John's Alaska Railroad HO Scale Layout

June 3, 2020

I spent the week running all locomotives around the layout as well as cleaning their wheels. For this cleaning I used alcohol soaked T-shirt material and placed the running wheels on it. As you can see in the photo it was a great success. I also cleaned the entire mainline track by hand.	Pizza and salad bar is on the menu for train night. Terry ends it right with hot fudge cake complete with ice cream and homemade brownies and hot fudge.	As layout construction draws to a close it is time to take tools home. After taking my table saw down the stairs and to the barn, LJ loads up his car with his jigsaw and mitre saw. His Dremel will remain on site for use with the second mountain.

Rick successfully tests the final seven locomotives on the test track and all are placed in service. After three weeks of testing the final results are two locomotives need replacement modules and two others refuse to function properly once their shells are put back in place. Next week Rick will address these issues.	LJ is smiling as he spends his evening running three different trains, a seven car passenger train, a freight consist of box and tank cars and a Maintenance of Way (MOW) train of gondolas and Difco dump cars. He selects an SD70MAC for part of the runs and then switches over to F7 #1500 for the rest of the evening.	The passenger train looks graceful while running, but proves to be a headache. The vestibules rub against each other when taking the 24-inch radius curves and derailments ensue. During the upcoming week I am going to install long shank couplers to fix this problem.

June 10, 2020

Bratwurst bar, fresh cut fries, homemade strawberry shortcake and now you want us to work on trains? Okay, here it goes. Rick replaces RailPro LM-3 modules in two locomotives which makes the entire fleet of 24 fully operational. We have old three GP-40s which are working funky and we believe it is in the motors themselves. Stay tuned for more on this problem.	After LJ fixes an output short on the layout he runs a wide variety of trains. He begins by running, believe it or not, a consist of fives cabooses. Although this may look a little bit hinky it is a necessary effort in that we want to ensure all cars on the layout are operational.	Another train LJ fields is an interesting fright consisting of John Deere tractors on a flat car, refrigeration car, McKinley Route box car, Leyden trailers on flat cars, centerbeam flat car (painted and decaled by Robert Krol) and a flat car with Alaska Railroad pick up truck which I purchased from Steve Booth's hobby store on the Kenai.

John spends his time cleaning track and transferring locomotive icons to the handheld controllers. The swing gate is beginning to have some operational issues. John and Rick discuss modifications needed to correct binding and sloping.	After eating his share of bratwurst, French fries and homemade strawberry shortcake Max is a wee bit lethargic this evening. Almost 25 rail cars need couplers converted from McHenry to Kaydee, but Max is just too tired to do the job tonight. maybe next week....

June 18, 2020

I spent some time over the week inserting my Alaska Railroad icons into each RailPro handheld controller. Since the controllers are touch screens you can look at the display and touch the icon of the locomotive you wish to control. Need icons, but don't have them? Take photos of your locomotives and convert them to bit map icons.	Several months ago I chose to move at risk and run trains before all the foam board was in place. You guessed it! I had a derailment and some of the freight cars fell to the floor. No!!!! One of the hoppers lost the covers (to the vacuum cleaner?) to the draft gear box. Rick came to the rescue and took different covers and screwed them into place.	Keeping 258 feet of main line (some of which runs thru tunnels) and numerous sidings clean is a challenge. I bit the financial bullet and purchased a CMX Clean Machine car. Cut the provided material to length and place it on the bottom of the car. Use the syringe to squirt your desired cleaner into the car and then turn the nut to the desired flow rate.

The cleaning car weighs one pound. Combining this with a wiper car at the end of the consist translates to tractive effort of two locomotives.	Now what type of cleaning solvent to use? Skip Williams sent me copies of two articles which really illuminated my path (1, 2). My choice was mineral spirits. The right pad shows the first run of the cleaning car. Whoa! The left pad shows the second run. Now the entire layout passes the white glove test.	Three of my locomotives are working pretty squirrelly. Rick suspects the problem lies in the actual mechanical components. Sure enough GP40 #3015 shows the wear and tear of over a decade of operation. I am able to find an unused Athearn GP40 in one of my boxes in which to swap the guts.

Here is #3015's shell receiving #3014's guts. Sure enough it works correctly. As I am never going to convert every locomotive I own this is a lot easier than replacing individual parts.	Here is the entire fleet of 24 operational locomotives. I wish I had room for a roundhouse!	For some mysterious reason several of the 41 switches are not opening 100% of the way. Is it settling of the layout? Change of humidity? Ghosts? Rick and I spend some time tweaking, shaving and tightening. This effort will probably continue over the next two weeks.

June 24, 2020

While the men are playing in the train room the ladies are in the kitchen working on various crafts such as jewelry making, cutting and sewing cloth face masks or painting rocks. Of particular interest is the Alaska Railroad rock painted for the train room.	Rick took two of the old GP40 locomotives (nos. 3009 and 3010) home for repair and lubricating. Tonight Rick successfully runs #3010 while #3009 runs about 20 feet and then stops. More work will be needed and possibly another Frankenstein effort as well. The bottom line is 23 of the 24 locomotives are up and running!	John successfully transfers the remaining locomotive icons to the handheld controllers. Now both controllers have custom icons for each locomotive. Next week John will transfer engine and bell sounds for each locomotive.

When you have 41 Tortoise switches on the layout you can expect a few to be cantankerous. The main south Anchorage switch refuses to open to completely and causes derailments. This week LJ lends Rick a hand in trying to find the cause. It seems the opening in the plywood is not big enough to accommodate full movement of the spring wire.	The wire is removed and LJ drills from underneath. Oops! Things go awry and the adjoining track segment is damaged. It is a bit of a pain removing track that is painted into place. However, it was removed and a new piece put in place. Next week Rick will bring his Dremel to prep the ends of the rails and slide everything into place.	Ultradome cars derail on S curves. Close examination reveals the opening in the gear box does not allow the coupler to move enough from side to side. LJ inserts a gondola between them and observes the twisting forces on it (click on photo to view video). Does anyone know of a possible solution to this problem?

Feel free to contact me at john@alaskarails.org
Page created 9/4/17 and last updated 7/3/20