Slowing Down, but Still Moving Forward

 

The Nooksack Valley Fruit and Produce Company Co. project is moving forward in fits and starts, but at not much above glacial speed. As a total aside, you can follow my wife and me on our garden project here, which helps explain my slowing down on the railroad. The lead photo here shows the current state of the building. Its wall color has been finalized, the basic roof is in place, and the loading dock is finished. In this post I will discuss some of these steps and list the remaining steps to finally wrap up this project. 

I left off my last post on this project with the walls built, but unsure of the color to paint the bricks. It took a couple of attempts. First I sprayed the completed walls with a rattle-can primer in a khaki color. After that had dried I started to sponge on some acrylic craft paint off-white and tan colors. As I was really unhappy with the look, I stopped part way through and cleaned off as much of it as I could with a damp paper towel before it had a chance to set up. The next day I masked the concrete foundation with painter's tape and sprayed with a white rattle-can lightly over the walls. I stopped short of complete or even thorough coverage to allow some subtle variation. While out in the garage with spray paints, I sprayed the doors and windows with a dark green primer. After yet another overnight drying session, I applied several light applicatiions of Vallejo Wash colors; I just touched the saturated brush tip to the wall allowing the wash to flow through the mortar lines. I finally had something close to the subtly worn white, painted brick look I had envisioned. 

While I had been using the scratchbuilt loading dock from another building for my planning, I wanted to build one specific to this building. After taking some measurements, I drew up plans for this one and created a cut list for the strip wood needed.  I cut the pieces to length with either my Zona razor saw or on the Chopper. (Something happened while cutting the deck boards on the Chopper as later I found them to have length variations.) After they were cut, I stained them with Hunterline Cordovan Brown weathering mix. Later when I started assembling the dock, I tried a new technique that I picked up from a Thunder Mesa Studio video by Dave Meek. Instead of building on the drawing covered by wax paper, add another layer to allow for a fixture technique. Tape the drawing to a piece of foamcore before covering it with wax paper, so that a starting piece can be pegged into place with pins. That provides a rigid piece to fit and glue the other pieces to. This photo shows this technique in use as I glued up the frame for the dock. While gluing on the deck boards, I used a metal block lined up with one of the long deck frame boards to keep the decking boards even on that side. After the glue dried, I went back and turned the deck upside down and trimmed some of the longer decking back with a chisel-bladed hobby knife. That, some sanding, and gouging with a hobby knife, turned inaccurate cutting into part of the weathering of a well-worn loading dock!

To wrap up this slow moving building project I need to:

• Finalize the roof; maybe paint, maybe tar paper.
• Decide on coping for the top of the walls, then apply and paint
• Window glazing and any interior
• Roof over loading dock
• Lighting
• Signage

Golden Spike Award Clinic

The Golden Spike Award can be seen as an entry into the NMRA's Achievement Program or as a guide into improving one's model railroad skill set (or both). On Saturday, I will be giving a short presentation on the NMRA Golden Spike at a virtual meeting of the Susquehanna Division. This is an updated version of a clinic prepared for the Alleghany Western Division a number of years ago. 

Below, I will provide links to a downloadable version of my clinic. In addition to a PDF of the presentation, I want to also provide a link to an NMRA web page that doesn't have an obvious link from the Achievement page on the NMRA website. For registered NMRA members, the Edutrain clinics include a useful one by Bruce DeYoung, MMR for which I will provide a link. His clinic is geared towards both someone hoping to achieve the award as well as giving guidance for evaluating others. 

1. Download a PDF of the presentation here: Golden Spike V.3
2. Open the "hidden" NMRA page explaining the Golden Spike 
3. Open the NMRA "Edutrain" clinic on the Golden Spike Award

Initial Operations Update

 

Just in the last few days, I created a new, freelanced piece of operations paperwork in Pages (one could use Word or any word process application). A recent blog post by Tony Thompson in Modeling the SP discussed using Train Line-ups for operating. He shared a Southern Pacific standard form. After a brief search online, I didn't find a GN form so I adapted the Clearance Form A that I had reproduced as part of my collection of somewhat prototype paperwork. 

As I continue to work on the first phase of my 4th Subdivision branch line railroad, I plan to start with very simple operations approach: sequence of trains. This Daily Train Line-up form provides a basis for using train sequence somewhat prototypically. In Tony's earlier post here, particularly in the comments, he discusses the use of a train line-ups form as a paperwork foundation for outlining an operating scheme. 

In this earlier post, Thompson also mentioned the "On Operation" column by Jerry Dziedzic in the February 2019 Model Railroader. While the train line-ups described in the article were targeting the safety of track gangs, they also could be thought of as a snapshot of a schedule. With my one-town initial TOMA approach, using the Train Line-ups form could substitute until I later develop a timetable and fast clock system. 

Fruit and Produce Company -- Part 2

Main building started

Back in December I introduced the idea of the Nooksack Valley Fruit and Produce Co. as a fruit packing complex to be located in the town of Nooksack. Having drafted a revision (or actually a new version) of one of my clinics for an upcoming Susquehanna Division meeting a few days ago, I have returned to working on the packing house complex. 

For this low relief building kitbashed from parts from the Walthers Grocery Distributor kit, I first returned to the photocopies of the wall sections to determine where I would need to make cuts to fashion the brick walls. I gathered the molded plastic pieces and tools that I would need before marking and cutting the brick wall sections to match my paper mockup. I scored the cuts in the wall with a hobby knife and then used a fine-bladed Zona saw to finish the cuts. I also sanded the edges and any sprue tabs. I trimmed the door and window castings off their sprues and sanded any little tabs left before collecting them all in a plastic bowl, so they won't get lost on my workbench. 

Yesterday I assembled the wall sections. As seen in the photo, I used some Evergreen styrene strip that I have on hand as foundation and bracing. Years ago, when I was still in Seattle, I was able to pick up a large bundle of various styrene strips for pennies as a hobby shop went out of business. I used .125 x .125 to extend the foundation and corner bracing. I also used .060 x .060 and .030 x .100 to fit around the molded-in ridges to even the corners and supports. Having learned one lesson on the kitbashed structure I built for the Ingleton plank, I paid close attention to making sure the corners were square and plumb. The Plastruct solvent worked fine, but using the brush-in-the-bottle made for extremely sloppy glue joints. Here on the interior, they will not be visible. As I plan to scratchbuild another low relief building for this complex, I will need to come up with another technique if I build it from styrene. In the current (March 2025) NMRA Magazine, Jack Hamilton MMR discusses glue/solvent application tools. Perhaps it is time for me to invest in a "Touch-N-Flow" device. At the very least, I should use a much smaller natural bristle brush for trim joints that will be visible. 

Staying focused on this building, the next step is painting. A few months ago, while shopping in Stroudsburg, PA, I took this quick snapshot of the back of some older industrial buildings. It has some nice prototype weathering of bricks and adjoining wooden siding to use. However, I am still thinking that the brick building in my packing house complex should be painted white. I spent some time yesterday looking online for packing house images and many of them are white. I just haven't found an image to use as a model for a paint scheme that I am happy with yet. I once saw a video with Gerry Leone using hairspray to create worn/chipped white paint effects on bricks, but that might be too dilapidated of a look. This is not an abandoned packing house, just a hard working one.  I think I will do a little more online "research" and see what rattle can primer colors I have in stock. Maybe a red primer with a white wash/dry brush over it? I just don't want to inflict analysis paralysis on myself!

 

Wrapping Up a Quick Build for Nooksack

Having repaired the buckled track work here in Nooksack, I returned to the workbench to finish a small craftsman kit that I started a few weeks ago. This is the Juniper Freight House, a Fos Scale Models kit. When I first ordered it I intended to use it as part of the Curtis Cannery complex. Now, I am thinking that I will use it, at least temporarily, here in the front of the benchwork where I have thought I would have a fuel supply company. It may become a lumber and fuel supply company. This little freight house fits nicely here, between the fascia and the spur track. Signage and details will have to wait until I determine the structure's use. 

This was the first kit that I have built from Fos Scale Models. The instructions were complete and relatively clear. The drawings showing the location of bracing were particularly helpful. By bracing the walls, they did not warp with staining or painting. I did let them dry under weight which may have helped prevent warping too. I used Hunterline Driftwood stain on the walls and for unpainted wood. I drybrushed Americana Buttermilk on the walls after the stain had dried to give the appearance of worn and weathered paint. For the plastic windows, I used a rattle can dark green, while I brush painted the wood trim and freight doors with Vallejo's Camo Olive Green. 

The only complaint I have with this kit is with the rolled roofing material. It is packaged folded and I couldn't figure out how to completely remove the fold. In the future, I would use the Jason Jensen technique of using black construction paper. Another step I would take in the future is to more carefully sand the glueing edges along the top and bottom of the walls, so the trim boards line up exactly with the laser cut walls. This was operator error, not the fault of the kit. Overall the quality of the kit is quite good. Both Jason Jensen and Fos Scale have some excellent You Tube videos on craftsman kit construction, painting, and weathering. They both are modeling really run down urban areas, so I am not attempting to weather as drastically as they do. Their techniques are worth emulating though.

I have another of the Fos Scale Models kits to build, but I think that I should focus on the buildings of the two complexes that I have already started here in Nooksack: the cannery and the packing house, seen here behind the recently completed freight house.  I felt a sense of accomplishment from actually completing something before moving on to something new. I hope to build on that feeling and make some progress on the kitbashed and scratchbuilt industries already under way here in Nooksack.  

Buckled Track Repair

 

Although I thought that track work (and track wiring) was complete here on the first phase, it turns out that I was mistaken. Gremlins appeared. In my last post, just a few days ago, I mentioned that the track had buckled on the passing track at Nooksack. After further review I suspect that the cause is not exclusively rail expansion, but at least partially benchwork wood shrinking with the low humidity of our house with the furnace blasting this winter. In addition, the turnout to the left of the buckled track has twisted and no longer lies flat causing derailments. 

At first I considered what I thought to be the easiest solution: unsolder the rail joiners, cut off a bit of each rail, and resolder the joiners. I wouldn't have to make any changes to the wiring; the existing feeders would still be adequate. However, what might happen in the summer when the wood expands? I decided to take a different approach.

I got out my Dremel and using the cutting disk, cut a new gap in the buckled track. After filing the ends of the rail flat, the flex track straightened and the turnout flattened down. The cutting disk left an appropriate gap. I removed some of the ties, filed the rail ends, and slid rail joiners onto the rails. With everything back in place after gapping the rails, both the track and the turnout were realigned. By not soldering the new joiners, the rails can move with the changes in humidity/temperature through the seasons. But. . . now we have a possible electrical gap, as loose rail joiners are notoriously untrustworthy.  

Needing to add a set of feeders to ensure connectivity, I fetched my electrical toolbox. Knowing that this approach entailed dropping feeders, I had plugged in my soldering iron as an early step.  A hot iron, having all materials gathered (yes, literally in a toolbox), and tinning the rail and feeders before soldering the feeders in place made for quick work. I tested continuity between the feeder ends under the benchwork and the rails with my multimeter before joining the feeders to the DCC bus wires with suitcase connectors. Cleaning up and putting the track tub and wiring toolbox away left only a repeat of replacing several ties as tasks in the basement. 

While writing this post, I remembered that I needed to add the new gap and feeders to my "Propulsion Circuitry Diagram" in the three ring binder that I have started towards the Electrical Achievement Program should I chose to attempt it in the future. It is good practice to document what is going on down under the model railroad in any event, NMRA AP or not.

Moving Forward With Nooksack -- Continued

Revised distant hills line

I mentioned in my last post that I was not satisfied with the distant hills that I had painted. I thought that they were too dark. Renee, my wife, noted that the pencil lines that I had sketched in to guide the painting were visible in places, and she thought that they distracted from the illusion. I was also unhappy with the bushes or trees that I had painted in the foreground. They appeared to accentuate rather than hide the right angle joint between the benchwork and the backdrop.

I decided to repaint, basically changing my approach while applying a second coat. First of all, I added some more white primer to the small tub of paint that I had mixed up and saved. Using a #6 round brush I painted over the first coat and any foreground that I had attempted. With a bristle #2 flat, I carefully applied a subtle tree texture to the top of the hill line by dragging the brush up into the sky. In this in-progress photo, the difference in apparent value of the hill and dirt colors between whether they are on the flat plywood or the vertical backdrop is quite noticeable. This phenomenon is probably caused by the reflective quality of the paints on the flat tabletop with the LED lights directly overhead. This will be a complication to work around as I add any painted foreground details or work to hide the right angle joint. 

With buildings and rolling stock cleared off for backdrop painting, I noticed that ties are missing at a number of the rail joints here in Nooksack. So, while thinking about it I found a tub of ties and got to work. Apparently saving little bits of everything is planning ahead rather than hoarding! Using a chisel blade in the hobby knife, I sliced off the tie plates and spikes. This is a technique where it is important to pay attention to the relationship between finger location and blade direction. After the replacement ties were prepared, I painted them with a random mix of rail tie brown and Americana Slate Grey craft paint. In slipping the replacement ties in today, I noticed a section of flex track and a turnout that are buckled from rail expansion: another task to take care of while moving forward with Nooksack. 

Over the last few days I did some thinking and decided that with my desire for one lighting system for structures on the model railroad that I would go with a 12 volt system. I ordered a regulated 2 amp 12 volt power supply and some of the LEDs from Evan Design. With that I will be able to include the couple of buildings that have incandescent bulbs built in already in one lighting system. Having made a decision, I can return to the structure building projects new and old. 

Moving forward towards the goal of visitors in April with a rough to-do list:

• Repair buckled track (trains must run smoothly)
• Steady progress on structures and mockups:
• Cannery complex
• Packing house complex
• GN Station
• Others?
• Big picture of roads and terrain
• First layers of scenery on several mini scenes:
• Team track area
• River and trestle scene
• Declutter the basement and continue train-room and presentation prep.

Is turning this into SMART goal format going too far into the weeds? Would it help or hinder progress?