Superior & Seattle Railroad Build (Volume 4) Started 8/14/21

[S&S RR]

I love the cross-cut sled for the Micro-Mark/Proxxon table saw.  I added the wood pieces to either side of the exit notch, to remind my fingers to stay away from there.  At least once it saved my fingers, when I was concentrating on lining something up and started to place my fingers where the blade would cut them 


dave

Dave




Good idea - you do need to keep your head in the game around these machines.  I made a mark with a red sharpe to remind me where the blade was. The Micro Mart sled works fine and saved me the time of constructing one myself. The key is getting everything aligned properly so it doesn't bind. It also works real well for cutting a number of pieces of strip wood to the same size all at once.  I'll post some pictures next time I setup for that.

[S&S RR]

Here is a test location for the clapboard portion of O.V. Hooker & son on the layout.

[S&S RR]

I also made some progress on the main brick structure for the O.V. Hooker build.  The brick walls are together and mounted on the baseboard.  I also installed some interior LED lighting.  This build will be a ways back on the layout so no interior detail to light this time. I just wanted to have light coming through the windows for night photographs.  I mounted three peel and stick LED's inside which will give me flexibility with light levels and spares just in case. The final picture with the light up test is with only one of the LED's turn on.

















Wire channel cut in the waterboard underneath.  All the wires will go through the same hole in the plywood benchwork.









Light up test

[PRR Modeler]

Great lighting.

[Mark Dalrymple]

Looking good, John.

The lighting looks great.

I like the new building to the left much better.  However - might I suggest that you carefully consider any building to the left of the station against 'nothing'?  Its hard to tell from photos, but I have a feeling that anything bigger than a tiny shed might take more away from the scene (especially the station) than it might add.

Cheers, Mark.

[S&S RR]

Great lighting.

Curt


Thank you, I have a little gap at the roof line to fix. It looks like the resin casting warped a few thousands of an inch. A little glue and some more weights on top while it dries.

[S&S RR]

Looking good, John.

The lighting looks great.

I like the new building to the left much better.  However - might I suggest that you carefully consider any building to the left of the station against 'nothing'?  Its hard to tell from photos, but I have a feeling that anything bigger than a tiny shed might take more away from the scene (especially the station) than it might add.

Cheers, Mark.

Mark


Thank you for your suggestions on the structure. I like it from one view but it does too much blocking from the other two directions. I have a couple small structures including a smaller Water Tower that I want to try in that area before going with some weeds and grass. This is one of the fun parts of the hobby. I need to get he Ice facility that will go behind the station in place before making this decision.

[S&S RR]

I got out the big weight to get rid of the small gap between my roof casting and the brick walls at the top. Seem to be doing the trick.

[Mark Dalrymple]

Looking good, John.

I can imaging the water tower working quite well...

Cheers, Mark.

[postalkarl]

Hey John:

That's coming along just beautifully so far.

Karl

[S&S RR]

Hey John:

That's coming along just beautifully so far.

Karl

Karl


Thank you,

[S&S RR]

Update:  I spent the day doing track maintenance on the layout.  I had a repair list from our last OPS session plus the short I have been chasing in the Superior Yard.  I may have made some progress on the short - I found a pair of lead wires that were attached to the wrong main wires leading back to the control panel. Time will tell if this was the only problem.  Two days of crawling around under the layout has reminded me I'm not as young as when I started this layout.

[S&S RR]

Well the short that I thought was fixed isn't. For some reason when I enter the reversing block at the entrance to Superior Yard it sometimes shorts out the entire power district.  I think I have an issue with the board for the power district or the board controlling the reversing block.  I have a lot of testing to do to figure this one out. Intermittent electrical problems are the worst.

[S&S RR]

Fun statistic on the S&S RR build thread.  On December 20th, the build thread on this forum began its ninth year. I added up the views for the 4 volumes of the build thread and it's over 1 million.  I find it amazing for a model railroad thread. As most of you know I started the build thread on "the old forum" about 10 years ago.

[deemery]

...I have a lot of testing to do to figure this one out. Intermittent electrical problems are the worst.

There's a technical term for those, "heisenbug"  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisenbug   And they ARE THE WORST because you can't reliably trigger them to figure out what's going on....


dave