Michigan Interstate St. Clair Sub.

Friday, June 3, 2016

Early June Update

June is here and with it comes some fantastic scenery completion along Grays Siding between Gerhard and Grays Lake. This post we will take a look at scenery progress, CWE shoutout, and look at future posts planned.

SCENERY PROGRESS

Over the weekend I jumped right into thick of the scenery process. For some time this scene has bee developing, but until I had the ballast down I did not want to start the "green" scenic process. In my last post we discussed the gluing in ballast and the base layer of dirt. Now it was time to add static grass mats, tufts, and flock-turf materials.

The north side of the tracks really sprouted to life!

Like all good projects I needed the right materials. In this case whitr glue, floxk-turf, various coarse turfs, pipette, isopropyl alcohol, and reference photos.

Material staging at Gerhard

Google street view reference photos of the area of Michigan I am representing.

While flock-turf from Scenic Express was used, other materials were used to help bring out the texture. Heki 1573 WildGrass was used as the primary static type grass. For more info on using this material I recommend viewing Thomas Klimoski's video on his Youtube Channel. He walks through step by step using this material to cover a hillside on his HO scale Georgia Northeastern. Search "Thomas Klimoski" it should come right up.

So over three nights the ballast, groundcover, and grasses were added. The area between the corn field and high overpass embankment will need to be filled in with SuperTrees which I plan to make this weekend. Enjoy a few more pictures, my goal is to have this scene mostly 95% complete by the NMRA Lone Star Region Convention.

Rough fitting the highway overpass in. I picked up Plastruct components at Angelos Hobbies yesterday so this scene will be next to complete.

Ballast work complete in the curve. The local siding (closest) is less groomed than the concrete tie main and passing siding. The embankment between corn field and right of way will receive WildGRASS and flock-turf tonight.

Overall view looking east - the results were exactly what I was hoping to achieve.

Closeup of highway embankment showing the scenic texture added.

CWE SHOUTOUT

Wanted to congratulate Tom Patterson on being published in this months RMC. Not only was he published in, but he railroad is featured on the cover.

Cover preview - article is fantastic

While I have not met Tom personally we do support each other's Blogs with links that you will find on our pages. Helping establish our railroad franchises both in the 70s (CWE) and 2016 (MCIS) one of my customers (Michigan Sugar) at Upper Huron recieves coke from Follansbee, WV which is served by the modern day CWE and WLE. Could there be a MCIS predecessor railroad car on the CWE someday....? Could be... Be sure to check out each or blogs often for updates.

CWE cars fresh from shop work on Virginia Midland before going back into revenue service.

CWE 125360 and 125379 on M-PHBA-28 heading through Upper Huron towards Bay Yard. Once switched to the L-BAPB they will be back to Upper Huron for spotting at Michigan Sugar.

FUTURE POST PLANNING

One exciting part of writing this blog beyond just providing monthly updates is creating content from reader suggestions. Between feedback from the blog and Facebook Freelance Model Railroad comments here are a few topics for future writing.

- HIWIDE Handling on the MCIS

- Consist Power Planning

- Layout Map / Diagram

- Engineers View of the St. Clair Sub

- Behind the Scenes (Benchwork, Lighting, Wiring, Control Systems)

- MCIS Predecessor Roads

These topics will keep me busy through the summer but if there is something you want to see or understand more about let me know via comments. The input by you the reader is important and greatly appreciated. Well this wraps up the Early June Update, ha great weekend!

Monday, May 23, 2016

Late May Update

Well it has been quite a few weeks since my last update post for your the reader. The month of May has been busy to say the least with items such as vacation, work travel, and being the parent of two children. After all it is a hobby, but in the last few weeks there have been a few happenings on the St. Clair Sub so let's take a look.

Trains and Walt Disney World

I have talked about Walt Disney and Walt Disney World numerous times on this blog, but it would be wrong to not show a photo or two from our trip there. There are more items to do with trains than most folks would expect.

Main Street USA station at The Magic Kingdom.

Train approaching Main Street station.

Neat artwork recently added to the queue on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at The Magic Kingdom.

Photos above and below of the large LGB garden railroad at the Germany Pavilion at Epcot. Intersting fact: This layout was originally intended to be temporary, but garnered so much interest that it has become a permanent exhibit.

Sound Decoder Installs

The month of May saw me complete decoder installs into three Intermountain ES44 engines. When it comes to installs the engine can be a hit or miss on the ease to add a sound decoder / speaker, luckily the Intermountain engines are dead on for making a simple, efficient, and effective install. For the ES44s I used the specific Soundtraxx IM-1000 GEVO sound decoder which is a direct designed replacement of the factory board. Two of the engines required lengthening the motor wires since they were produced post Soundtraxx-Intermountain partnership, but that was not a big deal compared to a full hard wire. Speaker wise I used the Railmaster 28mm on two engines and the TCS 28mm speaker for the third. Intermountain hit the mark on these installing a speaker baffle / housing in the radiators which made speaker install go very smooth. Both speakers have great sound and when partnered with the Seven band equalizer on the Tsunami, the results were fantastic. It is a good time to be in the hobby, quality choices available to us modelers are endless. You may be asking... GEVO, but the MCIS is all EMD. You are correct, the motors completed were a BNSF and UP for a good friend and the third was a CN motor which roams the St. Clair Sub on the CN overhead trains. Included are a few photos post install. One day I will get my Youtube channel where it needs to be showcasing the great sound results from the install.

BNSF 5803 leading M-BAPH-18. After work complete at Mac Rail, the motors were tested out and back from Port Huron.

Heading east out of Bay Yard

Operating via passing track at Grays siding while a business car train holds down the main with a customers appreciation trip.

With the IM-1000 decoder being directly compatible with original board, I was able to program ditch lights to flash with grade crossing logic when the horn is used. The ease of JMRI DecoderPro making all of the programming work graphical on a screen is one of the best enhancements to DCC in my opinion.

Soundtraxx Announcement

Being a fan of Soundtraxx Tsunami and Econami products, I am very excited about the Tsunami2 announcement coming out in two days. Be sure to checkout Soundtraxxs website and Facebook page on May 25th.

Grays Lake (Grays Siding) Scenery

After beginning the scenery and ballastinf process at Grays Siding we are now really seeing results. With corn field and soybean fields are installed and complete, we could now begin the gluing process for the terrain and track. Over the weekend around five square feet of layout was glued down. This process included the base dirt layer and ballast for the mainline, passing siding, and local siding. While i use white glue and a white glue / water mix on scenery, I prefer Scenic Cement for the ballast due to the consistency and pre-mixed nature. While there is a cost, the time savings is appreciated when working in 45-60 work sessions.

Ballast complete from the bridge through curve. Ready to glue.

That's not rain, it's isopropyl alcohol wetting the scene prior to scenic cement.

The gluing begins with pipette from back to front. The home made dirt mixture and real ballast colors come to life when they are wet down.

Tools of the trade - bowls for the alcohol, cement, and water to rinse the pipette.

Moving right along with the work - you can see a good saturation with the scenic cement showing through the granules. Real dirt and ballast are very easy to work with and don't float.

Complete and not complete

Overall work scene completed in a 45 minutes session. Figure this week another 1.5-2 hours will be needed to complete the initial scenery securement.

With everything dry, the roadmaster drives along reviewing the work complete. There a few areas that will require ballast touch up but that happens.

With ballast and initial scenic layer installed, we will be moving into the more lush materials next week to bring this area to life tying the railroad, crops, and overall mid-Michigan scenery together.

Thanks for stopping by!