Boston & Maine Eastern Route Progress

[Rick]

I'm seeing much great layout construction and modeling here.
I enjoyed looking through the last 4 or 5 pages of updates.
I'll try and stay current with this thread as you make more progress.

[jbvb]

Thanks, Rick.  There's a decade of history before anything I do in 2025.  I didn't do much modeling 2022-2024; I spent a lot of time at Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunkport, ME.

25-May-2014: I added the steps, then puttied and sanded the pit, then installed the rail and resistance-soldered the joints between the clips. I brush-painted it with Floquil Concrete, then did the rails and clips with Weathered Black. I brushed lacquer thinner around to give a basic grease/soot/dirt effect.



I sanded & stained the ties when I got up. Next, ballast the track outside the door.

26-May-2014: I finished the enginehouse track, but it won't be photogenic until work on the structure begins. So I chased a flaky contact in
the turntable and got to work on the west portal of Bexley tunnel.



I originally made it 13 scale feet wide, but it was too close to the switch points; my big steam locos caught the corner of the cab roof when backing through the diverging route. And that's a natural move for the westbound Narragansett while working Bexley yard.

I built the styrene portal fabrication to be removable. Here I'm sawing/filing it a foot wider. Then I painted over the carved mortar lines in the area I needed to re-do, and carved new ones (right hand side of the arch, below).



Here T-1a 4012 demonstrates that I removed enough. That's it for track issues turned up at my last op session.

[jbvb]

31-May-2014: Thinking about visitors this fall, the Scenery AP and Pete's (Orionvp17) backdrop clinic got my mind on backdrops. I watched Chris's (LVN) videos and stopped by Michael's yesterday. Their assortment of brushes did not include exactly what Chris used, but then again, I'm not trying to do exactly what Chris was doing. There used to be real art supply stores convenient to me, but they've been big-boxed; I tried a new-to-me one that morning.



I painted Rowley's backdrop before it went to Dortmund with the HUB Module Group in 2005. The low horizon is a priority for realistic model photography of a prototype where the horizon is, in fact low. It went slowly because I was pre-mixing colors, and the distant hills don't stand up well in close ups because they're too uniform. Chris's dabbing will help that.



I experimented on Newburyport last night, since the scenery below the backdrop hasn't been started and I hadn't invested any effort in shading the sky. I got the treetop horizon line too high and too uniform on most of it. The green I got from Mars Black and Yellow will do for the most distant trees, but I will come back with something closer to what I used for the distant White Pines. Everything but the piny area by the window will be rolled over.



This is the effect Newburyport needs: trees in residential areas usually higher than the building roofs, but not always. East Bexley and Newbury ought to look like Rowley, but with better technique. We'll see how I do.

[jbvb]

1-Jun-2014: I found better brushes at an art supply store: A 1" "Mop" and a thicker, more dimensionally stable "Fan":



The Good: I mixed gray and yellow into the base green to give more distant colors, and didn't try to do a distant horizon, just trees on the other side of Route 1. But Rt. 1 needs more visible cues that say "road, viewed at low angle". Maybe a baluster on the bridge, guardrail posts, telephone poles. If I can come up with a photomontage of cars and a business that was just south of the Little River bridge, that would really do it.



The Bad: The perspective view of Little River coming under Route 1 works from a standing position, but doesn't stand close inspection when viewed from track level. I can fix it with a repaint, but I think I'll leave this version in place till I've done the rest of the current project.

Orionvp17 commented:

I like the hillside look in the Newburyport area, but would recommend eliminating the "Hero" trees that stick up above everything else. Yes, they exist, but for the effect you want I think you'd be better off without them.
If you look around with a critical eye, you find that most of the foliage is the same height unless it's been "tampered with" by a fire, lumbering, farming and so on. The trees there compete for the same light, water and nutrients, so most are the same basic height. I'm looking across the bay right now at a tree line on a ridge -- pretty much the same height all the way up the Bay. The Heroes are right next to fields or areas now growing houses.
Don't worry too much about trunks, either -- the understory tends to fill in the blank spots and the trunks don't show.
As to Route 1, if you lighten up the black to a medium grey (I'd mix a dot of black with white and tan to get a "brown" grey rather than a "blue" grey) you should like it a lot more very quickly. Right now it's ten-minute old asphalt, and the trucks are already gone....
Your original Rowley backdrop works well, but could stand some variation in the colors, which Chris' Dab-Dab process will produce.
So keep at it, have fun, and don't forget that it's just paint. If it doesn't work for you, roll it out and try again.
Oh-- I really like that culvert, too....

2-Jun-2014: The culvert is compressed from the prototype Four Rock bridge over the Little River in Newbury, MA (prototype &
construction photos earlier in this thread). Essex County in Mass. was pretty much deforested by 1800 and this area was all cow pasture in 1930; it wasn't till the 1980s that regrowth reached the height of the old fence line trees. Nearby trees were coming out well that evening, but I haven't yet dabbed my way to the distant forested hills that should be this scene's horizon. Here, where flat land was available, farmers let the hills go to woodlot, sugarbush, or planted them to orchards. Some had been chestnut orchards before the Blight.

22-Jun-2014: That this was only my 2nd post in June doesn't mean I forgot my hobbies; far from it: I went to the R&LHS convention in Nevada, followed by the NRHS convention in Arkansas. Then Friday evening I did an airbrushing clinic for the Hub division, Saturday a BoD meeting and today our cookout at Waushakum Live Steamers.



This is what I painted or weathered at the clinic. Setting up my spray booth and other cleanup will be this week's next task.

[jbvb]

26-Jul-2014: I'd been in Cleveland at the NMRA National. I might have a few photos which would add to what's already been posted, but I couldn't till I got a new DSL router. Lightning struck my wind generator tower while I was gone; I'm pretty well grounded so aside from DSL I thought I'd only lost my inverter and my PV charge controller.

But last night I went up to the attic to work. After fixing some freight cars with minor damage from the National Train Show, I turned on the layout and found three casualties I hadn't expected: My P2K 0-8-0 (old Soundtraxx) makes sound and moves, but the LED headlight appears to have blown and there's a nasty 'hot electronics' smell coming from it. The P2K SW-9 (Digitrax) shown above doesn't move. And my Bachmann RS-3 (factory sound) blinks the rear headlight and doesn't move. The layout wasn't connected to AC power, but there's a lot of wire to collect induced currents. The 0-8-0 and the SW-9 were in blocks that were connected to the DCC buss, the RS-3 wasn't (I think). More when I have time to dig into them.

27-Jul-2014: I checked the damaged locos out: The SW-9's NCE decoder is completely blown, no response to programming and draws .75 amp w/o action on DC. The Bachmann RS-3 can be read, reset & programmed, but won't make sound or move. On DC, it moves with sound for a second or two, then stops/shuts off, repeats. The 0-8-0's Soundtraxx is operable but acts like it's on the way to burning out its headlight driver. I've never had the boiler off that one, but I don't know where tracing circuits will lead me.

8 other locos that were on the layout work OK, so it isn't a major service interruption. But I'm either going to fix these or buy/convert replacements before my next op session, to avoid McGinnis-painted GP-9s next to steam. I know it's my railroad, but because it's my railroad I'm allowed to care about things like that.

The NCE SW9SR acted up out at the far end of my DCC buss, so I'll probably try something else in it. The RS-3 is probably just a new decoder, assuming the OEM Soundtraxx decoder is the same form factor as one they offer retail. If the 0-8-0 has wiring issues, Atlas may have another customer for the B&M S-2 their website shows as scheduled for late 2013 (great updating, guys). Or I could just do a couple of RDCs in the delivery scheme (no paint, just road name & numbers).

29-Jul-2014: I opened up the 0-8-0; the only obvious problem is the front headlight LED is a short-circuit, which was overheating the 1/4 watt resistor I had installed it with. I'll see if a new LED fixes that.



I had this engine out on the main testing a telephoto zoom I'd bought before the trip. It was sitting in a block connected to the DCC buss, but it's Lenz decoder survived.

Anyway, I got my other module home, so the layout will be operational again soon. I also helped the Hub crew clean up the place where we'd staged the club modules to work on signals and spruce things up for the Cleveland train show.

MarkF said:

That's scary to think that you suffered that much damage from 'induction'. When I built layout room, I installed a double pole wall switch to minimize
possible damage from a lightning strike, but it appears that extra step might have been futile. Scary

Orionvp17 said:

Ouch again, James. I feel your pain and wish you well.
If it's any consolation, the HubDiv layout showed well in Cleveland, with "information systems" from an operating ball signal to that ultra-high tech, seriously cool, multi-screen computer display for the DS. Spectacular.

30-Jul-2014: Mark, my new policy is that all block toggles are switched Off before I switch layout power off. I'm also thinking of a loco rack or case for engines I'm not using in between op sessions. More handling, but less loco cleaning/dusting. I just need to find a place near my staging yard.

Thanks, Pete. It's just more DCC conversions, but it's tiresome to have to go back to two engines I just finished. Four or five HUB members put a lot into getting the modular layout signaling this far. It's going to continue to evolve, and we'll keep spreading the word.

6-Aug-2014: Since my last post, I finished fixing my old AC All-Crop 66 combine and harvested 2100 lb. of wheat. Last weekend I made a trip up to Auburn ME for the Seacoast Division meeting (I was a candidate for the NER BoD) but all I've done here is set up my modules so my main line is complete again.

Something the layout photos I took in Cleveland don't show is the many cases where I saw what looked like a nice scene with impossibly poor lighting. Often these were in the shadow of an upper deck, but some were either in a hot spot under a ceiling fixture or where a track light was aimed. I'm not going to knock anyone by name; it's the owner's layout, and I have no idea how hard it is to get wiring done in any jurisdiction but my own. But I am very glad my own layout has only a few places where the light is a little dimmer than elsewhere. And I'm seriously thinking about supplementing my 48" single T-8 fixtures with more LED strips to even it out completely.

8-Aug-2014: I continued prep for pouring Little River. I need this scene for both November's Tour de Chooch and the AP Scenery certificate, but I can't dawdle: getting the attic warm enough to cure Envirotex in November will be difficult or impossible.



I tried sealing the ends of the watercourse with Aileen's Tacky Glue. It didn't hold my test pour of water as well as I'd hoped (the drips evaporated before I took the picture), so I'll be back to it after I get the mud color right. Perhaps a little conventional epoxy, which will also give me confidence that the clear plastic won't dissolve at an inopportune time.

I used the baster to remove the water. It's got a stainless body, but the bulb had gone soft/sticky. So I replaced it with an old bulb that I'd been hanging onto for at least 15 years...

13-Aug-2014: This morning I  added a Gold Green/Raw Umber wash to the Little River's muddy banks:



Then I staredt the water with a little pour which I would spread over potential leaks. I took a gamble on my understanding of epoxy
chemistry and used the leftover Envirotex from Rowley River, poured in the late '90s. If I get burned, it will be all my fault, but I'll know tomorrow night.

15-Aug-2014: 24 hours later the 1997 Envirotex was hard & clear, with maybe a bit of brownish tint from the hardener. I used the rest for the bottom pour on the remainder of the river.  Then I switched to some I bought a couple of years ago.

18-Aug-2014: A 3rd pour this morning:



I'm running out of height on my dam in front, so that section's next will have to be tinted and final.

[jbvb]

22-Aug-2014: My RR-Line thread had been viewed more than 100,000 times. Thank you all, I appreciate your interest, it encourages me.

I was planning to post this picture of a couple of mistakes along with my intended corrections, but it's cool and damp here, not the right weather to pour Envirotex:



The visible mistake is I dipped too much of the blade of my mixing spatula in the Floquil Big Sky Blue: I got about 1/2", should have been more like 1/8". This looks OK in a thin layer in front of the bridge, but way too blue in the deeper part of the pour behind it.

The invisible mistake was how I measured and mixed: I weighed out 29.5 grams of each component into a cup, then poured them back & forth, stirring. I think unmixed stuff on the sides of the cups got in as I poured; most of it is nice and hard but some is still a bit sticky 48 hours later.

For the next pour, I'll weigh both parts into the same cup, one after the other. And I'll start tinting with a toothpick's worth of Pullman Green, then maybe a bit of Roof Brown. The front will get a very thin layer, the back more. And we'll see. I get another chance to tint when I apply Acrylic Gloss Medium...

23-Aug-2014: Another pour last night; about 35 g total, mixed in a single cup, with a couple of little dots of Floquil 'Pullman Green' (which is actually a good deal grayer/lighter than the real color).



It's still a little blue in the 'stark' shot, taken at night with only normal layout lighting (it also reveals cruft on my sensor). But with daylight and marsh grass, I think I'm getting there:



Shot with +1 exposure compensation.



I put some extra effort into continuing the riverbed under the bridge, and making it more or less fluid-tight. This is my reward (picture fiddled to try to undo the +1 exposure comp).

[jbvb]

26-Aug-2014: One more pour, again tinted with Floquil's Pullman Green, but only to the stream back of the bridge. I'm planning a "tide turning" scene at the bridge, reminiscent of what I've seen many times at the prototype.



This doesn't show the pour, but it does show the marsh grass (+1 overexposed) after spray painting the underside Rustoleum Primer Brown and trimming the grass to finished length (10 - 20 scale inches). Note that the spray paint appears to have shrunk the fake fur 5-10%.  It is also the last appearance of the V1 backdrop in this area. I have to re-paint, then finish the river banks & water before permanently gluing the marsh grass down and doing the 'beaches' where it meets dry land.

28-Aug-2014: After applying the first coat of sky blue over the v1 backdrop, I finished putting the new headlight LED in 624, my P2K USRA 0-8-0. Placing it on the track, the engine would move, with sound, but the headlight wouldn't go out. The smokebox front wasn't installed yet, and I found the LED was hot to the touch, even with the larger resistor I'd just installed. Power OFF!

The meter showed 26 VAC to the headlight terminals. Checking with two different meters showed 26 VAC to the rails. When fiddling around before I went to Cleveland, it was always the expected 14.3 VAC. Voltage from the MRC power supply 'brick' is 17 VAC, which isn't really out of line for something rated 15 VAC.

Email to MRC support sent.

I don't have any hope for the NCE decoder in 1231, it acts burned up. We'll see about the Bachmann RS-3 once I get my Sprog set up.

1-Sep-2014:

 

I've spent several hours painting backdrop using a few of Chris Lyon's techniques, aiming at the Great Marsh and adjoining farmland in
August. I like what I achieved in this shot of the Rowley - Newbury line (module joint at the left). But now I've cleaned my brushes. My modeling time for the next couple of weeks went to preparations for the NER convention September 11-14 in Palmer, MA.

10-Sep-2014: Yesterday Pete dropped by, so I got out Rowley's scenic details. After he went on his way, I decided to re-try a shot I'd originally taken for the Scale Rails article:



This one uses a telephoto and isn't quite the same angle, but it makes the best use of my recent backdrop work. And as usual, shows some things I should fix for a re-take after the NER convention.

[jbvb]

18-Sep-2014: I did the Heubach Farm (East Bexley) scene's backdrop:



Up to this point, I'd been using acrylics with techniques borrowing from Chris Lyon's videos. But now I needed to do a building front in perspective.



The Boxcar Red came out of the same ancient Floquil can I'd used to airbrush the barn's base color. The black is acrylic semi-gloss house paint.



The white is acrlyic house primer, done with my finest brush and everything I could do to steady my hand and paint straight. As usual with perspective views, it only works from one point (see above). So I need to add a tree or two to hide it from long views across the Rowley River.

1-Oct-2014: Since that burst of painting, I've tried out a couple of phragmites pines I had around; they show where the better trees need to go, but better trees haven't been made yet. Instead, I've been doing prep for future activity: A fast clock (future op sessions), sorting through all my signal parts (op sessions & AP Scenery certificate), cleaning up. The last two evenings have gone to installing AC panel meters on the two parts of the DCC buss. It wouldn't have taken nearly that long except the meters (GME PM89 series from All Electronics) had a design/manufacturing defect: When I tightened one binding post, it broke the etch/solder connecting it to the PC board inside. Rather than put the time/effort into returning them, I shifted a resistor lead on the board so it made direct contact to the binding post screw.

[Orionvp17]

The photos you posted about six minutes ago are all hiding behind the blue box with the question mark....

Bummer!

Pete
in Michigan

[jbvb]

2025: Pete, past experience suggests they'll show up in 5-10 minutes?  I'll check back.

8-Oct-2014: I wasn't satisfied with the color of my first try at Little River's marsh grass, as illustrated by the low-angle shots of 2713 and 4012 above on this page. So I made a couple of new pieces just colored with Liquitex Basic Green and Yellow.



New is on the left.



New in front.



Old front & back.

I was unsure. I did the backdrop to match (more or less) the old. These pictures were taken with only room light. The earlier pictures were taken with room light and daylight coming in the window. I think that's where the excessive brightness of the grass came from. So there may not be a perfect solution.

Orionvp17 commented:

Although this looks good, I share your misgivings on color. Both of these areas look overly green to me. The only marsh grass I've ever seen had a lot of brown in it, no matter when I drove by it. Would adding tan to the mix help tone things down and make them look "better?"

Marsh grass changes color a lot with the seasons, but I've been neglectful and don't have any pictures of my own from mid-August (the target time for this scene). Brown increases as Summer ends, then dominates the picture October - May. This page has a mid-summer shot first, then an October shot further down:

http://blogs.massaudubon.org/landpro...on-initiative/

The salt marsh photo at the bottom of that page tells me "more green, but no Pthalo Green" (source of the blue tint on my 1st try). It also tells me "can you get a little light brown on the tops of the tall parts?". Dry-brush? Airbrush at a low angle? Brown static grass? I'll experiment.

[jbvb]

As it happens, I photographed the Great Marsh (Newbury division) in September 2013. I think this was near the intersection of Hay St. and Newman Rd., on the Little River not far from Old Town Hill.

[jbvb]

Bror Hultgren commented:

Living on the edge of the marsh in Ipswich, my observations:
My initial response is that the colors are too saturated, whatever the hue. (This is a natural tendency for how we remember colors). Regardless of the season, the areas need more variety (see the 3rd to last of the pix in the Audubon link and your own), not so homogeneous. Your lighting is not helping you, especially when trying to match the color in the backdrop(having seen your layout, I can sympathize with the difficulty with the sloping ceiling). Can you place a few small bush size trees to break up the interface between the 'backdrop marsh' and the 'layout marsh'.

10-Oct-2014: I did a soak in gray to reduce the saturation; it helped at high angles but not down low. My friend Deb suggested hitting the tops of the grasses with a fan brush, which improved the low-angle view a great deal.

But it still was way too bright unless I blocked the window behind it. That just seems to be the nature of the ?polyester? fake fur. So that's how photography here will be done, I guess.

22-Oct-2014: Yesterday evening was all RR-related, but the only actual layout work was wiring a phone extension up in the attic. This is a convenience for one who does not carry a cell with him every waking minute, but there's also a cautionary tale: A modeling friend who lives alone out in the woods had a stroke late one night. With half his body paralyzed, it took him three hours to struggle to a phone. Now every floor of my house has a phone which I can reach with one hand while lying on the floor. And they all work when the house has no power.

Dave Emery commented: The last time we lost power, our Verizon land-line went down with the electricity (but the Cox cable home office phone worked just fine.) It appears as Verizon rolls out FIOS, their fiber based infrastructure is not as reliable in the face of power failures as their old copper infrastructure.

Fairpoint has some backup, but not like it was when our copper went straight to a New England Telephone CO. When Comcast is feeling prosperous or there's a big game coming up, they drive around and chain generators to the poles holding their head-end amps for each street. But in the best of times, that takes a while.

29-Oct-2014: The farm at East Bexley has had a cardboard mock-up of a pole equipment shed for some time, but with Tour de Chooch coming up, I decided to join the RR-Line "shed & shack challenge" and get it built. But first I needed workbench space: I like the express box car I built from this Red Caboose kit, but I'd used the original split-shank couplers and one had lost its pin. The door steps had also suffered from handling over the years:



I popped off the coupler box covers and installed Kadee #148s. Then I bent new door steps from Detail Associates .010 x .018 flat brass bar (I can still see the difference in cross section) and pushed them into #78 holes in the edge of the frame. After I reinstalled the trucks and the Blacken-It did its work, it was ready for a car card & return to service this morning.

MEC 622 behind it may get shelved in favor of the shed - the lead has broken off the motor a second time, so a better fix is in order.

6-Nov-2014: My friend Victor came over to tune up & run one of his passenger consists:


Generally, the BLI T-1 ran pretty well, but the long wheelbase, low pilot and weak lead truck springing found a couple of dips in the track.

[jbvb]

Handling an engine this large with a delicate multi-pin plug between the engine & tender is tough. But I thought of using the wood/cloth loco cradle I built last month:







Victor thinks he'll build one of his own, but 3-4" longer.

The T-1's volume was enough for a TRAIN SHOW. But it had a great variety of sounds, and a bigger/better speaker than any other HO steam I've heard.  I won't hurry to fix the dips which hung it up; they don't affect the westbound main and the westerly staging tracks anyway. I like to give people a chance to run their equipment, and I have broad enough curves for pretty much anything. But I'm not going to rebuild my prototypical clearances for double stacks.

Everything should clear a dome or Superliner, but the first lap will operate at Restricted Speed as a High & Wide.

[jbvb]

18-Nov-2014: Standing by the Rubicon (Little River):



I think this is about as good as I'll get the marsh grass, and I've spent too long on it anyway. With the Tour de Chooch looming, tomorrow I'll glue it in place and finish the beaches & wrack separating the marsh grass from the land.

25-Nov-2014: Ron G. came over to see the layout before helping at the upcoming Tour de Chooch. We got talking and while we were talking, I kept on working. One project got finished this morning:



Behind 1231 you'll see Farmer Heubach got the roof on his pole equipment shed.

The rest of the evening's labor went to the Little River area, but several steps remain.

30-Nov-2014: Before I switched to Tour de Chooch cleanup, the Little River bridge area got a lot closer to completion:



This angle doesn't show the 'beaches' at the edge of the marsh grass, which I did with sand from Hampton Beach. But it does show the 'sea wrack' which gets floated by spring tides into a layer above the normal high tide line.

No more pictures till I get the camera thoroughly cleaned.

Tour de Chooch: Wow. I didn't have anything on hand for a guestbook, and didn't think to ask my friends who were guiding visitors in/out to count, but I'm sure I had more than 100 visitors. And I talked to them all. The layout behaved pretty well. A couple of my cars derailed a few times, which I'll investigate this week. Ron's locomotive hit some condition which got it blinking its headlight 3 times, then pausing, then repeating for a minute or two and then going on normally. He needs to get the decoder manual to see what it was trying to tell us. Nobody who operated really knew the interlockings, so most of the day two trains were chasing each other around the main oval. But no smoke, no broken bits and everything's in place for the next op session.

So now off to dinner & a beer

[jbvb]

3-Dec-2014: It warmed up later in the day, but was gray & damp out, so I gave myself a RR day. I ordered the last PSX-1 I need. Then I replaced a marginal homebrew turnout control at Newburyport West. Then the track gang went around with gauges & lining bars and fixed several glitches that had manifested after I started heating the house. In late afternoon, I decided it was time to do this:



The library card file is my main parts store and also holds a number of unbuilt car & loco kits. When I'd first got it up there, I'd placed it to keep people from falling into the attic stairwell. But it made an unnecessary radio shadow for my MRC throttles, and I'm going to need the space it was in anyway when I start on Newburyport's City RR. peninsula ( http://www.faracresfarm.com/jbvb/rr/bmrr/Newburyport_1950.PNG )

So I moved it, built myself a sound but not pretty railing, then spent the rest of the evening cleaning and organizing. And as far as I can tell from this picture (Rowley on the right, Bexley behind the chimney), the cleaning I gave my camera & lenses worked.

The house appears on the 1800 tax rolls, so it was built in 1799. Some of the story behind it is here:

http://www.faracresfarm.com/jbvb/ae_house.html

The visible chimney is 3x5.  At ground level (the four visible posts are roughly the footprint, 8x9)? It has seven functional flues, but I've got stainless pipes in three of them for two woodstoves and the furnace. One of the two original beehive ovens is usable, the other
needs minor brick/mortar work.

28-Dec-2014: One aspect of getting the layout this far while active in the Hub Division is I now have nearby model railroading friends. Most of them don't have layouts, but want their equipment to run well when they take it to a Hub Module Group setup. Thus:



Victor came over with his new Bachmann NYC S-1 4-8-4 and a bunch of bargain freight cars he'd accumulated at various train shows. He'd brought a Kadee coupler height gauge and some tools, I got him started with the NMRA gauge and supplied a bunch more tools, washers etc. Then I cleaned wheels, leading to dismantling/reassembling the coupled drivers of my 2-8-4 and various other variants of 'yak shaving'. After about 5 hr., we assembled the train and observed as it ran all the way around the main line without a glitch. I made several more loops so Victor could make phone videos.

Bachmann did pretty well, but one driver and three tender axles were slightly broad-gauge. Luckily, I budged the drivers with finger pressure, avoiding bringing my NWSL Puller to bear. I really liked the way the engine drifted/coasted when you shut off the throttle.
I hope the various DCC fiefdoms will agree on which function keys should be apply/release brakes; WOW chose F7 & F6. Lots of SOUNDS, ALL AT TRAIN SHOW VOLUME. This can certainly be changed, but the dogs I was sitting needed dinner, as did I.

<to do: post the Dec. 2014 Eastern Route tour that once was on Picasaweb>

12-Jan-2015: This post was sponsored by RR-Line's "Unfinished Symphony" gallery. This project ran around my layout just as Rapido made it for four years.



Victor came over, and in between showing him techniques to build a P2K boxcar with separate ladders & grabs, I cut off the unprototypic (for the B&M) skirt remnants, opened it up and applied tape window shades. But since I actually finished it (there's light weathering around the trucks & roof), I wasn't sure it should go in the gallery.

AF (Osgood Bradley to those who have trademark lawyers after them) cars were the first choice for Boston - Portland trains from delivery to the arrival of the stainless-sheathed lightweights in 1947, and some of them used the Eastern. Even right before through service ended in 1952 Rowley saw #21 (unnamed, no consist listed) and #22 the Penobscot with three sleepers and "deluxe streamlined coaches Bangor - Boston". But only momentarily, as neither stopped.

Very little modeling was done in the very snowy February of 2015.

11-Feb-2015: So far all my roofs have held up; the Eastern Route is fine. But the snow is a foot above the windowsill in front of me as I type, and moving it around has consumed energy that might have gone to RR projects. A couple more snowstorms are expected, then maybe it'll warm up a bit next week. I was restaging for my next op session, which has led to completing weighbills I'd only put one or two entries on, messing around with a weighbill-generating spreadsheet a more experienced operator gave me, playing with spreadsheet programs to clean up some errors on it and so forth. I spent some snow-free time today looking into a dedicated layout LED power supply, which goes slowly. I'm not an EE and nobody else seems to have had the idea I have, so I've looked at 50 or more circuits, forums discussing them, etc.