Interesting Article

734 Electric Railway Journal Vol. 154, No. 20

Construction Begins on Dunsel Line

Sources close to the company have reported that construction has begun on the Dunsel Line. The company has acquired a right-of-way 60 ft. wide through Edgewater. The 0.05-mile line now under construction will have four tracks elevated approximately twelve feet above ground. These will rest on a solid-fill embankment with concrete retaining walls.

Chief Engineer Leif DeFurst has said that no special track work will be required at present. Mr. DeFurst went on to say that tracks and ties will be ordered as soon as possible. These are expected to be of the prefabricated type utilizing code 125 rails of nickel-sliver. In all, there will be four tracks such that when the line is completed, there will be dedicated local and express tracks in each direction over this segment of the line.

Plans for the new road call for third rail electrification along its lines. Code 100 nickel-silver rails of the standard type will be employed. The top of the third rail will be situated 6-½" above the top of the running rails and the center line of this rail will be 20-1/8" from the inside of the running rail so as to be of the same type currently employed on all the rapid transit lines in Chicago. This means that upon completion, the new road will be unable to host cars from other roads not so equipped. Chief Engineer DeFurst has stated that erection of standard trolley wire over the westernmost track is being considered, but is not an immediate goal.

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.

Success on Two Fronts

Okay, so this update is long overdue. In the intervening weeks I have had some successes with my models and my "layout." I have come to the decision (largely in part because of the purchase of the 2000-series cars) that the Dunsel Line will not be a traditional trolley layout. It will be a two-rail layout equipped with dummy third rail. This will allow operation of CA&E, North Shore, and "L" equipment even if the cars (such as the 2000s) are not equipped with trolley poles or pantographs. This will necessitate the pole- or pan-equipped cars to built to accommodate two modes of running, as they should be. This does come with a downside.

Prototypical placement of the third rail on the "L" has the top of the third rail 6½ inches above the top of the running rail and 20-1/8 inches from the inside edge of the running rail to the center line of the third rail. Contact with the third rail is made by a metal shoe (or a paddle in the case of very early AE&C cars). Contact with the third rail is made by gravity: the shoe naturally hangs and then glides across the surface of the rail when present. The problem here is that most on models, the shoe has been made in the free hanging or "down" position. This is fine for trolley operation as when under wire, the shoes should hang freely. With prototypical third rail placement, the shoe now hangs too low for operation. The MTH "L" cars have the shoe in the up or "on rail" position. This works well for prototypical placement unless the third rail is on the non visible side of the model or at gaps. In these situations the shoe isn't hanging when it should be.

A trolley beam on a St. Petersburg 2000-series car. The shoe is depicted as hanging free. This would collide with a prototypically placed third rail.

MTH made the shoe in the "on rail" position.

There are three ways to work this problem. The first is to use the commercially available trolley beams in the free hanging position and adapt the height of the third rail accordingly. The other is to use the on rail position and place the third rail according to where it will be seen by the viewer. I'm not entirely satisfied by either of these options.

The third option is, if at all possible, is to create a trolley beam with a third rail shoe that functions like the prototype so that it can glide or dangle as need be. I'm a neurotic freak so this sounds extremely satisfying. I had this idea in the past, but dismissed it due to my inability to construct such a small thing effectively. But now I can have things 3D printed! And according to the specifications on Shapeways' site, many materials do allow for moving parts if proper clearance is built into the design. Looks like I've got a new project...

Granted, this won't take into account the placement in the third rail given the difference in scales (1/48 vs. the 1/45 for the MTH cars) but I'll just have to live with it.

This actually leads to the first of my successes. The prototype seat for the 3200-series cars arrived from Shapeways on Monday and I’m pleased with the results.

This took far longer than I’d expected and was also fraught with no small amount of frustration. The first problem was getting the angle of the seat back to my own satisfaction (picture a weirdo riding the Ravenswood messing around with perfectly normal seats with a protractor and a crude, improvised plumb bob). The next (and far more frustrating) bit was to create the handhold on the back of the seat.

I was very much relieved to discover that the handholds on the 3200s are much simpler than their counterparts on the 22-, 24-, and 2600-series cars. Until I tried to produce them, that is. The process involves making an appropriately sized circle which will be the “pipe” in question and then drawing a curved line representing the path of the pipe. In this case, the path went up from the circle, curved to one side, continued horizontally, and then curved down to the same height at which it started. Once that path is created and placed on the appropriate plane (another interesting quest in of itself) and positioned with the start at the center of the circle, the “follow me tool” is used to extrude the circle along the specified path. Simple. Or not, as I kept getting error messages that people in Youtube videos never seemed to get.

Once I realized that the problem was that some combination of Google Sketchup and my computer was being a lazy pile of rancid horse turds, the project moved along swiftly. (No Skokie pun intended.) My problem was that I was trying to create the curve in 1/45 scale. This was simply too small for the program to handle. It wouldn’t do the math. However, once I scaled up the curve/circle combination to a large enough size, I was blessed with numerous beautiful curved pipe segments. Armed with this, I used the scale tool to reduce the piece to the appropriate size, and voila! (Apparently Sketchup has no problem rendering such a small thing, it just doesn’t want to draw it.)

Once that hurdle was cleared, I saved my file, exported it as a .dae (which is a file type native to Sketchup 8 and can be read by Shapeways) and sent the .dae off to be printed. And like that, it was done.

The question I keep getting asked when I’ve shown this thing around is, why did you only make one? I wanted to produce one seat just to determine what the end product would look like on a simple design and then rework my design from there. A single transverse seat seemed like the best option. This was printed in “Frosted Ultra Detail.” There are other (cheaper) alternatives available, however none of the other materials were sufficient to produce the detail included and wouldn’t pass some of the initial checks.

There was a slight (and I do mean slight) problem in the printing process. I didn’t include the stanchion that connects to the handhold on the back of the seat, but I did include the connection for it. This is the little nodule in the corner. This is an object that is shaped almost like an inverted, blunted, ogive cone. It is quite diminutive, but still bigger in diameter than the bar itself. The problem is that it didn’t print fully. There’s a “gap” in the back. Fortunately, it is so tiny that it isn’t very noticeable.

Now that I’ve seen what it looks like, I can say I like it and I can go ahead and make up the other variants. (Assuming I don’t go back and try to add the curves to the seat back and “cushion.”)

This still leaves the problem of the stanchions themselves. Still haven’t figured that one out just yet.

The second success is that the Dunsel Line has acquired a new piece of rolling stock! I am still waiting for it to arrive, but it is a high numbered 700 North Shore Line car in brass. (My knowledge of the North Shore isn’t what it should be, so I can’t identify the specific series until I consult my father’s CERA bulletins.)

This is my first North Shore model. The model didn’t come with trucks, trolley poles, or even a box. (This is why I it wasn’t identified when I purchased it.) What it does have is a few dents on the roof and some tarnish in a few spots, but these things should be easily fixed.

The plan here is to paint it in the final variant of the North Shore’s green and red and equip it with appropriate Q Car Company trucks insulated for two rail operation. Power will be supplied by a pair of NWSL Magic Carpets. A selector switch will, of course, have to be installed for two rail or trolley power. Poles will also be Q Car.

Exciting times ahead!