The Glade 4.0

Someone could waste all day watching related videos but thank you anyway.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Thanks for the video, Midgen. Very cool.

I haven't done much work that would generate new pictures lately; it's all been on-and-off getting the trackage fixed (again) to make the Decapod work. It's slowly improving; a lot of the cardboard shims have been replaced with balsa wood and thin metal strips from the hardware store. Less than $10 for materials and they've helped enormously, but it's very tedious. The Decapod is even more sensitive to trackage than the Allegheny or the GP-7 which both caused headaches when I got them. This is due to the long wheelbase and small flanges. On the plus side, the Decapod's tender holds the track incredibly well, far better than the tender on the little 2-8-0 or even the Allegheny's.

The other problem appears to be electrical. The Allegheny, the 2-8-0 and all my other old little diesels are DC-only locomotives; the Allegheny is digital command control (DCC) ready (has a slot for a chip) but I bought it without because it was much less expensive. The GP-7 has a DCC chip, but not sound.

The Decapod has DCC and sound. By itself, the DCC chip doesn't matter much; most DCC chips sense when they are working on standard DC and the Decapod is no exception. The sound module, however (which is surprisingly loud given its size) sucks quite a bit of power.

As a result, the throttle has no effect at all below about 65% power, and that just fires up the sound. To get the locomotive moving means turning it above 70%, and that's on the rare level spots. If I want it to go uphill it needs to be at 80% or higher and if it's pulling a train it needs to be closer to 90-100% to keep moving.

Even then it struggles, and I'm sure that's a combination of the demands of the sound plus the tight curves and the the steep grades. Were this layout flatter, with broader curves, it would be much more run-able. DCC would probably eliminate almost all the problems. In DCC, the rails are always at maximum voltage, and the speed is adjusted by a signal transmitted through the rails to tell the locomotive how fast to go. It would also allow for even broader sound capabilities, like the bell and whistle.

Because of this and the (hopefully) impending move, I'm sort of wrapping it up with this layout. Any more significant changes I'll post, but I think I have learned enough to rebuild with a big improvement when we get a new house.

Speaking of which, there is one house we looked at that I really like, partly for this reason (it's a really good house all the way around, but it has a special advantage) - an old storm cellar that's about 9x12. Perfect to make a larger layout, out of the way!

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Well, the original GG&N was completely dismantled for our move. While most of the track survived, along with the electrical equipment, some of the wood (the legs in particular), and of course the locomotives and other rolling stock, it was time to end its tenure. As I'd mentioned in the past it was simply trying to do too much in too small a space. This appears to be a thing with Atlas track plans; they seem to regard 18" curves as normal and 22" as broad in HO, while for the rest of the model railroading world, 24" is considered average in HO and broad doesn't really kick in until around 30". Atlas plans are fine if you either A) only want to run small cars and locomotives in relatively short trains or B) can significantly enlarge them.

The latter is what's going to happen! I mentioned before that I though Jerry's 6'x11' space would be vastly superior for the GG&N, simply by making curves broader and the grades less steep.

We did not get the house with the 9'x12' storm cellar. I liked that house a lot, but we got one I like even more! - fortunately, real estate is not terribly expensive in south Texas, so we were able to find a house of a pretty good size, and more importantly that had the space well laid out. This included a HUGE upstairs living room. I'm told that most of it originally should have been an extra bedroom, but it was left wide open, giving the kids a nice big play area - and me a section for railroads! This is the upstairs family room - at the moment its still the dumping ground for stuff we are tying to figure out what to do with.



This front section, by the windows, is approximately 8' deep by 20' wide - perfect for the rebuilt GG&N, while still leaving the majority of the room open for the kids. The plan I actually came up with will actually only come out about 7' for most of the width anyhow.



A shot of the space from one wall to the other. The plan will come all the way out to the edge in that far section, then it will cut in about 6 inches at the point 8' in front of the edge of that window, for a depth of 7'6" for the other 15 feet stretching towards the camera.



This is the plan I drew up. It may be hard to read, but the idea is basically the same as the original GG&N - 2 over-under figure 8s more or less parallel with each other, with 2 major crossover tracks from one to the other.

In addition to expanding things to the size available - all of the curves on the major lines except one are 30" radius, one curve on one crossover is going to be 28", some of the curves in yards and sidings may be 22-24" - I added a long passing track on one side of the river, and added a second small yard on that side. The tiny spur at the base of the larger yard was moved farther away from it and lengthened into a much longer spur.

Finally, a long distorted "oval" of track was added around the outside of the entire affair to allow a third train to run continuously. The main purpose of this is for when I eventually get some passenger cars; their length and the high speeds passenger trains run at mean a nice, smooth oval with less rising and falling will probably give them better performance.

The 2 squares are cutouts to pop up and be able to reach all parts of the layout. I am going to build this one a little lower than the last; many model railroaders like their layouts close to eye level but I want to be able to reach easily, and I want children to be able to look at it easily too.

The large trapezoidal shape at the bottom is the control area. That will go in front of the window. My original plan was that there would be a long space in the center where you stood and the layout went around you, but my wife did not want the table to be actually up against the windows, so I created that trapezoid to keep it back. That's where the control panel will be, so one will need to duck under the center of the layout to get to it. This trapezoid was what led me to go with a revised version of the GG&N. I also promised my wife I would hang a curtain from the room side of the layout so as to keep the bench work concealed.


I plan to take this one a lot slower than the last one. I kind of went crazy to just "get it running RARR!!" with the original GG&N and that probably led me to a lot of problems. I'm also MUCH more aware of the pitfalls of little details now, and I won't be dealing with such extremes of tight curves and steep grades. Plus, I need to spread the expense out. In particular, I want to change to digital control, but that's going to cost some, so I really don't plan to have anything going until at least August when my birthday rolls around.

More pictures to follow! I'm off this week for the holiday, so work is probably going to start!

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I spent most of the week refining the plan, and drawing up diagrams for the benchwork, but I was able to get the first section of the benchwork finished today. This section will go all the way to the right of the windows in the previous post, or to the left of the track diagram (which is drawn as if facing out from the windows.)


This single section is 5'x8' compared to 5'x9' for the entire first layout.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Sections B and C were finished today; one of the wedges and the narrower "neck" of the layout. My apologies for the second picture; I didn't realize it would look so odd standing in front of the other 2 sections. In the first picture, the cut pieces standing behind the wedge are the pieces used to make the "neck" square.





The hardest part of this is remembering to subtract the thickness of the wood itself from the appropriate places. Fortunately, when I DO forget, that means the offending piece is too long, not too short, so I can just cut it a little farther.

If anyone remembers the old cartoon Frank and Ernest", my grandpa had one hung up in his workshop where the two of them were cutting wood. One of them tells the other "You've got to be more careful; you've sawed it off twice and it's still too short!" This reminds me of that cartoon.. I wish I had that print. Incidentally, most of the tools I'm using were my grandfather's or my fathers. In particular I have a very old Black and Decker drill. It's not even variable speed, but it works good for drilling pilot holes and that means I don't have to change drill bits much with 2 drills. I'll post a picture of it; it's quite an antique but it runs like a top.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

First section is up (actually has been for a few weeks and track is getting laid. There's actually more progress than the last picture shows; that outer loop curves all the way around to the back and the track leading to the curved turnout has been extended all the way to the edge. Also, I decided against using that older steel track in the front and replaced it with nickel silver. I wanted to save money but.. it's going to cause problems if I use it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

So about three weks ago, I did more work on the layout, mainly putting up the next section of framework:



and curving the outer loop and the splitoff leg that goes across the single bridge around in the back:



In the following weeks my mom visited, I had drill and last weekend I just didn't get jack done for some reason.. EVE, most likely. I had my mind made up to get stuff done this weekend:



The center section went up. Earlier than originally planned; I had wanted to lay track from one section then the next as much as possible. However it occurred to me that the double bridge across the center is a critical piece - it has to be laid before most of the track around, under, and to the sides of it meaning the center section had to go up. This is because the bridge needs to be perfectly straight and flat - other track needs to adjust to it, not the reverse. I'll also need to remove the diagonal brace from the center and move it back a square to make way for the river that's going through that area - the river will require cutouts of the framework.

I brought the outer figure-eight loop out and installed the second turnout - this one is the one that splits that line to go either over the double bridge and continue its figure eight, or go straight and cross to the other figure eight - the back straightaway on the old layout. That long piece of plywood is the additional outer oval I added. A section of that playwood - the section over the second square in from the camera - will actually get cut and dropped level with the framework and hold up bridge pilings since the river will run under that section. I also added another 3-foot section of track just to the inside of the new turnout. Where that wider piece ends is about where the bridge will start.



This is the new turnout. It's a #8 which (for models) is a pretty gentle turnout. You don't see them much except on rather large layouts. Mine isn't large enough to warrant (or really even fit) them for all mainline turnouts; most will be #6 but this one and at least one other will be #8 since trains will go through the curved leg at speed and there's room for it. (Turnout number is the ratio between length and curvature for the turnout - a #8 goes 8 units of length for every 1 unit the curved legs splits from the main)



Between installing the new frame section, cutting plywood base and the support pieces for the plywood, and actually laying the roadbed and track that means over about 8 hours of work this weekend I laid.. around 9 and a half feet of track. It's slow going, but this way I don't burn out on it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."