Testing the track plan, Part 1

I feel I've gone as far as I can go with developing a track plan on paper, so I thought I'd move on to finalizing the plan with track pieces I have on hand.

The first thing was to make one of those tight curves that lead in and out of the urban section.

Radius? Tests I ran a few years ago suggested that a 7" radius would work with all my streetcars. I used an 8" one on the Mortimer Park Loop, and that worked ok except for the easement-free S-curve entry that caused some serious wheel grinding on longer cars, and at time derailments because of expansion and contraction of the roadbed that often had to be adjusted. I figured I'd use a 9" radius curve on this layout so my short diesels could also do a little street running. There are no S-curve entries, so that problem is eliminated.

I thought I'd make a 'free-standing' 9" radius curve by gluing some flex-track to a base of 0.040" styrene. The lead picture on this post shows how the track was pinned against a cardboard template cut to a suitable radius, and then glued to an underlying sheet of styrene. 

When it was dry the styrene was cut to fit the outside of the ties, and the whole thing was painted black. The length will no doubt need some further adjustment when assembling the layout.

On the aptly named layout table I laid out some track pieces to start puzzling out the left side arrangement of the track plan. The new 9" curve is seen in the upper left of the board. The layout table is 2' x 4', and the train layout won't be more than 4' wide at one side, so the table width is ideal for seeing how things will shape up.

I'm using standard Atlas code 100 track pieces for this. Most curves will be either 15" or 18" radius, other than those two 9" ones in the city section.

The first thing I learned was that I needed to use a left-hand switch for turning off into the inner loop instead of a right as per my drawing. The right-hander wouldn't leave enough room for buildings in the urban area and also provide a generously curved outer loop.

Next up, mocking up a passing track.

From 30Squares Labs, Where the Future is Being Made Today

Well jeepers, not much doin' today, but I did take a few minutes to salvage the track from the test track loop I made back in January.

I built this thing because the modular layout was disassembled most of the time, and putting it together, and then taking it apart again later, just to test some streetcars was a bit time consuming.

It's built up from scraps of foam I had stashed away in the crawlspace. The pieces were held together with carpenter's glue, and the top side hosted a loop of 18" radius HO track. The hole in the centre was for a T-clamp that allowed the whole thing to be grabbed in the jaws of a WorkMate.

The board itself feels quite stiff, and I decided to put it to the test in the 30Squares Labs Structural Testing Facility: also known as the backyard potting bench and some bricks.

I stopped loading it at 6 bricks because what you see in the picture is all I had. Those ones at the back balancing everything should be replaced by a suitable clamp, but I'll need a funding grant for that enhancement :-)

But, no cracks and it didn't break. Ok, I agree, it's not the most scientific test, but it shows it has potentially enough stiffness for a model train layout. The LOL Mk II - ugh, still no name comes to mind - is going to be all foam, no heavy wood that turned out to make Mk. I quite cumbersome. 

That's it for now. Gotta run and interview a couple prospective Lab employees.

Foldaway mountains

I'm thinking a lot about layouts these days and came across some photos of the first layout I built upon returning to the hobby after being absent for a couple of decades. 

These photos, and the layout, date from around the summer of 2002. There was some gloppy stuff on one - semi-dried adhesive from an old photo album - that smeared on the scanner as it went though. I think the scanner is now hosed :-( 

Anyway, the track plan was based on the Lake District Ry. that appeared in Kalmbach's 101 Track Plans for Model Railroaders. 

The flip-up stand was built from the design discussed in Francis X. Klose's Design for a foldaway layout published in the Nov '74 issue of Model Railroader. I'd been fascinated by Mr. Klose's design since I'd read about it in the '70s. Since the layout was going to be in the workshop, and the workshop can't accommodate a large permanent layout*, this seemed like a good time to build the fold away support.

The support and the layout both worked well. The problem was that I was discovering that I rather liked making miniature buildings, and this layout didn't provide much room for any. So, I disassembled the layout in November 2008, keeping the support's wooden 6'x5' flip-top table, as well as the rolling stand. Those components became the basis of a crude switching layout that was to represent a freelanced small town in Ontario: 6' x 5' = 30 square feet, so it was 30 Squares of Ontario. All this and more was the subject of my very first post :-)

Speaking of layouts and mountains. My last layout in my parent's house in the '70s was to be a modular one. I was infatuated with an article I had read about casting mountain scenery from home-made latex and gauze molds, so I thought a small modular shelf layout would be good for playing with those methods.

I built one module with plaster rocks cast from molds I made and had a second module started. Real-life was kicking in, so those got moved aside, and eventually trashed. No doubt there was some residual love for rocks and mountain scenery that got me working on the 2002 layout.

*I never seem to learn. One of the main reasons I'm disassembling the Ocean Park Line is that when all the modules are connected together, it's too big to keep assembled in the workshop for any period of time without it becoming a nuisance. It's predecessor, the Lost Ocean Line, was a compact, self-contained layout, which I think made it more fun to build, use, and show-off. Hopefully with the new - and yet still unnamed - Mark II version I'll have designed out Mark I's limitations and have kept its good features.

Layout deconstruction has begun

I thought I'd keep the two main road sections of the layout for use as photo stages. The loop module though will be taken apart so its track can be reused.

Once the layout's been disassembled a little bit of work will need to be done to the support structure to ready it for the new layout board. 

Fun times ahead!

Right-to-Repair the Northern Electric Baby Champ?

I've been chatting with Dave and Vince about Steve Wozniak's Right-to-Repair video (I've embedded it at the end of this post). It got me wondering if my father's old radio could have been repaired by him back-in-the-day if he needed to.

That radio is a Northern Electric Baby Champ. It seems there were several versions of this 'rainbow' style made between 1946 and 1950. I think my father's is a model 5104, which sold between 1949 and 1950. One of the links suggests that in 1946 the radio cost $28 CDN, and an internet inflation calculator tells me that is about $412 CDN worth of buying power in today's money, so this was a rather pricey piece of equipment.

Why was it called 'Baby Champ'? Probably because of its relatively small size for the time. This one doesn't say Baby Champ on the front, but on the back is that photo of a baby wearing boxing gloves.

Does it still work? I don't know. All the radio broadcasts are digital, so it can't be tested just by turning it on and listening for what it picks up. 

I do recall that while things were still analog, it did work, and I don't remember it ever needing to be opened up to fix. It did take a long time to warm up, and it hummed loudly while doing so. My father kept this thing on a high shelf in the workshop, and it was tuned to some country and western station at all times.

Here's the back, and its got the usual warnings, brandings, certifications, and, given it's a tube radio, a tube layout schematic. The red label gives you a stern warning that you need a license to operate this radio, but doesn't mention any prohibitions about fixing it:

Warning: Any person installing or operating this receiving set without first having obtained a licence from the Minister of Transport of Canada is liable, on conviction, to a fine not exceeding twenty five dollars, and the said receiving set may be forfeited to his Majesty by order of the Minister for such disposition as the Minister may direct.

(Extract from Canada Gazette Radio Act of 1938 Revised Jan. 26 1939, Regulation 66 Part II)

I've never opened this thing up before, but this is what the innards look like after removing 4 screws on the back panel, and carefully sliding off the front knobs. It's completely caked with dust, but it looks intact.

However, if you flip over the chassis, the components down there are looking just fine.

Any factory warranty? That's all that's left of a notice stuck on the bottom of the cabinet. It looks like there might have been free service for a certain period after purchase, but from the pictures it looks like if you were a radio tinkerer, you could likely attempt to fix it yourself, or maybe just replace tubes. 

So, fixable by an amateur? Looks that way. Here's what Steve Wozniak has to say: