Eastern Tn logging on the DG CC & W RR 1928
- Thread starter Bill Nelson
- Start date
F, especially in the Alps. Guess you probably haven't been there.
Not on the road; I took the train!
Bill Nelson
ground cover.
I have been very busy with the destruction associated with rebuilding the bathroom where my back porch used to be. most of the back porch is gone, and I'm digging trenches for pipes. I have taken some time to but down Ballast and ground cover in Southside. this , and downtown Harlow is some of the oldest track on this layout, but it has gone without scenery close to finished for fifteen years or more since it is off in a narrow blind hole, and isn't likely to be visited unless you are operating down there, and as a rule the Mountain division is more fun to operate, and there is plenty to do up there, so Southside has languished. I hope to make it more interesting when I add the Tannery, and perhaps start loading logs off a barge in the river.
Here are some photos showing Southside as it appears right now, and a picture of downtown as well showing some of those infamous #2 pencil expansion cracks!
Bill Nelson
I have been very busy with the destruction associated with rebuilding the bathroom where my back porch used to be. most of the back porch is gone, and I'm digging trenches for pipes. I have taken some time to but down Ballast and ground cover in Southside. this , and downtown Harlow is some of the oldest track on this layout, but it has gone without scenery close to finished for fifteen years or more since it is off in a narrow blind hole, and isn't likely to be visited unless you are operating down there, and as a rule the Mountain division is more fun to operate, and there is plenty to do up there, so Southside has languished. I hope to make it more interesting when I add the Tannery, and perhaps start loading logs off a barge in the river.
Here are some photos showing Southside as it appears right now, and a picture of downtown as well showing some of those infamous #2 pencil expansion cracks!
Bill Nelson
once again I forgot the picturesIn my haste to get back to the pick and shovel portion of the program, I forgot to post the pictures once again.
the freight dock on the frieght house is a stand in untill I get off my *** and build one from wood. the Terminal downtown was kitbashed from five small combination depots. I cut out all of the freight doors, and this frieght hose is made of them, as well as some surpluss wall and roof pieces. it has a two story bay window next to the Yard, and the Valley Division is run from the second story office up there. The Railroads business office is in the upstairs of the Terminal Downtown.
The bridge over the yard track is not finished, it will have two short through trusses and one long one. The bridge deck used to be on the Cave Cove Bridge, before I extended the passing sidding @ Terrapin on to it. It had just the right curve to fit over the yard, so it was recycled, to replace a plate girder bridge, which hid the yard going through the backdrop OK, but was way to stout to look right for my RR.
Bill Nelson
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Except for about five stub switches where the rails don't want to line up after they have been ballasted, maybe there was a good reason I waited fifteen years to ballast this track.
I might really appreciate this @ the club where I am ballasting the track before the switches are built.
Bill
You mentioned loading logs off of barges, loading them into the river off cars seems more likely to have happened to my thinking but ya'll might'a done things differently in TN. :mrgreen:
The only thing that makes switch ballasting easier is having a clear head and calm heart to do it, in my short experience. :thumb:
The only thing that makes switch ballasting easier is having a clear head and calm heart to do it, in my short experience. :thumb:
Often times the Mill was on water that could support floating rafts of logs but on my RR the mill is on a lesser stream, and was set up for rail to be the only way for logs to get there.
I'm not planning on having any permanent logging infrastructure in Harlow, but a barge with logs that I can place on the river, so that a log train, with a barnhardt can load there, will be an occasional complication for an operator on the Valley division. That, and I intend to get some log cars off the C&S via the Southern interchange, so there will be some log cars coming through Harlow anyway.
Bill Nelson
good news
I had let the window unit in the railroad room un in it's dehumidifier mode for the last three or four days, and all but one of the stub switches in Southside, which I had feared I had glued in place with the ballast glue solutions now work fine. Apparently the long switch ties on either side of the PC board "bridle irons" had soaked up enough moisture that they had swelled enough to prevent the bridle iron from moving.
The one switch whose movement I am not satisfied with has an old design homemade ground throw, and it looks like it has to much slop. ten or fifteen minutes with a soldering iron should get it converted to a new design, which should have a more positive throw.
Otherwise I've done some work with a single edge razor blade and a dental pick, scraping random chunks of ballast off the top of the ties, and out of flangeways. that is critical as a chunk of ballast on a tie next to a piece of code 55 is enough to interfere with the flangeway. Cleaning the flangeways is going to take longer than the ballasting did. I'm going to use finer ballast around the engine facilities and on the yard tracks.
I have been way down on the lowest level, one level down from Harlow trying for the fourth or fifth time to fix the Southern railway staging yard. I spent a portion of my minuscule train budget on a Peco switch (it looks like a # 6) which I am splicing in to the yard throat on the Harlow side, trying to get rid of some kinks that made the yard less than trouble-free to operate.
at the bottom of a one loop helix from downtown Harlow , I have a three track double ended yard followed by a section of track, and I hope to add a long passing siding on the back end of there. The Southern railway interchange locomotive (a fine proto 2000 USRA 0-8-0 ) will push cars into Harlow, or pull them away , staying the heck away from the Harlow trackage, and just taking the straight shot over the first of the two three way stub switches when absolutely necessary.
the set up of the staging yard should allow room for three interchange trains to be set up before an operating session. with a spare track in case we need to deliver a cut of cars to the SR before they deliver to us. That would allow a whole operating sessions southern interchanges to be planned in advance .
I'll post some photos as I get the other two tracks hooked up in this, the most photogenic portion of my layout. ( the track there is below knee level, I can't work very long there or I start to hurt.
Bill Nelson
I had let the window unit in the railroad room un in it's dehumidifier mode for the last three or four days, and all but one of the stub switches in Southside, which I had feared I had glued in place with the ballast glue solutions now work fine. Apparently the long switch ties on either side of the PC board "bridle irons" had soaked up enough moisture that they had swelled enough to prevent the bridle iron from moving.
The one switch whose movement I am not satisfied with has an old design homemade ground throw, and it looks like it has to much slop. ten or fifteen minutes with a soldering iron should get it converted to a new design, which should have a more positive throw.
Otherwise I've done some work with a single edge razor blade and a dental pick, scraping random chunks of ballast off the top of the ties, and out of flangeways. that is critical as a chunk of ballast on a tie next to a piece of code 55 is enough to interfere with the flangeway. Cleaning the flangeways is going to take longer than the ballasting did. I'm going to use finer ballast around the engine facilities and on the yard tracks.
I have been way down on the lowest level, one level down from Harlow trying for the fourth or fifth time to fix the Southern railway staging yard. I spent a portion of my minuscule train budget on a Peco switch (it looks like a # 6) which I am splicing in to the yard throat on the Harlow side, trying to get rid of some kinks that made the yard less than trouble-free to operate.
at the bottom of a one loop helix from downtown Harlow , I have a three track double ended yard followed by a section of track, and I hope to add a long passing siding on the back end of there. The Southern railway interchange locomotive (a fine proto 2000 USRA 0-8-0 ) will push cars into Harlow, or pull them away , staying the heck away from the Harlow trackage, and just taking the straight shot over the first of the two three way stub switches when absolutely necessary.
the set up of the staging yard should allow room for three interchange trains to be set up before an operating session. with a spare track in case we need to deliver a cut of cars to the SR before they deliver to us. That would allow a whole operating sessions southern interchanges to be planned in advance .
I'll post some photos as I get the other two tracks hooked up in this, the most photogenic portion of my layout. ( the track there is below knee level, I can't work very long there or I start to hurt.
Bill Nelson
Post 264 fourth Image
heard from the cab of a southern locomotive:
"DEAR GOD WHERE DID THE BRIDGE GO!!!!"
*Grabs break handle*
/dramatic music and montage of sceens ending with the loco's front wheels just hanging in space..........
"Control is NOT going to be happy"
heard from the cab of a southern locomotive:
"DEAR GOD WHERE DID THE BRIDGE GO!!!!"
*Grabs break handle*
/dramatic music and montage of sceens ending with the loco's front wheels just hanging in space..........
"Control is NOT going to be happy"
Post 264 fourth Image
"DEAR GOD WHERE DID THE BRIDGE GO!!!!"
*
The two spans of the Southern bridge over the as of yet unnamed river in Harlow is kitbashed from central valley prat truss kits. it is quite nice, has a lot of lacy detail, and is somewhat fragile, Since it goes directly over a code 55 stub switch, which will need maintenance at some time, I made it removable; and it is removed while I do ballast and other ground cover related scenery in the area. This is not a saftey issue, as the Southern Main there is for static display only, and has no power hooked up to it.
That Southern Railway 2-8-0, and it's passenger train will be tested in my Southern Railway staging yard, to see if it can negotiate the code 55 stub switches @ the Harlow terminal. If it can then I might have a Southern Railway Passenger train coming into the DG, CC, & W RR Terminal in Harlow.
That Southern locomotive is an interesting case. When I bought it it was the only really good running steam locomotive available painted for the Southern. Although it is a 2-8-0, a freight locomotive, When I opened the box ( I mail ordered it) I discovered it was painted in the Southern's beautiful green and gold passenger livery. This is actually correct for this locomotive #, as it was painted in the passenger livery in the 1970's and served in the Southern's seasonal steam excursion fleet. The color is dead wrong for 1928 however, but it looks so good, I'm not repainting it.
Bill Nelson
picks of SOU stgingI have some pictures of the new set up @ the Harlow end of the Southern Staging. the other end of the southern staging is still rough, but that won't be much of a problem. My southern railway staging has been way too small, and now it is more than big enough.
This staging yard could easily eat all the interchange cars on my RR at once. So I'll need more cars to operate any where near full potential.
The top photo is the track leading past the code 55 3 way stub switch and into the helix down to the Southern staging.
The second photo is the once around Helix, with the switch to the Pocket @ the top. The pocket is a siding that allows me pre position a switch engine, so that it is behind the cut of cars that the Southern delivers. This is important as the passing sidings in Harlow are no where near big enough, and a switcher in the pocket is ideally placed to use the yard in Southside to get the cut of cars sorted into cars for Harlow Delivery, and those that need to go south to Crooked Creek or beyond.
The next photo shows the new track arrangement @ the near side of the First section of Southern staging. the far side of this first section still has some awkward places, but that won't be much of a problem until I get a lot more freight cars.
the last shows the Southern Railway's freight interchange engine, a fine proto 2000 USRA 0-8-0. the tiny lettering on the locomotive with maintenance info identifies it as being out of the Murphy Shops, which is cool, as it is in the right neighbor hood. above the Southern staging, on the second level, you can see the DG, CC, & W RR mainline just north of Murray (between Harlow and Crooked Creek), and the semi hidden staging for the big log camp (as of yet un-named) in the valey.
Bill Nelson
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See I was going to ask about the southern loco, because I although I know the sou painted a pacific in green for a passenger train ( I think its was called the cresent limited or simmilar) and wanted to know if it was common practise for them to pain their loco's
The Cresent
The Crescent limited was the Southern's premier train, which ran as a night train from Washington, DC to Atlanta, GA; and continued as a day train from Atllanta, GA to New Orleans.
It is my understanding that other Southern passenger power wore the green and gold, although the power for the Crescent got some extra fancy striping and a gold crescent with a star on the side of the cylinder. The Southern took it's passenger service very seriously; and was slow to join Amtrack, as they did not want the service on the Crescent to be less than top notch. When I rode the Crescent in the summer of 1978, when it was the last non-Amtrack long distance passenger train in the Country (I'm not counting the Piedmont-the Southern's day train from Atlanta to Washington, which was a mixed train, piggybacks with a baggage car and some coaches. . . . The Southern's train men refered to it as the pig train) The Crescent still had linnen tablecloths, real silver silverware, and fine china on the table in the dinning car. First Class service was top notch.
We see models of the Crescent's power way more than we see models of any other Southern passenger power because of the power of the name train; just as if you look at models of the New York Central's passenger power, you are much more likely to see power from the 20th Century Ltd. than any thing else.
That green and gold paint job on the consolidation bugs me to no end, but it is very well done, and I don't really want to do the research to figure out what kind of passenger power the Southern used in the vicinity of it's Murphy branch, and then build and paint a locomotive to suit , so the green and gold consolidation will have to do.
Bill Nelson
The Crescent limited was the Southern's premier train, which ran as a night train from Washington, DC to Atlanta, GA; and continued as a day train from Atllanta, GA to New Orleans.
It is my understanding that other Southern passenger power wore the green and gold, although the power for the Crescent got some extra fancy striping and a gold crescent with a star on the side of the cylinder. The Southern took it's passenger service very seriously; and was slow to join Amtrack, as they did not want the service on the Crescent to be less than top notch. When I rode the Crescent in the summer of 1978, when it was the last non-Amtrack long distance passenger train in the Country (I'm not counting the Piedmont-the Southern's day train from Atlanta to Washington, which was a mixed train, piggybacks with a baggage car and some coaches. . . . The Southern's train men refered to it as the pig train) The Crescent still had linnen tablecloths, real silver silverware, and fine china on the table in the dinning car. First Class service was top notch.
We see models of the Crescent's power way more than we see models of any other Southern passenger power because of the power of the name train; just as if you look at models of the New York Central's passenger power, you are much more likely to see power from the 20th Century Ltd. than any thing else.
That green and gold paint job on the consolidation bugs me to no end, but it is very well done, and I don't really want to do the research to figure out what kind of passenger power the Southern used in the vicinity of it's Murphy branch, and then build and paint a locomotive to suit , so the green and gold consolidation will have to do.
Bill Nelson
My Southern staging yard is fully operational finally. I spliced in a new Peco switch to get better geometry, so that a vicious kink could be eliminated, and had some difficulty, as peco has changed the way that their switches are set up in the 25 years since I last bought one (the evil ****). I was able to fugure it out, it is probably something to make them DCC friendly. soldering a jumper wire onto the switch fixed it for my purposes, and the yard works! Now I have a car shortage, as my southern staging yard will hold about as may cars as all the sidings on my RR. my sidings are mostly full , but the Southern staging yard is mostly empty,
If I can get set up for operations, I won't be able to run @ full capacity untill I buy/build a lot more cars.
Bill Nelson
If I can get set up for operations, I won't be able to run @ full capacity untill I buy/build a lot more cars.
Bill Nelson
with the staging yard working I was cleaning the track on the once around helix up to Harlow. I had the southern 0-8-0 going through the middle and the outside track of the 3 way stub without a problem, pushing the longest cuts of cars it could push up the helix. The inside route is too tight, and I log ago gave up trying to get anything but geared locomotives and short cars through it.
I tried the Southern passenger train to see if it could negotiate the challenging track, but the locomotive is inoperable. I can hear the motor run, but a drive belt is slipping, it tries to go but can only get about a half a turn before it slips. the trucks on the cars are pinned in, and are not easily adjustable, and the wheels are to sloppy in the trucks . these cars will take some serious rebuilding to make decent cars out of them.
I did some work around the first three way switch, where some of the spike heads interfered with the flange way. I have some smaller spikes , now, so I pulled the offending spikes and replaced them with smaller spikes. this is a procedure I need to repeat all the way through Harlow.
Bill Nelson
I tried the Southern passenger train to see if it could negotiate the challenging track, but the locomotive is inoperable. I can hear the motor run, but a drive belt is slipping, it tries to go but can only get about a half a turn before it slips. the trucks on the cars are pinned in, and are not easily adjustable, and the wheels are to sloppy in the trucks . these cars will take some serious rebuilding to make decent cars out of them.
I did some work around the first three way switch, where some of the spike heads interfered with the flange way. I have some smaller spikes , now, so I pulled the offending spikes and replaced them with smaller spikes. this is a procedure I need to repeat all the way through Harlow.
Bill Nelson
Yes on the left near the gazebo. the worst of the curve is out of the picture though as the track straightens to go past the Terminal.
This section of track was the first thing I built when expanding from a 2 foot by six foot switching layout, after a split level addition was made to my then 115 year old farm house. The previous owner had built an ill conceived addition which had two bedrooms, but you had to go through the first to get to the second. We tore off the roof , and made both bedrooms into a large family room. Over the new family room we built a new roof which matched the roof line of the older portions of the house which had 12 foot ceilings, that, and the steep pitched roof, made for a size able attic and the railroad room went in there. alongside of it we put a split level with a garage down stairs and two bedrooms and a bathroom up stairs.
I stuck my switching layout in the corner and commenced to build my current railroad around it. That got trains running quickly , but I was not able to make the mental transition from tiny RR planning to large railroad planning. I have made a lot of changes to fix things as much as possible , but there are some artifacts of that original bad planning left.
where the track leaves the 3 way stub switch and goes gown the helix, it used to go up in a very steep s curve to what was then the second level. That enclosed a long strange loop , but the track on that s curve was only usable by small geared locomotives and short cars, The three way stub switches were a huge challenge to build, they look real good, and they work if the operator has a good eye. By pulling the oversized spikes I'm hoping to make the track there more reliable, but this is mainly a place to bring passenger trains into, the interchange trains have to go through here, but we won't be doing any fancy switching using those 3 way stubs, the main goal over there is to get over to Southside where the track is marginaly better without putting something on the ground.
Bill Nelson
photos to show what I'm talking about.Some photos to show what I'm talking about more clearly.
The first photo shows the 1st three way stub from above. due to bad planning or poor elocution, I can't remember which, the outside (to the bottom of the photo) route is the closest to a straight shot. as I said in the last post, this switch used to be at the bottom of a steep (9%) grade with an S curve with an 18 inch radius. most anything that could make it down that hill could go through that inside (upper) curve by the platform. the S curve is long gone, replaced by the helix down to the southern staging, and now that inside track is the worst track in the vicinity. Note the truck in the photo this is an old central valley truck with metal wheels, and it make a great tool for feeling out where there is a problem with the flangeway.
The second photo shows three spikes, laid out on a road in Harlow. the big one is one of the original spikes which has been removed as it interfered with the flangeway on the code 55 rail. the head of that spike is down where it doesn't show, but it is too big for code 55 rail. the middle spike is a small spike from micro mark, and I'm using these to replace the too big spikes I'm pulling from the inside of the rails in Harlow. The heads of these are a little too big, but if carefully placed they can be kept out of the flangeway . On the outside there is no flangeway to interfere with and I'm letting them stay out of laziness. the third spike is a micro engineering micro spike. These will often fold up before they penetrate the tie. I have used them some but I have to start a hole for them with a tiny drill and that is a pain.
The third photo shows detail of the track. in the right bottom you can see how the too large spike head interferes with the flangeway on this tiny rail. that spike needs to be pulled and replaced. In spite of the flangeway problems this shows how good the track looks.
Next door in Bill and Tom's excellent adventure I'm attempting to do a tutorial on handlaying track, so check it out if you are so inclined.
Bill Nelson
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DR Tom Visits.Dr. Tom came over this afternoon. It was my intention that we would work on setting up a good operations system in the Valley division between Harlow and Crooked Creek.
That didn't happen I had an electrical anomaly in Harlow, which resisted immediate diagnosis, and in Murray, where the passing sidding between Crooked Creek and Harlow is use of an off brand electrical tuner melted the white glue that holds the ties down. when it dried it fused the throw bar to the roadbed, so the next time I tried to throw the switch, I broke the solder joint on the homemade ground throw.
So Tom looked around at the changes to my RR, and ran the track cleaning train through Crooked Creek, which helped him reacquaint himself with the weird way the power routing switches are set up there.
When he left , I went to work trying to diagnose the problem in Harlow. Usually with my stub switches I have a solder joint break at the frog or down near the "stubbs where the two diverging rails are nest to each other. those were fine on this switch, and i had had the solder joint break where the wire attached to the outside tail. this was almost invisible even before the track was ballasted so I wasn't too embarrassed when I figured it out with the help of a multimeter.
The first photo is a close up of the offending switch in Harlow. See the offending solder joint. . . . .? I didn't think so. the 2nd photo is zoomed in even closer, and there it is. I made it to be hard to see, now I need glasses it's hard to find.
the third photo shows the broken homemade ground throw, and the fouth shows # 19, with track cleaning equipment, after the ground throw is fixed. # 19 is a PFM Cherry River Shay, which has a NWSL re-gearing kit installed. It has the track cleaning cars attached just to clean it's wheels. It is way too slow to use for track cleaning trains. by the time I got done cleaning the whole RR, it would be time to start over again.
The Valley division is open for business, and the aisles have been cleaned up. time to run the track cleaning train up the mountain, and work on the tabs to get ready to start training crews for Tab on Car operation on IRON MOUNTAIN.
Bill Nelson
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