Whipped up a Phone System and Finally Finished Water Street Frieght Terminal

 

I seem to have exited my summer modeling doldrums a few months early and tackled a few projects on the layout.  The most exciting of which is the installation of a telephone system. It turns out, this can relatively simply. I read online that all you need is a 9-volt battery and a 300-ohm resistor. This will allow you to pickup the phones and talk. Unfortunately making them ring requires 90 volts 20-cycles AC current. 

As of right now I have four phones, one at my desk, which will be the Altoona dispatcher. Another is at Altoona yard and serves Alto Tower. The next is at Gallitzin and serves AR tower. The final phone is in Johnstown and serves both J and SF towers. J Tower controls the main interlocking at the throat of Johnstown yard and SF Tower controls the interchange with the South Fork Branch.

Given the railorad will be operated via time table and train order, the dispatcher can relay order to the towers, who in turn pass them to the train crews. Just like the real thing. Of course, this means I will need a large operating group. Any volunteers?

To actually build the phone system, I used a buck converter to step the power from the lighting power supply down to nine volts, added a resister and soldered some two-connector phone wire to it. I crimped an RJ-11 plug on the other end, connected various spliters and ran lines. This essentially gives me an old-fashioned party line, which is certainly period appropriate. As mentioned above, I can't make the phones ring, so I will have to devise some system so the towermen and dispatcher know to answer the phone.

 

Basic telephony isn't the only thing I've been up to lately. In Johnstown, I went ahead and stained the rocks and planted trees on the small ridge between the main line and South Fork Branch. I also ballasted the main line and did a bit of landscaping.

 

Oh, and I finally finished Water Street Freight Terminal. Okay, I actually finished it a month ago and never got around to writing it up. I went with Floquil "Oxide Red" for the bricks, "Roof Brown" for the foundation and loading docks, "Grimy Black" for the roof. I used Polyscale "Penn Central Green" for the roof supports, Tamiya "Gloss Aluminum" for the roll-up doors and Testors "Flat Light Aircraft Grey" for the concrete parts.

FOr the brickwork, I used my usual trick of coating it with cheap grey poster paint and wiping most of it off to fill in the mortar lines. After that, it was weather wash, decals,the first round of clear flat finish, chalks and a finally round of clear flat finish. I'm quite happy with how he building turned out. It looks right at home in this part of Pennsylvania. Although the name Water Street seems a tad inappropriate for Johnstown. This will look perfect with a bunch of PRR merchendise service box cars nextto it.

Hello. Yeah, it's been a while. Not much, how 'bout you?

Wow, four months almost since my last entry. Frankly there hasn't been to post lately. In February, I changed jobs and have been working some long hours. On top of that, my wife and I have welcomed our second child, a beautiful baby girl. Also, as I blathered on in several previus posts this time of year, summer is upon us along with all of it's distractions. So yeah, a lot of time or energy for the layout.

Now all that said, I did manage to make some progress on the layout before all of the craziness started. I'm only just getting to write about it now. I managed to build a few structures. I also built some scenery and ballasted most of the South Fork Branch.

The first building I knocked out was Plasticville's Pink Lady Boutique. Unfortunately, I kind of screwed the pooch with my choice of colors. For the front wall of the building, I used Krylon "Meringue," which is basically Floquil's "Antique White." And just like it's Floquil counterpart, I ended up having to lay on coat after coat to cover up the base pink color. As a result I lost a lot detailing. The rest of the building, save for the roof, which is Tamiya silver, is Floquil "roof Brown."

I decided to turn this structure into a sort of seedy, run down bar that would sit in the middle of the Johnstown industrial area, giving the plant workers a place to grab a cold one after work. I weathered it heavily with chalks, added an Olympia Beer billboard and sealed it with clear flat finish.

Next up was Heljan's Bank Black. The architecture of this building just had Central Pennsylvania written all over it. I still don;t know it if will live in Altoona or Johnstown, but I'll definitely find a home for it. Floquil "Boxcar Red" for the walls, which I then coated with grey poster paint and wiped off to fill the mortar lines. I used Krylon "Meringue" for the doors and windows and with more success than on the previous building. The cornices are Floquil "Roof Brown."

For the roof, I decided to do something a bit different. Rather than paint the roof, I coated it with matte medium and dumped on some Woodland Scenics buff colored ballast. After letting it sit for a few minutes, I dumped off the ballast that didn't stick and I was left with a fairly convincing gravel roof.

Last up was Conrerstone's Brallick Building. I paint parts of the walls "Reefer white" while leaving the pilasters in their stock colors. The windows and doors are stock as well. The stairways are Testors "Flat Light Aircraft Grey." As for the water tower? The tank is "Roof Brown" and the supports are "Grimy black." I decided L liked the look of the gravel roof and repeated it here. Again, I not sure which end of the layout this building will end up on but I will definitely find room for it.

In addition to he buildings, I started building roads in the Johnstown industrial area, finished painting the rails between the Johnstown and Altoona yard limits and ballasted the South Fork Branch. Lastly I built a small ridge between the Main Line and the South Fork Branch to serve as a view block. I also installed lights in the structures.

Most of this was done in late February and early March. As mentioned above, time and energy for the layout has been largely non-existant at the moment. As of right now, I've had a Cornerstone Water Street Frieght Terminal sitting on my work bench for the past month waiting for me to finish it. Who knows when that will happen. Hopefully by the autumn, things will settle into place and I'll be back at work.

And in case you're wondering, yes, this entry's title is a reference to the Dan Seals & John Ford Coley song "I'd really like to see you tonight."

I'm not quite dead! Feeling a bit better actually...

Wow, well over a month since my last update. I hope you didn't think I wasn't coming back.  Simply stated, after finishing Gallitzin, I hadn't felt motivated to work on the layout. But, than I started chipping away at Casandra in fits and starts. So Here's what I've gotten done so far: I, I've gotten most of the earthworks built along the wall between Gallitzin and the conemagh river, Ballasted the tracks of the main line from Gallitzin to Cassandra and the Southfork Branch from the river up to the end of track. I've created rock outcrops and begun landscaping the Casandra and Southfork areas.

 

Cassandra doesn't offer much in the way of industry or operation but, it's one of my favorite railfanning spots and I had to include it on the layout. Here, the tracks come around a cure, downhill and pass under an old iron truss bridge before plunging into a rock cut. 

I built the iron bridge out of some Plastruct trusses and a bit of Model Power structure base. I glued the thing together and painted the trusses Floquil "Grimy Black." It will be mounted on a pair of Chooch Enterprises abutments. Right now it's only in place temporarily while other work is taking place.

I also went ahead and created the small railfan park. Check out the side by side comparison:

A Loram Rail Grinder passes through the real Cassndra, PA in August of 2010

And M1A 6720 thundering through the modeled Cassandra circa 1956

While the modeled scene isn't 100% accurate by any stretch of the imagination, it certainly captures the basic flavor. 

Meanwhile at Southfork, The track is ballasted and the groundcover applied. Also, the coal truck dump is finally in place of waiting patiently for two years. As you can see in the above photo, there is a gravel road running away from the truck dump. This goes to a small cabin on the Conemaugh River.

A River Runs Through It

One problem I run into with confining myself to working on one section of the layout at a time is my interest in working on said area tends to peter out. Gallitzin has been no exception. Also, I rather annoyingly ran out of needed materials to finish that area. So with that in mind, I decided to tackle a project I've been wanting to sink my teeth into for a while, the Conemaugh River.

Most of the river was actually dug out almost a year ago and the bridge carrying the Southfork Branch has been in place since. It consists of a pair of Atlas warren truss bridges sitting on a Chooch Enterpirses pier.

The main line crossed the river on a stone viaduct. For this, I used a single Monroe Models stone bridge kit. Normally, this kit is meant for a single track, but I took both sides of the bridge kit and glued them end to end. The underside of the bridge is mealy a pair of PVC pipe couplings cu in half and painted black. The backside of the bridge isn't visible to layout viewers so there's really no point in finishing it.

The river bed was also a bit of a departure for me. Normally I paint the bed in a series of darker colors to simulate depth. This time, I covered the river bed with various grades of Woodland Scenics Talus to simulate a rocky river. Next I lined both sides of the river with tufts of Woodland Scenics Field Grass to simulate reeds and bulrushes. I placed a few pieces of WS Dead Fall to simulate falen trees and suncken logs.

For the water itself, I've been following the advice of expert scenery maker Dave Frarry and used Mod Podge Gloss Medium for the water. It works just as well as Woodland Scenics' Realistic Water but costs about half as much. And it's readily available at Wal Mart.

The scene is still very much a work in progress, but I like how it's coming together.

Down to the River...

Having temporarily exhausted my supply of things to do in Gallitzin, I decided to start on something I've been wanting to tackle for a while now, the Conemough River near Johnstown. This involved digging a channel through the foam base down to the plywood. Once again my hot knife proved its value, slicing through the foam without making a mess.

Now, you may notice the river stops short of the PRR main line. Eventualy, I plan to construct a magnificent stone arch bridge at this location as per prototype. But I'm not really looking o tackle that at this time.

I did however build a bridge to carry the Southfork Branch. This seemingly simple project actually required a bit more work than first anticipated. As you can see, the bridge is simply a pair of Atlas warren truss bridges set atop a Chooch Enterprises pier. The pier was easy, I took it out of the package and hit it with a brown wash. The bridges were a tad more problematic. Each came with a piece of Atlas Code 80 track attached to it. I thought it would be a matter of removing said piece of track and replacing it with the Peco c55. Well, no such luck, the ties on the Peco track are just a hair wider than the Atlas ties. So I had to spend a good bit of time filing the bridges to get the track to fit. In the end though I think the bridge looks pretty slick.

On the subject of the Southfork Branch, it's short but will ultimately serve about four industries and keep an operating crew fairly busy. Now, when I'm running Pennsy equipment, this line will most assuredly be a PRR branch. But when I'm running Conrail or NS, I'm thinking the line may be operated by RJ Corman, giving me an excuse to add yet another railroad to the fold.