Dagwood and the Embankment

On Tuesday night I came to a conclusion: my conceptualization for the Dunsel Line is all wrong. For the longest time I have visualized building a simple two track layout at grade level with a small clapboard station set between the tracks. This was “the plan.” And yet, whenever I thought about some nebulous future where I had a fully fledged layout with scenery and whatnot, I kept picturing the North Side “L” in Edgewater with the backs of apartment buildings and the briefest of glimpses into the lives of the people who lived there.

In my mind’s eye, this was what I would build. The neighborhood seemed “right.” Yet the two concepts of this thing I was to build clashed. The thing I was planning to constructing didn’t match the thing that my future self had already built. I was aware of the conflict but disregarded it.

Until Tuesday night.

While lying awake in bed waiting to fall asleep, I finally came to my senses and decided to scrap (or at least postpone) the at-grade portion in favor of the four track main line on the embankment. I began to see the possibility of a simple method of construction and how it (theoretically) could be easily taken apart for transport. Everything started to make sense and I was excited!

Wednesday was my day off, which was fortunate since that gave me ample time to go out and take some general measurements of things I had questions about while I was still in the “hot” phase of my enthusiasm.

Unfortunately, when I finally rolled out of bed and made it to the living room, it became rapidly apparent that something was very wrong. Dagwood, one of my three birds, was sitting on the bottom of the cage puffed up and breathing heavily. None of these things was usual and I knew an emergency trip to the vet was in prime order. All else was on hold.

I rushed Dagwood to Animal House of Chicago expecting a number of things to happen (labwork not the least of them). They took him in back to perform an examination and draw some blood (apparently they only need 0.3ml for an avian CBC—which was expected but still a shockingly small amount) but before they could begin, Dagwood passed away.

Dagwood was one of three very special birds from a flock of eleven. Woodstock (who had lived with Dagwood) left us in February of 2014. I watched both of them grow from the time their eggs were laid. Needless to say, I was hit very hard by this death and the hopeful concern I’d had that morning had soured to grief. I returned home and spent the next two and half hours in bed.

When I woke up I was still exceptionally sad (and feeling a little guilty for not having recognized any potential signs earlier) but decided that I couldn’t stay in bed forever and even though Dagwood was gone, I was still here and needed to act like it. The best way to do this was to carry out my plans for the day.

I had decided that the embankment shouldn’t just be a big box with tracks, so I added a viaduct in the middle. I toyed with the idea of putting a station in, but later simplified it to be just a street overpass. I chose Catalpa Avenue to represent the average side street crossing I intend to build and made my way out there. With Dagwood’s unexpected death the fire that I had been experiencing was extinguished, but I still got my measurements. (Most of them anyway. Someday I’ll actually get this right.)

The Catalpa Avenue viaduct and surrounding embankment as seen looking northwest. A third set of support columns is out of frame to the left.

Back at home I began scaling the numbers down to a close approximation of exact O scale and then began producing a 3D model of this section. This model is a digital mockup to enable me to see the “completed” project before I begin and to store the numerical values in their proper locations without needing pages and pages of scattered notes for me to lose.

The green pieces are sidewalk (or sidewalk level elements above the roadway in the case of the columns in the center of the street) while the black is, of course, the street.

An angle similar to that of the location shot. The columns are still being finalized.

As I currently see it, the embankment will consist of a long tray on top of two inverted boxes. All of this will be made from thin plywood. The plywood will then have styrene added for detail. A 13-1/2” gap between the boxes will form the opening for the street.

The problem, at present, is making the three rows of pillars which support the viaduct. I could attempt to make these from wood or styrene but I seriously doubt my ability to make these uniform enough to not look absolutely terrible. I am considering 3D printing one end column and one middle column from which I could theoretically make casts, but this sounds potentially expensive.

The other obstacle is creating the texture of the concrete. If there are large sheets of styrene with this texture, then all is easy, otherwise I’ll have to resort to some kind of trickery, probably with paint.

Note: yesterday’s post was actually written several days ago.

Step right up

The steps arrived from Shapweays a few days ago and (in spite of my initial misgivings) I’m completely satisfied with the results. They don’t look bulky at all and should look very good once applied to the cars.

The one downside to the 3D printing process at Shapeways is that they don’t give the designer control over the print orientation. This is of vital importance to the final product as the print orientation determines which face will ultimately show the layers of the printing process. With control over this, a designer could specify a particular face to be “up” or “down” in the process and thus eliminate printing lines on surfaces that are intended to be seen.

Unfortunately, Shapeways will not relinquish this control to individual designers as they print orders on a tray en masse and each part on that tray is supposedly oriented in a position to optimize use of the wax support material for production. (This waxy support material is the substance that’s usually stuck to parts once they come from the printer.)

I’m not sure how this was “optimized” for the steps as they seem to have been printed on a diagonal. (Picture a cube balancing on one edge instead of sitting on a side.) This has left some very small (but still visible) jagged edges that I will have to very carefully sand smooth. This was my fourth printed piece and so far none of them have returned with any visible amounts of residual wax (this may be due in part to the fact that all of my pieces to date have been rather small) but I went through the process of wax removal anyway just to be safe for priming and painting.

The tried and true method for dewaxing Frosted Ultra Detail is to soak the part in a bath of Bestine. Bestine is a solvent and thinner for rubber cement. It can be purchased online or at art supply stores. In the Chicago area both Blick’s and Utrecht carry it. I used an old glass jar to facilitate the process.

How they appeared prior to wax removal. (It was exceptionally difficult to get these even remotely in focus.)

The imaginary minced garlic in this container contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer.

I submerged the set in the Bestine for ten minutes before returning the solvent back to its container. Visibly there was no outward change that any wax had been removed, but the surfaces of the piece had turned white. This is normal for the chemical wax removal process.

Some of the jagged edges can be seen here.

After setting the piece on a paper towel to dry, I carefully separated each set of steps from the sprues. In order to save on cost, I went the minimal approach and spaced each piece very closely to keep the amount of material used as low as possible. The downside to this was that in some cases there wasn’t much space available to cut. Fortunately they all separated cleanly. The part that really had me worried was cutting the remaining sprue pieces off since the ladders are angled and in many cases could not be put on their flat sides to make the necessary cuts. Frosted Ultra Detail, it turns out, is flexible enough and strong enough. Even when printed at its minimums, each part took the cuts with no damage. This was followed by a bit of light sanding with 800 grit sand paper and they were ready to prime.

After separation, but before sprue removal.

Since ventilation in my house isn’t generally good (and by “generally” I mean ever) and since I have several small birds that would be extremely susceptible to fumes, all of this has to be done outside. This also means that work is dependent on the weather. I liberated a cardboard box from my job to serve as a hood. Because these pieces are so small and light, a gentle zephyr could take them away. To solve this they’ll be stuck to loops of tape which will be taped to the back of the box. Once the weather cooperates they’ll be primed.

No, not this kind of Zephyr.

Since Memorial Day is coming up, my family and I will be taking a trek out to the Illinois Railway Museum and I’ll finally be able to get the remaining measurements I need for the 2200 series and hopefully I’ll have time to take a crack at the 2400 series. (With my luck they’ll both be in operation and I won’t get at them.) I do have a new “secret” project that this visit may certainly help. Keep an eye out for it!

April on the Dunsel Line

As predicted, April was a slow one on the Dunsel Line. There were no new purchases even though some were available. A pair of CA&E 450s was out there, but I passed these up. It’s just as well. I’ve already got two North Shore trains to work on in addition to the Skokie Swift pieces. Makes sense to at least try to finish some of this stuff, right?

As planned, I went ahead with more 3D modeling projects for the 3200 series cars. Unfortunately the Form 5 coupler is still not complete. My own attention to detail is really getting the better of me here. At this point I’m primarily stuck on one specific section of this model and lately I haven’t wanted to think about it so I’ve been avoiding it. (Not exactly an attitude that’s conducive for getting things done.)

Another project which I have been modeling is the steps for the 3200s. For whatever reason, when MTH made these cars, they didn’t include the steps. I suppose this stemmed from the same issue with getting the underbody equipment totally wrong. (Thankfully, when they produced the 6200 series, they fixed both of those issues.)

This is actually been a project that I’ve been working on since my last trip to IRM. For such a simple model I’ve really spent far too much time reworking things to get them right. Early on I kept getting holes in the model that refused to be patched and I hadn’t yet discovered the “intersect with selection” method which is necessary for making the angled portions of the side steps.

This method involves drawing a shape (in this case it was a rectangle) shifted to the appropriate angle and then moved to intersect the part of the model that needed to be “cut” at an angle. Once in place, both parts (the shape and the model) were selected and right clicked. This brings up a menu from which intersect is an option. It has two suboptions: “intersect with model” and “intersect with selection.” Intersection basically finds all the points of intersection between the two pieces and draws definitive lines at these points and incorporates them. From here the rest is easy; all that’s left is deleting all the unnecessary parts.

I wasn’t satisfied with how they looked on my computer in Sketchup or in the Shapeways render. They looked too thick to be right. I had to remind myself that the sides came out to be 0.6mm thick, the smallest workable size in Frosted Ultra Detail and this was thin enough to look good on the snowplows. Despite my misgivings I had them printed anyway and they arrived today. I am extremely pleased with how they turned out. This should serve as a reminder that I really should just take a deep breath and relax. (But it won’t.)

Speaking of the snowplows, I have made a discovery: they’re too wide! How frustrating. The angled bars at the top along side of the framing are supposed to fit neatly within the gap under the anticlimber. Unfortunately, the model plows are about 1mm too wide to fit within this space.

Attempting to rescale the snowplows didn’t work either. (Unlike the steps, the snowplows weren’t drawn full size and then scaled down. I mathematically scaled down the dimensions and then rounded these numbers to fit within the Frosted Ultra Detail guidelines.) In order to get them right I’ll have to redraw them. (All dimensions save for the width are correct, so cutting out 1mm from the center won’t work as this will decrease the distance the snowplows protrude from the ends of the frames.)

I’m not looking forward to this, but I’ll make the necessary modifications because it will gnaw on me until it’s right.

Another project I’ve been working on is the full-width cab partition in its closed state. (I’ll also be making one in the open state; that is, one where only the motorman’s position is closed off to the public.) This is nearly ready and is publicly visible in my list of designs on Shapeways. I’m still not satisfied with a few details at the moment. Something looks off about the position of the windows in relation to the “bar” above the cab door. I’m going to take some more measurements before finally sending this one out to be printed.

In addition to checking and/or correcting the window heights, the door handle also has to be finished.

The wheels which I ordered from Northwest Short Line arrived and—as expected—look good. Now I just need to build a pair of trailer trucks for them. But since these have arrived, I found myself wondering about the trucks I ordered for the Skokie Valley train. I placed the order for these in early to mid January and still haven’t received them. Apparently they’re still waiting on parts, but at least the order wasn’t lost!

These aren't 100% correct, but the difference between 30" in 1:48 and 28" in 1:45.2 is so close that getting the commercially available set is close enough.

A side view of the wheels.