinks in the rolling stock and trackwork, the overall track arrangements worked well for the jobs–they required enough moves to keep operators thinking and having to make smart moves without being frustrating for lack of sufficient track. I underestimated how handy it is to have a wye for turning trains working the yard instead of having to run around the length of the train. It was also the first major use of paperwork on the layout, something I’ll describe in more detail in a future article.
I’m so glad Patrick was up to playing guinea pig for the first session, and I’ve now got a new punch list of stuff I need to fix before attempting this again. All part of the learning process!
