Moving Mountains

Down the south hill end, a bit of solid hillside has sprung up. 

While doing this, a couple of small areas were also adjusted.

In looking at real pictures taken from The Command Post on the third level of track, it seems that the uphill portal of the Meinkreutz (I'm sure I've spelt that incorrectly, but it's the obvious bit of landscaping visible at the right side of these two pictures) is a rockface bore rather than a stone-faced portal. 

So I've trimmed that back per the prototype and as a bonus have gained an extra inch of visible trackage up there. 

Additional visible running has been realised on the middle level, where I've pushed back the tunnel/gallerie entrance to gain another three or four inches in the process.

If I keep going at this rate I'll soon have no hidden trackage left.

Re 4/4ii bogie swivel issues - Marklin Z 88951

As mentioned in my previous rant, I suspected bogie-swivel problems due to HOS cause the periodic Re 4/4 derailments I get around Wassen. And always have - since I started in Z scale a year or more ago.

Somewhat pleasingly, and more surprisingly, I've been able to cure the swivel/sticking and derailments in one foul swoop. And it's not HOS after all!

But Marklin isn't off the hook just yet.........


To back up, there have always been half a dozen spots where there have been occasional derailments with my SBB red Re 4/4s. Most of my early videos end exactly where they do because in the next frame an engine derails followed by me swearing.

I had begun to accept that tolerances in Z were so tight and the locos just not flexible enough to rollercoaster over my badly laid track (from three manufacturers) on its undulating (and flexing!) foamboard substructure. I feared a future of constantly tweaking track and turnouts with a growing fleet of blacklisted locos and wagons.


A few nights ago you may recall that my suspicions as to a possible cause of these derailments were aroused by the discovery that the bogies on some of my 4/4s get 'stuck' in the metal chassis while swivelling around curves.

My hypotheses was that depending on how the loco was tracking at a particular moment (whether pulling a load uphill or not, whether being pushed or pulled at that moment by a loco in front or behind, whether running fast or slow) a bogie might just 'stick' in a tight curve.

This stuck bogie - not being able to swivel further or back into line - might derail the loco immediately, BUT, it might also merely pop one wheel off the rails which will ride along outside the rail in that stuck position for a while until it was forced off by the next turnout or curve. I've observed that 'riding outside' on the layout before, but always assumed it was all due to my bad trackwork.

I seem to have proven that the stickiness was actually the cause of all of this by eliminating it - the fix was stumbled upon while poking and prodding around inside a disassembled loco - initially to see if the pins that hold the bogie in were sticking due to machining errors or HOS.

The breakthrough discovery was that the 'sticking' only happens when the bogies are twisted towards the end of their travel when swivelled clockwise (as viewed from below).

(or counter-clockwise if viewed from above).  They don't stick when swivelled to the extremes in the other direction.

After some disassembly (I pulled the pin out) - it turned out that the sticking happens whether the pin is in or out, so that pin is clearly not the problem.

 Hmmmm...



After some further examination, it appeared - to the imps in my head - that there was either some wear, or perhaps a slight design/casting glitch in a small off-centerline area on the main plastic bogie casting towards its top - the big round plug that mates into the hole in the main metal chassis frame - the two areas circled below - note they are off-centreline:

This is at both ends of the bogie frame (about 10:30 and 4:30 positions - if the coupler is held at 12:00 or 06:00 seen from above)

This glitch reminded me of flash on a mold join, but it didn't look like that at all. But something just looked a little suspect to my eyes.

I decided there was nothing to lose by trimming a sliver of plastic off that imaginary ridge, and making sure I cut in at the bottom to remove it completely - so there isn't any semi-attached material remaining that could bind in gears later. Be especially careful not to cut or bend the thin brass electrical pickups.

After reassembly, I couldn't believe it... the bogie swivelled freely in both directions!!!

I performed surgery on the other bogie, and then on the four bogies on the other two sticking locos. Magic!

Tonight, for the first time, I was able to run my passenger train, behind two Re 4/4s endlessly around Wassen - up and down for about fifteen minutes - with not a single derailment.

What a great feeling!

There is nothing more frustrating than playing model trains with model trains that don't work well. And what a relief that this somewhat expensive experiment in Z scale hasn't turned into a gigantic white elephant.

Speedy Gonzales

Footnote: as stated a few days ago, I have had these derailments due to swivel-sticking issues with three out of five Re 4/4ii locos. I have four SBB red ones (Marklin 88591) and one blue SBB Cargo model (88592). I don't know if all the stuck ones were red as I may have swapped bodies across chassis. I may have just gotten a bad batch. I have never seen a green 4/4 (88590).

I assume that these plastic bogie parts and metal main chassis castings are shared amongst many, many other Marklin 'short' electric and diesel locos; with prototype-specific cosmetic bogie sideframes and tops. It would be interesting to see if this is an isolated issue or common across the many Marklin models that presumably share these parts.

Prefab scenery - 2

After my portable hill's paint had dried, grassy material was attached to the steep sides with it laid out flat and a box underneath to catch glue dribbles.

After that, it was stood up and grass added to the tops of the hill. As always I'm dribbling on isopropyl alcohol (the cleaning/medical kind, not the drinking kind) as the wetting agent and following up with diluted PVA white glue.

The hill was then laid down on its side again for some forestry work:

Trees and scrubby bushes were planted. In the above shot, the trees are being encouraged to set 'straight' with some props.

Ideally, I'd have liked more pines/spruces/whatever-they-are here, but elected to spend seven pines of my collection here, and filled in the rest of the space with various ground foam, fine leaf foliage and even old rubberised clusters collected over many years.

As I always say: variety in size, colour and texture really helps while scenicing.

The prominent bank of grass on the real thing is visible to the right here, and other misc items large and small have been planted along the track and in the boring bits to make things look interesting. The hill was propped up at 45 degrees to make this easier to see without bushes rolling down the slopes.

Again, it's all rather easy when you are focusing on a small section right in front of your face that can be flipped to any angle that suits you.

Then it was time to plug the hill into place for a look. Could be worse.

Prefab scenery is a winner, with being able to comfortably focus on a small section being only one of its advantages.

In hindsight, it would have been best to do all my 'prominent' scenery that's hard to get at in this way (if it wasn't needed to be in place as a structural/stiffening element as my bigger hills are) and it's going to be hard to go back to working on those big hills, the village, and the tight Meienreuss valley with its bridges.

If (when!) I ever have serious issues with my hidden trackage (spirals, or yard), it certainly would have been far easier to detach one of these lightly-glued-in prefab sections rather than hacking into the permanent scenery with a saw. Even small hatches that could be cut out...

Prefab scenery - 1

When we were kids at school in New Zealand, most schools had 'prefab' (prefabricated) classrooms to compliment the larger, well-built wings of school rooms. Prefabs were kitset standalone classrooms built (or partially built) offsite and trucked in, ready to go in times of need....

One of the issues with the Wassen layout is that it is quite deep - so it's hard to work on the top level from the 'viewing' side without a considerable stretch.

Also, because Switzerland is quite '3D' in nature, I often find myself planting grass and scenery on near-vertical hillsides, which offers a challenge to get trees to stand vertical, and to attach scenic items with diluted PVA glue without it all rolling down the hill and settling in a puddle on your nice track at the bottom.

So the idea of a prefab section is being tried here.

Basically I pinned down a foamboard 'floor' (flat, white, snakey thing beside the tracks) :

A 'back wall' for my prefab hill was cut from another scrap of foamboard and suspended in space, being pinned to the piece of backscene that had sprung up recently at left and to a bit of scenery at right. Ribs made of the same material were roughly cut out and applied. After this, it was time to sit back and watch the glue set.

Next morning, the pins could be removed, which allowed the skeleton to be removed, and card webbing glued on with a hot-glue gun.

Diluted PVA-soaked paper was applied to the top in a glueshell (much easier being able to do this with the portable piece laying down flat or being held vertically as needed):

Now with convenient carry handle.

This was then painted dark green as usual. Let the scenicking begin!

Dropping ballast

These posts are all a bit out of order, but you'll be pleased to know that by now, The Command Post section of the top level has been ballasted.

And a tidy job I made of it, although the ballast used may have been coarser than the stuff used down the bottom level for unknown reasons. Not sure if I'm out of the finer stuff or not. At least it's the same colour.

Wet

I spent perhaps 90 minutes laying the ballast out and maneuvering each stone with a brush, managing to ping only a few grains down the hill (thanks to a portable piece of cardboard used as a dam) and those were all retrieved with the tip of a moistened finger and mustered back into place.

It would have been good to install the catenary masts first, but I don't have any more tiny brass H section, so may have to order that from overseas, unless I cheapen out and go with square section rod which probably easier to find. Brass is so much better than plastic because you can bend it to the vertical more precisely, and it's very hard to avoid the poles while cleaning the track, so having something solid to bump into is good. And if they ever get a really hard knock from a passing hammer, they should bend back to attention.

In their absence,  little card squares mark where the masts will go, such that ballast could be kept off them.

Then a gentle drop-by-drop of isopropyl alcohol from a pipette to wet-water the area, followed by the same with PVA and all was done.

...and dry the next morn.

Tidy.

As they say on Gavin and Stacey.

Ranting and raving: Marklin

OK, so I sorted out my soldering, cleaned the tracks, got power up and ran a pair of my Marklin Re4/4s around the place to check that the new scenery hadn't impinged upon the right of way.

The good news: all the tracks work, the turnouts work, no real issues with scenery, the pair of locos didn't stutter or run slow....

But there were a few derailments of the trailing loco.

After a lot of fiddling, I traced this to the bogies on it not swiveling freely. If you swivel the bogies to the extremes it would have trouble getting to those last few degrees, and/or stick there in the extreme position. Thus when running into a tightening curve, the stiffness is forcing one wheelset from the sticking bogie off the track as it reaches that point of swivel. The same thing might happen when the loco bogie was trying to unwind itself back into a straight, but sticks.

I have five of these 4/4 locos: one doesn't seem to work at all (a nice surprise!), two have free-swivelers and three have at least one bogie that sticks (including the dead one). The two that swivel freely do run around the layout beautifully, and they seem quieter and smoother than the locos that have featured in previous videos.

Now here's the kicker - these 4/4s are all brand new locos, purchased within the last 18 months. Modellbau-wiki.de says these could be up to five years old, but still.

Marklin locos - hopefully this isn't their natural habitat - on the workbench.

-------------

1. HOS    So one of the reasons that the bogies could be sticking at the extremes is that the tolerances are bad between the bogie pin and the slots in the frame. Another likely culprit is 'hardened oil syndrome'. Marklin used to use an oil that cakes up into a very hard resiny substance which requires disassembly, an extremely thorough cleaning of all the parts, and lubrication with a light, plastic friendly oil.

Now, I have Kato/Atlas N scale engines that I've owned for almost thirty years which have never been disassembled or oiled and they still run like magic....

HOS has been a complaint of Z scalers for decades now - you see this mentioned a lot on forums and on second hand listings, but... why? Why? Apparently the newer locos use a new oil, but what sort of company would (surely knowingly) treat its customers like that for so long? What sort of customer base would accept such bullshit?  Marklin went to 5-pole motors at the turn of the century. Those crappy Athearn blue box locos had them in the 80s.


2. Is that really what the customers want? So I have four red Re 4/4s - with the same road number on the sides of course, because that's how Marklin rolls - and one that I picked up in blue 'Cargo' livery. This was part of a special edition box that came with a pewter-cast copy (non-running of course). The standard engines cost almost twice what an N scale item does in US street value. The special editions cost more. Who wants a pewter desk ornament? And who wants to pay extra for one?! Presumably we'll run through green, red and cream (with two pantos instead of one?) and then the special paint schemes will kick in like the Gotthardo... and red will never be seen again. So it is lucky I happened to get into Swiss SBB Z scale modeling when I did and the red ones were available, because it's possible they never will be again.

OK, I'm new to Z scale, but this is a(nother) thing that irks me about Marklin - once they get some wagon or carriage tooled, they seem to spend the next twenty or thirty years milking it with bizarre paint schemes for collectors, yet few people who actually build layouts would ever want.

As an example, as a new modeler to Z and the SBB, I'd like one of those nice red streamlined Re 460s for my passenger trains. It was produced my Marklin in red from 1996-99, so they're looong gone - and with the old three pole motors anyway. Since then, there have been twenty two 'advertising' editions (one was a red but with an unusual 'connecting Switzerland' logo) plus three blue BLS versions. That's 25 non-red editions!

Surely anyone who wants to model Swiss SBB rail would want a red one, but they are stuck with these special editions that you almost never see on trains in the real world, unless you plump for an HOS-infested 20 year old example. Why not make the commonplace available for purchase once in a while? DB's red class 185 (all over the Gotthard) hasn't been available in red in Z since 2008 and are as rare as hen's teeth.

All model railway manufacturers have gone to small runs, but at least Kato and Atlas re-run popular schemes with new numbers every few years. And they always begin by producing a few numbers for each model to start with. Fortunately, with my four identically numbered red 4/4s, the numbers are pretty hard to read in Z...

Same with passenger and freight stock. My SBB passenger car set that I repainted myself into the current white scheme, is made up of a nice SBB panorama car...  plus... repainted German models -  I assume, as the details don't match the real Swiss cars.

In the freight scene: Intermodal trains are probably the most popular type of freight train in Europe and in 2018, as I type this, you can't yet buy a bogie container car from Marklin. Thats crazy! They'd be sold out in no time. But hey, if you want a bizarre 18 axle torpedo ladle car, or weird loads on flatcars, or a million versions of banana cars, we're your guys!

That makes no sense to me. Don't they want to expand their market by attracting fresh blood into Z scale? Young people typically want to model modern image and run trains - to make in miniature what they see have seen with their own eyes, not model something from the equivalent of the Railroad Circus.

And why are the insides of a loco (under the shell) approx 40% metal, 40% plastic and 20% air? Surely they'd pull better with a bit more of the metallic stuff onboard...? And why can't you sell me spare-parts bogies for me to make my own wagons?!? Grrrrr.

3. Now that's a quality product. DB takes a deep breath and calms down a little...

To be fair, at least one of my 185 'Hoyer' locos which were transformed into BLS 485/6 locos was probably second hand, and they were produced in 2008, so that's a while ago, but they both look in identical condition - clean, no obvious marks or dirt on the wheels, no scratches on the shells...

After my success with the two swivelly 4/4s that ran around the layout so well, the BLS pair were put on the track as I wanted to check how much slower 'The Alpinist' was than the other.

'Connecting Europe' was reasonably quick, the Alpinist was really, really slow. Really, really slow and stuttery. After a few seconds there were a few flashes from under the shell and it moved off trailing a disconcerting amount of smoke... but then it was off. Almost to the speed of the other, and close enough to double-head for a few laps. But boy do they get warm - especially the smoker (must be the Italian half of Mr Alpinista). I'm guessing a stripdown and HOS eradication is in order.

But then, just for a laugh, I put on a new engine from Japanese newcomer Rokuhan.

Wow. Smooth as butter, silent, powerful. Wow. Eye opening really.

--------

Sure Marklin have been through some hard financial times, and sure they have to cater to many prototype countries/railways/eras, and sure there is easier money in repaints than tooling new prototypes, but surely Z is their differentiator?

They've owned the Z market for so many decades, but it's never been more than a simmering one - an afterthought in model railway history, and they have been ignoring it foolishly. Surely they should have been putting more effort into it than this?

Newcomer Rokuhan's clip-together track is the best you can buy, and their loco mechanisms seem so far ahead of Marklin.

AZL (and too-briefly SZL), and now Rokuhan have produced superb locos and rolling stock over the past five years.  Will the folks in Goppingen see the writing on the wall and buck up their ideas before it's too late?

Well maybe.

• My crippled 4/4 models are actually really nice (on the outside, except for those awful pantographs and couplers). 
• A surprisingly decent-looking range for 2018 has just been announced, including (get this!!) Marklin's first ever bogie container car in Z scale*: the 'sgs' with three 20-foot boxes on board (sgs is a designation I've never seen in real life, but having googled it, it does exist). 
• They have also just introduced a new 'maintenance free' (brushless?) motor.

Maybe things are looking up.

I hope so.


*update: it's not their first at all, it seems it's a reprint of the same car with different containers - the original was issued in 2003!

meanwhile, under the South Hill.

Now that some progress has been made on the northern hill of the layout, it's time to turn some attention to the southern end.

So a start was made with some backdrops - the same foamboard that has been for the whole layout.

An L-angle spine in the corner...

And some backdrop...

...and there it stops. 

It would have been nice to continue scenicking the hill, but, there's been something missing under it which needed to be sorted out. 

You see, the inner of the two storage tracks up at the upper-level 'station' was never completed because I ran out of track. The track was purchased about a year ago, but never installed, so now seems like as good a time as any. 

N scale cork underlay added to give the required height (as I'm using flex here as part of my messy mishmash of MicroTrains points, Rokuhan curves and Peco and Microtrains flex).

Track added!

It must be about time to see if this still runs. 

The Goat Shed

I assume Swiss walkers and landowners are a bit like the English when it comes to walking all over, and having people walking all over their property. After the trot down to Wattinger Curve, the second most walked-upon farm in Switzerland by trainspotters would have to be the one up to The Command Post.

A squillion railfans must have have walked up to the top of Wassen village, passed under the second level of track, turned left and climbed the well-trodden incline. Up past a pair of houses, through the short stand of trees, past the goat shed (gingerly, after being startled by the sudden movement inside and tinkling of goat-bells!) before climbing up the zig-zags to the third level.

So I'd better make a tiny representation of it too. This was quickly assembled around a square of foamboard using a slate roof and thin card marked with a fine marker pen.

 The little open lean-to at one end was modeled from a box of styrene with more slate on top.

After the above pic was taken, I even included the little vacuum sucker tube that lifts hay from the open bit to the top floor attic (visible on both prototype pics).

I mixed up some orange for the roof tiles, and then washed some thinned black on to that and to the sides. I also drew on some rudimentary details like doors in the hope that nobody will ever look too closely at it's homely approximation of straight-and-square architecture.

Obviously it's smaller than scale to encourage some forced perspective as we look into the scene so it looks tiny when viewed from the 'wrong side' as below:

 It looks a little better from the normal side:

Not bad for ten minutes of effort - it was painted and installed before the glue was dry.

As much as anything the building also a bit of an experiment in scaling. To make my 'Wassen on a Door" look larger and more immersive than it obviously is, the houses up here, and the buildings in the village need to be downscaled to make things fit in, and the scales will get smaller the further back into the scene. These will probably look fine until a Z scale train winds its way past them. Mr B.A. Bodil was onto something with several different scales in a scene...

Obere Entschigtal Galerie Portal

Right up the top left of Wassen, just uphill from the command post, lies the Obere Entschigtal Galerie. It looks like a tunnel, but a fair chunk of it is really a man-made tunnel to protect the tracks from avalanches so I believe they call such a structure a galerie rather than a tunnel. It's great being such a non-expert in these matters.

Before starting, I painted the tracks on the upper level. I may have implied that the rails were painted about 18 months ago, but that was just the lower level that was being scenicked at the time. And not all the lower level at that...

It's a royal pain in the buttocks because the rails are skinny, it takes a long time, and on this layout you have four rails to do rather than two.

As I noted in the previously-posted post (which was actually written after this one), I wonder if I should have painted the rails a much darker brown, almost black even. This might have made them seem less chunky.

The portal itself was cut from slate roofing styrene - as Wattinger had been earlier - and washed with some brown, light grey, and black. It don't look too good in this cruel picture (but looks a little better the next day after everything had dried):

A tail piece was installed 'inside' the portal to represent the lining and painted to match, fading to black.

 A few clearance tests encouraged me to raise it on stilts a little to provide room for pantographs.

Command Post Culvert

Up at the Command Post, there's a fairly well-known culvert that tends to crop up in pictures.

More of my favourite plastic slate roofing material was used for the culvert facing. A hole was drilled and cut down to make the opening for the culvert itself, and a little grass was PVA'd on top. A second piece was placed behind for the upper row of stones.

 Some boxing for the lower part was made to 'contain' the hole.

 A wash of grey:

 A little darker drybrushing, and if the handrails look a little familiar, they're from an N scale sd40-2.

To install the culvert, a little cut was made downhill from the Command Post, perhaps a little too far down, but the landforms in place suggested this is where it should go. 

The fabrication was glued in place and the area tidied up.

Mmm, chunky track. Perhaps I should have painted it black?!

While the layout couldn't have been made much longer under my self-imposed constraints, oh how I wish this little stretch of track was longer...

Making (north) mountains out of a molehill

Some glue and paper shell added today on top of the cardboard strip mesh on the north hill.

Who knows what model railroaders will do when they stop making phone directories.

As you might have noticed from a close perusal of the North End, in our town, we get a combined White and Yellow Pages, just to add a bit of spice.

A touch of green paint from the dollar store (2D scenery in a tube) and it's starting to look more like a model railway.

Being Articulate - sggrss 3

A splash of paint and the sggrss articulated flat will be ready to take on the world.... or at least the layout.

As with most of the Euro articulated stock there are may detail variations and plenty of paint schemes - gray, blue, red, brown, yellow, green, black to name a few I've googled recently.

I decided to make a dark gray one for no real reason other than its something different and the brighter colours tend to highlight the shortness of the 40 foot platforms and the droopy hanging sides which, as I mentioned earlier, look a little odd being offset inboard from where the containers sit.

So some grey was slopped on - as I mixed it to taste, I ended up with a few different shades, which I rather like. Many of these wagons seem to have sections with the numbers/data that get cleaned more often than the other bits, so there is often quite a bit of variation in the prototypes.

Yellow was applied to the tie-down-extension-pipes and to represent twistlocks. I should have used tiny squares of plastic for these since I put so much effort on those vertical strakes.  The containers had been weathered earlier and the wagon might get the same treatment at some stage.

And there you have it. It looks pretty decent and the 2x40 footer doesn't look as silly as I had feared. 

Soon enough I'll get the layout running again and we will see how well it runs!

Being Articulate - sggrss 2

So at the end of last night's exciting episode, the sggrss 2x40 foot wagon was left structurally complete and now needs a little fleshing out.

The long sill piece that runs along the length of the wagon was made from Evergreen .043x.043 styrene rod cut to length. Underneath this, to represent the trapezoidal girder extension that hangs down between the bogies, a strip of .125x.125 rod was cut to length, beveled to shape and tacked on. Ideally I would have used a rectangular shape for the drop-piece rather than a square section, but this is what I had on hand in my large bag of styrene bits:

Of course you have to remember that these must be made in left and right handed pieces, two of each:

Once these are complete and tested to fit amongst the running gear, you can go to town with any detailing you want to add:

As can be seen from the above, the 'tiedown' piece that sticks out above the bogies was added and some angled end pieces over the center-bogie ends were chunked up from .043 rod and attached with plastic glue.

A vague representation of some of the vertical bracing that usually sits beneath each twistlock was also added. This was cut from .010x.020 styrene rod and painstakingly added under a magnifier and maneuvered into an approximation of the vertical.

The bottom lip of the whole shebang was added under the drop section using some .010x.156 that happened to emerge from the plastic-bag. It was scored, gently folded and glued in place. Aesthetically, it would have been nice to run this under the whole frame, not just the drop-section, but I left it off the bogie areas for clearance reasons.

In smaller scale modelling, the trade-off between potential derailment risk and perfect detail always favours good running or you get frustrated quickly....

Being naturally lazy, and being that you have to do four sides worth of any detail you add, I was a bit 'minimal' here on these sides (albeit better than the last wagon constructed!), but I think it's enough to give the impression of detail.