Maintenance of Way

We took the VIA to Toronto last weekend, and as we pulled out of Coburg I caught sight of this MOW equipment in the yard:

My wife managed to snap a pic of the head end as we went by, and you can't see that further back on the string is a big back-hoe thing, and a control cab at the far end. But a little Googling finds the Herzog corporate site, and a page on the Multi-Purpose Machine, including a video of it in operation (and if you linger on the page long enough, an MPM drives by in the top banner). The cars look like modified well cars, and the "back-hoe" can drive up and down the length of the train.

It just so happens that, a few months back, I built this little cast-metal kit from Railway Express Miniatures (paint job courtesy my dear wife):


Sort of an earlier iteration of the same idea. Very cool to see a prototype.

Hey, I can do this!

....Build turnouts, that is (even in N-Scale).

I used a Fast Tracks jig, along with their Quick Sticks laser cut ties, and following the procedure in their User Guides. Not bad at all for my first attempt, if I say so myself. A 24' hopper rolls through as smooth as silk!

Things I screwed up or can do better next time:

1. Foil cuts: I neglected to cut the copper inside the frog angle on the last long tie. Since this turnout is to be used in a static diorama, it doesn't matter -- just something to remember in the future.
2. Filing the base flange off the stock rail in the point-contact area: It's damned hard to hold the rail still with your fingers while filing it! As a result, the end product isn't very neat and smooth. After I was finished, I experimented with building a jig to help, and came up with this. It's made by running a scrap of hardwood through the table saw, to cut a shallow groove that holds the rail rigid, lying on its side. It works not too badly, though I have already thought of an improved version.
3. Forming the curved stock rail: Through not reading the UG carefully as I was working, I neglected to kink the rail at the start of the point area. I think that because of this, the curve of this rail isn't quite right -- it doesn't hug the outer edge of the groove in the fixture (again, not critical for a static display).
4. Curving rails in general: Both the curved stock rail and closure rail seem to have acquired a small twist or vertical curve to them in the course of bending. As a result the rail didn't sit flat in the fixture groove, so I had a little trouble soldering it, and the final turnout doesn't sit quite flat on the bench. Gluing it down well will straighten it out, but it would be better to prevent the problem in the first place. (How? Must ponder upon it....)
5. Soldering the switchpoints: I managed to solder the throwbar to the stock rails by placing the paper isolator in the wrong place. It goes between the throw bar and the stock rail, not the point and the stock rail!
6. Gluing to ties: Be very careful not to drip glue on the switchpoints, or the adjacent area of stock rail. It says that in the UG, but it deserves repeating. Oh yeah: did I mention about not getting glue on the switchpoints? Or the adjacent stock rail?
7. Rail length: Through not using the Quicksticks as a reference when cutting, I wound up with the rails a little short at one end, and hanging out at the other. Nothing that can't be fixed later, of course.
   

But the end result is very pretty. I estimate that, balancing the cost of the jig and material against buying off-the-shelf, the break-even point is about 17 turnouts (not that cost is the only reason to hand-lay).

Now all I have to do is get started on the big layout and I'll have a reason to build 30 or 40 more....

Ore Docks! Mini-quads!

I'd read about ore docks in Model Railroader (see MR November 1992 for a spectacular HO model), but for some reason assumed that, like so many other rail modelling subjects, they were things of the past, now all disused and torn down.

On this trip, I discovered I was wrong. Around Lake Superior, there are several ore docks still standing, and even a few (such as this one in Two Harbors) still in use:
(I apologize for the low contrast; the sun was at a bad angle for photographing the accessible side of the dock).

It's a simple concept: push a string of hoppers up the dock and dump the ore into bins below the track. Later when the lake boat comes in, lower the chutes and fill the hold. Here's a couple of close-ups of Missabe Road (now CN) hoppers up on the dock:





About those hoppers: that's another thing I had thought was gone -- 70 tons? Hasn't everyone gone to 100 tons by now? And aren't they older than the regulatory maximum life of rail cars? Apparently not, as there are plenty in the Two Harbors yard. (I also picked up an informative book from the museum in Duluth: Michigan-Ontario Iron Ore Railroads, by Patrick C. Dorin, which gives the state of the industry as it was in 2002 -- according to Dorin, some lines are still running 55-ton cars).

Now as it happens, I have a fondness for these 70-ton hoppers: Atlas makes a nice one in N-scale, in a variety of road names, which can be readily found at hobby shops and train shows -- often at prices under $10 (a definite advantage when you're trying to put together a respectably long unit train!) As a result, without really trying I seem to have accumulated a fleet of about 75 of these things (now all I need is a proper layout to run them on...but that's another story). So this Two Harbors jaunt was sort of Hopper Heaven for me. In addition, they had some of these:

Look carefully, and you'll see orange stripes up the corners of the end car, and on the fourth and fifth cars along. These mark the ends of one "mini-quad" - four hoppers permanently joined together by draw-bars. The DM&IR converted much of their fleet to this configuration in the 1970's, to reduce the number of failure points in an ore train (see MR February 1976, pp. 56&ff). They also added height extensions, as the newer taconite pellets are less dense than the raw iron ore originally carried. Also in the February 1976 MR is an article describing the modifications to off-the-shelf hoppers to bring them closer to this prototype. I decided to try this with a few of my DM&IR hoppers.

First, I needed to fabricate the draw-bars. The MR article scratch-built theirs out of styrene. However, someone at a train show gave me a better idea: every N-scale modeller has about a zillion discarded rapido-style couplers (at least, the ones who have converted to knuckle-couplers do). These things have a T-shaped end that nests in the coupler pocket. By cutting off the big square hook, and doing a little trimming and shaping, you can fabricate the other end into a similar "T". It goes like this:

The patient is ready for surgery:


A bit of work with cutters and a chisel-blade, and we have a candidate draw-bar:

Man-handle that back into the coupler pockets of two wheel-sets:

Repeat thrice, and we have a mini-quad:

Here it is, ready to haul ore:
(OK, I haven't added the extensions or the orange corner stripes. Yet. But even as it stands, it saves a lot of time coupling up the train!)

And here's a guy who's gone the whole way -- quads with extensions and an ore dock (scroll to the bottom -- it's worth it!):

http://www.grvs.com/missabe/nscale/index.htm
http://www.grvs.com/missabe/nscale/atlas_taconite1.jpg
http://www.grvs.com/missabe/nscale/Layout/dc_2.jpg