Post #18

  Finally baseboard construction has begun. I have had the plywood 8' x 4' or 2400mm x 1200mm for a few weeks and to make the baseboard framework I needed some extra timber. This was supplied by cutting down some long lengths of pacific maple timber. I transported the timber in the back of the Corolla down to a mate who had a table saw which made quick work of cutting up a boards 240mm wide into three x eighty millimetre wide boards. The beauty of the pacific maple was two fold, it was free and it is a very light timber which was ideally suited for the baseboard.

With this layout to be built I have decided to make the baseboard user friendly in that it will rotate to enable me to work on the underneath of the board without laying on my back or straining looking up from underneath. When considering how I was going to make this work the first thing I thought of was to drill a hole through a centre pivot point and insert a wooden dowel so that the board can be rotated 90 degrees to enable it to be worked on.  Not having any dowel on hand I could see me having to buy a long length just to get a short pivot piece. I then threw the question at Google something like 'rotating joint/coupling' and what popped up in Ebay was my answer, it was a lazy susan mechanism.

 So an order was put in and not forgetting that I had to order two of them. They soon turned up and then after playing with them in my mind I was soon asking how do you screw in the second disc when the first one is already screwed in? It took a look at Youtube to solve the answer in that a a second hole had to be drilled into one of the sides to expose the 'other sides' hole. Harder to explain in words, just check out Youtube if interested.

 Once again I have been rescued by using old baseboard timbers that previously formed part of South Coast Rail. These timbers originally came from a next door house construction as they were apparently made to the wrong size. As they were going to be scrapped I quickly grabbed them for future use. They now have notches from the previous layouts baseboard in them but I will fill these in with some offcut timber and make them all look nice. The baseboard framing has to be made upside down as the centre leg is connected to the end timbers. When it is all done then it will be flipped over.

In another 'doh' moment I was going to have the centre leg on the inside of the baseboard but soon realised that when the ply was attached and the board rotated the leg would hit the the underneath of the ply. After cutting off the top of the leg I soon realised that if the leg was on the outside of the frame there would be no problem, so that's where it is going.

As can be seen in the above photo it looks like the plywood is not large enough but as indicated in the previous post, the Electroliner has made me go to 10" radius curves to enable it to run and therefore I needed a bit of extra room to accomodate this aspect. So I have made an extra 100mm in width and also 200mm longer. The theory was that the whole project could have been larger as I have the room but there is a handling limit to a single baseboard size.

Now that the outer frame has been made I need to put the ply down and design the final track layout. If I just spaced out the other central supporting timbers sure as Murphy would put a timber right under a point construction. So the layout will be designed and can be modified if necessary to accomodate the timbers underneath.

There will be a connecting piece between the two upright timbers (and be on the floor) shown to support and stabilise the layout.

  The above photo readily shows the extra baseboard length and width I have grabbed. I will need to source some extra 9mm ply and fill it in to the edge. I am planning to try and incorporate a hill up one end and get away from the complete flat look. It will also create some interesting scenery features, and just hope the Electroliner will get up okay.

So that's where I am up to at the moment - out with the rulers, compass and anything else I can think of to design a good layout.

 

Post #17

 The process for getting back into some traction modelling has been going on for over a year, but I feel that the time is getting close for starting construction.

Over this time I have been collecting the many items required. The traction fleet is ready and the whole fleet is currently elsewhere having brains (decoders) inserted so that I don't have to spend forever flipping switches if it was being run on DC. This was how my first layout was set up but as I was the main (only) driver switch flipping wasn't a concern.

I also have a collection of buildings, mostly ones that I will need some time to assemble. I have managed a few second hand ones that can be placed directly onto the baseboard. Then I have a selection of brass poles as well as the overhead hardware - the frogs and wire hangers which have been sourced from the USA as that is the only location I know where you can still obtain them. The postage is way more than I expected but this is the only way to obtain them. So everything is ready to go.

Last week I finally arranged delivery of a 2400 x 1200mm plywood for the baseboard. I managed to get it down to the shed and took it down 'my' end. I am progressively adding carpet tiles to the floor and most of the first batch obtained has now been laid. To finish off the entire shed I reckon I will need around forty five more which will allow a complete wall to wall to finish. I could have omitted to lay under the baseboards but in the future it will be good to have it all carpeted.

Way back in Post #2 I showed a concept plan that I had come up with that I had hoped would fit onto the 8' x 4' board. I showed the proposed track in a thicker line than just using a pencil thickness line which in real life doesn't work. The plan looks busy and in Post #2 I nominated some features that I wanted to incorporate into the layout:

• Double track in roadway
• single track in roadway
• reserved track
• a crossing loop in the reserved track
• a combination of single and double arm trolley poles
• a depot/trolley barn
• a balloon loop
• reversing loop for single poled trams
• a freight track and building
• a run through passenger terminal
• and try to incorporate a few grades so it is not all flat

Concept plan

I liked the plan that I drew up and then need to translate it from paper to the actual baseboard. A lot of the plans that I see on traction layouts are very simple ones and have mostly straight line that runs parallel to the edge and are mainly boring. I had to try harder to get some interesting working brought into the final design to save from the boredom. It needed to be a few steps up from those people who make micro layouts - operation status 0 out of 10. After you have built the circle of track you can only sit there and watch it run round and round. I previously had an On30 narrow gauge layout that filled the shed and the operation possibilities were endless with so many variations. So I am trying to get this ideal into the design.

So eager to see how this proposed sketch would translate onto  the baseboard top, I managed to place the board over the junk underneath (still a bit more to get rid of) and then go into what I call 'dry planning' That is where you place structures, track, buildings, cars etc etc onto the board to see how it shapes up.

There is a similarity to the plan

Looking at the above photo there is some resemblance to the plan. There are some that might claim it is the proverbial spaghetti bowl a term that is often used when a modeller crams track into every square inch on the baseboard. I don't apologise if it looks like that as I won't sacrifice looks for operation. In the bottom right corner is a crossing loop that will give some operation in having to do a cross, it would be a nice feature to have operating crossing loop signals, but thats a long way away.

The fly in the ointment with this layout design has been the purchase of the Con Cor Electroliner four car set. It has a minimum radius of around ten inch radius curves so if I want to get some operation from the set the layout has to use the ten inch radius minimum. The above photo shows some paper templates I printed out utilising the 10" radius curves. Even using this radius will allow the proposed design to be incorporated with some minor tweeking here and there. The big shoe box represents the location of the car barn and will only be four roads containing two trollies under cover. To the top of the box you can make out another open road and this will be long enough to hold the 544mm Electroliner in clear of other roads. The other grey building is a temporary lend of the HO layouts diesel shed to represent the terminal building that will be located there.

In the past I have said that coming back to HO scale from O scale takes a while to get the brain to re-adjust again to sizing. A good example was when I was wondering how wide to make the roads in HO. I was only guessing when I laid out the ice cream sticks to represent the gutters. The road looked wide but then I remembered I had purchased a few HO cars for the layout. Yes I had purchased a black ute, a good pick up I thought. I already had an O scale similar truck and took the following photo:

O scale and HO comparison.

I am not sure that the O scale pickup is actually 1:48 scale but shows the vast differences. I will do some more research on road widths when the track planning gets serious.

Another issue yet to be tackled is the track. It will be a combination of ready to run and hand laid track. I will be trying to use code 75 track as I have plenty of rail left over from the previous HO layout. I have also obtained some Peco set track points. They have a very tight radius suitable for the depot fan but it is Code 100 track, you can't get the same tight radius in Code 75. The street trackage will be laid directly onto the baseboard and covered in to represent the various types of road surfaces.

Proposed depot entrance tracks

One further addition I will make is to tack on some extra baseboard and make the width 1300mm instead of 1200mm and either 100mm or 200mm to the length. At this stage I had only concentrated on laying out the depot end of the board and if all goes well I might only need the 100mm on the end, time will tell.

Now the sad part is that all items I have placed on the board have to come off as there is no framing yet done. More carpet tiles to be sourced to finish off the floor, then the frame up will begin. So as you can see - progress (finally)
 

 

Post #16

 Although I haven't as yet started on the baseboard construction other things have ben moving in the background. The shed is still being worked on, firstly to get it ready to contain East Coast Rail and once that is ready then the other half of the shed will get ready for the South Coast Traction Company.

One half of my fleet of cars has been sent off to have DCC decoders fitted as I feel I don't want to go back to the old days of flipping switches to get operating. On an 8' x 4' board it won't take long to go right around. I am also going to get sound decoders fitted to at least two trams so that videos will be more appreciated. As well headlights will be fitted  to them. It looks odd with a big hole sticking out the front. This as well as the lack of interiors and any form of window glazing leaves a lot to be desired compared with todays models. I guess the fitting of the big motors back then virtually restricted the fitting of seats.

I have also sent off to Modelu in England an order for some figures that I think will represent tramway personnel. I am still coming to terms with the small size of the HO models having just left the larger scale of O scale modelling. Received in superquick time, they have been sent to Ian Fainges an incredible figure painter who will make them all look nice. The prescence of the tramway figures hopefully will bring some life to when I start photographing scenes.

The last post I showed a pile of Traction and Model magazines I obtained. I skimmed through most of them and in one issue over fifty years ago was a model traction survey and the results were published.

 

These were the days well before DCC control and I am sure it would have been well received back then. I seem to remember the invention of the Astrac system was basically a precursor to DCC or anyway an improved way of controlling your fleet. I am not electronically minded so I will go with what works today.
 

Post #15

 As I am taking myself back around 50 years to revisit a modelling format that I enjoyed, slowly as I come across various 'triggers' that start me remembering items. Traction modelling seems to have been around its peak then and modellers were luckier than now in the fact that brass models from Japan and Korea were there to satisfy the needs. I am not sure if there are still manufacturers current that are making model trolleys in brass.

When I was modelling HO trains and I wanted to model New South Wales prototype, then there were virtually no ready to run models except when Lima came to the rescue and provided us with a 44 class diesel, which vaguely looked like one with a poor nose and cabin supplied and then similarly with the 38 class steam locomotive. Really designed for the toy market they were gladly purchased and both became subject of many magazine articles on how to modify and improve the models into something respectable. This is when the first brass NSW locomotive, the 38 class sold by the Model Dockyard in Melbourne became available.

Painted brass Model Dockyard 38 class loco - Bergs Hobbies photo

Although this was the first brass NSW model made, future releases of 38's were able to get a finer model produced.

So although I wasn't modelling NSW railways at the time my decision to go into traction didn't give me much choice except to start buying a few brass models. I was working at the time so it wasn't a big chore to be able to afford some models. Having said that I usually selected single truck models, the birney, sprinkler and freight car as starting models. Later I actually purchased a few bogie trams. I bought a New Orleans car as when painted up in red and silver it looked like the H class trams from Adelaide in South Australia. I had a North Shore car which I don't think ever got painted. I also had a PE Hollywood car which I painted in green and cream to represent a Melbourne tram. A fellow traction modeller Bill Bolton offered to paint it into the prototype PE colours and it turned out great and the only one I owned in prototype colours.

The 70's and 80's were a great era for traction modelling. There were plenty of brass HO models available, the modellers were possibly young enough to still remember the end days of the systems in the states.

By the mid 70's I had constructed my first HO model and as I got deeper into the hobby, you are always on the lookout for research material. As mentioned in an early blog I had a copy of Middletons 'The Interurban Era' and 'The Time of the Trolley', two excellent books. And also mentioned I have been able to obtain again copies of both books.

I can't remember how I found out but there was a magazine called 'Traction and Models' I must have purchased a copy from somewhere as I thought that it was worth subscribing to which I did. Each magazine had a cut out section for your subscription. But this was in the days before the internet and it all relied on posting a letter and sticking a stamp onto the envelope and hoping for a reply within the month. How spoilt are we these days with just a couple of clicks of a mouse it is all done?

So I got the subscription and the magazines started coming in. The magazine was the work of Vane Jones and he was the only name credited inside the front page. If this is so then it was incredible dedication for him to produce. What makes it more remarkable is that it was produced monthly, the guy probably didn't have time for a 9 to 5 job. Inside an issue was a list of back copies available for sale and No.50 is listed as an April 1969 issue. I am not sure of the first and last issue dates.

Back in the 70's there were a few mainly traction modellers who were roped into an group called the 'Model Traction Association'. The driving force behind this group was a guy called Arthur Perry. He was well known amongst the railway fraternity, he had a strong interest on steel wheel on steel rail items but his major emphasis was anything 'electric traction'. One of his true enjoyments was to travel to Japan and ride the rails there. I believe he had over twenty trips there. 

While the MTA continued on, I had decided to change my modelling objectives and after I had collected quite a few 'Traction & Models' magazines, I donated them to the MTA library.

After some time the MTA eventually broke up and sadly Arthur passed away recently in 2022. The magazines had resided at his residence until recently his son John contacted me and stated the magazines were still there and would I like them? 

One hundred T & M magazines

I picked them up recently and have been going through them to rekindle the memory on any of the articles. No memories of articles but what is incredible is that it was over fifty years ago that I donated them and now they are back with me.

As mentioned earlier Vane Jones certainly put a lot of himself into the magazine. Such a mag does not exist today but I suppose we will have to say that the internet has taken its place. It was generally a black and white publication with often a centre fold colour addition. Compared with todays advances in printing, some of the photos were not clear and sharp reproduction but better than nothing. Diagrams were all hand drawn as computer graphics were a thing of the future. But at the time this was all we had and no future comparisons could be made. So treasure any copies of 'Traction and Models' magazines you have, I don't think we will see the likes of them again.

As an added bonus with the magazines I also was given four books that are traction related. The Suydam - Interurban Modelling Handbook is a picture book full of brass trolleys made back in the golden era.

More reading

 

The Adelaide H class tram.

 

 

Post #14

 Well things are moving along slowly but surely. The area that SCT will reside in has been cleared of the previous O scale VR narrow gauge railway. The supporting timbers (that were rejected timbers for a neighbours house build) have been un assembled and are now on the ground waiting for yet another rebuild into the supporting timbers for the traction layout. Talk about recycling, I'm doing my bit for the planet (and hip pocket). 

So the area is now cleared of previous layout but the room still looks like a jigsaw puzzle with various piles scattered around the room waiting for a decision as to their fate. There is still a residual amount of left over O scale items still waiting to be disposed of. Today was lucky, just a chance posting of a photo of the narow gauge layout and a brief mention of some track and points left over led to a substanial sale.

Now you can see why construction on the new layout will be a while. South Coast Traction will reside where the red vacuum cleaner is

 As everything is slowly coming together and a start on the baseboard, I have been collecting items required for the layout. I have collected the trolleys, the overhead requirements (wire, poles, wire hangers). But one item I have collected as I see them are buildings for the town center. At this stage it is all guess work but when I see a building that I like the look of I will grab it. One place that sometimes produces good results are the second hand stalls at the various model rail exhibitions. Unfortunately I live in New South Wales and our exhibitions are few and far between and not all support second hand stalls. It is a lot of work for the organisers but a goldmine in sales when the seller pays 15% commission. As I have only become tractionalised since the start of last year I have only managed to collect a few buildings. Luckily my choice of modelling a US style layout has helped, whereas many are modelling Australian styled layouts and are looking for suitable buildings to match.

I regularly check out Ebay and Facebook Market place for items but they are slim pickings. Just got to be lucky and keep looking.

But I have managed to obtain some nice looking buildings mainly from Walthers. These will form part of the city center with a few impressive buildings for a corner or two. Trouble is the cover with the finished buildings is very impressive, but when you open the lid and see sprue after sprue you start thinking "Oh I'll put it together another day" And then there is the painting. Although some are multi coloured it still takes some various colours on the building to make a striking finish. I managed to get a few fully completed buildings which will save a lot of time. 

So for now I will stop collecting buildings until I get the baseboard in place. Then after the desired track plan is laid out, I can see what space I have left for the remaining buildings to go. The first building I will plan for will be the trolley shed/barn, then the rest can all fit around it. After all they need a place to sleep at night.

Here are some of the buildings I have collected so far for the layout:

 

 

At least the photos on the box give you an idea on what you are shooting for, I just hope I still have a steady hand for doing some of the finer painting.

'Till next time............

Post #13

 Recently I got excited when I found some old 8mm film footage of my 1st HO model traction layout. As the footage wasn't very long I decided to go the simple route and have a go a projecting the film onto a door and setting up my phone on a tripod and see how it goes. Well although the end results weren't brilliant it was clear enough to see what I had done at the time.

The first Youtube upload was just a selection of still shots i.e. nothing was moving. It was great to see how I had made everything fit on a door, this was easy to do in traction modelling. As I always try and do, I like to make the track plan as intersting as possible. With traction unlike model railways doing a lot of shunting doesn't happen and mainly single cars are run. (Unless you are modelling an interurban line that runs multiple units). I never kept any plans of the layout but re watching the video, I can remember how most of it all ran. Another issue was that it was run on DC as DCC was to become a future invention. So to operate the layout I used double pole double throw switches so I could run two trams together at the same time but this still required switching sections on and off or control of a section to the second controller. I am sure DCC was invented by a frustrated DC traction operator.

So eventually my plan is to get my models converted over to DCC so at least the constant movement of flicking switches will be eliminated.

Somewhere now probably lost, I had a few black and white photos of my layout but doubt I will come across them so the discovery of these movies films is special.

But just the other day when putting another random 8mm film through the projector, I came across another film of the layout but this time the trams were moving. There is only one minute of footage but I was happy to find it. It appears that at this time the layout was being run on two rail as there is no footage of a trolley pole up on the wire. I must have started on overhead wiring  construction as well.

Here is one minute of HO traction. I must congratulate Kodak also on producing a very stable product as this film is still as bright as the day I received it from the processors.

 As construction commences on my new layout I will have further footage to post.

#Post 12

The wish to return to modelling traction was probably caused by viewing a nearly fifty year old 8mm film of my collection. At that time I was collecting no particular company or prototype. That ended up with a Pacific Electric Hollywood car, a North Shore car, a New Orleans car and a Birney car which could have come from many cities, you just have to name one. Chuck in a single truck sprinkler and freight car and also a bogie centre cab work freight car and you have a very mixed bag for a traction layout. It wasn't that long really since the tramway system in Sydney had finished and I certainly knew more about our system than any overseas one. And as commercial models of Sydney weren't available the next best was something from overseas.

Brass models were probably at their peak during the 70's to 80's and were gladly received. There was an owner of a hobby store in Melbourne that always got a visit when I got down that way and after heading down the stairs into the shop, you were immediately in 'brass heaven'. As I had not long been working my choices were on the low price side of things, hence the Birney and single truck freight car.

So wind the clock forward and a chance to 'start' again in traction was made by the choice of what was available. This ended up being an entire fleet of painted trolleys sourced from Facebook Market place. And the majority of this painted fleet were from the Chicago. And being from downunder I don't think I was expected to know american geography. I had a rough idea that San Francisco was on the left hand side and New York was on the right. And due to the numerous hurricanes soon learnt where Florida was - bottom right.

I thought that I had better start squatting up on my geography lessons just in case I got some questions on where places were. And yes Chicago is to the left of New York.

Most of the models I obtained were from Chicago and painted in the 'red and cream', I am not sure if there is a more accurate colour classification available but for now 'red and cream' will do.

Wanting to learn more about where my trolleys came from I Googled 'Chicago Surface Lines' and on the Australian Ebay up came a 400 page book titled 'Chicago Surface Lines - An Illustrated History' by Alan R. Lind and as an added bonus it was autographed by the author! And a bargain for just under $30AU postage paid. After a couple of days the book turned up. The cover was a bit torn but what do you expect for a fifty year old book?. It also had that typical 50 year old paper smell and probably had never seen the sun in all that time. So I laid it out on a table outside turning over a group of pages each time I went past hoping to make it smell better. Unfortunately there are no coloured pictures in there but it seems extremely comprehensive covering all aspects of the CSL lines. Not one of my favourite things to do is reading but plenty of good pictures to enjoy.

Another thing I have learned about Chicago is that it was home to the North Shore line and amongst their fleet were two four car trains known as the 'Electroliners' and they operated between Chicago and Milwaukee. My interest in the Electroliner peaked when a friend who was aware of my introduction into traction happened to mention if I wanted to buy an HO painted model of the Electroliner to which the answer was of course 'yes'

Electroliner on the elevated in downtown Chicago

The model was produced by Con-Cor in the early 2000's and is painted, and includes internal lights, seats and head and tail lights. There are four trolley poles, two are raised for travel in each direction. The model is currently DC but DCC ready which will be fitted when the time comes for operation.
 

HO Electroliner as released

It was good I made an early decision to obtain this unit as I haven't finalised the layout design yet and one thing I became aware of is that 10" radius curves are around the smallest this unit works best one, so that will be a determining factor with design. The layout will be more likely be designed around city streets rather than open country side where the majority of the trips were made. But an iconic model that deserves collecting.

Starting point Chicago - internet photo

Street running - internet photo

Heading out of town - internet photo

At the time of receiving the unit I was in the throes of demolishing my narrow gauge layout and decided to take a few photos in amongst the O scale structures and humans, only the absence of overhead wiring gives it away.

 I am sure the model wasn't run much when received so it ended up doing a dozen or so laps around the layout to run it in and one part of the journey over the Thomson River bridge I managed a video.

 This is a great add to my collection and I can't wait to see it 'under the wires' one day.