Here is a link to the latest version of the plans I created for my model of the Rock Creek Trestle. I spent tens of hours over a few days refining the last version. This new version was carefully corrected (there were many small errors) and updated to include a new girder height and lots more hardware and correct lumber sizes. I also developed a side view, which took tremendous effort, as the photos just do not exist.
Remember that these are not perfect; since there is so little information available about the trestle in the era I am interested in (early 1940s) I had to use educated guesses and the few reference photos and drawings I have to make the best attempt. The plans were drawn in Adobe Illustrator. Each of the first 20 pages is a separate bent. The last few pages show a side view. I am gearing up to begin building the model and will share my progress as it is made. Comments and questions are welcome!
OK FOLKS, here is Part deux of my update on what’s new in with my model RR progress, and more! Who else is finding lots of spare time to work on your layout and hobbies?
Being socially distant in the layout room.
C&O Canal Bridges
I scaled and printed some blueprints of the three bridges across the C&O Canal on the Georgetown Branch. These were printed and had been laying around for the last couple years. I finally got some time and made mock ups using foam core and 3M spray adhesive. The goal is to get as prototypically accurate as possible when recreating the bridges, but I know some selective compression will be necessary, as I simply do not have the space. I have already done a virtual mock-up, and in the near future I hope to do a physical one.
Scale mockups of the 3 C&O Canal bridges.
Bethesda Update
A lot going on in this area of the layout as I completed the backdrop, painted it and removed tracks to do mock-ups.
This was the state of the Bethesda area prior to the latest work.I cut a piece of Masonite to fit the gap. I mounted the short pieces of lath wood to the wall to match the other panel, which sits about 1/4″ proud due to the shelf brackets.New sheet installed, spackling done.Overall view.Covered the remaining two tracks with painters tape (the only ones left that were spiked down, and funny enough, would be ripped out later that day.) and painted the wall with ceiling flat and wall flat paint. (using what I had laying around.) In the future I will paint the sky color and clouds on.As you will recall, I built four custom curved turnouts to facilitate the East end of Bethesda. I had never finished these so I set about cutting the gaps and cleaning the turnouts of the oxidation with a wire brush. This was tricky and eventually I used a cut-off disk in a Dremel tool, as it worked a treat. Next, I will solder feeder wires for the frog and other rails.
The three turnouts are sized as follows from right to left: #8 40″ outside radius, 30″ inside radius, #8 50″/35″, #8 60″/40″, and #10 60″/46″.
Now that the backdrop is in, I can get back to mocking up the track arrangement. Overall I am pleased with how it’s looking but I will need to tweak a few things. Feedback is welcome.East end of Bethesda. The bridge on the right is Wisconsin Ave. The Griffith Coal Co. trestle is in the center. I think I am going to build a small bump-out for the Bethesda Freight station. I want this to be a centerpiece of the scene and without the extension it will be stuffed in an awkward spot. I really want to give it a bit more space, so a small shelf will be in order here. There is plenty of space.A higher perspective view of the three turnouts all lined up. The templates will be glued down allowing me to glue ties in place which I can then spike the turnouts to.
Modeling Update
I have also been busy with various modeling tasks. A couple years ago I bought a large lot of HO scale vehicles, mostly die cast, some resin. In retrospect, I think I bit off more than I can chew and what I purchased are models that are going to take a lot of work to get where I want them for the layout. I’ve been prototype research on the vehicles in the hopes I can do some better paint jobs than the previous owner did. Here is one example:
The paint is all wrong, details are a bit coarse. It could be better. I set out to make this happen.
After consulting with my model RR Club, the consensus is they are Wiseman Model Services (ex Walker Motor Works) International KB-11 trucks. These models were made back in the 70s, I believe, and have gone through various iterations over the years. They are made up of several parts, are really fragile and don’t have a ton of detail. I did some research and decided to try some Super Clean for stripping these metal frames. The results were fantastic. Not only did the cleaner strip the paint, it also dissolves the glue after a few days, which allows me to get the models back into their parts form for reassembly and detailing.
For reassembly, I’ve been using the ZAP PT-36 Z-Poxy Quick-Shot 5-Minute Epoxy. This stuff is fantastic, old-school epoxy. Squirt out a bit from both tubes, mix and apply. The VERY nice thing, for this application, is that being 5-min epoxy means that it’s just enough and it gets just tacky enough to allow for me to put the truck cab parts together and rearrange them carefully as I go, until I’m satisfied, at which point it hardens. Once set, it’s rock-hard. I find that with CA, you kind of set it and forget it, with little room for adjustment as you fit things together. I ordered some BSI Insta-Set to help with getting the CA to cure quicker where I need it to.
Workstation.Here is one of the chassis being reassembled. Here I’m mounting the rear axle/wheels and driveshaft. FIDDLY BITS.Parts bins. You can see just how many pieces are in each kit.That truck does not go with this bed, but both are in process of reassembly. The shorter bed truck will hold a small tank. The wooden bed was originally painted brown. I primed it with the intention of painting it. But, when I drew a file across it, the weathering effect was fantastic! I decided to use coarse sandpaper and a file to scrape and scratch the paint away. A bit of dust and grime will finish it. I think I will use it as a barrel-hauling rig for the Waring Barrel House in Georgetown!This is a long flatbed trailer. I sanded it down and repaired the side rails by replacing the styrene strips. I am masking it so I can paint the metal and then weather the nice wood deck. Unfortunately the model is missing its axles so I will need to figure out a replacement.
Airbrush Tune-Up – About a year ago I did an overhaul on my old Badger airbrush. I took it apart and checked all of the parts. Cleaned everything carefully and reassembled it. I decided to add a regulator to the compressor. I noticed a bit of a clunk when operating the compressor under load, so I took it apart. Inspected all of the gaskets and parts and found no issues. I reassembled it and adjusted the bleed valve. A friend from my model RR club, Greg (who you have seen here before) gave me his old air tank which I will press into service soon. I need to figure out what piping/tubing I will need. I have also been upgrading my paint supply with some proper thinners, new paint and other goodies.
Testors 1:72 Stuka Model Wrap-Up – Another interest I have is military aircraft and armor modeling. I have many unfinished projects, but this one has been floating around my workbench for about 12 years. I decided it was time to wrap it up.
Masking complete, gloss coat on, now it’s time for decals.But first, let’s airbrush that yellow stripe that you forgot to paint! The airbrush worked well, but I noticed the brush “dried up” rather quickly, that is to say the paint stopped spraying after a short while. This may be [VERY]old paint (Tamiya) or improper mixing/technique. Probably all three! HA The 20-some year old decals did not play nice. I had to be very careful with them to not break them, and they were extremely cloudy. I picked up some Micro-SET and Micro-SOL recently and gave that a go. Not only did it get the decals to lay flat, but after a few applications of the SOL solution, the cloudiness disappeared. REALLY amazing results.Sealed with dullcote and a tiny bit of chipping. I am waiting for some panel wash to arrive and I will then do some light weathering and finish this out!You can see just how well the decals laid flat. Really pleased. Also, the flat coat did a great job as well. I used Tamiya flat clear out of a rattle can.Next up! Dad got me an incredible birthday gift last month. WOAH. I just got paint delivered today. This is going to be a project with my son and I and I really can’t wait!
Hope you enjoyed these updates. I know it’s just a lot of rambling, but it feels great to make some progress on all these things. There are so many other items I’ve checked off lately, and really the layout room is coming back alive after being dormant for about a year. I am reinvigorated to get moving and hope to have more updates later this month. Anyone else out there getting stuff done these days? Sound off in the comments.
I figured it’s been a long time since an update on my layout & modeling progress, so here goes, in two parts. Like so many right now, I have been productive with my hobbies. I’ve chosen to spend time in the basement getting back into the layout construction and finishing up some old projects. It’s been a lot of fun, and hard work. Here’s a [long] report of what I’ve been up to:
Rock Creek Trestle
I got the plans to place I was satisfied with and decided to start doing some work. *A quick note about this – I ended up spending another few days modifying the plans because I wasn’t pleased with them. More on this later!
Plans for the Rock Creek Trestle.I trimmed the mockup to the hill contours and pinned it to the roadbed to give a better idea of the scale of the trestle.
I ordered the lumber a few months back from Mt. Albert Scale Lumber (FastTracks) and Northeastern Scale Lumber and decided to laser cut some jigs for the bridge ties. I even picked up some tie plates, spikes and joint bars from the folks at Proto:87, which I will use to detail the bridge track.
The lumber yard. The two laser-cut jigs for the bridge ties, rail and stringers. Closeup on the escape platform area.The B&O ties are a bit shorter than any commercially available ties out there, so I had to shorten them just a bit. Testing some cuts and fitting in the jig.Chop chop. Love this tool.
Next up was the stain. I did some testing with about 5-6 different Hunterline Weathering Mix stains and eventually settled on Tie Brown with a bit of Driftwood mixed in.
Staining the ties with the Tie Brown color. I opted to paint these individually instead of dipping them.
Staining all done.
Fast forward a couple months and I’m picking back up where I left off with this project. I was doing a mental and physical inventory of the trestle project to get back on track. As I started to go through my notes and compare them with what lumber I purchased last Winter, I realized I screwed up. I missed a few things in my order. Oops! A quick trip to FastTracks’ website and the order was in.
Laying out plans, drawings and materials. Wood to the left, plans and jigs in the middle and blueprints on the right.
So now that I am waiting for that material to show up, let’s get busy staining the wood we DO have! But how do you stain 2′ long x 1/8″ pieces of wood? I had to figure out a solution, so I designed a trough out of foil, but that failed catastrophically. (Cleaning up stain is NO FUN.) I cut a rigid paper tube in half, lined it with foil and used some old clay to create ends that are adjustable. I then laid a sheet of plastic wrap in and held it in place with clay blobs. The whole thing was rubber-banded to a piece of wood to keep it steady. This gave me a nice place to hold the stain while I dipped wood in and set to dry on drying racks I made from old Snap-Track. In the future, I may try to get some Flex Seal to spray on the tin foil and make it a bit more robust, as I worried the tweezers or the wood itself could poke a hole in the saran wrap and cause a leak.
My staining setup. The stained pieces were put on racks made from old Snap-Track. I would place a piece into the stain, let it sit, put another piece in, pull the first one out and lay it down to dry. The stain trough. Worked quite well!Here are all of the 1/8″ dowels which will make up the pilings of the trestle.
Tichy makes a 40′ plate girder bridge flatcar kit load, that is a very close approximation of the same sort of bridge span across Rock Creek. The major difference is that this one is 1’6″ taller than the B&O prototype.
A VERY nice kit! The details are very crisp. Assembly not to bad when I took my time. I had to re-read a few of the steps to really wrap my head around what the directions were saying, but it went together quickly. I used Tamiya Extra Fine cement.Completed kit.With a 50′ box car atop, for perspective.
Story time. I spent a good while putting this post together, and when I got to this point, I stopped and realized there was a problem. I sat looking at the open deck girder bridge model and realized it looked a bit tall to me. I quickly opened up my drawings and reference materials and looked a the B&O plans. They clearly indicate that the trestle is to be 40′ long, 6′ 6″ wide (girder to girder) and 4′ 6″ high. This Tichy kit is 6′ tall. I then went down the rabbit hole for several hours while I tried to figure out what to do.
I opened up the plans I had drawn and started to modify the sections where this 6′ tall center span would sit. I had to lower the bents and adjust all the cross bracing in those areas. I did not like it. Some of it looked a bit odd and threw the whole thing off. I was not happy. I decided to keep digging.
Months ago, when searching for a deck girder bridge for my model, I had a very hard time finding a nice 40′ long kit in HO scale. The Tichy kit really fit the bill, but I didn’t pay close attention to the height of the girders. Micro Engineering makes a 30′, and a 50′ bridge, but not a 40′ one. The 50′ bridge is just over 6 scale feet tall. Just like the 40′ Tichy model I already have. The 30′ bridge, albeit too short, is a scale 4′ tall. I have decided that this will be my way forward. I feel that a scale 6″ is easier to forgive and blend versus a scale 1’6″ which is quite a bit more and really changes the characteristics of an iconic part of the structure. Now, some will say “there are only a small handful of people in the world who will know the difference. Who cares!?” Well, being that I’m making this model for me, and I care, I am going to spend the time to do the best job I can. I’m already knee deep!
So I then set out to RE-adjust the plans for the trestle, now with this 4′ high girder. I will have to kitbash two kits into a 40′ span, but that shouldn’t be too difficult. I’m going to add slightly taller blocks under the bridge to add to the height just a couple more inches, to hide the disparity between the prototype and my model. In the end, we’re talking a few inches difference. As I went through the plans, I realized some other errors I had made, and I cleaned them all up. I also reformatted the plans to fit on 8.5×11 paper, so I can print at home, since I think I will be in it for the long haul. I will share my progress on the plans soon in a future post.
So, phew! This was a doozy. In a long period of time, not a lot has happened, but such is my life. I have been busy with other projects… *ahem*
Springfield! Always wanted to go to “the big show.” It was FANTASTIC. I hope to go again next year! They had a STEAM ENGINE THERE. And it was OPERATING. Incredible. Upgrades for the Fiesta ST…New front-mount intercooler & an intake kit allowing for a stage 2 tune.Took the FiST to Summit Point with the Audi Club and had a fantastic weekend, just before the COVID-19 pandemic stay-at-home rules came into effect.Headed home for the weekend. The FiST is fantastic!
So, yeah. Been a lot going on. Second update coming SOON!
This is another long-overdue update on a project. This time I’m going to show off progress on the Bethesda freight station as a laser-cut model that I created. As long-time followers will know, I drew up blueprints for the station as a basis for a laser-cut model. I am still working on some details but after a few major revisions I’ve arrived with what I feel is a good design. The first version was incorrectly scaled horizontally, but was close. The second version is right on the money, as far as I can tell. The third version is largely just a change in textures and layout to allow cutting to work better. I am hoping that with this pandemic lockdown I will have time to give a go to putting this together.
This was a first attempt at cutting the parts using design v2. I didn’t include tabs on the walls and the brickwork and concrete textures were a bit aggressive so the wood bowed quite a bit. Overall, I wasn’t too pleased with the walls. The windows and doors came out PERFECTLY! On the left is the Garage Door. To the right is the large window in the South end of the building. The other small frames are for the smaller windows throughout the building.A close-up of the textures in my first attempt. As you can see, the brickwork got to be a bit coarse. I am planning on doing some testing on this to see how it looks, but I am imagining the texture is a bit too gritty to look like brickwork on a station that was only 5-10 years old in my era. Here is my second attempt at cutting v.2, with some improvements/changes. I added tabs to the design to keep it secured to the plywood frame. The textures were simplified and brickwork more defined. Otherwise, the design stayed the same. Now I need to source a few detail parts (I-beams, wood, brick, doors, etc.) and get building!
Went to the big Railroad Hobby Show in Springfield, MA this past weekend and wow, it was a doozy. The show was massive and loaded with great stuff. I picked up a few cool things for the Georgetown Branch, including a Sylvan Scale Models HO Barge with Coal resin kit. I also checked out the Sea Port Model Works tables and took a good hard look at some of their models. Just lovely. I have my eye on one of the harbor tugs for my own layout.
But, the whole thing got me thinking about what the barges looked like in Georgetown in the heyday of production down at the waterfront, by Smoot Sand & Gravel. Here are some cropped aerial images to get the juices flowing and get some ideas going. Enjoy!
Note what appears to be a tug, nestled among the barges.
Unfortunately I don’t have dates for these images. They are part of a book that was loaned to me by H. Smith and now resides at the B&O RR Historical Society Archives in Eldersburg, MD. The images seem to date from the late 1940s to the early/mid 1960s. You can view these and more images from this collection, in full size, in my Gallery.
Yep. This video was shot just over a year ago. Why am I posting it? Because it’s been eating me up and I decided enough was enough. Sometimes seemingly simple goals become unrealistic whether because they were set too high or other things got in the way. In this case, it’s a bit of everything. The transmission repair project took over last Spring and dominated my spare time through the Fall. HPDE season prep and subsequent packing up/cleanup took the rest of the Fall away. I was burned out and it took a while to get back into the swing of things.
So, enjoy this video. There’s actually a good bit of track work and layout progress that is NOT depicted in this video, so I need to do a new one! I will work on cleaning up the layout room and getting a new video done. In the meantime, enjoy this. Post any questions/comments below.
One final note, this video was done without any real production. I just wanted to “get it done.” Forgive the lack of quality and I hope to do better in the future. I would also like to do some features on the side projects I’m working on like building the Bethesda station and the Rock Creek trestle. Lots going on!
I’ve been working on putting together scale drawings of the Rock Creek trestle on the Georgetown Branch for several months now in my free time. I’m getting very close to have a final working set of plans that I can use to build my HO scale model of the bridge and wanted to share a quick screen shot to see what it looks like.
Bent #10, which supports the east end of the deck girder bridge.
This is very much a work in progress and the drawing reflects that. There have been many challenges with this project. Some of the big ones include the lack of images of the trestle from the time frame that I model; 1945-55. Another includes the various versions this trestle had throughout its life. It was originally built in the late 18th century, rebuilt some time in the 1920s, and again at some point in the 1950s. In the 60s it burned, in the 70s half of it collapsed. It was rebuilt, burned again in the 1980s rebuilt in the 2000s, reopened for pedestrians and finally in 2019 it was demolished. I took as many photos of it as I could (found in the Gallery on the main site) but due to the many modern additions, it’s nearly impossible to determine what was original and what was new.
I am doing my best. There is a lot of staring at photos for a very long time, trying to determine where bracing was placed, what height it was located at and what angle is correct. I’ve got about 3 photos that date back to the 40s and 50s. None are particularly good. I have a rough plan of the structure made by the B&O but it is missing many, many measurements. It’s a good starting place, and will give me a “good enough” on many measurements, but I wish I had taken more when the structure was still open to pedestrian traffic. Oh well. More to come, soon.
After wrapping up the curved turnout build, I haven’t been back to the layout much over the last couple weeks. A few things have happened, so in the interest of momentum, I’ll share them here.
Last Fall I inherited an old Digitrax Super Empire Builder starter set, which is about 15 years old, from an old friend. This allowed me to switch from DCC++ to Digitrax for my main DCC system. (I’ve preserved my DCC++/JMRI/RPi setup for use as a programming and testing platform.) The Digitrax DT300 throttle that came with the set appeared to have been a victim of the capacitor plague and Digitrax had some sort of warranty repair program for repairing it. It will be going back to Digitrax for the repair soon. (they are just now getting back on track after being ravaged by hurricane Michael last year.)
So far, I have been using my backup throttle, an old UT-1 which I purchased about 17 years ago so I could run trains on the old MCMR club layout. The layout was gone shortly after I purchased it and I have never really had much use for it. With my new Digitrax system, I finally do! Since earlier in the Winter when I picked up the Digitrax system, I’ve used the UT-1. It works fine for running stuff around and testing it but I have been plugging it directly into the DB150 which means I can only use the throttle at one end of my long room. So, this weekend I decided to make some LocoNet cables. I have had some old inherited Cat5 cable that was left over from the old club storage area and some 6-pin RJ12 connectors and the proper crimping tools stashed away. I broke everything out and sat on the couch and did some crimping while watching TV with the wife. It went well. I had a bit of a re-learning curve as I figured out the process again. I attempted to use the cutter/stripper on the tool I have, but it would slice too much insulation and into the wires damaging them. I ended up using an X-Acto knife to carefully cut back the insulation. I also realized that my vision requires the use of glasses and an opti-visor to really get the wires correct!
The Digitrax LT1 tester proved to be tricky, as well. I read through the directions but I must have skimmed the part that said you must have a throttle plugged in for it to work correctly. (thank you Tom M. for helping me figure this out!) Anyway, once I got that working, the cables checked out and I hooked them up to a couple of the old Loy’s Toys cab bus fascia panels I have, and voila! I could now plug in my throttle at various spots around the room. Worked fine.
Lastly, I had a little bit of fun with some non-DCC locos I have collected over the years. I decided to put some basic decoders I have laying around into these engines and see if they will run. I fired up the DCC++/JMRI system and got to testing. I managed to get my Athearn Genesis 2-8-2 USRA light mikado and my Life-Like Proto2000 S1 up and running. I couldn’t fit the S1 shell back on and in doing some online research I found that these locos have a critical flaw that needs attention before the decoder can be properly installed. That will be next on my list.
So that’s it for now. Spring is here and thus my time in the layout room is being challenged by chores, yard work and other fun things. I’m hoping that I can continue as I really do have some great momentum right now. I visited my friend Kelly yesterday and saw his Georgetown layout which is really coming along nicely! He is modeling the area of G-town from the Aqueduct bridge to the “new yard” at Wisconsin Ave, with plans for expansion. Very cool!
As most of you will know, the bridge which crosses the B&O’s Metropolitan Branch and Georgetown Branch lead at Georgetown Junction is slated to be torn down. The sides of the bridge, which once belonged to a turntable, are to be saved and placed along a new stretch of the Capital Crescent Trail, which is nice. The bridge was constructed at some point around 1918 and has seen several refurbishments over the years. Much of the support structure rusted away over the years and as such the bridge has been condemned for the last year or two. Thankfully, it was recently re-opened to pedestrian traffic.
Here I am on a chilly Sunday posing in front of the Talbot Ave. bridge. It snowed a bit while we were there. Note the giant logs laying on the ground; evidence of the brush and tree clearing the Purple Line folks are doing. Photo by Greg C.
Greg C. and I spent a morning at the bridge documenting it both with a measuring tape and with a camera. All in all, it was a very successful trip and I feel confident that I have enough data to accurately model the bridge in HO scale for my layout. Unfortunately, the model will have to be modified a bit to fit in my space, but I plan on being as accurate as I can. I think once complete, it will be a really neat model. Here are a few a sneak peeks at the drawing I am developing of the bridge structure:
The three turnouts in place for the track coming into Bethesda. Not the extra curved turnout on the right.
After building my first curved turnout a couple weeks ago I decided to build the next two to complete the track coming into Bethesda. I spent several hours over the weekend putting these together. When all three were done, I set them in place and realized I didn’t like how they worked. The first one was too tight of a radius. Hmmm… the only solution was to build one MORE turnout! This one a #10 LH with a 60″ OR and 46″ IR. It took me a few more hours to complete as I don’t have a FastTracks PointForm jig for a #10 turnout, only #8. So I used that and filed them down further to get the clearance I needed. Improvise. Adapt. Overcome… yeah.
Closeup of the curved turnouts.
Putting together the turnouts has been a tremendously rewarding experience and I take a lot of pride in how they turned out. I still have a bit of work to do with them, specifically I need to cut gaps, test continuity, fit them in place on the layout, paint, weather, install ties and wiring. Oh, and switch machines. *phew!* I’ll also need to modify the benchwork for the first siding which branches off at the start of the curve. This will be for the Griffith Consumers Co. coal & oil facility, which you can see here in this 1949 aerial view on NETR Historic Aerials. I will add a bit of a wing of plywood and Homasote subroadbed and then drop down for the coal unloading trestle. Ideally this facility will receive 2-3 40′ cars of fuel oil and coal. Here are some random LoC photos of the facility there. Unfortunately I don’t have a great shot of the trestle.
Horydczak, T., photographer. Griffith Consumers Co. Yard at Bethesda for Griffith Consumers Co. Bethesda Maryland, None. ca. 1920-ca. 1950. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/thc1995000330/PP/. Horydczak, T., photographer. Griffith Consumers Co. Coal truck of Griffith Consumers Co. Bethesda Maryland, None. ca. 1920-ca. 1950. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/thc1995000332/PP/. Horydczak, T., photographer. Griffith Consumers Co. Oil tanks of Griffith Consumers Co. Bethesda Maryland, None. ca. 1920-ca. 1950. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/thc1995000331/PP/. Horydczak, T., photographer. (1947) Griffith Consumers Co. Coal pile in Bethesda, Maryland for Griffith Consumers Co. Bethesda Maryland, 1947. Sept. 18. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/thc1995000364/PP/. Horydczak, T., photographer. (1947) Griffith Consumers Co. Wood pile in Bethesda, Maryland for Griffith Consumers Co. Bethesda Maryland, 1947. Sept. 18. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/thc1995000365/PP/.
