Update on NO-OX

The No-Name Industrial Park is back in business!  After the NO-OX distaster I spent a LOT of time cleaning track using various solvents and techniques.  I got small improvements in traction, but nowhere near what was needed.  Frustration lead to basically ignoring the layout for a few months.  And that turned out to be just what was needed!  A few days ago I decided to spend a vacation day cleaning track again to try to get the layout operational.  But first I did some test running.  It turns out that I can now shove 8 of the Atlas 60' Berwick hi-cubes around the curve and up the short grade into the Tighe track with only minimal slipping as long as I keep it moving - if I let the speed drop below a scale 4 mph (easy to check since I've speed calibrated my loco for 1 speed step per scale mph in 28 speed step mode) then slipping takes over and it gets stuck.  Apparently some of whatever was making the track slippery has either evaporated, or gotten stickier, or something.  That's good enough to resume operating the layout.  And I can hold out hope that time will continue to improve the situation.

Palmer Industrial Fascia

I mentioned at the end of my Foam on the Palmer Industrial Park post that I was planning on following the recommendation in Lance Mindheim's book "How To Build A Switching Layout" to use 1/4" MDF for fascia.  The bending experiment I showed at the end of that post was a success.  Here's a photo of that piece of MDF after I unclamped it and left it sitting on the bench for a couple weeks:

The bend holds even when unclamped

 You can see that the bend has relaxed a little bit, but not much.  Success!  I bought a sheet of 1/4" MDF to do the rest of the fascia.  I promptly broke two strips trying to put both bends in a single piece for the end of the peninsula.  Sanity prevailed while I still had enough left of the sheet.  I went back to my original method of doing just one bend at a time.  I used a trash can lid, sitting on a piece of 2" foam with a hole cut in it for the handle, so the lid would sit flat.  I filled the lid with water, and soaked an old towel in it.  Then I wrapped the towel around the section of an MDF strip that needed to be bent.  I propped the ends of the MDF up a bit to give it just a little bend, and left the towel wrapped area sitting on the trash can lid with the water deep enough to keep the towel soaking.

Heavily soaking at the beginning of a bend

The water needed to be refilled as it soaked in.  And pouring it over the top of the towel made sure the whole towel wrapped area stayed soaking.  Over the course of several hours, I propped up the ends higher and higher, wedging them in a little too to keep increasing the bend.  It's very important not to rush this process, or the MDF will break.  As the bend progressed the towel wrapped section sat further down in the water in the trash can lid, which made keeping it soaking easier.

The bend is progressing nicely

Once the MDF will bend to the desired radius without much force, it's time to go clamp it on the layout.  I did each bend in a separate piece.  Some planning as to where the joints in the MDF will be is necessary, so you can get the bend in about the right place with enough extra at each end so you can trim to fit.  It does take a little time to do, but it's kind of fun and I think the end result is worth it.


I fastened the MDF to the layout with yellow glue and brads.  At the joints between pieces of MDF I just made sure both ends were cut square, butted them up, and glued them like crazy.  After all the glue dried I went back and filled in the imperfections at the joints with wood filler, and sanded it flush.  It didn't take much.  The dark color of the fascia hides any remaining imperfections.  The joints between the MDF sections have a 1x4 behind them below the plywood surface, which helps keep them firmly aligned.  The top 2 1/4" is unattached though - all that's behind it is the 2" foam.  The rigidity of the MDF combined with it's solidly glued base seems to make the top end of the joints between strips plenty strong enough, even though they are just butted together and glued.

Fascia in place and painted

Above is a picture of the end of the Palmer Industrial Park peninsula with the fascia installed and painted gloss hunter green.  I painted the layout supports satin black too, which was a big improvement.  I used valspar latex enamel paint - the color, finish, and brand were selected by what was available at the local Lowes pre-mixed in a quart can.  The colors turned out pretty nicely.  The green is a pretty dark color, and it doesn't seem to be possible to get a picture of it that really shows it's color properly - it looks darker than the above picture in person.  I used forest green on the O scale layout (in the background), and in person that doesn't look as nice as the hunter green.

The paper track plan, cut back to not overhang the edges, did a good job of keeping the green fascia paint off the layout surface.  After the fascia paint was dry I pulled off the paper track plan for good.  The most recent thing I've done is finish going over the rows of indentations in the foam left by the pounce wheel track plan tracing so the track center lines are easily visible.  We lost power for four days in an early but nasty storm here.  It eventually occured to me that since the best way to go over the rows of indentations is to shine a flashlight along the layout surface, it was a task perfectly suited to a cold and dull evening with no power.

Fascia done, backdrop done, trackplan traced - time for track?

The current state of the layout is shown in the photo above.  It's now time to quit waffling on some final track decisions.  When I started this project I planned to hand lay code 40 turnouts and use ME code 40 flex track.  I eventually convinced myself that if I ever wanted to actually get the layout running I should use Atlas code 55.  I've purchased all the Atlas code 55 track and switches I need, but I must admit there has been a little nagging voice in the back of my head saying "it's still not too late to do code 40".  I also need to finalize a decision on how to control the turnouts (ground throw, just plain friction, tortoise, something more exotic), and practice soldering point jumpers to those tiny little points a bit more on my two sacrificial practice turnouts.

Up to now, all of those seemed like decisions I could string along until the time came.  The time has now come.

Aeronautical Distractions

Model railroading has been my main hobby for as long as I can remember, if not longer.  But I do have other hobbies, and occasionally one of them occupies enough time to be a serious distraction from railroading.  Recently that's been the case with radio controlled airplanes.  Specifically, small (about 15 inch wingspan) battery powered electric RC planes.

The aeronautical distractions, bottom to top in order of preference

Of the six micro rc airplanes I've had, five are still flyable and are shown in the above photo.  Micro in this case means they all have a wingspan in the range of about 15 inches.  First was the Parkzone Vapor (center in photo).  With 3 channel control (throttle, rudder and elevator), it makes a good beginner plane.  Very rugged too.  Second was a Parkzone Cessna, a little faster but still 3 channel.  It's not in the above photo, because it had a terminal encounter with a tree.  Third was the Parkzone Sukhoi (top plane in photo), the first micro rc plane with ailerons on the market.  It's "twitchy", and was too much for my abilities at the time.  Ailerons allow for more variety in crashing - cartwheeling turned out to be a specialty.  I got overwhelmed, shelved it and stopped flying for a while.  The fourth plane I got is the Parkzone P-51 (second from top in photo).  Also a 4 channel plane (throttle, rudder, elevator, and ailerons).  It's not twitchy like the Sukhoi.  I learned a lot with it until a tree jumped in front of it and bent the prop shaft.  While waiting for a replacement I bought the T-28.

The bottom two planes in the above photo are my favorites.  The Parkzone micro T-28 (second from bottom), and an E-flite micro Beast (bottom).  The T-28 is a very fun plane to fly.  It's very well behaved, yet still pretty maneuverable - loops, rolls, and other stunts are pretty easy.  Relaxing and fun.  It also has the distinction of being the only micro RC plane I haven't crashed (if you don't count a few bad landings).  The Beast is, well, a beast.  It's the only plane in the bunch to have a brushless motor and a 2 cell (7.4 volt) lipo battery - the others are all single cell.  It's got very large control surfaces.  It goes fast, can turn on a dime, and can roll fast enough so you loose orientation (i.e. you think it's rightside up when it's upside down).  It does exactly what you tell it to do, and has no self correcting tendencies (if you let go of the controls it won't level out).  It can get into a lot of trouble very fast.  If you look closely you'll see the that left top wing has been broken off right at the inside corner of the aileron.  The bottom wing has been broken twice.  The guy wires have been popped off a couple times.  The nose has been mushed in once.  Medium thickness foam safe CA with a kicker can work wonders.  But the wing does have a slight twist to it now that messes up some maneuvers.  It's still in good enough shape to teach me a few more things though.  It is most definitely NOT relaxing to fly (at least at my current skill level), but it is a lot of fun.

To tie this back into model railroading, you'll notice the planes are sitting on the benchwork of the N scale Palmer Industrial Park - in fact they're sitting on Trans Plastics.  That photo was taken after I finished installing and painting the fascia (the subject of the next post I'll write), but before I finished tracing the pounce wheel dents in the foam with black magic marker to make the track plan more visible.

Now that the weather is colder and the wind seems to insist on being too gusty to fly these little planes when it's still light enough to see them, perhaps I'll get back to some more model railroading.

Palmer Industrial Backdrop

The backdrop for the Palmer Industrial Park goes down the middle of the layout, which sticks out into the middle of the room.  I didn't want the backdrop to change the feel of the room from one big open space into a sort of maze.  So I decided to keep the top a bit below my eye level.  A nice convenient height seemed to work out to 10 inches above the foam.  That seems like it should be quite high enough to provide a good backdrop for relatively flat N scale scenes - none of my buildings will be anywhere near 10 inches tall, and even tall trees won't quite make it to the top (10 inches is 133 N scale feet).

I described the backdrop supports in Foam on the Palmer Industrial Park.

Order of operations is always a good debate.  I wanted to get the foam painted a reasonable earth color, the backdrop painted sky blue, and the fascia painted dark green.  It seemed to me that the best way to do that and have the least potential for getting a color of paint somewhere it shouldn't be was to do things in this order:

1. Paint the foam.
2. Tape down the paper track plan, to transfer it to the foam and then to use it as a drop cloth to keep backdrop and fascia paint off the foam.
3. Put up the backdrop and paint it.
4. Put up the fascia and paint it.
5. Rip off the now paint splattered, pounce wheel punctured paper plan and stand back to admire it all.

Without backdrop or fascia to worry about, painting the foam is fast and easy.

Foam painted a light tan

I used a color from TrueValue called "Benefactor" (number 14D4).  It's not quite what I hoped it would be, but it serves the purpose of being at least somewhat ground colored, and still light enough to easily see pencil and marker lines on.

With the foam painted, getting the paper plan back down over the backdrop supports turned out to be fairly easy, with only a bit of fiddling around to get it positioned properly again.

Track plan back over painted foam

As I mentioned previously I decided to try a roll of vinyl flashing for the backdrop, so I wouldn't have any seams.  The flashing is fairly thin, which is why I used sheets of plywood to support it.  The open question was what glue to fasten it with.  I didn't want to have to try to clamp the vinyl in place while the glue dried.  I wasn't sure I could do it without denting the vinyl.  And I didn't have any clamps with long enough reach anyway.  So I read the fine print on the the tubes of glue in the glue aisle.  After rejecting the ones that had dire warnings about ventilation, I found Loctite Power Grab for tub surrounds.  The fine print says it has "very high initial tack which reduces the need to brace".  I clamped a plywood scrap vertically to a support column in the basement, spread some of the stuff on it, pressed on a chunk of vinyl, and sure enough it stayed put.  After it dried, I couldn't see anywhere that the glue had damaged the vinyl.  And I couldn't pull the vinyl off without exerting enough force to wreck the vinyl anyway.  So I bought another tube (and later discovered I should have bought two more tubes), and started on the real backdrop.

Glue spread into thin layer on support

I used a plastic scrapper to spread the beads of glue out into a more or less solid thin coating on the plywood backdrop supports.  Then very carefully press the vinyl into it.  You can pull the vinyl back off, and even slide it around a little to get it exactly where you want.  The only really tricky bit for my backdrop was the bulb around the end.  I used an extra thin bead of glue up the single post at the end, and let the curve of the vinyl do most of the work, pulling it around until it just squished into the glue bead on the end vertical a bit.  Here's the backdrop completely glued on, with the remainder of the roll sitting on the O scale layout at the far end, waiting for the glue to dry.

Backdrop glued in place

At the far end the backdrop curves out to the wall with a pretty tight radius.  I didn't actually glue the backdrop to the wall, I slipped a sheet of thin (1/16 or so) model aircraft plywood I had lying around in and glued the backdrop to that.  Saves messing up the wall.

Once the glue was dry, I trimmed off the remainder of the vinyl roll and applied the first coat of paint.

First coat of paint

I used valspar EB6-4 Sky Blue.  I chose the one color actually labelled "sky blue" after bringing home hundreds of those paint sample strips with exotic names for various shades of light blue.  I'm very happy with it.  I'd always thought the backdrop on my O scale layout was a bit to intense of a blue, this one seems much better.  In the above photo you can see a couple blue marks on the track plan, so it is serving it's new purpose as a drop cloth.



So, if I was to do the backdrop over, I'd make a continuous strip of plywood down the center, cutting a series of vertical saw kerfs deep into it where the shallow curves are to make the bends.  But I'd do the big blob at the end the same way.

Transfering the Plan

On both my new N scale Palmer Industrial Park and my older O scale No-Name Industrial Park I drew the trackplan in a cad program (Ashlar Vellum, for reasons I won't bore you with here).  The cad drawing has very accurate turnout locations with point, frog, and center lines marked, and also easements.  The challenge then becomes getting the drawing onto the layout in a form that helps you lay track.  I described the process of getting the full size printout in Mocking up the Palmer Industrial Park.

Once you've got the full size plan taped down to the layout (and in the case of foam, if you're going to paint the foam paint it before you get to this stage) you can transfer the plan from the paper to the layout.  I use a pounce wheel, which is a sharp pointy wheel in a handle.  You can get cheap ones at fabric stores, but they don't have the sharpness necessary to do a good job.  I bought the 3-piece pounce wheel set from Micro-Mark, and I mostly use the largest of the three wheels.

Using the pounce wheel is simple.  Try it out on a scrap with however many paper thicknesses you have to see how much pressure you need to get a good line of dents.  It needs a lot more pressure on plywood than it does on foam.

Using the pounce wheel

At intervals while you're doing the pounce wheeling, take a break (your hand will need it anyway), and very carefully peek under the paper without moving it to make sure you're getting a good line of dents - not too deep, and not too faint.

Once your done, make sure you've got decent lines of dents everywhere.  For laying track, you want the line to be clearly visible between ties and through a thin layer of glue, so you need to go over the dents with a pencil or permanent marker.  If there are places where the dents get a bit faint (it happens), shining a flashlight along the line will bring them out.

A flashlight makes tracing dents easy

A bit of care and patience, and the cad drawing is transferred very accurately to the roadbed.

I've done all the pounce wheeling on the Palmer Industrial Park, but I haven't yet done all the tracing.  The printed plan is now serving as a drop cloth to keep backdrop and fascia paint off the foam, after which it will be discarded and I'll finish the tracing.

I should note that an alternate approach I've seen used on the North Shore Model Railroad club layout's newer areas is to simply glue the printed track plan to the plywood, and glue the roadbed and track to the plan.

A note about NO-OX

A number of people have reported good success using NO-OX to treat track.  If you search for NO-OX track you'll find a number of references.  Sanchem is the supplier, and they even have some instructions on their web site: http://www.sanchem.com/aSpecialE.html.  Since I have had occasional dirty track troubles I decided to give it a try on my O scale layout.

Worst mistake ever.

I will freely admit that I succumbed to my ever present tendency to over do things, and used more than I should have.  But I still didn't use very much.  The problem is loss of traction.  My MP-15, which should be able to move at least 12 of the Atlas 60' Berwick hi-cubes easily now struggles to move 4, and 8 is out of the question.  I've cleaned the track dozens of times since the NO-OX application, with alcohol, goo-gone, and several other things.  I've scrubbed the top and both sides of all rails with a toothbrush and alcohol, cleaned out the flangeways with Q tips and wipes, cleaned every single wheel on the layout one at a time with a goo gone soaked Q tip, and repeated the process.  So far I haven't materially improved the situation.  Nothing feels greasy, but it evidently is just a bit slippery.  I do have hope that with more cleaning and more time I will eventually get rid of the residual greasy NO-OX carrier.  But by then I will have done more track cleaning than I otherwise would have for the entire life of the layout, so it hardly seems worthwhile.

In the meantime I can't operate the layout as designed, since my loco is unable to move the requisite cars.  Fortunately the layout has a reasonable amount of operating interest even without the Tighe warehouse where the 60' hi-cubes go.  And the rest of the industries take cars that are lighter and/or roll better, so I think I'll be able to claim the warehouse has closed and operate the rest pretty much as planned.

I won't go so far as to say you shouldn't use NO-OX, since some people seem to be very happy with it.  I will say that you should be EXTREMELY careful about using too much.  And you might want to consider alternatives.

Foam on the Palmer Industrial Park

I finally got back to working on the N scale Palmer Industrial park this weekend.  The focus was getting the backdrop supports in and the foam down.

The backdrop supports came first.  I've decided to go with a 10" high backdrop.  Since the plywood is at 48" above the floor, that puts the top of the 2" foam at 50", and the top of the backdrop at 60" - just a bit below eye level for me.  It seems to be high enough to make a nice backdrop, but low enough to leave the room more open feeling.  I wanted to keep the backdrop thickness down, so instead of building a more complicated frame I opted for using my favorite fastener - the pocket screw - to fasten 12" high pieces of 3/4 ply vertically along the backdrop center line.  The paper plan now has cut outs for the backdrop supports, the theory being that once the foam is glued in and painted I will drop the paper plan back down over the supports and trace through onto the foam.  We'll see how that plays out in practice later.

The backdrop supports pocket screwed into place.

The photo also shows what I'm going to try for a backdrop - 10" wide vinyl flashing.  The total length of my backdrop is roughly 30 feet (15 feet from the wall to the end blob, then back), so the 50 foot roll will let me have no seams, and give me a little to experiment with before I start to glue it in place.

The next step was cutting the 2" foam sheet to fit.  I tried a serrated bread knife, but that quickly got stuck.  I bought a cheap fillet knife, which worked much better but also eventually gets stuck.  So I ended up using a 6" or so sawzall blade mounted in a handle I got somewhere for the purpose.  The sawzall blade cuts on the upstroke and it's got relatively fine teeth, so it makes a decent, fast, and easy cut.  By doing all the cutting on the other side of the room on a couple saw horses and vacuuming each piece before bringing it to the layout I kept all the little blue foam dust away from the layouts.  The backdrop has several angles and curves in it, so each piece of foam required some careful layout.  I balanced the 2 foot wide sections of foam in place on the layout as shown below (the gooseneck thing is for weight to keep it from tipping off), made sure the front edge was parallel to the front edge of the layout, and measured in from the backdrop the same amount as the front edge overhung the layout to transfer the back edge marks.

Transferring the back edge line to the foam.

The worst piece to lay out was the one where the lead will go - it's got odd angles on both edges.  But everything ended up fitting OK.

Test fitting the foam.

I'm considering several possibilities for the scenery at the end of the peninsula.  One is modeling the Swift River that follows the real park track, which would cut down into the 2" foam.  Another is building up the terrain a bit so the sharp curve is a bit concealed in a cut.  While I could still do it, I traced the outline of the end foam onto a 1 inch foam sheet and cut it to match.  Not sure if I'll use it yet, but it was easier to cut it now than later.

A 1" sheet cut for raised scenery at the end.

With everything ready, I glued down the foam.  I used Liquid Nails projects construction adhesive, which is safe for foam.  I had assumed one tube of it would be enough, but ended up having to make a quick trip to the hardware store for a second tube.  A motley collection of stuff from around the basement served to weigh down the foam.

Foam glued and weighted down.

Watching glue dry is, if anything, less fun than watching paint dry since you can't even see it.  So I decided to test bending the fascia around the corners.  One corner on the peninsula is a 4" radius, the other is 6".  I don't remember why they ended up different - that was a number of plans and several years ago.  Lance Mindheim's book "How To Build A Switching Layout" (an excellent book) recommends using 1/4" MDF for fascia.  I used 1/8" masonite on the O scale layout, and avoided the warping problems I've seen other people have by gluing and nailing it to the 1x4 at the front edge of the layout.  But the top edge is a little thin to lean on, and I've noticed that people like to lean on the layout.  Preventing leaners seems to be impossible (I catch myself doing it sometimes), so with a 1/4" fascia the top edge should be considerably stronger.  My one reservation about the 1/4" MDF was whether I could get it to bend to the 4" radius corner.  I bought a 2x4 foot sample piece, ripped a 6" strip off it to try.  If I do end up using that 1" foam to raise the scenery at the end I'll need to use a 7" strip, but that's not today's problem.  I soaked the bend area using a garbage can lid and a dripping wet towel, and then tried to bend it around a roll of flashing I had hanging around that's about the right diameter.  Very awkward trying to hold everything in place and clamp it.  Eventually I gave up and clamped it directly to the layout - a little damp won't hurt that corner.  Surprisingly enough, the 1/4" MDF does seem to bend nicely around the 4" radius.  I guess I won't know for sure if it will work until it's thoroughly dried out and I remove the clamps.

Test bending fascia to 4" radius.

I'm eagerly looking forward to the next steps - gluing the backdrop in place, and painting it and the foam.  But that will have to wait for the glue to dry.