A Little Something

It's been on my mind for quite a long time—ever since I built my first crossing flasher. One never builds (or buys) these things singly, because there's always one on each side of the tracks. So I knew I'd be making another if I ever planned on using the first flasher on a layout.



Originally I'd planned to use my first flasher (above) on the suitcase layout I'd started a while back. But whilst building the cigar box layout, I've had the growing urge to use the signal on the latter instead. One reason: the cigar box layout is much easier to examine closely, and being such a tiny model, the crossing flashers would benefit from closer study.

Which brought me to the point of making another one. Or perhaps something else, something much more interesting, such as... a cantilever signal.

The project got a major kick-start when I came across a signal head assembly I'd made for the first crossing flasher and rejected as being defective. Thankfully I didn't throw it away, because I subsequently decided the defects weren't objectionable. Thus I only had to make the cantilever and stanchion.

Everything was cobbled together from scraps of etched brass. The cantilever arm is a sandwich of two pieces of N scale ladder and a slice of Z scale bridge lattice. The catwalk came from a Z scale European signal gantry, while the railings were part of a window frame from a Titanic super-detailing kit. And the ladder is a sliver of HO diesel ventilator grille—at only .003 inches thick, the ladder was by far the most difficult part to handle.

One might think that I'd use cyanoacrylate to assemble the model, but instead I soldered everything. It was more or less out of necessity: the joints were all so tiny that CA would have failed. Surprisingly it all came together quite quickly—so fast that I didn't even get any photos during construction.



Here it is compared to a dime:



The catwalk is actually see-through...



This brought me to the hardest part all too quickly: installing the LEDs. I began by repeating the previous procedure: first, I bonded four 0402 SMD LEDs to a piece of stainless steel with CA. I then wired them with #44 solenoid wire, which is about as fine as hair. So far, so good—having done this before a few times, I had no trouble.



Then came the task of installing the LEDs on the signal heads. Previously this is where I had the most trouble. So, in anticipation, I thoroughly cleaned the LEDs by soaking them in acetone, and scraped the backs of the targets clean. With the first LED in place, I applied some CA, then went off to write a blog entry.

Twenty minutes later, I returned to find the CA was a messy glob of goo, instead of being reasonably solid as it would under normal circumstances. I have no idea what was causing this to happen, but I was determined to find an alternative solution. And I found it, almost by accident: sitting nearby was a bottle of carpenter's glue. I thought about this for a moment: the bonds didn't have to be ultra-strong—there would be no forces applied to the LEDs other than just wriggling the wires while positioning the remaining LEDs (which was enough to pull the first LED free from the CA goo). I had nothing to lose.



And it worked perfectly: within five minutes, the bonds had set and the LEDs were all firmly in place. It was such a (relatively) painless process that I wished I'd thought of it before—it would have saved literally hours of stress the first time around. The final steps were to apply touch-up paint and connect the wires to a terminal block soldered to the bottom of the pole.

At each step along the way I tested the LEDs to make sure I didn't screw anything up. I also shot photos and some video of the process, and rolled them into a YouTube short:



The cantilever signal is now installed on the layout along with the first one. This should really spice up the cigar box!

Have a Cigar: Accessibility

How do you get to a tunnel inside a cigar box? Not to mention a battery pack and wiring? From the outset of this project, these were circumstances for which I've been carefully planning. Here's what I had to hide:



My original idea was simple: make the upper half of the scenery removable. Problem: since having to "daylight" the upper tunnel (owing to a miscalculation), the top half of the scenery was then split in two. New idea: make two separate scenery pieces to remove. Problem: I'd also decided to build a road bridge across the upper track, which would span the two scenery parts. This gave rise the final idea: make the bridge really strong so that the two scenery parts could be treated as one.

To make a really strong bridge, I made a substructure out of heavy brass. The main part is a half-inch wide, .025-inch-thick strip. After bending it to form a rough arch, I soldered each end to a plate, which I glued and screwed to the Gatorfoam scenery parts. (If this sounds like overkill, trust me, it's not; the stresses on the connecting plates would easily separate the bridge from the Gatorfoam if it was only glued.) Here's the result:



Bear in mind that, by the time I'm done, all of this will disappear. The entire brass substructure will be embedded in a styrene bridge modeled to look like either concrete or stone, and the plates on the ends will be buried under pavement and scenery.

Concurrently I was making a set of indexing pins so that the removable part would reliably align with the layout base. The indexing pins are simply lengths of 1/8-inch diameter styrene tubing. Once the removable parts were properly positioned, I drilled holes all the way through the layout, then bonded the tubing to the removable parts. You can see the three indexing pins, as well as the four screws that help hold the bridge in place, on the underside of the removable part:



Now the removable assembly simply drops onto the layout, covering the lower tunnel as well as the battery pack and wiring:



At last I'm ready to start on the scenery—something I'd anticipated would already be well under way. Not that I'm complaining; I actually enjoy problem-solving: it keeps one on one's toes.

Have a Cigar: Pink Pages

In the world of motion pictures, "pink pages" refers to script revisions made during production. Well, what would a modeling project of mine be without some pink pages? Pretty rare, I'd say!

Two things have been revised on my little cigar box layout. The first change was owing to a miscalculation. I got the total headroom inside the box wrong: it was one layer of foam board less than I thought. This meant the tunnel for the upper loop had to be "daylighted."

I was a bit disappointed by this turn of events, as I was counting on both tunnels to reduce the perfectly circular nature of the track plan (futile though this may seem). It also created a bit of a technical challenge, as it meant reducing access to the lower hidden track—a fact that weighted heavily on me as I began filling in the openings above it, millimeter by millimeter, so that the upper loop could be ballasted:



By contrast, the second change was a willful one. The more I thought about including the working crossing flasher on this layout, the more I liked it. However, that meant changing the power supply from 3 volts (two cells) to 4.5 volts (three cells), and adding another on-off switch.

No matter; the piece of layout on which the battery pack was already mounted would be gone shortly anyway, because I was struggling with where and how to mount the on-off switch for track power. After considering all sorts of variations with the switch mounted next to the battery pack, it finally dawned on me to locate it where it can be operated without having to remove the top of the hill to get to it. The felt feet I added to the bottom of the box created sufficient clearance for some miniature slide switches, which I had on hand in abundance.



Subsequent to the decision to include the flashers, I decided that I might have a yen to add other lighting effects—streetlights, for instance, or interior lighting for a structure—and in order to anticipate this need, I installed two more on-off switches. I also changed the battery pack from being mounted on the layout base to the cigar box bottom to simplify wiring.



After installing the switches in the box bottom and mounting the battery pack between them, I included a miniature terminal strip so that the layout could be removed from the box if necessary (blue object, above). Then I gouged out the space where the battery pack used to be on the layout, so that it dropped over top of the electronics (below).



Incidentally, I'm not including any sort of throttle for this layout. The train will receive a steady 3 volts (I added a tap to the middle of the battery pack to supply this voltage, instead of the full 4.5), and any reduction needed for a good steady speed will be handled with diodes. Stay tuned to see if there are any more pink pages for the cigar box layout. Knowing me, there surely will.

Have a Cigar: Benchwork

Time to build the benchwork. Benchwork? Well, what else does one call the structure that supports a layout? It just seems absurd when it's an 8-inch square of foam board! But in this case, that's the essence of it. Knowing there'd be ballast bonding and scenery-making to come, I used 3/16-inch Gatorfoam (instead of traditional Foamcore) because it's water-resistant. I had a scrap left over from my Z scale layout construction, so it didn't cost me anything.



The primary component is a single square of Gatorfoam that I cut cookie-cutter style to make the subroadbed. I then added layers of Gatorfoam scraps to support the subroadbed and create the grades for the spiral of flex track. The layers were bonded together with carpenter's glue.



Like a layer cake, more Gatorfoam was added until I reached the height of the upper track. This marked the point at which layers above will be removable, to access both the hidden track and the power source—that being a battery holder—and so nothing more would be glued on.



This also marked the point at which I spray-painted the track. I used Rustoleum flat brown instead of my usual choice of Floquil Roof Brown, as I was fresh out of the latter. I also attached the "benchwork" to the cigar box with small wood screws so that the layout was both secure yet removable.



Next up will be the last step: scenery and detailing. I'm debating whether or not to install my working crossing flasher; I was going to use it on my suitcase layout, but now I'm not even sure if I'll finish that; I've had an urge to work in N scale, and I may re-purpose the suitcase for a little N scale layout. We'll see—at this point, anything is possible!

Have a Cigar: Genesis

Ordinarily I'm not at all fond of "novelty" layouts—you know, the ones built inside guitar cases, music boxes, and so forth. But when I saw an unfinished cigar box in Michael's during a quick stop for something (can't recall what it was, now), I immediately envisioned a T Gauge layout inside of it. I couldn't resist. I had to do this.

Although I was confident I could fit some track inside, I had no idea if anything would run on it—most mechanisms don't like anything smaller than 120mm, or 4.75 inches—and I determined the minimum radius required for a pair of loops would have to be on the order of ~2.5 inches! But again, the idea of a layout in the box was irresistible, so I decided to build the layout anyway, and bash my own custom power chassis to run on it if necessary.

Here's what I started with—an unfinished wooden box measuring 8.5 inches wide by 8 inches deep:



I decided to give the box some character. I distressed and stained the finish, then attached an old label for Chinese tea (I know, obvious joke):



Then I started on the track. For once, Lady Luck was smiling on me—one piece of flex was almost exactly the right length—I had about two inches left over. Here's the track about halfway through the bending process:



This is as far as the track would flex and hold its shape on its own. (Incidentally, the well-known "twist" exhibited by new flex track was gone by this time.) From here on out, it had to be "restrained" in order to hold the precise shape. To do this, I simply taped it to a piece of paper that had a 1:1 print of the track plan—such as it was—rendered using AnyRail:



It was slow going, quite tedious, and required considerable care and patience. But I did manage to succeed without ruining a length of flex, as I feared I might. When the shape was complete, I trimmed the track where the ends overlapped, and soldered the ends together with a standard Eishindo flex track joiner:



At this point in time, here's what things look like (you may notice that I've inverted the box, so that the lid is now the base; this will afford a better view of the contents):



The next installment will detail how I supported the track, created the scenery, and powered the train—assuming I can get something to run on it. I did do a very quick test, and it appears my CNJ F3 might run on it, but this was inconclusive; I need to run more comprehensive tests.

See you next time.