Happy New Year! I’m catching up on a LOT of updates for this site. I’ve got tons to share and just trying to find the time to get it all online. I had a great work session with Matt R. where we disconnected the DCC system and hooked up a regular power pack to the layout so I could run some of my non-DCC-equipped trains. This served a couple purposes. One, it was cool! Two, it gave me a chance to see how the “biggest” steam engine I have (a B&O Q1c Mikado) did going around the curves of the layout. What did I learn? Well, some of the curves, especially at the Junction are WAY too tight for the Mike. But, I also had some great brainstorming, realizing that I had laid out the track at the Junction in a way that wasn’t prototypical and could be done better to ease the curve and allow for a more prototypical arrangement. I’ve ripped out about 80% of the track I need to remove and am in the process of redoing the roadbed and arranging the tracks. I need to test fit a couple #8 RH turnouts, so that is the next step.

But, the big thing is that I’ve laid track all the way to Bethesda! (yay!) The bad news, I hit a snag. The curve coming into Bethesda is a broad compound curve. On the prototype there were three turnouts. From right to left, a turnout that served Griffith Fuel & Oil and included a long coal trestle. Next is another siding. I’m not certain what this served.  The third turnout is the lead for the passing siding, which also led to more sidings serving Maloney Concrete, Frito-Lay and some team tracks among others. 

I had originally planned on using some modified Micro Engineering and Walthers #6 turnouts (webbing removed to allow minor “curving” of the turnouts). See here, from last Feb:

But, upon closer inspection, and now that I actually have a lead into Bethesda, I realized these just do not work for me. The #6’s are way too abrupt. The “main” would become the “diverging” route on the turnouts. This looks way too wonky to me. The curve of the #6 is very sharp and it doesn’t flow well, even with bending. I tried some of the broadest curved turnouts that Walthers/Shinohara offers and they are too tight. So what’s left? Are you hearing that? It’s the call of the old-school model railroader… that’s right; Hand laying track!

FastTracks is a modern supplier of tools, jigs, and supplies for hand laying track. They have just about anything you could imagine in this realm. I have seen their stuff before and it’s very nice, but also very pricey. I can’t afford to buy a few of the CNC-cut jigs, but I will use their free templates as guides to get my turnouts close to what I need. I printed out about every template that was close to what I am looking for and test-fitted them on the layout. A few of them come close to what I need. Matt and I used a piece of spline to draw a nice curve from the existing track on into Bethesda. This gives me a baseline for the curve of the turnout I need to build. To give you an idea, here is the overall ROUGH arrangement of the tracks in Bethesda:

Next steps: Now that I’ve got the curve drawn on the roadbed, I’m going to cut and remove the roadbed section where the curves are and mount it to a small piece of plywood. This will allow me to take it to the workbench and work there versus on the layout itself. I then need to start test fitting ties and figure out the layout of the turnouts themselves. Alternatively, I may just build three turnouts of the same size and then place them together like sectional track. This will also allow for simplicity, but I won’t be able to achieve the nice compound curve I am following. Either way, I have my work cut out for me this weekend.

As a final note, next weekend (Feb 2-3) will be the Great Scale Model Train Show at Timonium, MD. I will be there and will have some table space to sell some old equipment. If you are going, drop me a line so we can meet up and say hello!

Merry Christmas! Some more great progress has been made. I know it doesn’t look like much but I am making great headway considering the fits and spurts of attention the layout gets. All of the trackage at Chevy Chase is done and wired up. (Minus the turnout frogs, switch machines and the coal trestle at T.W. Perry.) the trains can now run all the way to just before Bethesda. Track is half way through the curve at the end of the room. Feels good to make such progress.

My goal is to get the upper deck done by the end of the year and I’m very close. I have already cut and prepped all of the track in Bethesda but had to rip it up so I could wire frogs and holes for switch machines. I also spent a day working with my friend Matt who helped me add some more prototypical curvature at the east end and rework my sidings. These changes are already in place, I just need to get the track in. One more week? Can he do it? Stay tuned.

Made some great progress this past week. The area around Chevy Chase is taking shape. I laid track halfway through the area and finished fitting the rest of the main and passing siding. I ran out of time to complete laying it. Still need to solder the drops to the rail bottoms and spike into place. After that I will install the team track which will go on the curvy bit of roadbed I installed.

I also installed a new-to-me Digitrax system that was graciously given to me. It’s an Empire Builder 2, about 15 years old but nearly new. Unfortunately the DT300 throttle suffers from the capacitor plague and I will have to have it repaired by Digitrax. Since they were badly hit by hurricane Michael it will not be for a few months. No worries for now, I have an old UT1 to play with. 🙂

Did some cleaning up and consolidating of scenery materials and storage in the layout room and a few other layout tasks. It’s been a productive week! More soon.

Have been really making some great progress on the layout these last few weeks and it feels great. I last updated that I had got my DCC system up and running and after a little tweaking it is working flawlessly. I power up the system, turn the layout power on, open WiThrottle on my phone, acquire a loco and away I go! And on that note…

I’ve completed the Junction area as well as nearly all the trackage in the first section of the layout. Bus wires and feeders are in place and trains are running! There are a few trouble areas that I am working on- the biggest being the sharp curve leading from the Junction on to the branch. Not sure how I’m going to solve this but I’ll work on the major issues when I get closer to them. I can see my steam engines having a hard time negotiating that tight turnout. In the meantime, here’s more…

I created the temporary bridge from some plywood with an old 2×2 screwed to the bottom for rigidity. The bridge is easily removable with two wood screws. Feeder wires are screwed into a terminal block for easy removal. Right now track is laid semi-permanently on top of the bridge for operational purposes. Once I have the trestle model complete, I will “cut out” the old bridge and replace it with the model. Since that is far off, the temporary bridge is solid.

The drop down area is where the creek bed will be located. The trestle will be built to scale, an exact representation of the prototype as it stood in the 1940s.

In this wide view you can make out the approximate location of the long coal trestle which will branch off from the main right after the junction. I really like how the re-worked grades turned out for the junction area. Originally I had the mainline up very high and it presented some real challenges down grade. My friend Matt helped to re-work the Junction completely. We spent a few hours looking at photos and studying maps to come up with the existing layout, which more realistically follows the prototype, where the Branch drops off quickly from the Metropolitan Branch mainline and is sunken between sidings. (E.C. Keys and the coal trestle) So far, everything is working smoothly. It feels great to make real progress. It feels even better to be able to run a locomotive on the layout! 🙂

Next up I’m going to continue track laying into Chevy Chase and on into Bethesda. If I stay on track, I should make my goal of completing all of the upper-deck track work before Christmas. 🙂

** UPDATES BELOW **

The prototype DCC system is up and running. I decided to home brew my DCC when I read about DCC++ and realized I had an Arduino laying around with no real purpose. I bought a motor shield and hooked up my laptop and an old power pack to test it out. It worked but I knew I had to come up with a more complete and permanent setup.

I immediately considered the Raspberry Pi (RPi) as it’s a low cost, full featured Linux computer and I can run JMRI on it! I needed a power supply and a bit of research found others doing similar things using various inexpensive devices. I also wanted a proper booster so I chose a Tam Valley unit. I’ll invest in a second one for my other power district in the future. EDIT: I used Steve Todd’s “JMRI RaspberryPi as Access Point” which is a pre-built configuration for RPi which sets it up by default as an access point, connects to the DCC++ system and runs PanelPro, etc. It’s fantastic and worked right away.

Today I spent several hours putting all the pieces together that I had collected over the last couple years. The monitor was a donor from my dad. The mouse, keyboard and cabling was all old stuff laying around. I put everything onto a board, first laying it out and planning the cable routing. Once everything was good, I screwed the pieces into place.

Next was to test voltages and see what worked. A bit of tinkering and everything looked good. I set it all in place and started configuring things in the RPi. A bit of trial and error getting things to talk to each other, with some luck, and it’s working!

There are still lots of kinks to work out and I need to experiment with a lot of the features. My intention is for this to be a fun project and provide a robust DCC system to get me started for the Georgetown Branch. We will see how it works in the long run.

incidentally, I had planned on taking apart my Proto2000 GP7 to have a look at the plastic gears, as last time I ran it it was making lots of noise.

Wouldn’t you know it, all four gears were cracked! I replaced them with Athearn units, like a charm. Here’s one of the cracked units:

I was asked to give some more details about parts and prices so here is a list. Building this setup requires many things that you probably already have on hand, so the cost will vary. Also, you can find things on sale occasionally and you can simplify or streamline it with your own skills or modifications. I included rough estimates for a few things which you will need just to get the ball rolling. Feel free to reach out with any questions you have.

List of parts: (Updated 1/2/2022)

• Arduino Uno, Rev3 $23.00 (can use off-brand; YMMV.)
• Arduino Motor Shield, Rev3 $33.49 (can use off-brand; YMMV.)
• Arduino case (Use whatever you like/have. Prices on Amazon ~$5+)
• 26 AWG M-M Jumper wires $4.99 (can use 26 AWG solid core wire too!)
• Raspberry Pi 3 B $34.99 (*1/2/22: I have been unable to find one for sale right now. The new Pi 4 is $45, also hard to find.)
• Raspberry Pi 3 case (Usewhatever you like/have. Prices ~$10 and up on Amazon.)
• Tam Valley Depot DAB002 DCC Booster $54.95
• Tam Valley Depot DPS016 16V 4.5A Power Supply for Track Use $16.95
• Tam Valley Depot 12V 5A Power Supply for Accessory Use $16.95
• MeanWell RS-25-15 Switching Power Supply $20.00
• 3-prong power cable $4.59 (mine came from an old PC. Anything certified is fine.)
• Amazon Basics Wired Keyboard $13.30 (Any wired standard USB keyboard will do.)
• Amazon Basics 3-button Mouse $8.23 (Any wired USB mouse will do.)
• Monitor (Any HDMI monitor will do. May need HDMI-VGA adapter for older monitors.)
• Wire (Assorted wire for connecting devices.)
• Small screws (Assortment to fit your devices.)
• Plywood (Any mounting surface you like. I used what I had.)
• 3M Scotch Double Sided Mounting Tape $6.28
• Smartphone (Any iOS/Android device w/ WiThrottle/Engine Driver)
• USB 2.0 Type B male to Type A male 10″+ cable $1.60
• Cable management (zip ties, velcro wrap, etc)
• HDMI cable, 6′ $6.99
• Cooling Fan, 0.15A 12V 2-pin 30mm x 30mm $8.99 (not essential)

A few more things

Updates: (1/2/2022) – this is not definitive, but rather a couple notes.

DCC++ Issues

I ran into issues with my DCC++ setup, essentially it would read some decoders and not read others. I spent hours troubleshooting it and eventually moved on. I suspect it has to do with my power settings, but as I am not a programmer by nature, I didn’t feel like spending more time figuring it out. I’ve moved on from using DCC++ but would VERY much like to revisit it in the near future as I think there have been some wonderful developments with the growth of the DCC++ EX project; essentially an updated version of the old DCC++ project. They even have a Discord! I have tried DCC++ EX but still have issues. Again, I’d like to revisit this.

Raspberry Pi / Arduino Availablity

I don’t know why Arduino and Raspberry Pi units are so hard to come by right now. I basically couldn’t find ANY for sale right now, anywhere. I’m not sure if this is a result of the global chip shortage, the global shipping crisis, a combination of the two, or something else entirely. If you are in the market for one of these, you’ll have to get creative. It really is a frustrating situation! Let me know if you see things change.

JMRI RaspberryPi as Access Point

Model Railroader and programmer Steve Todd has designed and offers totally free a whole lot of cool stuff on his website. This includes Engine Driver, the awesome Android app you can use to run trains on a WiFi-equipped DCC system! In addition, he offers a completely self-contained, packaged solution for using a Raspberry Pi as an access point to run your layout with JMRI and WiThrottle. Simply write the image to your RPi SD card, boot it up, point it at your DCC system (with WiFi enabled), configure your throttles (smart phones) and you are running trains. It’s amazing. You don’t even “need” a keyboard/mouse to do this. Here is a link to the page with all the info you’ll need: https://mstevetodd.com/rpi I have set this up on my layout and it works great. Really awesome!

That’s all for updates for now. Good luck with your DCC++ adventures. I’d love to hear more about what you all are up to!

Even though it’s a short stretch of track and is purely cosmetic on my layout, it feels great to get it done. The track is some Micro Engineering weathered code 100 flex track that I received in a lot of very old track. It’s probably over 20-some years old, if not older. As such, it required me to drill all of the spike holes, which I did about every 4-5″ with a Dremel. Soldered the joints and pre-bent the curves. This stuff is very stiff and tough to bend smoothly! All in all, it turned out nicely. It will be a great spot to stage a mainline passenger train.

Next is to work on bus wiring, roadbed at the Junction and getting more track down.