As a follow up to a recent posting concerning refrigerated box cars and while waiting for some doors from doctorwayne,I deceided to experiment. I picked up a couple of 10' plug doors from LHS. Following some directions from doctorwayne,I enlarged the opening and removed upper and lower rail guides. I looked real close at the door and could not see anything molded on the door that looked it would fit into a rail for sliding the door. What I did see was what looked the same kind of door locking that are used on tractor-trailers.So Once I got the door down to size,I fitted it into the opening. I then started to install hinges which you can see in the upper left door.
I like the way this is looking and will probably do the same on the actual car.
I know the photo quality is not that good but I was more interested in showing the door than anything else.
Comments on the door installation would be appreciate.
Bob

Hi Folks,

it is a long time since I have been active at this forum. Now this is a try to get back into my good old model RR forums again. I have been off line almost all of the year 2009 - and what a lousy year this has been for me - apart from one single positive happening!

First of all let me say a cordial "thank you" to all of my friends who thought of me and sent me PMs or congratulations to my birthday. And at the same time I apologize that I haven't even been able to send them an answer. I just couldn't get enough energy together to thank you all!

Let me explain.

Until 2007 I loved to do long hiking tours in the Swiss Alps, but then my right hip started to hurt more and more. In the Spring 2008 it became so painful that through this year I couldn't do one single hike. I tried some physical therapy, but it didn't help at all. So I had to face surgery to replace my hip joint. This was planned for early 2009. So far, so good. (At that time I still was quite active here...)

In mid-January there happened the only really good thing in this year 2009 - we got our first granddaughter. Now this was really great, and the little girl was a sunshine from the start - and she still is! But our daughter had massive problems after birth - so my wife and I were quite busy with traveling back and forth (some 150 miles distance), helping in their household...

And as it turned out, this stress was a bit too much for me. In Spring I was next having problems, suffering a heavy heart attack, necessitating some heart surgery, followed by a three month rehabilitation program. Because I now have to swallow blood-thinning meds, the hip operation had to be cancelled. Walking became more and more painful, so I even had to leave out a part of my rehabilitation program, which didn't help either. Live quality decreased and decreased for me. And being a bit the type of the Lone Wolf, I retreated into my snail shell, cut my contacts to my surroundings.

To top it off, in July my heart acted up again - another heart artery suddenly was closed for 97%! A balloon dilatation did the trick (for how long???), but now the hip operation is postponed again, at least until next Autumn. No wonder I started getting depressions. These negative feelings were even strengthened, when a very close friend, same age like me (66), died unexpectedly - he simply didn't wake up in the morning! I sat around, brooding, having no wish or courage to do something at all. From time to time I visited 'my' forums in the internet, but I never found the energy to join a discussion, let alone doing something on my railroad and showing it off to the others.

Then I had the luck to meet one of my former students who is a psychiatrist now. We started a conversation, and for him it was quite obvious that I had serious problems. To make the story short: He managed to show me new perspectives, and he succeeded to pull me out of my depressions. I'm still not really happy with the situation, but at least I found new courage to analyze my problems and to make the best out of them. Now I try to find my way back to the 'normal' life I used to lived before 2009.

But back to model railroads: I simply have to redo my layout, because I can't work under the benchwork or up near the ceiling any longer. I'll have to do construction work without physical stress (i.e. simply standing, without much stooping or climbing...) Even better will be sitting work at the table - build structures, cars etc. So I started planning a new, much simpler layout with everything in easy reaching distance. And finally I found again the intention and the courage to 'join the crowd', to learn from you and perhaps even to report a trick or two to you guys and gals.

So I sincerely hope that once more I'll be able to throw in my 2 cents worth to different threads in this forum.

Ron

( PS: I posted the same letter in several forums. So if you see this for the second time, please excuse me for not composing several different texts saying basically the same. )

Hello everyone. New member here and really enjoy the site. I finally was able to retire back in October so now have plenty of time to start working on the model railroads again. Among other things, I'm a former railroad employee having worked on the following railroads: Conductor, Frankfort & Cincinnati Railroad; Agent/Operator, Louisville & Nashville Railroad and General Freight Agent, TransKentucky Transportation Railroad. Railroad career ended in 1984, when the Frankfort & Cincinnati (FCIN) folded.

My primary interest is in short line railroads (the shorter the better) and industrial type switching operations, so I've been following doctorwayne's NW 58th Street layout construction thread with great interest. Between doctorwaynes's excellent work and that of Lance Mindheim - I've really been fired up to start doing some modeling again. Will never have anything to match their work, but the inspiration and desire sure is there.

If anyone is interested in modeling the bourbon whiskey business - feel free to contact me. I spent many a cold night switching cars at the distilleries along the F&C!

Regards,
Ed

Hey all,

I found another iPhone / iTouch app that is model-railroad focused. ModelSpeed is a very simple app that simply calculates scale speed over a given distance. Should be handy for speed matching locomotives. More detail here:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/modelspeed/id317775289?mt=8">http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/modelspe ... 75289?mt=8</a><!-- m -->

One year ago, I saw no reason, whatsoever, for devices like the iPhone. Too set in my ways apparently. I have to admit, I'm reformed and am absolutely tickled with what this device can do, and even more so, tickled that there are so many developers out there creating cool stuff for this device. I now have three apps that I bought for Model Railroading:

WiThrottle (I have a post in the DCC section on this)
Clinometer - basically a level that. I've mounted it on a flatcar to document spot gradients.
And now this - probably the least useful, but handy nonetheless.

Take care.

This is interesting:

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For those that have an iPhone or iTouch, this makes for an extraordinarily inexpensive wireless throttle. The cool thing is that your DCC system doesn't need to be wireless for this to work - it communicates with your system via a home wireless network and JMRI.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0ZgoEpz_kY">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0ZgoEpz_kY</a><!-- m -->

Requirements:
- Home wireless network (wireless router)
- JMRI (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://jmri.org/">http://jmri.org/</a><!-- m -->) running on a computer that's connected to your DCC system and to your home network.
- A DCC system that you computer can interface with (NCE, Digitrax, others)
- A wifi-capable device with an app that will function as a throttle (only the apple products so far, and as far as I know)

Once everything is set up, anyone with an iPhone or iTouch (or presumbably other smart phones in the future) can download the free app and have a throttle to use on your layout.

I've downloaded the app to my phone, and the interface is very smooth. I've just torn down my layout so haven't yet had a chance to try it out controlling trains, yet.

Was apparently the number of nails required to keep track from flying off my layout. Emphasis on "was" as the layout is no more. I also de-screwed 255 Wood screws and unjoined 130 rail joiners. I ran trains to the very end - I had a work train to haul track nails and joiners. I'll miss the thing - my son's 5th birthday inspired the around the wall track plan (expanding from a 4x8) and he's now a freshman in college!

The layout *was* U shaped, about 14' long on one wall, 7' on the opposite and spanning the 11' end wall. The space that the layout resided in went from this:


To this - decorating credit goes to my daughter and wife.


The entire tear down (as well as some ancient film-camera build up pictures) can be found here:
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There will be a new layout on the opposite end of the basement, with some spill over to the neighboring room (opposite side of the bearing wall in the picture below). More on that later, because I'm going to need planning help!

Need some guidance on this issue fellas. If you have two adjacent tracks and you place a crossover, fed from two insul frog turnouts, between the adjacent tracks, does this create a reverse crossover? If so, how do you eliminate the polarity issue? Where do you place the insulated joiners, if even necessary? I have at least eight of these crossover track situations on the new area (some a longish some and are very short). After laying a bunch of track on the industrial expansion of my layout, it just dawned on me I might have created a problem! However, the trains seem to run through these crossovers without complaint! Comments please. Thanks
Eric

Here's an overhead shot of the 12" X 24" modular layout we set up at the Charlestowne Mall this past weekend:
   
This is an overhead shot of my three modules:
   
and this shot is looking east, as the 2-6-6-2T approaches the bridge over "Shamus run":
   

I hope I will not have enough time to finish a 3rd challenge car before the end of the contest, but I am still unemployed and have tons of free time to use. So, I might as well get started on another project . (My hope is that I find a job soon so that I don't have time to finish )

Anywho, these are two model power coaches I bought a while back. They really are quite nice coaches for their price, and would look good as an 1880s coach being pulled by a 4-4-0 or 2-6-0. But, they are too short to look good with my other passenger cars and too wide to convert easily to narrow gauge. Since I have no use for them within my current plans, I will try bashing the two together to create a longer car. I found plans for a narrow vestibule coach in an old issue of model railroader, and these cars would make a decent starting point.

The prototype car is about 58 feet, and the model cars are about 48 feet. That means I need to combine the two cars together to get the extra ten feet. The cars are also only 9' wide, whereas most passenger cars in my era were at least 10' wide. My MDC passenger cars scale out to 10'6" wide, and the Model Railroader drawing of the narrow vestibule car is 9'10" wide. I won't make any attempt to widen the car - i will live with that slight discrepancy. I will pretend this is a car built around 1890 and purchased secondhand.

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Not strictly train related, but this site may be useful for those modeling the automobile age.

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