Dan’s Train Blog

I haven’t written much lately but I’ve been building a LOT. As I mentioned in July, We moved to a new house with a workshop . The plan was to use the shop space for the layout (of course) and a workshop space for model building.

So much for plans. We’ve started teaching “build stuff” workshops on weekends for
teenagers/young adults. We started with a three month class meeting for four hours on Saturdays. That filled so we added a Sunday section. The projects are really great and since part of what the kids are doing will be blogging about their work I’ll just show a sample of what they are doing and I’ll provide a link to their blogs once they are up.

Ian is building an Airbus 380 in 1/144 scale.

Nick is building a micro layout in HO with a bridge and tunnel – the only model railroad project!

Sarah is building a fantasy diorama of a bed flying over a city at night.

Peter is building a super complex Gundam kit with a bagillion pieces.

Phoebe is making a ¾” scale room box of a Vamire’s Steampunk style home.

We’re all taking turns practicing airbrush and other painting techniques on my old model of the Millennium Falcon.

Kris is building a 1/48 scale tank for a diorama.

Not pictured: Reggie’s free-lanced 12” Globe, Devon’s Manga stage model and Steven’s world of eraser people.

It’s a huge amount of work but also tremendous fun.

I’ve always loved NWP number 8 as shown in this 1915 view below.

I’d like to try to use this IHC 4-4-0 Old Time American as a starting point to model NWP 8.

These models have been around since the 1970’s and have tender drive. They’ve been sold under several names (IHC, Rivarossi, AHM, and Pocher). They are not really HO scale (3.5 mm = 1 foot) but rather are OO scale (4.0 mm = 1 foot, running on HO track). So why use them? I bought 3 on sale for around $30 each and I used to have one when I was a kid so I’m interested in seeing how good a model I can make based on this chassis.

This particular model has an updated pilot with a knuckle coupler (a dummy as shipped) and a straight, albeit not plain, stack.

I’ll start with a design sketch to get an idea what the model would look like. I took the photo of the stock engine above and placed it on a lighted tracing table.

Then I taped a sheet of paper on this and traced out the engine. The cab, headlight, and tender are embellished with the changes needed to bring the appearance closer to NWP 8.

Note that I copied the model, warts and all. This will be a drawing of the model based on an IHC chassis, not a drawing of a real engine.

As I sketched in changes I referred to my picture of NWP 8.

The proposed cab will be larger, metal, and pushed forward a bit. I also drew in an air compressor interrupting the walkway, a generator in front of the steam dome, and engine brakes between the drivers.

The most significant change I’m planning is to lower the forward frame. As a digital drawing it was trivial to cut and paste the frame about a scale foot lower. The final drawing shows that these changes will yield an attractive engine.

Small, nimble on the rails and with beautiful proportions, the classic 4-4-0 “American” has always been one of my favorite engine types. As I mentioned in my last post, the Northwestern Pacific Railroad was powered almost exclusively by small 4-4-0 and 4-6-0 engines. This is one of the great things about modeling the NWP on the limited size of a model railroad since small engines help create the illusion of greater layout size and mainline distance.

Exact RTR (ready-to-run) models of NWP engines are not available. Consistent with my overall modeling philosophy (plausible but free-lanced), I’m going to examine the engines of the NWP and build engines for my layout that are consistent with the spirit of the prototype. My goal is to build plausible and reasonable, while not exact, models. Understanding the prototype well enough to build things and make decisions consistent with the way the builders and mechanics of the NWP did things is what I enjoy.

The Americans on the NWP in the 1920s fell into two broad groups: old engines built in the 1870s and 1880s — some twelve engines and a “new” group of seven built between 1904 and 1914.

The Old Engines

By the 20s, the older 4-4-0s had been in service between 40 and 50 years and had been significantly updated and altered from their as-built appearance. As built the engines would have looked much like these shown below:

Grant 4-4-0 1873

Baldwin 4-4-0 1871

Both of these engines are standard “catalog” offerings and are therefore typical engines. Compared to the mechanical standards of the 1920s these engines are missing many pieces of equipment:

1920-29 Standard Equipment:

• Engine brakes
• Knuckle couplers
• Air pumps and associated hardware
• Electric lights, generators and associated equipment
• Oil burning modifications (in the NWP case)

While engines may have left the factory looking pretty similar, railroads would generally shop engines only when something broke or needed to be done to meet new requirements (compatible couplers, air brakes, etc.). Individual engines in their 50 year trek to their 1920 appearance would have been shopped and upgraded on unique schedules. In this way each of the old Americans on the NWP looked quite different from each other by the 20s.

NWP 8 Engine 8 was an 1881 Baldwin product with 63” drivers, 15×24 cylinders and weighed 71,000 lbs. By 1915 it looked like this:

Engine 8 has received minimal modification beyond the standard equipment listed above, a new metal cab, and a new pilot. This is probably not what the engine looked like by the 1920s but I love the proportions of this engine and will likely model it as seen above.

NWP 9 An 1883 Grant product, number 9 had 59” drivers, 16×24 cylinders and an 86,300 lb. engine weight. Number 9 was heavily modified in its lifetime and in the 1920s probably looked something like this 1935 view.

Engine 9 has an entirely new boiler and obviously mismatched pilot truck wheels.

Transition between the Old and New 4-4-0s

Boiler location: In the 20th century as scientific principals were increasingly applied to locomotive engineering, an emphasis grew on firebox design, boiler pressure and superheating. For the classic 4-4-0 (shown in cutaway below) the location of the firebox low between the engine frames severely limited the size of the grate and therefore the amount of boiler horsepower that could be generated.

The solution was to raise the boiler centerline so that the bottom of the firebox was completely above the engine side frames. As early as the 1888 view shown below this techniques came into use. However, while wider than before the firebox is still constrained to fit between the driving wheels.

One of the ultimate limitations on the 4-4-0 design is that increasing the firebox size further was never seen as practical. On more modern engines with different wheel arrangements the boiler was raised even higher so that the firebox and grate could be carried completely above the driving wheels and widened to the width of the engine. NWP 4-6-0 number 181 below shows this kind of configuration.

Extended firebox: Comparing the Baldwin 1871 with the PRR 1888 drawing also note the difference in how far the smoke box (the part of the boiler the smokestack is mounted on) extends forward. To hopefully enhance complete combustion, the “extended” smoke box became common (but not universal) on new and rebuilt engines.

Superheating: Superheaters were added to locomotives by changing the boiler design such that steam lines were fed back into widened fire-tubes in the boiler increasing the temperature of the steam and thereby increasing the amount of work the steam could do. This reduced fuel and water consumption for a given amount of power produced. On an old engine superheating is typically only signified by the change from slide valves to piston valves .

Variously updated 4-4-0s on the NWP in the 1920s

This is not a complete breakdown and I picked the following engines because I find them the most interesting.

NWP 10 was a twin sister engine to number 9 (Grant numbers 1665, 1664, respectively) but by 1920 appeared highly modified and updated.

Fully updated with all the modern (1920s) conveniences. Slide valves (superheated), new boiler, air and electrical equipment.

NWP 17 was a Rogers 1889 product with 63” drivers, 17×24 cylinders, and 87,300 lb. engine weight.

In this 1927 view the engine appears to still have its original boiler since the steam dome is old-style location directly over the firebox and the smoke box is not extended forward. The engine has air and electrical equipment.

NWP 20 was a Rogers 1884 product (older than 17 above) with 62” drivers, 18×24 cylinders and 93,800 lb. weight.

In this 1923 photo the fluted domes on number 20 might lead you to think that this is the original boiler. However, my best guess is that the boiler was added around 1917 and the old domes were apparently reused.

NWP 21 was a Baldwin 1904 product with 69” drivers, 18×24 cylinders, and 117,350 lb. weight.

What a difference a few years makes! Number 21 is much heavier than the older engines and in this 1936 photo looks quite modern with the exception of the slide valves.

NWP 22 was a 1908 American product with 69” drivers, 18×24 cylinders, and 128,500 lb. engine weight.

Fairly modern engines but still with slide valves in this 1931 view so presumably not superheated.

NWP 52 was one of the last batch of 4-4-0s purchased by the NWP in 1914. These had 63” drivers, 19×26 cylinders and a hefty 158,500 lb. engine weight.

These engines were more than twice the weight of old number 8. Note the modern piston valves and Walschaerts valve gear.

Southern Pacific 4-4-0s

For comparison and more modeling ideas I have some photos of 4-4-0s from the Southern Pacific since SP was one of the NWPs corporate parents and some mechanical influences are evident.

SP 1421 is shown in 1924. The thing I like is the headlight moved to the center of the smoke box front per SP practice.

SP 1358 is shown in 1923 and other than air and electrical is looking pretty old fashioned indeed. The relatively un-altered appearance of this engine is my justification for carrying forward NWP 8’s ultra-cute 1915 appearance forward to the 20’s.

Ok, I’m still not getting to my trains. I had this pre-painted 1:25 scale AMT 1962 Pontiac Catalina model that I had started and I needed to get it off my workbench. I had started it thinking “Prepainted, it will take no time to build.” Ugh.

The paint job provided was quite good but because all the parts were painted I had to use Crazyglue for all assembly. The model also has serious fit problems in the front end.

If you can’t make it perfect, what to do? Make it completely imperfect. I decided to weather the car as if it had severe flood damage and I came up with an extremely lazy way to do it. I dunked the whole car in diluted latex paint.

First I took a large plastic food storage container large enough to place the car inside.

Next I got my special “mud” latext paint and poured enough to cover the bottom about a quarter inch deep. This color is basically Olive Drab.

I filled up the container with water up to the level I wanted the car submerged and stirred up the diluted paint with a stick.

Each evening over the next week I’d scoop up some of the “muddy water” and baste the car, wetting it completely. At the end of the week I pulled the car out and let it dry.

While building Ark Number 4 for the Tiburon Railroad-Ferry Depot Museum I needed to make a weathered wood shingle roof.

Here’s the recipe I came up with.

• Apply Campbell Shingles or other paper/wood shingle material
• Ink-alchohol wash lightly
• Dry brush Tamiya XF-66 LIGHT GREY
• Dry brush Tamiya XF-23 LIGHT BLUE, followed immediately by more ink-alchohol
• Very lightly dry brush Tamiya XF-21 SKY
• Highlight with china white pencil
• Seal with Dullcote
• Add more highligts with ink-alchohol and very small brush

Hindsight: airbrushing a control color to tone down the contrast would have made the effect a bit better.

The final result on the model:

Sketching is a really important part of model building and design. Some of my best ideas come to me while killing time in meetings or classes that are not keeping or needing my attention. Sad but true.

This is a boat I sketched for a modeling idea about a small river steamer. I have a 16” hull under construction and this is definitely my favorite superstructure outline yet. I’ll use 1:35 scale and take advantage of all the military miniatures details available.

This design is somewhat inspired by the MARIN.

A very long seminar was a good place to do some drawings of my waterfront town of Tiburbon. Here is a rough idea about the ferryboat loading trestle.

This drawing is hard to read but if you compare to the real location on the layout:

An early drawing of Crazy Horse Canyon bridge.

This bridge and canyon has been worrying me but this initial sketch let me establish how things would look. I made a more detailed drawing in this post and determined I would only need three full towers instead of the four shown above.

I changed the shape of the mountain significantly to be more like the planning model.

Sometimes I do a full-on high quality drawing like this one of an NWP picnic car based on a photo.

The final drawing ends up a composite of the pencil drawing and digital drawing since I continue the finer detailing on my computer using a Wacom stylus pad.

This is an idea of a typical building in Tiburbon. Since there is almost no dry land beyond the roadway the buildings will all be built over the water.

As I left off last time I had decided to buy a Walthers 90’ turntable instead of scratchbuilding.

Placing it into the rough cut 11” hole I had already cut, it was clearly going to need a bigger (and more perfectly circular!) hole.

The Walther’s turntable needs a 12-1/2” diameter hole. On my trackplan I superimposed that size hole where I had the smaller hole and it was a tight fit, but it did fit.

It is a good idea to read the instructions: closer reading reveals that the turntable needs a 12-5/8” hole. As usual – everything ends up taking a bit more space than you initially plan.

First I needed to draw a really accurate circle on the plywood. Normally this is no big deal but there’s a hole in the plywood where the center needs to be so I clamp a piece of ¼” plywood over the hole from below.

Next I need to mark the center of the circle. The approach tracks to the turntable are already laid out and their centerlines should cross exactly at the center of the circle. Using a flexible clear plastic ruler I draw lines out and where they cross will be the center of the new enlarged hole.

Drawing the first line.

Drawing the second line. Where it crosses the first is the center for the new hole.

From the center just marked I use an inexpensive compass and a sharp pencil set for a 6-5/16” radius to gently mark out the new circle’s outline. This kind of compass works fine as long as you use very little force.

Drill a starter hole for the saber saw.

Cut the hole

Somehow I forgot to take any photos of this step. Maybe it was because I was holding the saw with both hands!

Anyway, I carefully cut the hole with a new blade in the saber saw and with a little bit of shaving the new hole works great.

The edge of my plywood base for the yard area is now dangerously close to the edge of the turntable so I immediately add some pine 1×3 facing boards and use a cargo strap to hold them while I glue and screw them in place.

The plastic lip of the turntable is exactly the same thickness as the ties under my track. Since my track is riding on cork roadbed I need to raise the turntable to match the track height. The easy way to do this is to run a ring of roadbed around the turntable hole to use it as a riser. Then I just cut away the bevel where the approach tracks come in.

I still have to actually assemble the turntable but I’m moving on to laying the track first.

The Tiburon Railroad-Ferry Depot Museum is building an HO scale model of the Tiburon railroad yard of the Northwestern Pacific Railroad as it was in 1909. After several meetings with the the permanent staff I was informally commissioned to build some of the structures starting with “Ark Number 4.”

“Arks” are local (Marin county, California) slang for what were more commonly known around the country as “shanty boats.” Around the 1880’s and 90’s it became very popular to vacation in home-made houseboats around the San Francisco Bay. Known locally as “arks,” these houseboats, every one unique, once numbered in the hundreds. None survive afloat but many were hauled up on land to serve as housing for railroad and other local workers looking for low cost “funky” housing. I plan on having many of these Arks in and around my 1920’s Tiburbon.

In 1909 several arks lined the Bay shore along the approach to the Tiburon yard. My sole source of data for this building were enlargements of this photo from an old post card:

After estimating dimensions from the photo and negotiating with the museum staff how the two sides you can’t see might have looked, I proceeded to build my model. Museum requirements were to use materials compatible with at least a 50 year lifespan. Styrene is prohibited for any use but small details. White metal castings are also prohibited. In some ways this meant going back to techniques popular in the 1960’s: Strathmore, acid-free paper, wood, white glue.

A drawing I made before construction.

I’ve been dabbling at model building (cars, trains, planes, ships) since my pre-teen years and while I have 30 years or so of experience this was my first stab at really scratchbuilding. Fortunately, I have been an avid reader of Model Railroader and the Narrow Gauge & Short Line Gazette and I drew heavily on all those articles and pictures to help me build this model.

The scale is 1:87 HO. Overall dimensions are 33′ x 16′ not counting the not-so-out-outhouse. Roof is Campbell shingles on a solid wood core. Walls are hand-scribed Strathmore on a basswood core. Windows are real (damn thin) glass. Floor is board-by-board scale 1×4s.