Catenary Towers, Part 1: Truing Up

A key element of the Old Line Corridor's visual character is its picket of Pennsy-style catenary towers. As previously described here over the past year or two, my imaginary, impressionistic Northeast Corridor catenary towers were primed black and their magnetic mounts roughed in. Some extended holiday modeling time became available, so I used the opportunity to complete my catenary. In the next three posts, I'll show how I how I took the catenary towers on the Old Line Corridor from 'roughed in' to 'more or less finished'.  

First step: ensure that the roofing nails used as magnetic mounting bases are square. Bar magnets placed on the mounting bases were checked with a plastic square. Adjustments to roughing nails were made using a pliers to twist and shimmy the nails into square and level positions.  

At the entry to the Ivy City visible staging yard, the double track catenary tower was too narrow, so I fitted a four track tower instead. This improvisation necessitated carving away some terrain for square and level installation, as seen on the right side of the photo. 

In the time since I primed and roughed in the catenary mounts and towers, many of the 3-D printed towers warped. Not sure if some of the rough, crooked mounts caused this warping, or if the warping is a natural outcome of the characteristics of the Shapeways FUD material in combination with the thin, near-scale cross sections of the main tower structure components. However, the material is responsive to gentle heating. Here is the cross structure of one of the bridges clamped to a scrap of 1x1 hardwood in preparation for heating.

Straightening a particularly badly warped tower cross bridge section using my festively-colored heat gun. I did this completely by feel and instinct, keeping the heat gun moving and 3-4" away from the catenary bridge, with occasional pauses during which I would touch the assembly. When it felt very warm but not yet hot enough to not touch, I stopped the heating and let it cool back to room temperature before unclamping. Nearly all the towers have developed some degree of warpage, in either the horizontal bridge or 'K' section or in the vertical uprights; I straightened only the half dozen or so that showed the most noticeable warping.

Next up: painting and weathering the catenary towers.

Look What Drove Me Home from New York

I had a bit of an obsession with Amtrak ACS-64 642, the special veterans locomotive, a few years ago when Amtrak first rolled it out. I had at least two tantalizing glimpses of it in 2015 or so, and was either without camera or too slow on the draw to meaningfully capture it. So imagine my surprise an delight as I stepped off the 55 Vermonter in Washington Union Station after a week on client site and realized I had been riding behind 642! Bachmann makes it in HO, and an N scale version has been rumored since Kato released its ACS-64 a few years ago. This is another Sony RX100M2 capture; this image is remarkably high quality for such low-light conditions.

Looking the other way down on the platforms of Union Station, more NEC trains. This image would really never have been possible with film--today's digital cameras extend the reach of photography in ways that would have seemed miraculous 20 years ago.

Launching a T-Trak Side Quest

This single T-Trak module is the most basic and original building block of the T-Trak table top N scale module concept. Note the line of holes for attaching Kato Unitrack, which is an integral element of the T-Trak standard. The module bases shown here were constructed from Masterpiece Modules kits, each of which comprise nine CNC router-cut 1/4" Baltic birch parts. The precision-cut parts fit together like 3-D puzzle pieces; carpenter's wood glue is applied to the mating surfaces. Per the instructions, gentle hammer taps moderated by a block of scrap wood ensure the precisely milled tabs fully seat  and form  square, super strong joints. The resulting module boxes are extremely rigid and sturdy.

Life comes at us fast, says an advertising campaign, and my wife, Rachel, and I are anticipating major changes to our living and working situation over the next five to ten years. In particular, we have the good fortune of a likely early retirement in the next five years or so.

As we have contemplated new living arrangements, possibly with multiple smaller homes while we transition between full-time work and retirement, Rachel has thoughtfully raised concern about how I can continue my modeling in smaller, transitory spaces.

I'm also thinking of ways to satisfy multiple different modeling interests. As mentioned here previously, I still have an abiding interest in modeling the prototypes of my home region of Northwest Indiana, as well as burgeoning new interests in European prototype modeling. 

An Operation Lifesaver T-Trak single
module concept. Will look awesome on
Rachel's desk!

Yet another project I have in mind is to modestly contribute to and support Rachel's new professional role as a railroad industry safety leader via my modeling. Put another way--she needs relevant railroad models for her desk and her rail industry events!

And I'm finding the fellowship of model railroading increasingly rewarding. I have uncovered the model railroad social scene in Washington DC area, and was pleased to find that we have a vibrant N scale modular model railroading scene, focused on the Ntrak and T-Trak standards.

T-Trak modular model railroading in particular offers a promising approach to meet these portability, versatility, and fellowship needs. To give the approach a test drive, I recently took the plunge and ordered T-Trak module base kits from Masterpiece Modules.

These kits are ingeniously engineered and produced, and were a delight to build--each went together in less than 30 minutes each with only sandpaper, carpenter's wood glue, a hammer, and a wood block. For future efforts, I may learn and use makerspace tools--such as laser cutters and CNC routers--to make modules and other benchwork of my own design.

In addition to an Operation Lifesaver module, I have in mind at least one Northwest Indiana-themed module, and also a European module. The Euro module is very likely to be a long quad, so I can build out a run of Sommerfeldt or Viessmann catenary.

Stay tuned for more on my T-Trak side quest.

A double T-Trak module--same number of parts, just differently sized. The ÖBB (Austrian state railways) Vectron loco is positioned over the row of Unitrack mounting holes to give a sense of proportion. If you were thinking, "that loco looks familiar yet more interesting," that because the four-pantographed ÖBB Vectron is the sexier Austrian cousin of Amtrak's ACS-64 Cities Sprinter. This Fleischmann model has excellent lighting and running characteristics, which I fully leveraged by using a ESU LokPilot 4.0 decoder with an Next18 plug.

Rear view of a quad T-Trak module. Note the small round holes intended for mounting the backdrop ('skyboard' in T-Trak parlance) and the large square holes for passing through wiring.  This module will likely be German- or Austrian-themed, with a run of either Sommerfeldt or Viessmann catenary. I’m thinking a Rhine cliffs or similar theme.

What's underneath: not much. The front, ends, and top fit together very tightly and squarely. Those corner gussets add more strength and are fitted with T-nuts for threaded ‘legs’ that allow for adjustment to uneven tabletop surfaces. Am wondering whether I should screw in more bracing to minimize twisting or torsion, but I suspect that would be overkill on an already excessively sturdy and overbuilt design. 

New Job, New Camera, New (Casual) Railfanning

This speeding Long Island Rail Road DE30AC at Carle Place, New York, was the first railfanning occasion for my new Sony RX100M6 camera. I bought the camera to celebrate my new job, so it was fitting that traveling home from my first week in the field with clients presented this opportunity to break out the new camera. The end-of-day winter twilight did not help but this brave little superpowered point-and-shoot acquitted itself well in these challenging shooting conditions--it was dark, wet, and that outbound LIRR train was doing at least 60 mph.

A scant five minutes later this string of MUs blasted through. Trains magazine has tagged at least one major LIRR junction, closer into New York City as I recall, as a hot spot. The LIRR is very busy, and even though I was on an 'off-peak' train, I didn't wait and it was quite full. I will be on this client engagement, which also affords me an Amtrak ride from Washington to NYC, for another month or so--more photos likely.

Stuff I’ve Been Reading: Foreign Model Rail Mags

I’ve made a point of late of being a more social model railroader, which has led—weirdly—to a dramatic increase in my consumption of foreign model railroad magazines.
I resumed reading a German-language model railroad magazine, MIBA (MIniatur BAhnen, or Miniature Railroads), as a direct result of all the model railroaders I have met in the past few months who ask me why there isn’t wire between the fancy Pennsy poles on my N scale Old Line Corridor layout.
“Aren’t you going to put up catenary wire? Europeans do it all the time in N scale.”
I have tried—in vain—to explain that the Old Line Corridor is a kind of extended experiment, and that I had already doubled down on impressionistic modeling of the tower and right-of-way elements of Pennsy/NEC catenary, but would not be modeling the wire.“You ought to think about wire. You’ve done it in HO, so you should be able to do it in N.”
Those suggestions, and the allusions to European modelers who are undaunted by N or even Z scale catenary, led me to revisit my Sommerfeldt and Viessman catalogs and guidebooks--which do make N scale catenary seem attainable.
I needed to read more on this topic, which is when I discovered a special edition of MIBA titled "Fahrleitungen im Modell" ("Modeling Overhead"). It helps here that my German is serviceable--I did live there for a time in the 80s as a soldier and even took a minor in German for my bachelors degree back in the day.
I downloaded the MIBA special edition and then went back for more--VGB, MIBA's publisher, helpfully offers its many railroad books and magazines in digital editions, via secure online transaction.
MIBA was already familiar to me--I bought a copy a day or two after arriving in Germany with the U.S. Army in 1986. MIBA opened a door into German culture for me. When the teacher of my Army-mandated German culture orientation class saw me reading MIBA during a class break, he revealed himself to be a model railroader! This experience repeated itself numerous times during my time in Germany, where model railroading is much more popular and much more mainstream than here in North America. For crying out loud, the Germany section of Disney's EPCOT Center, sponsored by the German government's cultural outreach arm, prominently features an outdoor model railroad. Germany even has a national model railroad day (December 2, FYI).

The magazine was available on practically every newsstand in Germany, and not only did I learn more German language from it, it provided me an entree into German life.
After buying a half-dozen or so of MIBA and other VGB digital editions, I took the plunge and became a MIBA subscriber. A print subscription here in the US probably would have cost somewhere north of $100 annually, but the digital subscription was very reasonably priced, no more than my digital subscriptions to Model Railroader or Railroad Model Craftsman. The how-to articles and layout stories are well done, the reviews thorough, and all are supported by excellent photography. Cutting and pasting text into Google translate provides an expeditious way to digest MIBA for readers who don't read German.
For its part, the "Fahrleitungen im Modell" edition is both a comparative product review of European model railroading's catenary products and a how-to on model catenary. The production quality is equal to or better than Kalmbach or White River's offerings. It will guide me through my upcoming experiment in actual N scale catenary construction on a European-prototype T-Trak module (watch this space).

*  *  *

With all this thinkin' about European trains, a stack of Continental Modeller magazines caught my eye a month or so ago at Rockville Model Railroad Club's table at the Train Show in Timonium. A cover story on an Austrian prototype HOn30 'heavy' electric layout particularly intrigued, but there were other interesting stories scattered throughout the magazines. Glen from the Rockville Club wanted $2 each, and it was late in the show, so he offered me the whole stack of a dozen magazines for $5. I took them all.
Continental Modeller is a British model railroad magazine focused on non-British modeling subjects--mostly 'continental' European subjects, with occasional forays into North America, Africa, Asia, Australia, and even South America. CM leans heavily into layout stories, and has a smattering of how-to, technique, and product review content.
Like MIBA, CM is available digitally. Unlike MIBA, CM has its own app that also affords access to CM back issues.

Continental Modeller's layout stories seem more 'human' than the typical MR or RMC fare, spinning yarns of layouts acquired second-hand, or renovated after years of dormancy. There are also a wider variety of approaches to model railroading in evidence--very small layouts, for example, and layouts built specifically for display at exhibitions, not just the operations-oriented basement empires or 'lifetime layouts' that are the staple of North American model railroad magazines.
Speaking of model railroading cliches, Continental Modeller does seem to rely on a few. Just as Model Railroader falls back on Appalachian coal haulers and Colorado narrow gauge, Continental Modeller has what seems to be an endless parade of Alpine narrow gauge layouts, and lots of German engine terminals.
But I'll keep readin' 'em all anyways--cliches or no, I thoroughly enjoy seeing model railroading from all over the world, done as many different ways as possible.