From Mockup to Model: Beefy Highway Overpass Abutment

A model abutment . . .

. . . starting from this mockup

A couple of weeks ago, I made a mockup of a of the highway overpass at the west end of Dunes Junction. I liked how the mockup looked--its general dimensions and proportions seem to work, so I used it to begin work on an actual highway bridge model.

Bruce Petty showed how he built a highway overpass with styrene sheet and Rix Products highway overpass components in the September 2011 Model Railroader, and my model is drawing on Bruce's techniques.

.040" styrene sheet on the top and
 ends, .080" sheet on the outerwall

1/4" square styrene bracing--
stiff and strong. Grrr!

I did make some key changes to how Bruce built his abutment.  Bruce fabricated his abutments with .030" styrene and Plastruct structural shapes for bracing.  I opted to use heavier materials for extra strength and durability. The outer wall of my abutment is .080" styrene; the ends and top surface is .040" styrene.

To really add some beefy bulkiness to my abutment, I added bracing with 1/4" square styrene strip.  The abutment is quite solid and heavy as a result. This sucker will not warp or even flex.

Next steps: filling and finishing edges of the abutment and preparation for painting. Then the actual span and a support pier.  Stay tuned for more.

South Shore at Hammond/State Line, 1994

More from my shoebox archive: South Shore Sumitomo cars at State Line/Hammond in 1994.  I was in graduate school at nearby Purdue Calumet at the time, and shooting 35mm film with a Canon AE-1 Program I had inherited from my late brother Chuck.

CSS&SB #23 leads a westbound train out of Hammond, sometime in 1994. Steve Lee photo.

CSS&SB passenger train crosses Indiana Harbor Belt at State Line. IHB yard throat in background. Steve Lee photo.

UPDATED: UK Electric Models With A Little Extra Spark

Feast your eyes on this YouTube video of UK heavy electric models dashing across some of those display modules of which our transatlantic modeling colleagues make such good use.  The modeler, Dave of Westcoast Miniatures, is using fixed-height pantographs that don't contact the catenary wire.

But that arcing effect is awesome, awesome, awesome, and brings the drama and excitement of electric railroading to life.

UPDATE: Don Silberbauer of Model Memories tipped me to this product from Germany, the 'Pantographen-Blitzer' ('pantograph flasher') offered by Viessmann Modellspielwaren.  Not sure if this circuit is intended to work with DCC or straight DC, but I suspect that this manufacturer has set it up so it works with either.  Euro Model Trains and a few other outlets here in the US might be good sources for this product.

Quick Snaps of Road and Tree Line Mockup

Here are my latest bits of mock-uppery. The forest is a photo of a treeline near Ocean Pines, MD, and the road a stock road texture photo. The South Shore flag stop passenger shelter began with a drawings from the June 1981 Railroad Model Craftsman, which I extensively Photoshopped into a cut-and-fold papercraft model. (Look for a future post with a download of the graphic).

South Shore #802 with a very short NIPSCO (NORX) unit train crossing Mineral Springs Road at Dunes Junction

I printed it all on stiff matt photo paper with my trusty free-after-rebate Canon IP1600 inkjet printer, The tree photos are stuck to poster board with rubber cement--cheap model railroad fun with stuff from an office supply store.

Unpainted Nickel Plate Products South Shore combine #100 at the mock-up Dunes Junction flag stop.
Dig those seventies-era cars!

Fast Tracks on The Model Railway Show

Tim Warris of Fast Tracks, maker of Bullfrog turnout controls, is a guest this week on my favorite model railroad podcast, The Model Railway Show.  Bullfrog turnout controls were featured here back in May--they're still working great and their simplicity is keeping the zen in my Dunes Junction layout.

And if you haven't checked it out already, go subscribe to Trevor and Jim's outstanding podcast:

The Model Railway Show - The Fast-Paced, Thought-Provoking Podcast!

My Workbench In A Rare State of Orderliness

All organized and neat, ready for me to make stuff.

Instamatic Snaps of the South Shore, 1979

From the archives (actually an old shoebox), comes a few Instamatic 110 snapshots of the South Shore from 1979. This is some of my first railfan photography, ever.

CSS&SB combine #101 at Dune Acres flagstop, looking west toward Miller, June or July 1979. Steve Lee photo

Switchstand and right-of-way detail at Dune Acres, summer 1979. I was anticipating building the Dunes Junction way back then, so I snapped this one for future reference. Steve Lee photo.

Randolph St. station (now Millenium Station) from above, summer 1979. Steve Lee photo.

Juice Modeling in the Wild: Heavy Electric Railroad Modeling

One of my goals for Up Dunes Junction is to become a resource for modelers who like their electrics, and so I am kicking off 'Juice Modeling in the Wild', an occasional series on examples of big traction models on the web.

Heavy electric modeling is fairly rare.  There's a whole model railroading world out there of Union Pacific, narrow gauge, Appalachian coal haulers, circus trains, late model diesels, and lot of other big and small niches that get a lot of play in the big model railroading magazines and web sites, but catenary and pantographs don't get no respect.

The last ten or fifteen years have seen a lot of manufacturer interest in American electrics--Atlas' AEM-7, Bachmann's modern Amtrak and EL-C/E-33 offerings, and a steady stream of 'premium' big electrics from MTH, Broadway, and even Trix. For cryin' out loud, for as many GG-1s have been offered in the past ten years (MTH is doing one this year), one would think there's a closet heavy electric modeler in every county, though there are probably several states that don't have any.

There are a couple of notable online resources for heavy electric model railroads. For a great start, check out  this page at Model Memories.

For the first installment of 'Juice Modeling in the Wild', let's have a look at Rick Abramson's outstanding New Haven layout. Model Railroader magazine featured Rick's layout in its August 2004 issue (not linkable, unfortunately) but luckily there are several ways to get a glimpse of it online (try Model Memories, Metro North NMRA, and Rapido Trains ) including this preview video for FOS Scale Models' new DVD:

Know of a heavy electric layout or modeler that should be featured here? Let me know!

Mocking Up Stuff and Testing Ideas

Over the past few days, I've made some mockups of various scenic ideas for the Dunes Junction layout.

The overpass mockup at the west end of Dunes Junction.

I wasn't happy with my old highway overpass on the west end of the layout, and I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to get catenary under it. So I sketched a new one out on posterboard, glued some blocks along the bottom to make it stand up, and voila--a mocked-up over pass.

The other thing I've been thinking about is catenary.  I've been corresponding with Don Silberbauer at Model Memories, going over ideas about how to make functioning South Shore-style iron lattice and wood pole span bridges.  These span bridges have a distinct look that says 'South Shore'.

But while I wait patiently for Don to work some modern model railroading manufacturing magic for me, I feel like the Joker in Batman as played by Jack Nicholson when he's cutting out pictures and says, "It's so hard to stay inside the lines!"

So I made a mockup of an iron lattice and wood pole catenary span bridge from some Rix Products telephone poles and 1/8" Plastruct lattice I-beams.  I posed the span bridge on the layout with a pair of self-closing tweezers.

Mocked up South Shore catenary bridge, sans paint

I plan to mockup some more features in the next few weeks: the tree line that will go up against the rear back drop, a road that will cross the tracks at the east end of the layout, and a passenger shelter.  With these mockups I'll be able to test out ideas for compostion and placement of scenery and structures.

Look for future postings on my mockup progress.

American Electrics: The Little Joe, A Direct Current Monster

South Shore Little Joe #803 at the Illinois Railway Museum. Photo by Sean Lamb/Courtesy Wikimedia

South Shore Little Joe #802 (MTH Model) at Dunes Junction

If Pennsy's mighty GG-1 is an artifact of the era of classic art deco design and New Deal mega-projects, the Little Joe is a souvenir from the interlude between WWII and the Cold War.  GE began construction on 20 of these 300-ton direct current monsters as part of WWII lend-lease, while the Soviets were still America's friend.  By the time GE finished construction of these 2-D+D-2s in the late 40s, the Cold War was in full swing and the Soviets had dropped their iron curtain across Europe.  GE never shipped them to Mother Russia; instead, the locomotives were re-purposed for use on US and Brazilian railways.  Milwaukee Road got 12 for its electrified mountain routes in the US northwest, and the South Shore received three.  Brazilian FEPASA took delivery of the remaining five.  All had originally been built to run on Soviet 5' gauge track and were regauged for their new homes (4' 8 1/2" for Milwaukee Road and South Shore, 5' 3" for the FEPASA).  South Shore's Little Joes, or 800s, lasted into the early 80s; by that time they were little more than very large switchers, working local freights in Gary and East Chicago, Indiana.

Model Catenary: Real or Fake?

My electric train fascination began early, and my obsession with correct-looking catenary wasn't far behind.

Fixated on that contraption on the

 roof: South Shore in the Dunes,

 1970s nps.gov photo

My first train ride ever was on the South Shore when I was about five years old, when Mrs. Hroma's preschool class took a train ride field trip from somewhere in the Indiana Dunes to Michigan City. What I really remember from that trip: the top of the train. I asked the conductor what that thing on the roof was, and he told me, "That's the pantograph. It collects electricity from the wire to make the train go."

So before I knew what a coupler or any other part of a train was, I knew about pantographs and catenary.  These components are what makes electric trains electric, after all.

Not long after that South Shore ride I saw HO trains with catenary and pantographs during a Christmas outing in downtown Chicago--the Marshall Fields department store's elaborate Maerklin HO train display featured German-prototype electric locomotives and MU cars operating under model catenary.

My tween-age mind was blown by HO catenary and pantographs! Shortly thereafter, I came into the mentorship of a Chicago-area O scale traction modeler, and stole glimpses of heavy electrics in model railroad magazines and catalogs. Vic Roseman's photos of Northeast Corridor HO subjects (these 2005 photos from Railmodel Journal  nicely capture Vic's magic) especially caught my eye.

Some South Shore Video, Courtesy of that 'Other' South Shore Model RR Blog

Over at My South Shore Line in O Scale, Jay Beckham is chronicling the construction of his O scale South Shore railroad.  He just posted a link to this YouTube video of the South Shore in action back in the 70s. 

Thanks for the tip, Jay, and hope to see you around!

Models From My Eighties Detroit & Mackinac Memories

Detroit & Mackinac N5 caboose and Alco C425M locomotive:
 Modeling my memories of a ride behind the best-looking diesel I can think of

July, 1981: I was a bored teenage dirtbag, driving my parents crazy because I was bored on a boring family vacation with my boring family in boring old Northern Michigan, with two things on my fevered adolescent mind: girls and trains.

Of course, no teenage boy wants parental 'assistance' with girls, but my my Presbyterian minister stepfather is still able to smoke out trains and other train enthusiasts wherever he goes. One of his Michigan-based minister colleagues pointed us in the direction of a round-robin group of railfans and model railroaders.

We drove up to Cheboygan, Michigan for a meeting of the group.  Before the kick off of slide shows and running of model trains, the gang filed out and walked over to the nearby Detroit & Mackinac yard to watch the sunset departure of a southbound freight, mostly boxcars loaded with diapers from the local Procter & Gamble plant.

Two D&M Alco C425Ms, freshly shopped and painted by GE, were on the point--exotic locomotives with a flashy but tasteful paint scheme, followed by 50 or so boxcars and an ex-Pennsy N5 caboose. The D&M train snaked out of the yard, and that old caboose stopped in front of our railfan group.

"You guys wanna ride down the line?" hollered the conductor.  One of the group instantly volunteered to drive his station wagon down to Topinabee, Michigan to bring us all back up to the meeting in Cheboygan. 

We piled on the ancient caboose and rode 20 or so miles on down to Topinabee.  It was an awesome, unexpected treat to ride in a grungy old second hand caboose behind the best looking locomotives in the US--almost as exciting as hot Detroit girls also on boring family vacations in Northern Michigan!

My D&M train ride is among my most cherished railroad memories, and it was made possible by Jim Uttley, my stepfather, whose persistence and patience I have come to admire--especially now that I have had two teenage boys of my own.  The HO models--that's an Atlas C425, a Bowser N5 caboose, and Athearn boxcar--are my modest commemoration of a memorable evening with family and trains. 

American Electrics: The Mighty G

The mighty GG-1 is the quintessential North American electric locomotive--and maybe even the quintessential Pennsy locomotive (The T-1 would be the other 'Pennsy' loco, but it was a dirt-burner). These art-deco beasts-designed by Raymond Loewy, same dude who designed the Empire State Building-toiled for nearly 50 years on what we now call the Northeast Corridor.  4935 lives indoors in a nice museum in Strasburg, PA.

Pennsylvania RR GG-1 #4935 at the Pennsylvania RR museum in Strasburg, PA in 2005 (Steve Lee photo) 

Such a little thing (as paint) makes all the difference: track weathering

Track weathering. It's awesome! What a difference 5 minutes and a spray can of Floquil Rail Brown can make!

Kalmbach's old Small Railroads You Can Build featured a 4' x 6' layout called the Yule Central that featured several innovations, such as extruded styrofoam scenery and weathered sectional track.  Author and Kalmbach Books Editor Bob Hayden's track weathering technique was simple: flat brown spray paint, then clean the railheads.

It was a stupendously revolutionary technique back in the 70s when that book came out--it could make sectional track actually look presentable.Still a great technique that dramatically improves the look of model railroad track in just a few minutes.