Part 3: Atlas Wooden Turntable Goes Steel

To follow this project from the beginning, check out part one and look at part 2 with interest and make sure you’re all up to speed, because here’s where it gets complicated.

Okay, since the design of this turntable is essentially a pin-connected steel truss bridge lying in a concrete pit. So now it’s time to break out a package or two of Central Valley’s bridge parts. To make the bridge, you need to assemble 4 identical truss bridge pieces. A smart idea would be to make a wooden jig and assemble the pieces accordingly. I need to draw up some scale plans for the truss spans, I’ll post them in a while. It isn’t too difficult to take the photographs found in the first article and modify or compress them to fit on our atlas turntable.

the photos above shows how the Central Valley bridge pieces connect to the I beams attached to the main frame in the last article.

Basically, each truss piece should attach to the I beams, then you connect each truss span together with bar-and-pin fittings from the top of each truss span. The first truss span seen in the photo below was a prototype. Each girder was cut with a razor saw, and fitted together with Walther’s goo. The rivet plates were made from 0.003″ brass, the rivets made from gently tapping the point of a screw into the brass in the correct rivet pattern, pretty tedious work that doesn’t make that great of an effect. I might go with styrene in the next version with archer rivet decals handling the rivet details.

Next, we’ll tackle how to distribute weight on the turntable, work on the pit rails and give it a rotation test.

Painting the G scale Engine House

Now that almost everything is attached and glued together, it’s time to seal it with a layer of primer and begin the final process of painting and adding door hardware. The process was pretty straighforward and can be done a number of ways. We choose the most professional way, using a compressed air sprayer with lightly thinned Benjamin Moore outdoor flat house paint. Next we went in and painted the roof with brushes and the white trim with smaller brushes.

About 3 coats of primer had the wood sufficently sealed to be left outside on the garden railroad.

2 coats of Spanish red had the engine house looking really nice.

The Roof was painted carefully with flat brushes in a nice dark brown.

White trim adds a touch of class and sharpens the overall look of the building.

In our final installment, we’ll add the doors and place it on the layout.

Adding a Roof to our G scale Engine House

So now that the walls have been built, it’s time to add a roof to the frame we built in the first installment. We’re using 3/8″ plywood for the roof, held with Titebond and finishing nails.

Once both sides have been glued on, there will be a gap in the center of the building, this is on purpose as we’ll be adding a clerestory roof to this building as seen in the cover photo.

Fill in the cap of the roof with small lumber cut to fit, filled with wood filler and sanded flush.

Now that the roof cap has been built on BOTH ends with a 1/4″ interior overhang in the clerestory, it’s time to actually build the clerestory.

Figure out the pitch (angle) of the roof and cut two end pieces to match them, then cut the sides and bevel the bottom edge to match the slope of the roof.

Now attach the two roof boards you cut and beveled the interior edge to the clerestory roof frame. but we’re not done yet, the final step can be done in a number of ways.

To prevent direct water/snow contact you need to cap the roof to prevent the building from water leakage. You can go classic and shingle the roof and use split shingles to cap the roof. You can roll tar-paper over the top of the roof. You could do the entire roof in scale corrugated metal and cap the roof with some copper, or you could carefully cut a piece of 1X1″ lumber into an “L” shape and mount it on the roof like we have here.

Stay tuned for priming, painting and the addition of hardware.

Let’s Build A G Scale Engine House & Carbarn

This remarkably beautiful structure could be your next G scale structure. A building like this could easily be a car barn or engine house depending on the type of details you’d want to add to the basic structure.

This particular engine house is built to last, utilizing high quality lumber and plenty of titebond, screws and nails to keep it together for years to come. It also has recieved two layers of primer and 3 layers of state-of-the art housepaint. (We’ll discuss paint later).

Our building here is sparsely detailed to allow the future owner to detail it to fit his needs. With the addition of normal sized doors and windows along the side it could look even more impressive. Spend some time adding some board-and-batten woodwork, and some victorian architectural detail and you could really make it stand out. Add some G scale smoke jacks and rigging wire and you’d have a top-notch engine house.

Based off of plans found at a train show, I modified the drawings to fit the space I had, which was roughly 2X4 feet. The building itself is 19 5/8ths inches wide and 44″ long, with an inch roof overhang all around the structure for drainage and improved looks.

So Follow along in the next couple of posts as we build this fantastic engine house!

First we cut the front & rear walls out of 1/2″ plywood with a Jigsaw. The 2″ round hole in the front was cut with a drillbit hole attachment.

Next we cut the walls from more 1/2″ plywood and NOTCHED the top of the board to match the slope of the roof, which is crucial.

Make sure to cut the holes for the building out carefully, as you’ll need to use them for snug-fitting doors for all three stalls. We cut the 1/2″ thick pieces in half and filled and sanded them smooth.

Next we cut the roof framing from recycled 1/2″ lumber and notched the roof peaks in a special fashion, as seen below, for extra strength.

Follow the arrow to the roof brace mounted about an inch below the roof line, so the roof frame, when lowered into place, will sit flush against the beveled side walls for a seamless fit.

IF you want one just like this, we have decided to offer it to “Interacting with Miniature Railroading” readers for just $450 plus shipping.

Stay Tuned For Part Two!

SP Common Standard Turntable from an Atlas Model PART 2

Now that the concept proved successful, it was time to dive into actual construction. Luckily, I had a turntable lying around from a display I took to shows last year, and although it was nicely weathered and a nice model in it’s own right, it was cheaper than buying a new one.

I began construction by salvaging an Atlas turntable motor from another damaged model I was given. The motor and gears worked fine, and recycling is paramount to any model railroader. So I installed the motor onto the turntable and then soldered wires to each rail in the center, so I could run the electricity up onto the future bridge.

I also purchased a 12″ by 12″ plexiglass sheet to use for the new (non-rotating) turntable pit. I traced the circumfrence of the atlas model with a pencil onto the plexiglass and lightly scored the plexiglass. I then used the “scribe n’ snap” method for making a remarkably perfect circle. If you look closely in the above photo, you can just make out the plexiglass disc.

Next, I had to build the open steel underframe for the bridge that would span the turntable pit. Most turntable scratchbuild tutorials go for the classic plate-girder look, but I decided to go for something more interesting, as you know. I built it almost entirely out of styrene “I” beam structural shapes I had laying aound. The main I beam is a scale 4 feet tall, laying on its side making the strong center beam.

This really took alot of patience and a couple failed attempts, which I suppose will make good shop clutter or scrap loads. I had to not only cut all these I beams identical widths, they had to be notched to interlock with the large “I” beam.
If someone knows a really great, smooth and clean way to cut structural shapes like these to identical lengths please post a comment, I’d love to hear it. Eventually I got the necessary amount ot structural shapes cut and began putting it together.

Now that the underframe is complete, it’s time to build the pit rail and outrigger wheels to support the ends of the turntable. In our next two installments, we’ll build some truss structures and the outrigger wheels.

Atlas Turntable Kitbash- From Wooden Wonder to SP Common Standard.

The Atlas turntable has been a staple of model railroading for more than 40 years, and still sells well today. However despite it being one of the most mechanically well-designed turntables in existance, it is a model of a very unusual prototype. Wooden plank turntables did and still do exist today. The wooden plank turntabe was used in the late 1800’s for street railways, cable car operations and small industrial railroads to not only provide a means to rotate motive power but also to serve as an accessible pedestrian or vehicular thoroughfare when not in use. It also would have been installed in areas where a turntable pit would have been dangerous or not feasibly built. Despite these advantages, they were expensive to maintain and all but a very select few survive today. Most, if not all of them were “armstrong” turntables in which an operator had to push on the piece of equipment to get it to rotate. Other examples of armstrong turntables include “gallows” style turntables and very early cast-iron turntables, all dating from the beginning of railroading forward.

Due to the fact that the wooden plank turntable is an extremely rare type of turntable, it shouldn’t be on as many layouts as you see them on. The benefit of the Atlas model is that you don’t have to modify your benchwork in any way to use the turntable, which is a major plus compared to nearly any other model on the market.

In this next series of articles I aim to get a solid, non-rotating turntable while achieving the detail of a Southern Pacific Common Standard 100′ turntable, albeit selectively compressed. It won’t be an easy project, but it’ll reward you with an excellent looking and operating piece of equipment that’ll always work well.

The Concept

The Idea is to cover the rotating top of the turntable, to legnthen it to the outer edges of the device and create a highly detailed steel turntable structure to be visually appealing and eyecatching.

From a mechanical standpoint, It’ll have wires soldered to the rails on the deck that’ll be fed up through a tube to the rails at track level. The whole turntable will swivel from this central tube which is glued to the former top of the turntable.

A new concrete pit will be scratchbuild out of acrylic sheet and painted. Pit rails will be installed to guide the outrigger wheels on either end of the bridge.

The extended edges will allow a Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0 (with Vandy Tender) to turn itself around, which was impossible before the modification. This opens up the turntable to medium sized motive power and it can also turn an SD-45T-2 with ease as well.

The first step was proving my concept before jumping head first into a complex project, so I cut a large doughnut shape from grocery bag paper electrical tape. Testing out the false bottom concept was a success, it turns fine as long as there’s clearance over the former wooden top of the turntable.

Follow along as we venture into the complex world of constructing a turntable from wood, brass, styrene and acrylic sheet.

Here’s a sneak peek…

PART 2- The Manson Dredging Warehouse in N Scale

Now as you may remember from the First Part of this article, we are using Windows Live lLocal and Google Maps side-by-side to aid in modeling a rather unremarkable, but essential structure for my Richmond Pacific Rail Corp. N scale model railroad. The railroad itself is a 2X4 Switching layout featured in this previous article.

So, now that we’ve built the walls, it’s time for their first layer of paint and a roof!

The Roof over the warehouse is pretty straightforward, Just 0.40 styrene measured and laid onto the angled walls. The ridge of the roof will have a tinfoil cap to make laying the tarpaper easier and make it look more realistic in the end.

Building a hip roof is a completely different challenge though. You could use a lot of geometry to make it completely precise, which I would recommend if you’re capable of such feats, but here’s a simple way to do it.

This first step has you make a sturdy flat roof placed flush with the top of the walls to act as a base for the angular sections. (Note that this method is simple and won’t offer interior roof detail, obviously.) Then I stacked two large pieces of balsa wood and cut the roof angles (usually 25-50 degrees) with my razor saw and then proceeded to the next step.

I then added some large roof trusses and angled them off the main beam to the edges of the walls. The corner posts are VERY tricky and will take some experimentation to get a nice flat posts for the angled roof surface to adhere to.

Next, using thin sheet balsa (I would have preferred to use Basswood sheet, which is not only thinner, but better looking and more realistic) I cut out shapes for the roof.

I then gave the roof a base coat of black to give the scale tarpaper something to adhere to along with the glue and provide some opacity. The final roof color will be a much lighter gray, to match the actual color.

Stay Tuned for Part 3, Tarpaper, Weathering, and Final details.

Building a Structure from SPACE!

Ok, so at least by using a satelite view and an isometric view using Google Earth and Windows Live Local, respectively.

For my Richmond Pacific Rail Corporation layout I needed a scale model of Manson Dredging’s maintenence building to sit on my water front. I’m roughly modeling Lauritzen Channel of which the RPRC railroad servicing facility is on one side and the Manson Dredging company sits on the other.

It’s a fairly unremarkable single story building that has two major parts, a medium sized warehouse portion and the larger storage building attached perpendicularly to the warehouse. (It has the angled hip roof)

Using Google Maps, I got a good clear view of the channel:

Then I went over to Window’s Live Local to get some isometric angular views…

I got these by clicking on the Bird’s eye button.

Since this is N scale, I had to purchase some Gloor craft windows to suit the building, and everything had to be scratchbuilt from evergreen styrene. The horizontal windows are from an HO scale AHM firehouse kit and the steel roll-up doors are from micro engineering, as is the normal doors.

What I didn’t realize until I finished the first wall is that you don’t need to cut holes in the walls for the Micro-Engineering roll up doors! Oh well, It worked just fine anyhow..

After carving out the holes I actually needed for the doors and windows, I built the rest of the wall, remember that the building butts into the medium sized warehouse.

Knowing that I didn’t have to cut holes for the doors, the rol up doors were glued in place without any problems. I still need to add the windows on the other two walls though.

Here’s a view of it sitting on the channel, just like in the satelite photos.

Stay tuned for Part TWO!~

(For those interested in actually following this buildng It’s already complete, so you can follow the build with confidence as I post it!)

Model What Used to Be: Abandoned Trackage.

Since the beginning of the railroads not every commercial venture between two steel rails has always worked out for the better. There are over 10,000 miles of abandoned right of way in the US alone, probably much more if you count yards, sidings and industrial spurs.

Often, abandoned right of ways tell almost, if not more of a story then the active lines you’d model on your railroad. Most times bridges were left in place, signals still standing (some still operating years after the track has been abandoned!) Of course embankments, ballast and the right of way itself will remain until redevelopment or nature destroys it.

Railroads merge and traffic dries up, creating duplicate routes and usually the one that’s costlier to maintain is abandoned. Case and point would be the Southern Pacific’s Altamont Pass line. It was steeper in grade and featured sharper curves to the rival Western Pacific mainline just across Alameda Creek. Rails were removed in the 1980’s when much of the traffic along the line had disappeared, and what was left was easily served by the WP mainline (namely the Kaiser Gravel Plant at Radum, between Livermore & Pleasanton, Calif.)

The mess of industrial trackage that can still be found in most American cities that experienced industrial growth before 1940 is another interesting example. Really tight curves, crossovers, diamonds, double slip switches and small yards would be utilized to efficiently serve the major industries of the day. Often the buildings were built with the curvature of the railroad tracks in mind, as were fence and property lines. One can trace former industrial trackage without great difficulty as long as it hasn’t been completely redeveloped. Many older industries simply left the trackage in place and removed their mainline connection (usually a switch) sometimes they would have a few obsolete railroad cars delivered before this would happen to be turned into storage.

When railroads fail completely, due to lack of traffic or commercial business reasons, the right of way is either left to rust or ripped up. All infrastructure except for ballast is sold off and the grade is left to nature. Most often when this happens, especially if it’s in a scenic location near affluent residencies, a “rails to trails” program is started, which usually paves the right of way with a bike path. The Southern Pacific’s San Ramon Branch is an excellent example of this, as is the Northwestern Pacific’s line to Tiburon. It would be interesting to model a little paved pathway with bikers and joggers with evidence that tracks once existed there.

Disasters can also cause a line to be abandoned. The Eel river plagued operations on the NorthWestern Pacific railroad up in Norther California’s Redwood Empire. The river would rise more than 40 feet, washing out bridges, flooding tunnels, destroying buildings and eroding embankments. Eventually the line was so unprofitable that it was abandoned. Plenty of other hard-to-maintain railroad lines have had their rails pulled up.

Here’s some excellent examples of abandoned trackage:

A Superdetailed N Scale Layout

At a recent train show I met an excellent modeler, who built everything you see here. He has an amazing eye for detail, and isn’t afraid to kitbash even the most expensive brass locomotive into just what he’s looking for. Gutting Atlas geeps, Intermountain tunnel motors (EMD SD40T-2’s) and completely redetailing them part by part into something really exceptional is his typical way to model. His layout is well-researched and constructed. Although the scenery isn’t completely finished he can teach the average modeler alot about the necessity of important details. He says that “the trick isn’t to put every detail found on the prototype, but certianly enough to make the model unique and recognizable to anyone who might have seen one in person.”

Not only does he kitbash diesels, he also scratchbuilt accurate telephone and electric poles to serve the roundhouse properly. All the vehicles adhere to a late 1980’s time frame and check out some of the smaller details he’s added to the scene.

Here’s a collection of some of his projects, some finished, some in progress. Each has been disassembled and reassembled to ensure that the major modifications would fit just right. On the right, shop trucks were scratchbuilt for when a locomotive’s trucks are removed and the frame needs to move to another portion of the shop. The oil-stained concrete is always a good touch.

A heavily kitbashed Southern Pacific rebuilt GP9E rounds the curve with a loaded ballast hopper.

The locomotives are serviced out back on the garden tracks. the Pit was made just like the real thing, with board-formed concrete.

Another fascination of his is Maintenence of Way equipment, and most of his fleet is scratchbuilt or heavily kitbashed using photographs of ATSF and SP subjects as important reference.

GHQ kits are also a sub-hobby of his, he builds them with all the movable joints and even modifies them as-needed to make them fully posable. N scale vehicle modeling is a pretty exact hobby, and it looks quite impressive when done well.