You can see more of my model
railroading photos at:
http://home.comcast.net/~j.sing
Thank you for visiting!
Santa Fe 'Peavine
Line' in 4' x 4'
To get a perspective, let's start by seeing what the N scale
layout looks like looking into the office from the living room
back in January 2006. The layout is 4 feet x 4 feet,
consisting of two 2' x 4' modules back to back. Kato
Unitrack was used,
ballasted with Arizona Rock and Minerals 'mauve' color ballast:
The front of the layout, the Glendale Junction module on the left,
is an attempt to use diagonal arrangement of
lines-of-sight to optically distract from the small size of the
module. Here's an angle shot:
As I tinkered with the track plan, the concept of Glendale
Junction is to loosely represent Glendale, Arizona.
I use two fairly good size buildings at the ends of the module to
act as:
- View blocks to track entering/exiting the Glendale Junction
module
- Give some 'heft' to the scene, i.e. have the buildings
appropriately overwhelm
the trains a little - i.e. a little bit of visual illusion
trickery
A view that shows the the Glendale Junction module from overhead,
with the 'Prieta Canyon' module in the back:
Another view of 'Glendale Produce' on the left side (decaling
still to be done). This is a standard Walthers George
Roberts Printing
Company kit:
And a view of the right side of the layout and "Santa Fe Ice House
Number 1" (also a Walthers kit) on the right side
of Glendale Junction:
Now we move to the back half of the layout, the 'Prieta Canyon'
module. The Prieta Grade was the old Santa Fe
Peavine Line through Prescott, Arizona, running on a 3% ruling
grade. The layout, however, is flat, there is no
grade, the scenery
simply goes up and down to visually distract the eye into thinking
of elevation changes. These shots were taken
in 2005 and 2004, before the Kato Unitrack was ballasted:
(by the way, Southern Pacific never ran on the Santa Fe
Peavine Line, but I just like the SP Black Widow paint scheme)
Model photography can really fool the eye, the following shot, one
of my favorites, is taken from the stream
bed in the previous photo, looking up at the locomotive headed
towards the tunnel. You can see more about
my model photography thoughts by
downloading
my
(free) NMRA clinic on "Photographing Railroad Models"
(1.3 MB Acrobat Reader file):
And here's another view that fools the eye in terms of the small
size of the layout,
this one taken on the Glendale Junction module looking right at
the overpass area:
As final proof that the camera really does 'lie', here's a shot of
a set of Santa Fe Warbonnets departing the tunnel
on the Prieta Canyon module:
The layout is approaching some semblance of the original concept
that was developed in August of 2002.
Kato
Unitrack:
Painted, then ballasted
As this was my first layout as an adult, and from research,
clearly I wanted to make sure I did not have any
track reliability problems - hence my choice of Kato
Unitrack. From a tracking reliability standpoint,
the Unitrack has been bulletproof.
Click
here to see how I did a simple modification to the Kato #4
turnouts to avoid some locomotives and rolling stock from picking
the points .
The layout's Unitrack was originally painted only, as you can see
in the view below from August 2005. Basically,
the track was painted a mix of Grimy Black with Railroad Tie
Brown. The painted track was satisfactory until I started to
weather,
at that point, it became clearl that ballasting became necessary
to maintain the overall appearance of the layout.
You can see in the above photo where ballasting the Kato Unitrack
was started where the bridge is.
A view that the track crews had in September of 2005, after
ballasting the Unitrack in the Prieta Canyon module:
The steps I used are visible in the following picture. After
carefully placing the ballast where I wanted it, I first carefully
pre-wet the ballast with
an eye-dropper, using mixture of water with 91% isoprophyl alcohol
added (that breaks the surface tension and wets the ballast
without
disturbing it). Then, also using an eyedropper, I applied
50/50 mixture of water and white glue to the ballast. I
*never* sprayed either
pre-wetting or applying glue - that would move the ballast out of
position. Here's a picture:
The Kato turnouts have been carefully have ballasted.
My basic method on the turnouts is to make a small thumbnail-sized
'glob' of ballast and 50/50 water-glue mixture, and then with a
small screwdriver tip, carefully spoon that mixture into the
appropriate places on the Kato turnout. This assures that I
would not glue shut the internal Kato switch machine:
Here are the results:
And you can see below, where I used PollyScale acrylic 'Earth'
paint for the areas that I wouldn't / couldn't ballast:
As you can tell by comparing the two photos, the eye can be easily
fooled. (smile)
Track Plan
and Kato Unitrack Uni-joiner Electrical Experience
Here is a track plan, with the curve radius of the Kato Unitrack
noted. I arrived at this plan by clicking different
combinations of Kato Unitrack together until I got an optimum
combination for appearance. Clearly, the
appearance and tracking created by using vary curvature radius to
create easements was worth it. Any of
the "straight track then abrupt transition to curve" plans I
tried, looked *awful* compared to this final plan:
By the way, the purpose of the run-around track is to facilitate a
simple switching puzzle for the three sidings.
The layout's Unitrack continues to use the standard Kato Unitrack
Unijoiners. From an electrical conductivity
standpoint, after all these years, these have held up to an
adequate level. The fact that they continue to work as well
as
they do is a testimony to Kato's engineering - no other
non-soldered rail connection would have lasted this long.
As the layout ages, I do notice the Unitrack does 'age' in terms
of electrical connectivity at the Unijoiners.
As a result, today at the 8 year age mark for the layout, the four
feeders at equidistant points around the loop are
just barely adequate in order to maintain the voltage to be
stable. In retrospect, the recommendations of major
Unitrack users
such as
PowerSteamGuy1790
to solder feeders as much as possible, including every piece of
Unitrack... is actually a good
recommendation. If I were to do this layout over
again, that is one recommendation that I would follow.
DCC for
the 4' x 4' N scale Santa Fe Peavine Line
In 2007, I started acquiring a few factory
sound-equipped N scale locomotives. It's said that Sound
Sells DCC... and that
was certainly true in my case. So, I added
an A/B switch to the layout wiring, and with that can run the
layout entirely on DC,
or with a quick change, I run the whole layout on DCC.
(I am very happy with my NCE
PowerCab).
The standard Unitrack wiring will work
adequately on a small layout like this to run DCC, but
clearly, those wires are *not*
big enough to follow best practices for DCC wiring. I
would highly recommend that anyone using DCC, wire their
layout properly (see the famous Wiring for
DCC website).
That having been said, it is true that on this small layout,
just by switching the wires to a DCC NCE PowerCab.... the
layout will
work and run on DCC. No modification to the
track is required to have DCC work.
Note, however, that due to
the small size of the Unitrack wires and the resistance
introduced by the
8-year aged Unijoiners....
I clearly found spots on the
layout, between the feeders, where the short
circuit protection would not trip on the PowerCab's wall wart circuit breaker.
That's
not good, and is asking for trouble.
In my opinion, these experiences
indicate that for a permanent layout that is using Unitrack,
one should put *a lot* of feeders, as many as
you can afford (ideal would be *every* piece of Unitrack
IMHO), and wire the power bus according to good DCC
recommendations.
Despite the small size of this layout, those are the reasons
why I decided I would rewire my layout power bus with heavy
proper wire.
See the "Rewiring the Layout with proper 12-gauge DCC bus"
section below.
PSX-1 Circuit
Breaker
I followed the advice of one of my local DCC experts, that
even on a small layout like this, a circuit breaker / short
circuit protection of
some sort is very useful. Simple automobile lamps or
similar would work fine. However, since this
little layout is basically a test bed,
and given the above-mentioned situation where there were some
spots where the 'quarter test' failed to trip the PowerCab's
wall wart
circuit breaker, I put in the acknowledged best solid state
sound-friendly circuit breaker, the DCC
Specialities
PSX-1:
A solid state circuit breaker like this is fundamentally
optional on a layout of this size, but it has the effect of
providing additional
protection for the track other than just depending on the
PowerCab's short circuit protection. The PSX-1 would cut
the power
to the track when shorted, whereas the PowerCab wall wart
would not - that's good for this layout. In addition the PSX-1
is
very sound decoder friendly. Finally, with the PSX-1, I
know when there has been a short via either visual (the 'short
circuit
LED' lights), or a beeper that can be soldered onto the PSX
board.
In a low power starter set DCC configuration such as the NCE
PowerCab (or a Digitrax Zephyr,
etc), I followed the instructions to setup the PSX-1 to trip
at 1.27 amp.... thus protecting
the track before the PowerCab's 1.7 amp wall wart circuit
breaker trips. It's having additional protection for
the track,
which is good DCC Best Practices. In addition, I
have had up to 6 N scale sound locos on the layout at once
(collectively
they draw about .5 to .6 amp when they are all idling with
sound on).... I did an extended quarter test to short the
track....
the PSX-1 recovers nicely and all the sound locos come up
fine. Good stuff.
Rewiring the layout with proper DCC 12-gauge wire bus
In September 2011, I rewired the layout using a proper
12-gauge bus, to assure that the DCC signal would be clear,
the
DCC short protection would be correct, and to mitigate as much
as possible, any future Kato Unitrack Unijoiner
current loss. Most importantly, as stated
above in the "PSX-1 Circuit Breaker" section, the DCC
Specialities PSX-1 is
accompanied by proper DCC wiring.
Here's five shots of how I rewired the
layout. It was a fun project.
Basically, I created a "star" wiring, and used terminal
blocks to attach the Kato Unitrack feeds to the heavy 12
gauge wire bus.
The following is the back "Prieta Canyon" module, showing it's
wiring:
I hope all this helps.
I hope you my photos makes your day more enjoyable, and if you'd
like to see more, please feel free to
click here to return
to my ATSF_Arizona Home Page.
Thanks for visiting!
John Sing
Sarasota, Florida, USA
Modeling the Santa Fe's Peavine Line (Ash Fork -> Phoenix,
Arizona)
in the 1950s and 60s - in N scale
