June 2019 Construction Journal

Helix Construction

After getting the majority of the curves cut, the next step is to build the support structure for the helix. Based on a suggestion from Brad Rotert, owner of the B&O Decatur Sub layout, I'm using the same box design to support the helix as I've been using on the rest of the layout so far. Each section will be 12" x 60" with 1/2" plywood tops on 1 x 4 lumber, probably with a 1 x 4 cross member in it. The boxes will be arranged so that they make a square 72" on a side. The helix will sit on top of the box and some of the inside curves will hang over the edge of the box. Each layer will be well-supported by the layers underneath, so a little bit of overhang is not a concern. 

The lumber cut list is as follows:

• (4) 12" x 60" 1/2" plywood - tops
• (8) 60" 1x4 pine - box sides
• (12) 10.5" 1x4 pine - box ends and crossmembers

The boxes will be bolted to each other and I'll make a leg pocket in each of the four corners. If one leg is not enough, I'll add more legs around the outer perimeter and possibly the interior perimeter, if necessary. 

Stack of curves to build the double-track helix.The inner track is 30" radius, the
outer track is 32.5" radius. Each piece is 7.5" wide, which accounts for track
spacing and for allows room for the support blocks. 

I got the boxes all built and laid out a circle on top to see if everything fits, and it looks like it does. The next step is to bolt the boxes together and cut the legs.

The support platform is 72" square and each section is 12" wide. There

is a small overhang in each corner but since the helix will be secured

to the boxes, this is not a real concern. 

The four support boxes got leveled and bolted together and then we started assembling the lower level entrance/exit with the other curves. 

We connected the first course of curves together using 1/2" plywood "plates" and some 1" wood screws. As the helix goes higher, I'm planning to use 4" wood blocks that are glued on the bottom and screwed in the top. This will let the blocks line up vertically and eliminate the need for a guard rail around the helix itself. Later in the week, I got all the blocks screwed down and I've got a nice smooth curve heading up. The next step is to draw the track alignments and lay down cork and track for the first course of the helix.

DCC/Electronics

After getting the right parts from RR-Cirkits and some education on how to make cables, I was able to get the east end yard crossovers and the arrival/departure turnouts wired up with Tortoises. It's so satisfying to hear that motor run when you click the icon on the JMRI panel.

Besides the five I installed tonight, I bench-wired the rest of the Tortoises I had, since it's far easier to do that than work above my head. Of the Tortoises that are left, 5 go to the west end of the yard (2 crossovers and the turnout between the two arrival/departure tracks), 4 go to the pair of crossovers to the east of the yard which allow access to staging and to the industrial district, and 3 more are heading elsewhere, probably to the industry tracks on the upper deck that are slightly out of reach.

Bench wiring Tortoise drives is far easier and safer than doing it under the layout. 

I also had to use longer .025" piano wire to reach the track, got it at Hobby Lobby. It's much easier to work with a longer wire and trim it than the included wire if your benchwork is thicker than they expect. To make it easier to mount the Tortoises, I used Scotch double-sided foam tape. This stuff is insanely strong and the screws are an afterthought, especially since some of the locations are impossible to reach with a screwdriver.

The next step in this project is to wire up the two remaining crossovers at the west end of the yard, as well as the turnout accessing arrival/departure tracks 1 and 2 in the yard. That will use up all 8 ports on the Motorman board, so I'm getting more on order. One of them will handle the mainline turnout on the upper deck right above the yard, as well as other turnouts down the line. Two of them will be used in the staging yards, which will allow me to do push button routing. I was going to wire each turnout individually but these are so much nicer and easier to work with, I decided to spring for the components.

I finished running feeders to the west end of my main yard. It turns out the parallel jaw pliers I got for making the 10 connector cables also work great for clamping down my suitcase connectors. The magnifying lamp I purchased from Menards makes it much easier to see what I'm doing, both above and below the layout. I put the lamp on my IKEA tool cart and can push it around to where I need it.

Scenery Bookmarks

Articles and videos related to scenery for later use.

Speed Ballasting

Operations Primer - Introduction to Traffic Control

If you’ve got a model railroad layout of any size, are you running your trains or are you operating them? This may sound like a stupid question, but there’s a difference between just running trains and operating them. In the real world, each time a locomotive moves on the railroad, it’s for a reason. The locomotive may be dropping cars at an industry, picking up cars that need to be delivered elsewhere, or it may be on the front of a train hauling passengers across the country. When your model trains move, are they moving with a purpose?

When we talk about operations, we are talking about simulating real world railroad traffic on a miniature scale. There are two primary aspects to operations that we simulate:

• How do trains move across from one point to another on the railroad?  
• How do we simulate moving goods and passengers between locations on (or off) the railroad?  

When I visit railroads during open houses, I love seeing trains running through the various scenes on the layout, as do most visitors. However, I find that running trains in a circle tends to get boring over time. By adding an operations model to your railroad, you can increase your enjoyment of your layout, no matter how big it is.

These articles are designed to introduce operations in an easy-to-follow, step-by-step fashion. Operations can get highly complex but you can start out simply and work up to the level that you’re comfortable with. In this article, we’ll start by talking about traffic control on a layout.

Traffic Control 

In the real world, trains don’t move without permission. How the engineer and conductor get this permission varies, and all of the methods can be used on a model railroad layout during an operating session. If you’re running a single train by yourself on your layout, this section may not be for you. The minute another operator is involved, you need to have some sort of traffic control system.

Line of Sight 

If you’re switching on a small layout where you and another operator are the only people on the layout, you simply need to coordinate with the other operator so that you don’t run into each other. You can add some realism to this. If you’re operating in the days before radio, you couldn’t just talk to each other. Even on a 4’ layout, that’s 348 feet in the real world, which is about the length of a football field. In this case, you can use hand signals to communicate with the other operator. I have been at operating sessions where hand signals were required between the engineer and conductor while switching cars, etc.

These hand signals are taken from the Consolidated Code of Operating Rules, 1967 Edition, hosted by the GN-NP Archive at www.gn-npjointarchive.org. This common set of rules were adopted by all the major railroads in the US at the time and the signals are still the same today, even though we have radios now.

Verbal Orders

In this system, a train crew asks permission from the dispatcher to take their train through a particular section of track. Without that permission, your train can’t move on the mainline. Trains within yards can do whatever they need without asking the dispatcher permission, as long as they stay within the boundaries of the yard, known as the yard limits. There may also be trains doing switching within towns/cities/districts on the layout where they are off the mainline, those trains are also not affected.

Verbal orders are also known as “Mother may I” operations, since you have to ask the dispatcher (you might not want to call them Mother, though) for permission to move. These are also the simplest to implement. You only need a few things:

A dispatcher who is accessible by voice, radio, or lineside telephone. Family radios are inexpensive and your guest operators probably have them already. If you use these, I’d recommend asking people to wear earpieces to cut down on the noise in the train room.

A diagram of the track plan and a way to mark where the trains are. This can be done on paper, a whiteboard, or some sort of magnet.

An engineer or conductor calls the dispatcher and asks for permission to move their train. The conversation might go something like this:

Engineer: UP 3546 (the lead engine number normally) to Dispatch.

Dispatch: Dispatcher, go ahead.

Engineer: UP 3546 requesting permission from <location> to <another location>.

Dispatch: (Dispatcher checks the board to ensure that the train can safely proceed) UP 3546 cleared from <location> to <another location>.

Engineer: UP 3546 cleared from <location> to <another location>. (Repeats the instruction for clarification)

Dispatch: Read back correct, dispatcher clear.

In the real world, there are a lot more rules on how the orders have to be recorded, numbered, etc. but we’re trying to keep this simple.

Timetable and Train Order 

In the days before signals, there was no way to contact a train that was underway except by sending orders to the stations along the way. There were no lineside signals that indicated whether a track was clear or occupied ahead of you. As a result, train crews had to rely on their timetables and train orders (abbreviated TT&TO) issued by the dispatcher through the stations along the way.

A timetable listed the trains that were scheduled to operate on a section of track. Each train was listed with its station stops, the arrival and departure time, and what priority the train got in relation to other trains. Passenger trains and other high priority trains got the highest priority, and every other train had to get out of the way. Other freight trains might be considered second or third class and be handled in that priority order.

For changes while the train was moving, the dispatcher would rely orders to station agents by telegraph or telephone. The station agent would record the orders on slips of paper and in a book, and then turn on a signal light indicating to the oncoming train that it needed to stop for orders. In some TT&TO layouts, the conductor is required to sign a book at the station. In cases where an oncoming train has to wait until another train has gone by, the oncoming train looks at the book to see if the other train has already passed.

TT&TO systems almost always use an accelerated clock, known as a fast clock, to simulate railroad time and allow trains (especially passenger trains) to run on a schedule. Since it won’t really take hours to get from point A to point B on a railroad, the fast clock speeds up time so that trains can still run on a schedule that might run at 3 or 4 times normal speed.

Modern timetables still exist, but they focus more on the routes that trains take, the rules and restrictions for sections of track, and so on. This is a link (at time of writing) to a Union Pacific timetable for around the Denver, Colorado area:

http://denversrailroads.com/Denver/Timetables/UP_Denver_TT4_11-16-09.pdf

Fast clocks are often used on modern railroads when passenger trains are worked into the operating scheme. The question is whether freight trains have to get out of the way or not. Amtrak, for instance, operates in lower priority to freight on the freight railroad tracks they use. You might choose to adopt the old school priority and make passenger trains still the highest priority traffic. Having to work around a passenger train that has to stay on schedule can add a degree of difficulty to your operations, if you choose.

There are entire books written on TT&TO operation, but I'll do an introductory article on this in the future, as well. If you're involved in the NMRA Achievement program, that program requires a timetable and train chart to be turn in as part of its requirements, even if you're not planning to use it on your layout.

Signals 

Signals are similar to traffic lights that you're used to when driving or riding on highways, with a few minor variations. Railroads like Union Pacific and BNSF have a single dispatch center for the entire country, where a dispatcher is responsible for a section of the railroad. The dispatcher is watching where trains are going and where they need to go and lining tracks accordingly. The engineer follows the signals along the track and they’ll know whether they can go, slow down, stop, or switch tracks. No radio communication is required for the most part unless the train needs to do something special, like occupy the main while doing switching. There are many variations on what signals look like within the US and outside the US, but the meaning of the signals is reasonably easy to find.

Model railroads with signals are fascinating to operate on, but putting functioning signals on the layout requires a lot of electronic hardware. If you want to build a completely automated system, the hardware has to know when trains are sitting on particular tracks, which direction the turnouts are thrown, and you need some sort of software to control the whole thing.

In the April 2017 issue of Model Railroader, Bruce Carpenter talks about his paper signal system. The dispatcher walks around during the operating session and puts up paper pictures of signals that the operators need to follow. Here’s a link to this article where you can download the templates:

http://mrr.trains.com/how-to/track-planning-operation/2017/02/paper-signal-templates-for-your-model-railroad

I eventually want to use signals on my layout, so I'll cover those in a future article.

Conclusion 

I hope this article gives you some ideas on how you can start to implement operations on your own layout. If you’ve got a layout that you would like help implementing operations on, please reach out to me at eric@northcomp.com. I love operations and would love to help get your layout operating, too.

May 2019 Construction Journal

Layout construction has been on a bit of a hiatus recently because I've been knee deep in software development. It originally started as the registration system for the Southeast Michigan Ops Weekend, but has since morphed into an entire registration system focused on model railroad operating events. The new site is at www.operatingsessions.com and I've got pages of new ideas for it. I'll run it out of pocket for now, but eventually I'm hoping to be able to sell sponsorships/advertising/etc. to help to pay for the costs.

Week of May 19, 2019

The next big step in layout construction is to build the helix. It will go in a backroom in the basement and then be connected into the rest of the layout. I'm planning to build it as a self-standing unit so that I can work all the way around it instead of having to stay in the center of it the entire time. Here are the details:

• Atlas Code 83 track - concrete color, since it's mainline track
• Cork roadbed
• 30" inner radius, 32.5" outer radius
• Starting height: 36", Ending height: 56" - slight grade to connect with 57" upper deck
• 4.5 turns
• Track will be broken into multiple blocks to allow for detection -- probably one block per deck
• Decks separated by 4" 1x4 blocks

Based on the track radii and the space required for clearances, each quarter piece of plywood will be 7.5" wide:

• 3/4" outer space for spacer block
• 3/4" inner space for spacer block
• 3" for each track and roadbed

To determine how much material I needed, I cut a template curve and then placed it on a spare piece of Homasote. Based on how the curves can be cut from it, I will be able to cut 8 curves from each piece of plywood. Because I had a spare partial piece of plywood, I was able to get three curves from that spare piece. 

For a support structure, I'll be building 4 1x4 boxes with 1/2" plywood tops:

• (2) 66" x 12" boxes
• (2) 42" x 12" boxes

I'll use either 2x2 or 2x3 legs on the four corners of this structure that will be bolted together.

Week of May 26, 2019

The weather has not been overly cooperative lately, but I was able to get out and get lumber at Menards this week. I picked up enough to build the helix, the supporting box structures, and the connecting modules that will go on the walls. In between my daughter's high school graduation and upcoming open house, I'm hoping to start making progress on the next sections of the layout. 

I got my template curve cut first, which is designed for parallel curves at 30" and 32.5" radii, respectively. That gives you 4.5" of space to start. The spacer blocks are 3/4" wide on either side of the track, and I add in some extra space for clearance. After tracing the template onto the 4x8 sheet of 1/2" plywood, I was able to get 7 curves cut from a single piece of plywood. Unfortunately, my jigsaw batteries take a while to recharge, so I get a break in between cuts. On the second piece of plywood, I was a little more careful with my alignments and managed to get 8 curves out of it.

That gives me a total of 18 quarter curves to work with, which should be enough, but I have spare plywood to take care of the rest of the subroadbed that I need.