This essay will appear as Observations #63 in a slightly shorter form. A China Syndrome Back in early March 2012 a missive from Jason Shron, the president of Rapido Trains (Canada, suppliers of HO and N Scale) made the rounds on various O Scale discussion forums. In the letter, Mr. Shron detailed some of the [...]
Back in issue #51 (still available for sale) I wrote an article on a variety of uses for the Atlas O Universal Switch Controller (USC). One of this uses was a turntable indexer and I did a proof of concept using a paper clip as a target for the IR sensor. Well, I decide it [...]
The Saga of #953 You would not believe the grief this engine has given me to get it to the point where it is presentable! The engine was scratchbuilt by Frank Miller in 2009. I gave him drivers and a motor. He did the rest. The engine is a V1 class 4-6-0. These are unusual [...]
Many people have seen the photos of my N&W K1 on Matt Forsyth’s blog. But what they didn’t see was the process that took place over the span of 11 months. A little background: I had the K1 “custom built” by someone who had a reputation as a superior model builder. The K1′s boiler was [...]
By Rob Adams The 2011 version of the renowned Naperville RPM meet was held October 20-23, 2011 at Lisle, Illinois and as in years past was well-attended with many excellent models on display. If you haven’t attended a Railroad Prototype Modelers (RPM) meet, you should make it a point to do so. The opportunities to [...]
I’ve been working with Scott Mann and his builder to make sure the N&W M 4-8-0 is built correctly. I’ve been given drawings to examine and correct. It’s been a fascinating look behind the scenes at what it takes to get a model built. I’ve been given permission by Scott to post drawings of the [...]
This essay will appear as Observations #63 in a slightly shorter form.
A China Syndrome
Back in early March 2012 a missive from Jason Shron, the president of Rapido Trains (Canada, suppliers of HO and N Scale) made the rounds on various O Scale discussion forums. In the letter, Mr. Shron detailed some of the issues facing model railroad suppliers that have their products manufactured in China.
The 2008 purchase of Sanda Kan, the world’s largest model railroad manufacturer, by Kader Holdings Company Ltd. (which also owns Bachmann Industries) had a huge impact on the model railroad hobby. Where Sanda Kan had contracts with many hobby brands here in the U.S. (large and small), Kader dropped almost everyone but the very largest accounts. According to Shron, “The industry is still recovering from the eviction of Sanda Kan’s clients. The January closure of one of the largest remaining suppliers in the industry will only add to our collective problems.”
Shron continued: “Bringing the manufacturing back to North America would cost even more due to very high start up costs and higher overhead, and there are no reliable model train factories set up yet in places like India. So I think we’re looking at tough times ahead in our industry: more delays and even larger price increases.”
Recent activity on the boards indicate that model railroaders are seriously concerned about the current increases in the cost of model trains and accessories, particularly track. But the part of the message that gets my dander up is the idea that we cannot bring the manufacture of trains back to North America because it’s too expensive.
So, let’s take a little side trip, bear with me. In addition to being a “train guy” I am also a “car guy”. I’ve owned a 1961 Ford Starliner, seven different mid-60s Corvettes, a 1970 Chevelle SS, a 1978 Trans Am (4 spd, 400CID), a 1985 IROC Z28, and my current ride is a 2011 Toxic Orange Challenger with a Super Sport package
As a car guy, I subscribe to a magazine called AutoWeek. For the past two years a company called WeatherTech has placed two and four page ads in AutoWeek, not for their floor mats and rain guards, but to extol the virtues of manufacturing their products in the U.S.
David MacNeil, the CEO of WeatherTech, explains in the pages why they stopped using foreign manufacturing and brought it all in-house using North American tools and materials. His essay is called “What Matters To You” and you can read it on the WeatherTech website here [http://www.weathertech.com/assets/1/7/What_Matters_to_You_New_American_Factory.pdf]. But his message can be summed up succinctly: “… place building a quality product, supporting your country and your fellow American worker before profit.”
So, let’s go back to trains. A lot of U.S. manufacturers went to China to reduce manufacturing costs and in this quest for more profit they downsized or eliminated their U.S. workforce. All model trains used to be made domestically except for the brass imports from Japan and Korea. But what a lot of people thought was a global economy is turning out not to be so flat. According to recent remarks by Wharton School professor and frequent visitor to China, Marshall Mayer, manufacturing costs in China are going up and rapidly. China’s population is starting to age and they are having trouble finding workers. Other Asian countries are experiencing falling birthrates as well so moving manufacturing to India or Vietnam will only stall, not solve the problem.
Marshall also says that higher oil prices make global trade more expensive and the logistics of shipping products from China makes moving manufacturing back to the U.S. look more feasible every day.
China is also experiencing an energy shortage. China generates most of its electricity from coal and while the government does not control the price of coal, it does control the price of electricity and it is held artificially low. So low, that electricity produces cannot make a decent profit because coal costs too much so they shut down their power plants rather than burn more coal. The result is power blackouts.
So, given that China is not the goose that lays the golden egg, I do not accept the idea that model trains cannot be manufactured in North America again. It is a matter of how much will it cost and whether or not train vendors have the will to do what is necessary to bring it back.
I also realize that trains made in North America would cost more than trains made overseas, but I’d be willing to pay a higher price to know that I was supporting American workers and American manufacturing. Bringing manufacturing back here will not be easy but I have to ask does it makes economic sense for the model railroad industry to be at the mercy of one foreign company?
Now, don’t get me wrong. I do not advocate a boycott of foreign-made trains. If you did that, you would limit your model choices to an extreme. But I would like to see some domestic production. For example, the present Atlas Model Railroad Company was once know as the Atlas Tool Company and all of its products were made in New Jersey. It would be great if a company like Atlas would return to its roots and do both its engineering and manufacturing in the U.S. Even Lionel has looked seriously at manufacturing some of its trains here in the Philadelphia area. I hope they do more and I hope that all of the model railroad industry takes a hard look at how and where their trains are made.
Back in issue #51 (still available for sale) I wrote an article on a variety of uses for the Atlas O Universal Switch Controller (USC). One of this uses was a turntable indexer and I did a proof of concept using a paper clip as a target for the IR sensor. Well, I decide it was time to put the indexer to use as I am now working on the White Top module of the layout.
First a refresher. For those of you who may not have seen the article, or who, like me, are too lazy to go dig it out, here is the circuit diagram published in #51.
The Sensa-Trak II is an IR transmitter/receiver pair from TCH Technologies. It’s output is normally “high”, i.e. a positive voltage and when triggered the output goes “low”, i.e. to ground (0 volts). Since the USC does not like to have a ground on the input constantly, I used a small trigger circuit that will go low when the sensor is triggered but then charges quickly back up to the the source voltage. This way, the turntable can be restarted. Without that trigger, the table would be stuck in place.
Here are the various circuit boards secured under the layout next to the Millhouse Studios turntable.
I use a Radio Shack Wall Wart that puts out 18 VAC. That is controlled by my remote power strip. That 18 VAC feeds a 12 VDC power supply which provides the power for both the USC and the Sensa-Trak sensor. I feed that 12 VDC over to a 5 VDC power supply to run the turntable. My previous testing showed that 5 volts was more than enough to run the table at a nice slow steady speed.
What I needed to do to make this all feasible was make an adjustable target so that I could align the table to incoming and outgoing tracks. The target had to be easy to make with no special machine tools and it also needed to be fairly cheap. I thought about this for a while and even searched online for something I could buy off the shelf. What I came up with is shown below.
That is a strip of 0.032″ thick brass stock (K&S from the LHS), two 6-32 hex nuts, a 6-32 square nut, a 6-32 acorn nut, a 6-32 brass screw 1-1/2″ long and a piece of .040″ brass wire. The hex nuts are soldered to the brass strip while threaded onto the screw. Then I drill out the nuts so the screw just passes through the nuts (#29 bit, 0.136″). I put the screw back through the hex nuts with the square nut threaded on the screw and put the acorn nut on the end with some Walthers Goo on it. Now when you turn the screw head the square nut slides back and forth along the brass strip.
The target is held onto the bottom of the turntable drive wheel with Scotch double-sided foam tape. I lined up the table and incoming track by hand. Marked the location of the sensor head on the drive wheel and then attached the target so the square nut was in the middle and aligned with the mark on the wheel.
To align the table I manually backed the bridge away from the incoming track and then triggered the table. Once the table stops because the sensor is active I check to see where the table stopped. From that I know to adjust the screw so the table advances a bit more or stops a bit earlier. I go back under the table, make the target adjustment and manually move the bridge back away from the sensor, then restart the table and check the alignment again. It did not take long to get the table lined up dead-center. It took maybe 4 trys at 10 minutes, tops.
I assembled two micro-pushbuttons with about a foot of wire attached on some perf board and then built a small cabinet out of styrene siding scraps to house the perf board. The buttons get connected to the start and emergency stop inputs on the USC. The housing looks like a utility cabinet next to the turntable. Flip open the top and the button on the right starts the table. The button on the left is an emergency stop button.
Finally, since the USC has a built-in output for an Atlas O dwarf signal head, I placed a dwarf next to the incoming lead to the table. It’s lit green when the table is stopped (and aligned). It’s red while the table is running. Cool!
I realize now that I did not need such a long screw. I just was not sure how sensitive the target/sensor pair was going to be so I wanted a lot of adjustment. Now that I’ve done it four times, I could likely have used a screw half as long which would allow more targets to be installed for more tracks.
Since there’s been a lot of talk online about my latest Observations column, I’ve decided to post it here for those who don’t get the magazine or have not received their copy yet.
Going Digital
We will be selling a Digital Edition (DE) of the magazine starting with the May/June issue. See the announcement at the bottom of page 39 for more details.
OST Modelers Network
If you have not registered online for the OST Modelers Network, take a moment and do it now. It’s free. You will have access to our discussion forums, photo galleries and can stay in touch with other O Scale modelers like yourself. Visit the OST Blog at www.oscalemag.com and click on the Register link.
The State Of O Scale
Not long ago an acquaintance sent me a letter saying he was getting out of O Scale after just getting started less than a year earlier. His reason was that it was too hard to find the things he wanted or needed to build his railroad. I’d seen this happen before several times and I am sure it will happen again in the future. This newcomer’s negative reaction to O Scale can be attributed to several factors.
First and foremost, O Scale does not conform to a prototypically correct track gauge. O Scale standard gauge was set in the U.S. at 1.25” (five feet wide) long ago in antiquity and the developed inertia against changing this is enormous. This wide gauge has led to a host of corrective measures over time, none of which have caught on with a majority of O Scale modelers or manufacturers, but has left O Scale 2-rail with a legacy of multiple scale ratios around the world: 1:43.5, 1:48, and 1:45.
O Scale is big, relatively speaking, and when smaller scales, like HO, N and Z, were offered to the hobbyist, migration to the smaller scales took place at the expense of O Scale. What was once the “King of all Scales” is now a minority scale with less than 5% of the total model railroad market. Indeed, some dealers and hobby shops don’t even know that O 2-rail still exists.
What little O Scale development there is goes primarily to the 3-rail O Gauge market. There are definitely more hobbyists using 3-rail than 2-rail. So, manufacturers tend to listen to and cater to the 3-rail market first. We’ve seen the kind of mayhem this can lead to with 140 smph top speeds, poor low speed performance and compromised fidelity to scale in order to operate on tight curves.
Unlike other scales, O Scale “suffers” from a multitude of competing control systems. HO and N Scale drive the overall model railroad marketplace and those scales have settled on DC and DCC as the two main control systems. Virtually every new locomotive in HO and N comes factory-equipped with dual-mode DCC with sound. O Scale control systems include DC, DCS from MTH, TMCC from Lionel, and DCC. Only Atlas O offers dual-mode DCC as a factory-installed option. MTH is now offering their DCC-compatible Proto3 system in its newest locomotives but only in diesels so far. Importers that cater to both 2-rail and three rail offer Lionel-licensed TMCC command systems in 3-rail models but only simple DC for 2-rail models.
All of model railroading has suffered from a loss of kits, particularly rolling stock and locomotives. In the smaller scales, there are enough buyers to accommodate the production of the most obscure equipment. Not so in O Scale. At present there is one producer of locomotive kits in O Scale: Stevenson Preservation Lines. The kits offered by Bob Stevenson are essentially updated Lobaugh kits from the 1940s and 1950s. The Varney/General Models/All Nation/Babbitt locomotive kits have found a new home with Bill Wade at BTS but the last Babbitt 4-6-0 kit I bought (2009) was hopelessly mired in the 1940s. There has been no U.S. development of a new O Scale locomotive kit since the 1950s. Mike Calvert in the U.K. has five white metal kits of U.S. diesels but that’s about it.
Ted Schnepf (Rails Unlimited) and Jon Cagle (Southern Car and Foundry) make cast resin kits, while Glenn Guerra (Mullet River Model Works) makes laser-cut and etched rolling stock kits. All three manufacturer’s kits are considered craftsman quality which means there are no entry level rolling stock kits for modelers to learn skills.
The state of scale turnouts in O Scale currently is dismal. There is one provider of ready-to-lay turnouts, Atlas O. Atlas O makes three types in 2-rail, a #5, a #7-1/2 and a #5 Wye. Contrast that to the 10 types Atlas O makes in 3-rail and the 27 3-rail turnouts offered by Ross Custom Switches.
The final stake through the heart of O Scale is the complete lack of 1:48 vehicles. You would have thought that by now someone would have capitalized on the lack of vehicles and filled that void. Uh-uh.
Many newcomers to O Scale come from either smaller scales (like my acquaintance) or the 3-rail side of the house where they are used to having virtually anything they want in an easy-to-open, ready-to-run box; where a locomotive from Athearn will easily double-head with one from Bachmann; and where they have a choice of scale couplers all of which are compatible. When they learn that in O Scale 2-rail if you want something you will likely have to build it yourself from scratch or bash it from something else, that most O Scale couplers (Kadees included) are oversized, that Atlas O truck frames are too wide, or that DCC for O Scale is immature, they leave. I watched one newcomer get berated for “whining” about O Scale on the OST Forum and then he left, for good.
I have very mixed emotions about all of the above. O Scale 2-rail is the last bastion of the scratchbuilder. I believe it builds useful life-skills when you don’t have everything handed to you ready-to-run. As one long-time O Scaler put it: “If O Scale was easy I wouldn’t be in it.”
On the other hand, O Scale 2-rail needs fresh blood and fresh ideas. That will only come from a younger demographic which will want to model in O Scale 2-rail. The niche where I see both youth and new ideas happening is Proto48. I think that Proto48 has plenty of room to grow and eventually become the defacto O Scale it should have been from the beginning.
Keep Highballin’
You would not believe the grief this engine has given me to get it to the point where it is presentable!
The engine was scratchbuilt by Frank Miller in 2009. I gave him drivers and a motor. He did the rest. The engine is a V1 class 4-6-0. These are unusual because the driver size as-built was 56″ and later increased to 62″. This has 62″ drivers.
The tender I originally had behind this was a USRA 10,000 gallon unit which I quickly realized was incorrect. I needed a 9000 gallon tender and no one has ever made one. I decided to make a tender myself.
Many people have seen the photos of my N&W K1 on Matt Forsyth’s blog. But what they didn’t see was the process that took place over the span of 11 months.
A little background: I had the K1 “custom built” by someone who had a reputation as a superior model builder. The K1′s boiler was the only thing he actually scratchbuilt. The rest was made of commercial parts. The cab and cylinders came from a Sunset N&W K3. The tender is a USH NKP berk tender. The chassis is from a PFM Toby USRA Heavy 4-8-2. I gave him all these components and a substantial deposit. What I got back was the pile of crap that you’ll see in these photos. So, here we go! (Click on the photos for larger unclipped images then use the BACK button to go back to the blog text.)
By Rob Adams
The 2011 version of the renowned Naperville RPM meet was held October 20-23, 2011 at Lisle, Illinois and as in years past was well-attended with many excellent models on display. If you haven’t attended a Railroad Prototype Modelers (RPM) meet, you should make it a point to do so. The opportunities to interact with other modelers of all skill levels and learn new techniques is perhaps the most valuable part of the experience. Regardless of your prototype choice, era or scale, the models, displays and layouts exhibited will serve to inspire your own modeling.
Notable new O Scale products on display at the meet this year were Archer Fine Transfers excellent line of resin rivet head, louver and safety tread decals, the wonderful Rails Unlimited Milwaukee Road Stock car, and Mullet River Model Work’s upcoming CB&Q truss rod box car model. I’m particularly excited about the Mullet River box car, which was a common Burlington house car during the steam and early diesel era. It will be offered as-built with double-sheathed ends, and as rebuilt with steel ends and metal clad roof. This should be considered an essential freight car for any steam era modeler in O scale. I was most remiss in not snapping any photos of the pilot models, but trust me, you’ll want at least one of them on your roster!
Great Northern box car 47451
Photo 1: A model of GN box car 47451 as built by Dick Scott. Models in the back ground are HO Scale.
There were fewer finished O scale models on display than the last couple of years, but those exhibited were impressive. Of particular note was a beautiful Great Northern box car model built by Dick Scott. The car replicates one of the GN’s signature box cars built for the road from 1937 to 1942 and numbering 8000 cars in the series 45000-52999.
Dick’s model was created from:
Coincidentally, Railway Prototype Cyclopedia Volume 23 published by RP Cyc Publishing was released in concert with the Lisle RPM Meet. It includes an excellent feature about Mid-Century 40’6″ Composite Wood Sheathed Box Cars 1937-43, with thorough coverage of the GN cars, including drawings, equipment diagrams and more than two dozen prototype photographs. I would recommend it for any modeler interested in freight car history and modeling.
More information about this wonderful publication can be found at: http://www.rpcycpub.com/
Model Images from the Lisle RPM Meet
Photo 2: A side view of GN47451 as modeled in O scale by Dick Scott
Photo 3: A close up of the "B" end of GN47451 as modeled in O scale by Dick Scott
Photo 4: A side close up of GN47451 as modeled in O scale by Dick Scott, showing the fastener detail, dimensional data, chalk marks and repack stencils
Photo 5: A view of the roof and running board detail of GN47451 as modeled in O scale by Dick Scott.
Photo 6: A view of the underframe detail on GN47451 as modeled in O scale by Dick Scott.
Photo 7: Grand Trunk Western GP9 4432 as modeled in O Scale by Paul Cervenka. Paul's HO scale GTW RPO is in the foreground.
Photo 8: Another view of Grand Trunk Western GP9 4432 as modeled in O Scale by Paul Cervenka.
Photo 9: Proto:48 models built and displayed by John Pautz of American Switch & Signal.
Photo 10: A B&O M-53, one of the Proto:48 models built and displayed by John Pautz of American Switch & Signal.
Photo 11: Milwaukee Rib-side box car, one of the Proto:48 models built and displayed by John Pautz of American Switch & Signal.
All photographs by Rob Adams.
I’ve been working with Scott Mann and his builder to make sure the N&W M 4-8-0 is built correctly. I’ve been given drawings to examine and correct. It’s been a fascinating look behind the scenes at what it takes to get a model built. I’ve been given permission by Scott to post drawings of the variations.
If it were not for Steve Jobs you would not be reading this today. Back in late 1985 I came across the Macintosh computer. A friend of mine had bought one and was showing me MacWrite and MacDraw, two programs that came with the Mac. To be honest, I was not impressed. My Commodore 64 cost one-tenth as much and could do the same things, or so I thought.
About a year later I had my own “fat” Mac with 1Mb of RAM and a 10Mb Hyperdrive internal hard drive. That Hyperdrive cost $600! Then, a couple months later a friend of mine approached me with an offer to buy an Apple Laserwriter Plus for less than wholesale. I snapped it up and started a desktop publishing business while I was still working at General Electric Space Division.
I still have a copy of PageMaker 1.2 in a box with a floppy disk and printed manual. Armed with PageMaker, Photoshop and FreeHand, I was in business. By 1990 I’d had enough of the corporate grind and left GE to do DP full-time. By now I had a Mac IIci roaring along at 20Mhz with 8Mb RAM (at $1000 a Mb) and a 40Mb hard drive. I’d added a hard drive to my LaserWriter so it could access all the fonts I’d collected (over 1000) and not have to download them all to the printer’s memory. I was doing newsletters for small businesses and I worked on a management publication for a Fortune 500 company with a friend.
Meanwhile, I kept upgrading Macs whenever possible. After Jobs left Apple, it seemed like the Graphic Arts industry was the only thing holding Apple up. But we all hung in there and Jobs finally came back bringing with him the next big thing for the Mac, the new OS based on a UNIX kernel.
I’ve been through a slew of Macs: “fat” Mac, Mac SE, II, IIci, IIfx (40MHz – “wicked fast”), a “pizza box” 650, 8500, 9500, G3, G4, G5, G3 iBook, G4 iBook, MacBook, MacMini, and a 2 GHz MacBook Pro with 4Gb RAM.
Steve Jobs and the Macintosh allowed me to do what Joseph Campbell recommended, live my dream. I’ve always been a writer, even when I was working as a chemist and an engineer. It’s been what I do best and the Mac has allowed me to share that with you. Without Steve Jobs and the Macintosh, there would be no O Scale Trains Magazine.
So, farewell and thank you, Mr. Jobs. You left your mark on my life and I, for one, am grateful for it.
Joe Giannovario, Editor-in-Chief & Publisher
O Scale Trains Magazine
I was walking around the vendor halls at Indy and came upon a table with the most fantastic looking conifer trees I’ve ever seen. Long story short, I bought all 23 trees the guy had and a package of 18 tree stumps. The trees are made by Canyon Creek Scenics and they ain’t cheap, but I feel they are worth the money. The majority of my trees and scenery products come from Scenic Express which has just about anything you’d want. But these Canyon Creek trees are something else.
The masses have spoken and the voting is done. The 2011 O Scale Hall Of Fame inductees are:
Thanks to the O Scale Kings for organizing and hosting the vote.
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