Roundhouse Kick

 

"Hi, I'm Chuck Norris.  You may know me from the popular TV series 

'Walker, Texas Ranger' (now streaming on Disney+!).  

That was where I demonstrated my signature martial arts maneuver, 
the 'Roundhouse Kick', with almost comic regularity.

"This post is not about that.  For the real story, here's my friend Keith." 

Thanks, Chuck.  Yes, the topic of our post today is an actual roundhouse, the one at SNR's Yaeger Yard in Segway, W. Va.  -- and the kick it required to get it into compliance, and finished.

This portion of the layout came from the previous house, but the roundhouse had not been installed yet when we moved.  When I finally did add tabletop for it to the benchwork, it sloped away from the turntable, by up to 1/4" at the extremes.  But somehow my impatience overtook my OCD, and I determined it would be... fine.  So I left it that way.  

The impact, though, was that steam locomotives coming off the turntable would find their forward drivers dangling in space over the radial tracks, until finally passing the center of gravity, whereupon the whole rigid wheelbase would clunk down, hopefully onto the rails.  Even with diesels -- the Stewart drives would bottom out on their belly tanks.  Shameful.  

Note the gap under the level.  Yes that's over 1/8" drop in about 5".  On track 6, at least. 

Alas, I can hear my father from beyond the grave: "You know that long thing with bubbles in it?  It's called a LEVEL. Yeah -- the name might give you some idea what it's used for."  😄

I have hated this condition from the beginning -- but not enough to tear everything out and re-do it, since it was all wired and did sort of... work.  I also never scenicked the area, knowing this really needed to be corrected first.  And so it sat.  For like, 25 years.

Finally this fall I could take it no more, and dove in.  The whole project included a number of other improvements, as well.

1.  Kicking (Jacking Up) the Roundhouse

This far downrange, there was no way I was going to tear benchwork apart.  So I devised a plan to jack the roundhouse up to level (ish), using a graduated series of shims made from the Approximator's Best Friends: tongue depressors and business cards.

That worked pretty well actually -- just loosened the screws holding the floor in place and snaked the shims in from the front, one at a time.  Even managed not to destroy much, or rip out any wires.  After that, I did the same thing with the outside tracks.  Note how high the back three tracks are, compared to the one just outside the roundhouse -- the last one yet to receive the fix.  Look at its wicked angle up to the pit edge, too!

  

I then filled the big areas with cork, and filled in the air gaps under the tracks with sand, to get it all up to tie-level -- ready for a final coat of cinders, dirt, and weeds.  At last!

2.  The Doors

"Into this house we're born ♫♬♫♩...."  Ahem.  Anyway, the Walthers roundhouse kit originally had a full set of doors.  However they tended to flop around and encroach on the tracks, so over time almost all had been removed and stacked in a pile out back.  But I always liked the look of them, so I thought this would be a good time to try again.  This round, I glued them in place and to each other -- that way they'll stay open and clear.  It's always summer on the SNR!

3.  SE Tower

The tower had always been just idling over there beyond the engine tracks (along with the stack of doors!), waiting for scenery, as well as for some way to compensate for the grade on the mainline.  I built a raised site on cribbing, cut into the embankment, to get the tower to the right height and distance from the tracks.  

4.  RIP Track

The space vacated by the tower (and the stack of doors!) allowed room for what was kind of an afterthought: a freight car RIP track.  A while back my friend Bob Bartizek installed a RIP track off the turntable on his Pennsylvania & Western, which I found cool -- and I'd been noodling with the idea ever since.  ...Because the Yaeger yardmaster needs a little more to do.  😉   

Needs a bit less inventory, and some tools and scrap added.  Check out those cool steel bins, 

courtesy of Tom Patterson (Chesapeake Wheeling & Erie).  Full of brake parts, stirrups, and truck coils. 

The freight crane is a legacy from our late friend Gerry Albers' Virginian Deepwater District layout.  

5.  Clearance

If you've ever been yardmaster in Segway, you know that spinning a Mallet on the turntable is a dicey prospect, because the flanges barely clear on both ends -- and, that leaves the overhang to grind the couplers into the embankment over by the yard lead.  Despite my having dug out a trough a few years ago, clearance was still insufficient, and couplers still snagged.  Well no more -- dang if I wasn't gonna fix that too.  I gouged it way the heck out, and even measured this time.  Even built an ersatz retaining wall to hold back the fill, and fixed the scenery.  Still tight, but look, Ma -- no scrapes!

6.  Scenery at the Depot

Another item in the While You're At It Dept. was to finally finish the scenery over by the Segway depot.  This included a rutted mud-n-gravel parking lot, and ballast etc. for the helper pocket and team track.  

7.  Armor

Lastly, what actually begat the entire project was that the roundhouse had been bumped so many times by the YM's elbow, or hooked by crewmen's shirts while reaching over it to uncouple on Mineshaft Gap siding up above, that the end-wall had completely departed the structure.  Not counting being picked up off the floor a few times, it was just sitting there by its own inertia, along with its broken pieces and truant windows.  

This badly needed to be addressed, and so I rebuilt the entire end-wall, armoring it with Evergreen 3/16" square tubing at every wall and roof joint.  Anchors were installed along the floor edges throughout, to hold the structure in place in case of trauma, without gluing it down.  Wise men have suggested plexiglas or sharpened utility poles for future protection, but I'm going to let it go a few rounds on unseen brute strength, and see how we do.  At least it looks a whole lot better.  ✅

Well that's it for this one project in numerous parts.  Now back to the other two scenery projects that had stalled weeks ago!

Thanks as always for reading, and let me know what you think.  

Other Kids' Toys

 

Well the incessant churn of lawn/garden/house/woods/pool maintenance, on top of travel and classic-car season, has finally begun to abate.  I have gotten zero completed on the layout since April, which accounts for the dearth of posts.  So I thought I'd celebrate the work that some friends have done on their own SNR equipment.  And OK, maybe one of my own.

It's both amazing and an honor to see "your thing" interpreted by other guys for other layouts...   

CENTERFLOWS

You may recall that early in the year, Patrick Harris of Three Notch Rail released a custom run of Accurail 4600sf Centerflow covered hoppers, lettered for the SNR.  They featured the hex logo that I had time-warped into a futuristic multi-mark, for friends in the "modern" era. 

I'd asked for photos as guys got these weathered and running on their layouts.  Let's take a look at a few who wasted no time...

On Tom Patterson's Chesapeake Wheeling & Erie, it's 1975, so the car is only a few months old.  So where most of us would use that as an excuse to call it a day, Tom (being Tom) instead super-detailed it...  and OK then weathered it anyway, since even a newborn will have some subtle crud accumulation.  Here it is, on the CWE at Summit Springs, WV, fresh from the beauty spa.  You have to see this stuff in person to believe it.  

Down on Brent Johnson's Clinchfield, it's 1980.  So the '75-built Centerflow, seen here in Marion, SC, has acquired a few years' worth of grime -- as well as consol stencils and ACI labels like Tom's. As with everything else on Brent's layout, the effect is beautifully restrained, and consistent across the fleet.  Another layout you just have to see to believe.   

Over on Paul Maciulewicz's SP Lordsburg Sub., the older Centerflow has clearly been trapped in captive service in the blistering desert sun.  Paul's been developing some really stunning surface-rust effects for his Arizona setting, and the Railway is glad to play a part.  I can't wait for the golden spike on this layout, and the start of operations!

Thanks guys for your efforts and artistry -- and thanks again to "SNR Nation" for all the enthusiasm shown for this car run!  I believe Patrick sold it out almost instantly.  

DECAL JOBS

In some cases where I've swapped cars with friends, they've later asked for spare decals so they could do up a few SNR cars on their own.  I'm flattered of course, and happy to oblige.  

As it happens I've got a couple sources for decal reserves:

1. Several professional runs, including a last batch from Rail Graphics, just before they went out of business.  And, 
2. My buddy Darren Williamson (IHB), who can do custom sheets from my artwork on his collection of ALPS printers.

My friend Bill Doll (Forest Park Southern) once found himself with a couple of nice PS-1 kits yet unassembled.  He offered one to me for the SNR -- in exchange for some decal sets so he could do the other one up in SNR paint as well, for his layout.  Wow!  Here it is on the FPS's yard lead at Flowing Springs, WV -- looking an awful lot like its sister-ship on my layout, only with better weathering.  

Bill also enjoyed the story around the "Peanut Route" slogan car I did for the SNR's subsidiary, Southern Shore Line -- that evolved out of some questions about what those Centerflows might be hauling.  (There is far too much involved in that discussion to summarize it here, but if you missed the post, check it out at this link:  "The Peanut Route".)  He asked if I had leftovers, and behold:  sitting in Middlesburg, WV, here's the first ever car on another layout from an SNR subsidiary.  I guess I need to send Bill some CJ&G "Apple Hill Road" hoppers...!

Tom Gregory is a gentleman from Luka, MS, who, improbably, makes the 8-9 hour drive to Cincinnati every other autumn for SWOOPS (SW Ohio Operations).  As he says, "Not many operating layouts in Mississippi!"  I've been privileged to have him sign up to run at my place on numerous occasions.  He wrote me a few months ago and asked if I had any spare decal sets he might use, to do up a PS-1 for his layout.  Never a problem -- I sent him a few, and here is the result -- yet another 26000-series on yet another layout! 

But having decals to spare, Tom wasn't done yet.  Here's his take on a vivid late-50's repaint, which he says is naturally based on the SNR's orange-and-blue passenger and diesel schemes.  Very creative -- I'd conjured up a future (1968) herald and font, but I'd never even thought about a technicolor scheme that so many roads experimented with, usually on rebuilds, as things loosened up in the 50s.  Call Patrick McGinnis!  Love the lading visible through the door, too.

Actually even before he'd written me about the decals, Tom had done some decals on his own, too, for a gondola repaint.  

Tom also sent along a shot of a double-sheathed auto car he'd built -- following a post I'd done on the same thing (click here for that post:  "A Couple of Aging Automobile Cars").  The prototype pic for that project was of a Southern Ry. car, and as a Southern modeler (as well as a Southern modeler 😉) Tom thought it checked all the boxes.  Daggone, with the right lettering it looks bang-on the original!

A while back, another friend here in Cincinnati, John Miller (Kanawha & Lake Erie) and I traded freight cars, and we subsequently traded decals too.  Since the K&LE is set in 1976, John was interested in spares of the modern herald, and I created a few different sizes for him.  Whereas, I wanted examples of his boss old-school diamond herald, and he kindly gave me the last two sets in existence.  I did up a couple of gondolas (click here to see that post: "K&LE Gondolas"), but John took the concept and ran with it.  In the above photo, the car I gave him is on the right, and all the others are cars he did himself, including the awesome malaise-era paint-out in green.  Again, never thought of it!

AND ONE OF MY OWN

Here is the sum total of modeling projects I completed this summer (other than Vanderbilt swaps -- watch this space).  And this was only because I took decals to the beach, where I'd have time! 😄

Man I have been meaning to play this gag for decades -- since the early 90's, when the indie band Veruca Salt debuted, with their hit "Seether".   That band name just rattled around in my head -- "Veruca Salt, where do I know that from?!"  Naturally it was Barri, knower of all things non-technical, who clued me in -- Veruca is the charming little princess in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.  

"I want an Oompa-Loompa NOW!!"  -- V. Salt

There is so much eternally great stuff in Willy Wonka (yes of course I mean the 1971 Gene Wilder version) -- and with the band paying homage too, some reference had to be made on the SNR, since it is The Buried Jokes Route.  Given that salt is hauled in privately-owned covered hopper cars, the idea just crystallized (no pun intended).   (Well OK, sure -- pun intended! 😄)

The challenge was the font.  I originally did a decal sheet in blue block letters, to mimic the Morton Salt cars, but it was just too vivid for the Truman era.  So I toned it down to no louder than other examples I could find from the time, mainly by outlining the letters (and dropping the blue).  Gave it a '49 build date too, so it could have a little bit of salt rust, without obliterating the name.  

Sadly I don't have a single customer on the layout that could remotely use it.  No matter - it will just have to be random overhead traffic -- on its way to some northern city to destroy all the new cars next winter!  

"Come with me,

And you'll be

In a world of pure imagination...." ♫♩♫♫♩♩

(Y'know, I probably can scare up some decal spares, if anyone wanted to join in on building a cross-layout fleet of them...  😉 )

Well, that's it from the Wonka-Vator -- thanks as always for reading, and let me know what you think!

Endoscopic Surgery at Amherst

You may have heard that half of the current SNR came from our last house.  When it was adapted to the new house, the "bridges" segment was placed at an angle to the wall, rather than flat against it, as previously.  This required a change to the track alignments in the tunnels, where they run through the wall and around into the staging loops.

The green are the sections that came from the old house, and the blue is the new construction to link them together in the current house.

The lower level of the "bridges" segment (leading to Amherst, Va. staging) already had a transition joint on the curve, from code 83 to 100.  Moving that section to the new house required an additional joint in the code 100 -- and that landed right where the approach entered the freshly-chopped hole in the concrete block wall.  I installed roadbed into the hole from the other side, with the track already spiked to it -- but sadly the alignment was less than perfectly linear.

Nonetheless, things ran -- until, over time, they did not.  Several years ago, the Mallets started popping their pilot trucks off.  I fixed this, in a Vice-Grip Garage sort of way, by not running Mallets to Amherst anymore.✅

Recently, though, the Broadway Consolidations, whose bread and butter is working between Amherst and Millsbrae staging, started departing the rails utterly.  They would exit the tunnel entirely on the ties, and grind their way valiantly back up onto the rails -- except it was onto the guardrails of the bridge.

No choice now -- it had to be corrected.  But how? 

          

I'd already tried to fix the transition joint, on a curve, deep within a mountain, between the tunnel liner walls which could not be removed without dismantling the whole end of the layout.  Yyyeah.  That effort resulted in leaving myself a note on the tunnel roof inside the mountain -- along with a stern warning...

     

Since both joints are at least 3' away from the viewer after "mountaintop removal", I took a closer look with the Borescope.  The "alignment" on the code 100 joint was awful enough (bad Keith!) -- although it may have been a casualty of humidity change, too.  But the transition joint was astounding -- one side had come completely unsoldered over time, likely from my failed attempts to fix it... on a curve, between tunnel walls, from 3' away.  Per the signs.  

     

Dead.  The only choice at this point was to rip out the entire curve, from the end of the bridge at Dominion around to the throat turnout in Amherst staging, and replace it outright.  And that meant with a single, 9' length of flextrack done properly:  soldered on the workbench, in free air, in a straight line, and at eye level -- and cut to fit in place.  So it was going to have to go in through the tunnel portal, like endoscopic surgery.

After substantial stewing, I determined how long each piece of flex needed to be to place the new joints on the shallowest parts of the curve possible.  And since I'm not Edward Scissorhands, there was no way I'd be able to spike the new track down accurately, from 3' away, on a curve, in between tunnel walls.... So I ordered up an assortment of 3 million teeny self-tap screws, figuring I could go straight down from above.

After this much planning -- and stewing -- I felt I'd finally gotten the odds shifted into my favor that the SNR would ever run again.  So I took a deep breath and started ripping out 32-year-old trackwork (along with its 24-year-old bandaids).

     

The removal wasn't as bad as I thought.  There were only a couple of feeder pairs, and not too many inaccessible spikes.  Luckily I could get my arm into the wall from the staging side to clean everything up, without even having to move the refrigerator.  I marked the alignment before removing the old track, so I'd be able to replicate the curvature.  Flushed with success, I treated myself to some Operator's Fuel Pellets.

 

The first task in the rebuild was the transition joint.  I've done a million of them, with all the 83-to-70 joints that are on the layout -- but as a species they are not renowned for their sideways shear strength.  So I did this 83-to-100 guy on the workbench, girding each side with some .039 bronze rod, so it would hold true when flexed into a curve.  I freakin' dare it to come loose.   

Now since a 9' length of flextrack would be... well, flexible... to the point of being unwieldy... I did the second joint in situ at Dominion, once I'd worked the first 6' section up the pipe via the tunnel portal.  When the solder had cooled, the whole 9' length could then be snaked the rest of the way in.

     

The screw idea worked like a champ.  I used a 7mm length, which would go through the ties and all of the cork, but not hit the plywood subroadbed and start fighting, lest it wreck the alignment.  I predrilled holes liberally down the whole length of the hidden piece, not knowing which ones I'd be able to reach. The visible end got spikes as normal.    

Over on the staging side of the wall, I could get to the approach section readily, with only minor contortion and personal injury.  So that track got spiked into the homasote like usual.  Following the original alignment markings got me a straight joint at the throat turnout, too, and with the transition curve intact.  I then left the straight segment, through the wall, to float.  

Last step was reconnecting the feeders, which was a bit of a challenge, holding on to the soldering iron by little more than the cord, but it got done. 

Oh yeah I also needed to cut a gap into the curve after the fact, so that staging's master kill switch would work. 🙄  That was accomplished with a Dremel, many spikes, and piles of gap-filling ACC carved to rail shape.  

    

But hey -- first test, and behold!  Mallets' pilot axles stay on the rails!  Even Consolidations' drivers stay on the rails!  And the right rails, too!  

Phew -- I had been dreading this job.   I guess this is why normal people tear old stuff down and start over -- 'cuz it's so much easier.  But where's the fun in that?  🙂

Thanks as always for reading, and let me know what you think!

EPILOGUE

In an image time-warped back from the 21st century, the SNR has been bought, and its original line through the Blue Ridge abandoned.  I'm told that at the date of this photo, negotiations will be under way to transfer the RoW to the Commonwealth of Virginia for use as a bike trail, although the removal of the venerable truss bridge will have presented a challenge.  

  

"The Peanut Route"

Well we're all pretty excited here at SNR headquarters...  Three Notch Rail's custom run of Accurail Centerflow hoppers, factory painted for the SNR, has hit the streets! 

The artwork features the traditional SNR hex herald, time-warped forward into the Big Graphic Design era 

as a "multi-mark", for friends in the "modern" period.  (Yes, 1975 is "modern".  😉)  
The herald also channels the Burlington Northern's " 'N' that isn't there," that was so fascinating to me as a kid.

Much appreciation goes to Patrick Harris of Three Notch Rail for another custom run of SNR cars.  And a big thanks as well goes to all the guys who jumped in and bought copies for their own railroads -- I believe the run is already sold out.

Now, several of those friends -- especially guys who run waybill routing systems, who care deeply about such things and document them -- brought up the same question about their new SNR covered hoppers:

        ¿"OK, what's in them?"

Well y'know, I'd never thought about that before.  Grain always works, but what about something more specific to the SNR?   And the answer was quickly obvious:

            👉"Peanuts."

Suffolk, VA sits in the middle of a rich peanut growing region.  In fact, Barri and I named US 460 from Petersburg to Suffolk "The Peanut Route", so our boys would understand which road we were planning to take, on our trips down to the NC Outer Banks.  (This was in contrast to "The Bridge-Tunnel Route", which meant killer industrial and maritime scenery for boys, with spirited language and bursting neck veins from Dad, charging headlong through the insanity of Hampton Roads on I-64.) 

On 460, the bucolic 45-mile stretch of 4-lane highway runs almost constantly through peanut and cotton fields, and is paralleled the whole way by the N&W mainline to Norfolk and Lambert's Point.  It's also paralleled by the original RoW of the SNR, chartered north out of Suffolk, toward Petersburg and Richmond, in 1852. 

Upon my explaining all this, my friend Robbie Vaughn (L&N/Family Lines) said: 

"Seems like 'The Peanut Route' ought to be a slogan on a boxcar somewhere."   

Well there's something else I never thought of.  As much as every named thing on the SNR is an inside joke or buried reference, that idea never found a place to grow.  

So here we are, three weeks later, and look what just rolled into at Yaeger Yard:

SNR's subsidiary, the Southern Shore Line, hasn't gotten around to repainting all of its equipment to include the corporate overlord's herald yet, given it's only been 6 years since the 1946 acquisition.  This double-sheathed USRA car is still wearing the scheme from its last repaint, in the '30s -- along with many layers of soot.

The Southern Shore Line is analogous to the Atlantic Coast Line and Seaboard Air Line.  As an Appalachian coal hauler, the SNR was ahead of its time in acquiring a gateway route to the South -- grabbing the SSL, and leaving the C&O and N&W to fight over the SCL and the Southern, years later.  

By contrast to the wooden car still showing the slogan, this all-steel car (which has been on the layout a while), has had an overhaul since the 1946 merger, including new Youngstown doors, and a power hand brake.  We know now that the updated paint job that came with the rebuild must have obliterated the quaint SSL slogan -- replacing it with the conglomerate insignia carried by all the SNR subsidiaries.  

The SSL is named for the town of Southern Shores, NC, where our beach house is located... which has been our destination when travelling via "The Peanut Route" since 2002 (get it....).  And as it happens, that fertile peanut-growing region extends the full length of those southern coastal plains through which all three of the coast "Lines" pass, all the way to the Florida panhandle..  It was only natural that the SSL should be the subsidiary that would get to wear "The Peanut Route" slogan.  Great call, Robbie!  😉

Well listen, thanks for taking the time to read this.  The backstory, rationale, and references are as much fun as the modeling, for me at least.  

And especially, if you've acquired a Centerflow or two, thanks for honoring the SNR with your interest.  Shoot me a pic if one's made it onto the layout already.

Cheers!  Would love to hear what you think....