BENCHWORK

Hollow-core doors, $19.99 each from Home Depot, made benchwork construction a breeze.  I fastened the doors to a 1" pine ledgerboard along the walls and used knee braces for support.  I designed my benchwork to be portable in case we ever have to move.  The layout sections are simply lag-bolted together as shown in the photo.

The resulting benchwork is quite rigid and easily supports my body weight.

I used green foamboard insulation from Lowe's as a scenery base.  I initially used three inches of foamboard, which resulted in a track height of 53" off the floor.  Upon placing temporary track and structure mock-ups, I found that 53" was a tad too low for my taste.  I added another 2" layer of foam to bring the benchwork height to 55".  I'm 5' 10" and 55" is about armpit height.  I tested operations again before permanently attaching the additional foam layer, just to make sure that I could manually uncouple cars anywhere on the layout.  The resulting 5" foam base layer allows for plenty of scenery below track level.

I used a hand saw rather than a utility knife for cutting foam, cleaning up the edges with a drywall sanding block.

PL300 is a great adhesive for attaching foam.  

WILBUR CHOCOLATE

This is the Wilbur Chocolate factory in Lititz, Pennsylvania.  Wilbur receives inbound hoppers of sugar from NS.   I really like the way the terrain slopes uphill, both to the rear and left-to-right.  The building itself just begs to be located at the corner of a shelf layout.  

I notice more subtle details each time I visit and photograph the factory.  Check out the truck dock between the main and the spur.  There is just enough lawn and landscaping to give the hint of late fall.  Also, the variety among the buildings themselves is terrific.   

 

AERIAL PHOTO

GOOGLE MAP IMAGE

MICRO SHORTLINES

Here are a couple real-life examples of neat industrial rail operations:

The first example is located in picturesque Manheim, Pennsylvania. Manheim is in the heart of Amish country in Lancaster County. Here, the Manheim Industrial Railroad operates a mile of former NS track.  The Manheim Industrial is a division of East Penn Railroad, LLC. When NS couldn't give Ferrellgas the service they required, East Penn stepped in to handle switching of inbound lpg. A classic minimalist shortline.

Here is an Aerial Photo

Ferrell is located on the former Cornwall RR. The former interchange with the RDG was just south in Manheim proper (where the wye is located). Today, a Norfolk Southern local shoves cars of lpg past the wye, dropping them north of E. Steigel Street. East Penn uses a trackmobile to drill loads and empties in and out of Ferrell. Up to 9 or 10 cars may be dropped by NS. Ferrell can unload three cars at a time, so switching gets complicated quickly!



Ferrell Gas siding, looking south down the main. NS Interchange is past the crossing ahead.




NS local shoving lpg loads onto the interchange.




Backing in loads to be dropped north of the wye. There were some neat trackside industrial buildings in Manheim, but they were all razed in 2006.




Picking up empties. View is looking north from E. Steigel Street.

Now let's travel from PA to MI to look at another small classic: the Lapeer Industrial Railroad. Owned by the Adrian & Blissfield, the Lapeer Industrial operates 1.34 miles of former GTW rails to serve a grain elevator and a manufacturer of adhesives. Here is an AIR PHOTO of the line, which branches off the GTW main near the Lapeer Amtrak station. Note how all switches are trailing point, so there is no need for a runaround. Click HERE for an interesting article about the railroad.

UPGRADING TRUCKS UNDER WEAVER BOXCARS

This weekend I switched gears from layout construction to freight car upgrades.  A change of pace is always good!

I decided to upgrade the trucks on my Weaver 50-foot boxcars.  These cars look great when weathered and detailed! 

 

One downer, however, is that the Weaver trucks do not have rotating roller bearing caps.  Being a railroader, when I see a moving car with frozen bearings my first thought is that someone left a tight handbrake on!  To remedy this problem, I decided to upgrade the cars using Lionel trucks and NWSL wheelsets.  The conversion is very easy and simply involves flipping the carfloor.  The Lionel trucks are built differently than Weaver's.  Inverting the floor gives a flush mounting surface for the Lionel's.  It just so happens that the resulting car and coupler height are dead-on the NMRA height gauge.  No extra shimming is necessary. 

I began by disassembling the car:

 

Then, I cut the bolsters from the center sill using a razor saw.  I made sure to remove enough of the sill to allow the trucks to swing freely:

 

The ribbed side of the carfloor becomes the bottom; the smooth side becomes the top.  I add small blocks of styrene over the truck mounting holes (see top of photo below).  The styrene, when drilled and tapped, gives the mounting screws a little more bite.  I drilled and tapped for 10-32 machine screws, then reattached the underframe assembly to the ribbed side of the car floor with ACC.  Last was adding Kadee couplers and installing the trucks. 

 

I insert 4mm lengths of 0.093 diameter styrene into the coupler spring to eliminate the caterpillar-like effect of the Kadee's.  There is just enough slack action to create a realistic effect, while the coupler still moves side to side freely.  

OPERATIONS ON THE NCIR

The NCIR  classifies inbound cars off CSXT and spots them as requested by customers.  The NCIR is one division of parent company Pioneer Railcorp, and crews are dispatched to work the various lines as required.  The best way to get a feel for operations is to picture yourself as a conductor working the line: 

Packaging Corp. of America requested a 7:00 am shift this morning.  They are anxious for a couple hot cars that came in overnight off CSXT, along with a couple more loads from the storage track.  They also have an empty car to be respotted for scrap paper loading. 
 
Here again is the layout of the branch line:

Here is a picture of your morning's work:

Start:

End:

And here is your work in switch list form:

Note that there are no cars for Premier and Dal-Tile did not request a shift today.  You'll only be drilling PCA.  Now it's up to you to get the work done.  No pressure, but remember the day shift manager at PCA is waiting for those hot cars...:-)

I've been operating the NCIR, in its final form, for about a month now.  Most sessions average 1 hour. ..just what I had in mind.  There are so many variables (e.g. number of inbounds, spots, respots, cars on/off the holding track, loaded scrap paper cars that must be held because billing is not completed etc.) that no two sessions are ever the same.


**Thanks to FrogRail for the GIF's!** 

LAYOUT LIGHTING

I experimented with several lighting configurations before I found one that I was happy with.  I ultimately settled on a combination of 4-tube fixtures directly over the layout + a 2-tube fixture mounted slightly in front of the benchwork, close to the valence.

I placed Phillips Daylight Deluxe tubes in the overhead fixtures. This gives a great ambient light source for the layout. However, the Daylight tubes alone give off a very bright but cold-looking light. I needed something to soften the light, and at the same time, shine down at an angle so as to really bring out the detail and weathering on my rolling stock. I tried track lighting with halogen fixtures, but could not eliminate "pools" of light at the front of the layout and multiple shadows to the rear. However, I found a second set of fluorescents, with cool white tubes, to be the answer. The cool whites give a beautiful, angled light to the layout, replicating a late Autumn day (my scenery will be set in November) and the daylight bulbs overhead give everything a nice, seemless punch.

 












 
I could not use the same shadowbox style lighting above the Commerce Street district due to overhead ductwork.  The ducts and utilities also eliminated any type of recessed can lights within the drop ceiling.  So, I went with pigtail fluorescents mounted in track light fixtures attached to the valence.  

STARCH HOPPERS ARRIVE

Most large cardboard manufacturing plants receive corn starch by rail.  My Packaging Corporation of America plant is no exception.  Starch is used as an additive in the adhesive that holds the layers of corrugated cardboard together.  

On the Gettysburg & Northern Railroad, we delivered starch to Inland Container (whom my PCA facility is loosely modeled after) in 100-ton ACF Pressuraide hoppers like no. 51029 pictured below:

Now Atlas makes a beautiful Presssuraide hopper in HO scale, but has yet to produce it in 1/48.  However, Lionel makes a very well detailed ACF 4-bay; complete with see-through metal walkways, separate grab irons, and nicely done brake gear:

 

I obtained two of the Lionel SHPX cars, which are very easy to convert over to 2-rail.  Northwest Shortline #8293-4 (36" / 145 tread) wheelsets are drop-in replacements.  Not only is the conversion easy, Microscale Decals even offers an O scale decal set for CCLX Pressuraides.  You can view the decal set here: Corn Products Decals 

I considered kitbashing the Lionel car into a Pressuraide, but quickly dismissed the idea as too much work.  The pneumatic outlets of the Lionel car are close enough for me!  A few hoses for transferring starch from the hoppers into my PCA mill and I'm all set.  PCA will receive a hopper of starch about once per week.  So two hoppers will serve my needs quite nicely.  

Spending most of my free time on layout construction, I contacted Jeff Sohn to see if he would be interested in painting and decaling these cars for me.  Jeff did an AMAZING job on these!  If you need a model painted, I highly recommend Jeff's work.  And be sure to check out his website: Jeff's Custom Train Painting 

Here are pics of the completed models.  I need to add couplers and a little weathering, then they will be ready to start earning revenue for the NCIR.