2016 in Review

“The reports of the Dunsel Line’s demise are greatly exaggerated.”

While it started off rather well, 2016 was ultimately not a great year for modeling for me. Contrary to what the lack of updates may suggest, there has been progress over the past year. Some projects have inched forward, while others have not. What follows is a smattering of what has been accomplished since March 2016.

CTA 52 (Skokie Swift)

The underbodies of all three sections have been primed, leaving the bodies of the A and A1 sections of the car in their natural state. A resistance soldering unit was acquired from the defunct Chicago & Utopia shops and made short work of the trolley shrouds and brass roofboards. (I left the boards on one section for the time being as a reference point.)

Very recently, I ordered the Chopper III from NWSL and made short work of a set of styrene strips that will become the new roofboards. It is a very nice little tool that I expect to put to good use. I still have to get the dimensions of the “saddles” (the supports for the boards) and fabricate them before I can continue.

The PCC cars that were “Skokie equipped” were given sets of curved horns that I had long searched for as a commercially available product. This search was in vain. The 5000-series cars carried these horns on the roof near the destination/route sign meaning that they were generally out of reach. On a trip to the Illinois Railway Museum, however, I discovered that an accessible pair of 6000-series cars was equipped with these as well and that the horns were beneath the anticlimbers. Not long after returning with pen, paper, a tape measure, and a few other odds and ends, I had a set of 3D printed horns arriving at my office.

CTA 3200s (Skokie Swift)

After the last printing of the front section resulted in a less-than-optimal print (and also turned out that I’d made a mistake and made the piece too short) I have gone back and decided to redesign the whole thing (front and back). The rear portion looked good, however the brackets that support it didn’t fit into the grooves on the roof. This was something I had never intended and just figured I’d work around it, but with the needed redesign of the front, I figured why not correct this too? In all, it required an increase in width of 1mm. The difference is small enough that it shouldn’t be visually noticeable, but should prove to make the fit much better and easier.

After printing and priming a partition with closed cab door, I discovered that pipe filters would make an excellent filler for the cab door window. (The small window in the door has a crosshatch in it.)

Another advancement came with the announcement that NWSL had finally come out with the Stanton drive in O scale. The downside was that the wheelbases offered (8’-0”, 8’-6”, and 9’-0”) were too long for most traction applications, but after emailing them, I was informed that S scale drives were available that were capable of accepting O scale wheel sets and that the wheelbases offered (same as for O scale) would scale out appropriately for O scale traction applications. I promptly ordered a pair of these with a 9’ wheelbase with 30”/145 flush axle wheels. For the 1:45.2 size of the car, the trucks are slightly too short and the wheels are slightly too large, but this is by far close enough and well worth the avoidance of the headache of building my own. When complete, each car will have the rear truck powered so that the ends can have visually appropriate trailer trucks.

CNS&M 170 series cars (Shore Line train)

I make no attempt to hide the fact that I am a novice modeler from others or (more importantly) myself. Given that I recognized the simplicity of some of the North Shore cars and decided to put some effort on these.

Unlike the CA&E, there are no multiple unit connections needed for proper trolley operation and trailer cars only need power for interior lighting. With the completeness of the brass models, this reduces the project (for the most part) to painting and wiring (and the wiring will be simple due to its minimal nature). This made it a great starting point. I began priming one of the two models before remembering that the trolley hooks need to be removed and insulated for proper operation. The trolley hooks on these consist of a bent wire that runs through the boards and into the roof where it is secured in place. Unfortunately it was not secured with a bead of solder so it could not be removed by heating the area and pulling without damaging the hook. Instead it needed to be removed, which was done with a Dremel. (I’m short on parts for this, so this is as far as I’ve gotten.)

3D Printing

It came to my attention that Bestine, the solvent used to remove the waxy leftovers from the 3D printing process is no longer made. I didn’t hear about this in time to stockpile it before it was all gone. The search for a pure heptapane replacement is ongoing.

Layout

There has also been decent progress on the benchwork, which is almost complete. All that remains at this point is installation of the legs, shelf brackets, and the two storage shelves. (Sufficient funds and access to the proper tools are the two things holding this back at the moment.)

The section under construction is going to feature the North Side Main Line embankment as it passes through Edgewater. This is a four track structure with island stations. I toyed with the idea of throwing in some crossovers, but decided to leave it at four straight tracks and I’ve acquired the track and subroadbed for this.

I’ll endeavor to put forth more effort in both modeling and maintaining this blog in 2017!

March in Review

Let’s get straight to the point; I spent a lot of money this month. Even though I’d planned on spending a good deal of money on models this month, my actual total greatly exceeds my anticipation (and this doesn’t even cover routine things like food and bills). I had a number of other projects (not model related) that also cost more than expected, so April will almost certainly be a very quiet month around here.

With that said, it seems like a good time to stop and reflect on a very expensive (but good) month. March is the month of the Chicago O Scale Meet (also known as the March Meet) and associated open houses at various trolley layouts. Preparation for these two prompted me to get back in gear and begin working on the 3D model of CTA’s form 5 coupler.

Ultimately this design wasn’t finalized in time for the open houses (I was only able to attend one) and the design work is still ongoing. The continuation of this project should be a nice one to carry on into April.

Before the meet I was able to get my hands on a Clouser North Shore steel coach. Although it did not come with trucks, I did get a good deal on it and am very happy with my purchase. The following week was the March Meet and there I bought a brass North Shore 170-182 series coach. Acquisition of this car has enabled me to outline and define my projects for the North Shore Line. I’d already decided on modeling the North Shore circa 1952/1953 (the same years for the CA&E) and the addition of these two older steel cars has led me to separate my efforts into the creation of two trains: Chicago-Milwaukee via Skokie Valley (the combine and upper 700) and a Chicago-Waukegan Shore Line train (the “older” coaches).

I have already ordered a motor truck set that would be applicable to either car on the Skokie Valley train, so I’m waiting for that to arrive. I’ll have to construct a test track pretty soon, which I suppose will be the very beginnings of my layout.

Also at the O Scale Meet I bought a pair of pantographs to turn into sausage. The shoes on these will be cut apart, to produce four “single” pantograph shoes. Each of these will be mounted at the end of a pair of four-spring horizontal trolley poles. I still need to buy a total of eight trolley poles for car 2 (the 1-50) and car 52 (the 5000) to make this. As a result of... overspending... I probably won’t begin this phase of that project in April.

After the March Meet I went back and made complete 3D models of the 3200-series snowplows. After increasing the size of the nuts so that they would register at Shapeways, these were sent off to the printer. They arrived on Monday and I am extremely pleased with the results. I’ve already made these available via the Ravenston Car Company at Shapeways. (Shameless self promotion!)

In continuing work on the 3200s, I ordered a set of wheels from NorthWest Short Line. I had planned on mounting these inside of cheap, temporary trucks (shop trucks) but I’ve abandoned this idea in favor of 3D printing my own set of “test trucks” which will enable me to try a few things out and see how well this will actually work. Unfortunately, 30” wheels are on backorder for about a month, so this particular project will probably have to wait for a while. In the meantime I’ll see if I can gather some pictures of the Duewag trucks with which the cars are equipped.

I know someone who claims (strong emphasis on “claims”) that he has access to equipment to make metal casts and, if all goes well, I should be able to make molds of the 3D prints and produce a series of metal trucks.

Even after the end of the March Meet March continued to be a money spender! I found another brass 1-50 series car and didn’t hesitate to grab it. To model the four basic iterations of Skokie Swift equipment as planned, I need a total of three of these cars: one as for a single-unit 1-50 and two for a double-unit 60. I now have two.

My first 1-50 has a dent on one end which I should be able to hammer and fill back into shape. Regardless of how well this turns out, the original (dented) 1-50 will now be used as part of the 60 pair with the dented face being positioned between the cars to minimize its visibility. The new car will now be the single and will get the CTA designed trolley-pans.

I also started work on a 3D model of the resistor grids for the 3200 series. This model uses measurements taken from the pair of 2400-series cars at the Illinois Railway Museum. There are subtle differences between the 2400 and 3200-series equipment that I have to account for and I’m currently working with the design to get it right.

The benefit of creating this model in full scale and then reducing it is that it can effectively be used to create specific models for the 2400, 2600, and 3200-series cars with only minor variations in each and scaled appropriately to 1:45 for the 3200s and to 1:48 for my planned 2400s and 2600s.

The 2200-series cars (which I have already started designing) used a resistor set that was substantially different than those used on the later cars. During my last trip out to IRM, I didn’t take underbody measurements for the 2200s, so I won’t be able to continue work on that particular set until I make another trip out to Union.

Finally (my wallet has its fingers crossed that this really is finally) I found a power truck set that would be appropriate for either car in the Skokie Valley train. It matches the truck I ordered from NorthWest Short Line, although at present I don’t know if the motors are Magic Carpet IIs or IIIs. The main impetus for getting this truck was the fact that I was able to get it for a substantially lower price than normal.

Moving forward into April my projects are most likely going to be all 3D modeling as this can be done at no cost. I plan to finish the form 5 coupler, work out the kinks with the resistors, and begin creation of an underbody set for a 2400-series pair (since I have photos and measurements on hand for that). I’ll also be continuing to fabricate the replacement car floor for the second 3200-series car.