Price: Forever Free PRINTER-FRIENDLY Edition November 2011 - IN DEPTH: Moving coal Tom Patterson does a - Stripping Kato paint - Improving Atlas crossovers Central Valley - Canvas curtains from teabags Bridge Kitbash and lots more, inside ... Page 1 • Issue 11-11• Nov 2011 Front cover Front Cover: MRH forum regular Tom Patterson shows us how he beefed up a Central Valley truss bridge to make it more suitable for heavy coal train mainline traffic on his CVE railroad. Read all about what Tom did in this issue. Cover photo by Tom Patterson. ISSN 2152-7423 Editorial Staff Joe D. Fugate, Publisher Charlie Comstock, Editor Columnists Richard Bale, News and events Remember to tell them: “MRH sent me!” John Drye, N scale Lew Matt, Narrow gauge and shortlines Bruce Petrarca, DCC Sponsoring Advertisers - Les Halmos, Modular railroading Our sponsors get extra visibility with the Special Correspondents Jim Duncan, Layouts and operations MRH web audience (45,000+). There’s also our Hobby Marketplace! see page 22 ... Byron Henderson, Layouts and track planning For more model Production Patty Fugate, pasteup and layout railroading Joe Brugger, copy editing Mike Dodd, copy editing products, including Technical Assistant hard-to-find items, Jeff Shultz also see our Advertising Account Manager Hobby Marketplace Les Halmos Click here to learn how to become on page 22. a sponsoring advertiser. Page 2 • Issue 11-11• Nov 2011 Masthead and Sponsors Page 3 • Issue 11-11• Nov 2011 Advertisement Visit BLMA website LAST CHANCE Click before they disappear. HUNDREDS OF DISCONTINUED PRODUCTS DALLAS MODEL WORKS Page 4 • Issue 11-11• Nov 2011 Advertisement Visit Dallas Model Works website Page 5 • Issue 11-11• Nov 2011 Advertisement Visit ExactRail website Table of Main Features contents Columns 55 First Look: 68 Improving Atlas crossovers 24 People for the RR Beginner’s guide to creative effects Track Gang: One evening project Lite and Narrow by Jeff Shultz by Lew Matt All scales HO by Lew Venema 30 Bear Creek gets water, p2 57 First Look: 70 Rochester coal deliveries Up the Creek 2012 Walthers HO reference book In-depth look at realistic coal traffic by Charlie Comstock by Jeff Shultz All scales by David Karkoski HO 35 Picking a date Getting Real 58 Kato paint removal 79 Making cab curtains in any scale by Jack Burgess The Engine House: one evening project Using tea bags to simulate canvas by Brian Banna by Chad M. Zentz 43 More of the basics HO & N All scales DCC Impulses by Bruce Petrarca 60 Kitbashing a Central Valley truss 83 The 35 dollar challenge, part 2 How to tranform it into a heavier bridge Modeling an IPD car 50 King Coal by Matt Snell Comme-N-tary HO by Tom Patterson HO by John Drye 94 November Model Railroading News Other Features MRH News and Events 8 Selective compression 16 MRH Q - A - T by Richard Bale Editor’s Soapbox by Charlie Comstock Questions, Answers and Tips 110 Steam-to-diesel interest? 22 Hobby Marketplace Reverse Running 10 MRH Staff Notes by Joe Fugate How do you read MRH? 112 Derailments – Humor? 14 Subscriber-only extras Bonus downloads Page 6 • Issue 11-11• Nov 2011 Table of contents - Features Page 7 • Issue 11-11• Nov 2011 Advertisement Visit Advertiser’s website EDITOR’S SOAPBOX: Selective Compression Turning less into more ... making it feel bigger when viewed switch crew, a two man local switch job up close. in Redland, and two man road crews. Reader About the Feedback Modeling large structures at a The first reductions are road crews. (click here) reduced scale. Locals, which do a ton of switching, Editor keep two man crews, but other trains The list goes on. run with just an engineer. et’s face it. The vast majority With operations we face different of us will never have enough problems. I made more cuts by dropping the space to model everything we second man in the switch crew at want to include on our layouts. Over Sometimes we look orf ways to Redland and making the yardmaster Ltime, and through many counsel- justify more traffic than would be run his own switch engine. ling sessions (referred to by some as present on our tracks. Those mod- The next step is using single man “hanging out with the trainheads”) eling heavy duty mainlines are not crews for locals. This lets the railroad we learn to deal with such reali- likely to have sufficient staging to run with a crew of 10 people. ties and move on with life – and our permit running 100 trains a session layouts. Maybe the mantra “it’s not so a subset of trains is selected. But I only had eight, what now? what you’ve got, but how you use it” Our all-too-short mainlines pres- applies here? The dispatcher got a throttle and Charlie Comstock has been a ent us with runs that end too soon. dispatched from a cab instead of his When it comes to dealing with our Either we run more slowly to savor office. regular columnist, author, and editor limited spaces we resort to various the mainline, or some of us park Instead of TWC (track warrant con- techniques and ruses. trains in a tunnel for a few minutes of Model Railroad Hobbyist trol), trains ran on verbal authority. Shortening the mainline to make to represent running up mainline Magazine since its inception. room for more towns. miles somewhere. One compresses The fast clock was turned off and time, the other real estate. trains departed in sequence as space Reducing the size and number of and crews became available. “Is there To learn more about Charlie, A fast clock compresses the towns and picking a handful of key room in the destination staging area? appearance of elapsed time. click here. structures or features. We include Is the track where you need to go those to clue visitors in on where The most recent op session on the clear enough? Then go!” we’re modeling and omit lots of the Bear Creek and South Jackson was The result? We ran a 3.5 hour session in humdrum surrounding them. interesting – there were only eight about 2.5 hours, with a pint sized crew. Resorting to trickery such as stra- operators present. I consider a full tegically placed mirrors to make it crew to be 14 to 18 people though it’s Sometimes less really is more! seem as though the layout extends possible to run all positions with 10. beyond the walls. What are the crew positions and how did I compress them? Building a series of microvignettes to seduce the eye into dawdling The “bare creek”, as I sometimes call it, over each area of the layout, uses a dispatcher, a yardmaster, a yard Page 8 • Issue 11-11• Nov 2011 Editorial There is Only One Real Choice When Accuracy, Detail, Quality, Value, Quality Products Co. Purchasing Couplers. Made in the U.S.A. Patent Numbers D414,533 D410,709 HO-Scale, PS-1 Box Car Kits 5,785,192 7,434518 B2. ® Kadee Quality Products have Patent Numbers D414,533 D410,709 the ONLY Couplers that conform 5,785,192 7,434518 B2. to the NMRA Standards! WORLDS BEST COUPLERS FOR OVER 65 YEARS! Kadee® Made in the # 6912 40’ PS-1, 8’ Door..........$ 37.95 U.S.A. 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