Again, while I haven't been posting frequently, work has been steadily moving on at Green Rock and the end of the branch turntable. The Division 12 Thursday modeling night Zoom sessions have really helped me with progress. (Note to self: scheduled modeling time is a good thing.) At the end of December I wrote up a "to-do" list for Green Rock, and I have been able to check off a majority of those items.
After my last post here and before writing the to-do list, I did, in fact, finish laying the track. One obstacle was that the thickness of the ties and the rim of the turntable pit were not the same. I used a crescent shaped bit of styrene left over from
another project to form a ramp up to the lip of the pit. If I haven't mentioned it before, by this time the pit and other turntable parts have been sprayed with rattle can primer and first layers of acrylic paint. Also, as seen in the photo, I have applied some ground goop around the pit and roadbed. At any rate, after installing the track, soldering the joints, and double checking that all the track had adequate electrical connections, I went ahead with the next step -- painting the track.
With such a small area, I tried to save the time masking and cleaning the airbrush by hand painting the track. It turns out that approach is
not a time saver! First I tried using the Testors "Enamel Paint Marker" seen in the photo. It didn't cover well, even with two coats. I had cleaned off the flux from soldering; perhaps cleaning all the rails with isopropyl alcohol would have helped, but I doubt it. So I tried brush painting the rails with rail brown acrylics after the enamel had dried. Even with multiple coats, I still had what I called "sparkle." Tiny dots of unpainted rail next to the spike heads reflected light and "sparkled." I applied yet another brushed on coat to the visible rail sides, ameliorating but not solving the issue. I also brush painted the ties with a wet on wet mix of rail brown and light gray before calling it good enough.
Continuing with the good enough approach, I added some 3D scenery around the "light at the end of the tunnel" entrance to the Green Rock module, using the crumpled newspaper, masking tape, and plaster gauze technique I have described
elsewhere. After that all dried I added Sculptamold, and after that dried I painted it with my standard brown earth latex paint. I also cut a piece of 1/8" hardboard to fit as backdrop behind Green Rock. I gave it a first layer of background paint blending the blue into white towards the bottom. At a later point I might decide that it is not good enough and add additional details. I did paint in some initial tree shapes around the hole through the scene divider. At that point it was time to focus on the turntable itself.
The Walthers turntable kit had some problems, but by troubleshooting them and accepting hand operation, I was able to barely hit my good enough standard. The DCC and track power did end up working just fine. I had a PSRev auto reverser on hand that I have owned for maybe fifteen years. I cut and painted a piece of scrap plywood to mount across the legs of the Green Rock module. While my soldering skills are not great, I was able to attach short 14 gauge wire to the appropriate holes in the PSRev board. I then attached the circuit board with #6 screws using short lengths of plastic tubing as set-offs. I also attached some Euro- style terminal strips to the plywood for the incoming DCC bus and the outgoing wires to the phono plug I intended to use for connection to the turntable bridge. Luckily, this part of the turntable build has been working fine!
Otherwise, the turntable has been a bit of a disappointment. First of all, after buying it, I read some reviews. ( I know, that is not the proper order.) While some of the built-up Walthers turntables work well, the kits had terrible reviews, particularly in terms of operation. I guess one does get what they pay for. I am not going to document the build of this model, but I will admit that with some careful painting, it looks pretty good. It could use some more weathering. Mechanically though, it has been a real struggle. Between the reviews and my test fitting, I early on decided to go with the manual approach rather than trying to use the motor. The bridge originally would not spin at all in the pit, despite my seemingly accurate construction carefully following the directions. I ended up using my orbital sander to sand down the ends of the bridge. It spun, but not smoothly as it still hung up in a few places. Then, in first actual trials with rolling stock, one end of the bridge would tip side-to-side causing the locomotive to derail. I tried attaching a small carved wooden block as an extra support next to the wheel on that side. After experimenting with using a dab of Labelle grease, it is approaching good enough status, but I fear I will need to keep experimenting with kludgy fixes.
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