John's Alaska Railroad HO Scale Layout

March 3, 2021

I needed to level out the "abutment" form board pieces for the base of the second mountain. I tried and failed in hand saw cutting a 0.5" thick piece from a 2" foam board. I broke down and made a visit to the hardware store to purchase 0.5" thick foam board. I cut this foam board with a hot wire to fit the existing curves and then used Liquid Nails to secure it in place.	David made his weekly appearance and finished the sky on the inside of the inner scenery backdrop. This week's discussions covered the importance of preserving the world's oxygen, the proper parenting of children and electronic dance music.	After finishing the sky David began painting more clouds. Completed areas include Alaska Marine Lines, double track and North Pole refinery. Next week David should be able to complete all cloud work and begin focusing on the land forms beneath the clouds.

During train night Rick and I focus on cutting foam board for the base of the second mountain. After putting an uncut board in place Rick traces out an approximate shape. Using a jigsaw Rick cuts a more exact size. He holds the vacuum cleaner nozzle next to the blade to catch as much foam debris as possible.	Once the foam board is in place Rick trims the western face with the hot wire cutter. First Rick notches the area at the portal so it sits on top and behind it. Next, he trims small slices at the slanted face of the reverse loop curve. Cutting too little is okay. Cutting too much will be a big problem as it will require fill material.	The slicing continues until a match is made with the existing slope (green foam board). Next Rick crawls under the table and measures the rectangular cut for the hollowed-out center of the board.

Rick uses the jigsaw to cut out the center of the board. A hollowed out mountain will be built on top of this base. Why is it hollow? If a train derails inside the mountain the operator can crawl under the table, stick his head up inside the hollowed out section, spot the fallen cars in the catch basin and retrieve them.	Over the past few months Rick took a Burlington Northern GP40 and turned it into an Alaska Railroad unit. A RailPro LM-3 was installed and Rick built a small test track at home. Tonight he ran the locomotive on Clayton's Alaska Railroad. In this video you will see an uncoupling of the passenger car. This is due to mixed coupler heights and will be fixed next week. It is always something!	I need to add a photo of the baggage car. Rick added washers to the trucks for proper coupler height. At my request, he removed the electric contact plates which rub against the wheels to provide power for interior car lighting. This poor design creates friction and squeaking. I don't intend to light the interior of the baggage car so the problematic design was removed.

March 10, 2021

As Mike Cooper and I initially discussed the creation of the layout we decided to create removable foam board around the tracks to facilitate easier scenery work for my limited reach. Who would have thought we could send a scenery board with John and Leigh to work on at their home in Kentucky! They are constructing a Woodland Scenics Maple Leaf Cemetery kit with a few fun additions. John is shown here cutting out the various pieces of the basswood tool shed.	Although the foam board is flat true life dictates otherwise. John and Leigh use newspaper to create slight rises in the scene. "Every project needs a foreman!", says John as Zeus peeks a supervising eye up over the table. Rumor has it he is actually looking for a table snack, but his press secretary released a statement he is actually keeping a watchful eye on the workers.	Here is another view of the land form work. Knowing John and Leigh's propensity to dark humor it will be interesting to view the finished product. Will there be Walking Dead? A leg bone sticking out of a grave with a dog yanking on it? Or maybe something as simple as representations of themselves working a funeral?

Leigh has done her share of mortuary facial reconstructions using a wide variety of waxes. She applies her skills here to model landscapes using high quality Liquitex Flexible Modeling Paste. This paste is easy to work with and holds great form. With an artist flair Leigh smooths the paste over the land forms.	The finished preparation work looks great! Zeus, the ever vigilant foreman, nods his head in agreement. "Time for pizza", he exclaims!	Over the weekend the entire family drops by to celebrate Terry's birthday. Four grandsons spend 4-5 hours watching the trains roll past the new scenic backdrops. Oldest grandson Liam took the controls and ran several trains, blowing the horn and ringing the electronic bell. He also enjoyed following the train with his great grandfather Doug's John Deere farm tractor.

Terry is a devotee of garage and estate sales. She happened upon a huge estate sale near our home and found a large collection of HO scale buildings, freight cars, locomotives and scenic materials. I returned with her and found a few items I could use. The seller gave us everything for half price.	For train night, Jackie brought iced and chocolate chip cookies for Terry's birthday. This was a great finale to the chicken sandwiches, homemade French fries and salad bar.	Over the past week Rick added #6 washers to five Princess and two Holland America passenger cars plus one Alaska Railroad baggage car. These modification brought the rail car's couplers up to NMRA standards.

Somehow the front coupler on GP40 #3009 got broken so Rick installed a replacement. As it turned out one of the hostlers was talking on his cell phone to his girlfriend and stopped paying attention to what he was doing. He now works at McDonalds just down the road.	Rick is working on a custom built track testing car. There are LEDs on the front and back plus on each side. This car mimics the electrical connections a locomotive experiences as it crosses over switches or other areas of interest. Next week Rick will give it a test run on the layout	This piece of plywood was added when the reverse curve was eliminated at the "dreaded S curve." Unfortunately, at the southeast end of the plywood an elevation break was created. The rise of this sheet of plywood butted up against the level area of the next piece of plywood. This explains the recent rash of "pull aparts" at this location.

This video shows the change of coupler heights as the train travels across this new piece of plywood. Small changes are okay, but the large change at the end of the video is the location of the extreme elevation change and subsequent "pull aparts." My apologies for the occasional camera shake due to walking along side the train. Next week we will rip up 16 inches of track and cork road bed on either side of the elevation break, apply a belt sander to the region and then lay new cork bed and track. The main line will be down for two weeks.

March 17, 2021

When initially designing my layout my mail goal was the ability to run trains long distances. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that during the week I will head to the train room and send a nice long train around the 254 feet of mainline. Yup, just sit and watch it run. The custom painted backdrop by David makes it look very cool!	Rick finished his custom built track testing car and used his GP40 #3006 to push it through the back-to-back switches at the north end of the Anchorage depot. The LEDs did not flicker as the trucks pass over the frogs which means the wind must be coming from the north. Weeks ago our GP40s would pause through these sections so the wind must have been coming from the east.	Even though the swing gate is locked in place some settling and shifting occurs which causes derailments at the eastern end. Rick gave this some thought and came up with a proposed solution. These two steel rods demonstrate the prevention of both east/west as well as north/south shifting in these wooden blocks. Rick will implement this design at a future train night session.

The southern ends of the "Smooth as Glass" curve and adjacent siding has sudden elevation changes which cause disconnecting of adjacent couplers. Tonight Rick begins the implementation to fix this issue. First, he unsolders the joiners for the track in the siding.	Next, he uses a putty knife to remove the painted track from the cork bed. He repeats the process to remove the painted cork bed from the plywood. Thank goodness this cork bed was fastened with rubber cement as it is fairly easily to remove and can therefore be re-used.	Using a belt sander he smooths the transition area from the two adjacent pieces of plywood. The vacuum hose is at the rear of the sander to keep dust to a minimum.

Rick replaces the cork bed and track and resolders the joiners. Now it is time to see if his efforts paid off.	At the transition point the couplers remain the same height and thus did not come uncoupled. Mission accomplished!	Rick repeats the entire process for the mainline. The transition point is now smooth and we experience no pull-aparts. All that remains is for the plywood to be repainted.

The railroad layout will require creation of hundreds of pine trees. Pat and Casey Durand sent me a "Tree Making Kit for Dummies" several decades ago for my previous layout and I've opened it up to kick start a new effort. Using bumpy Chenille, floral tape, paint and ground foam I created an initial test run of trees. They look good, but need some of the floral tape removed as the "bark" looks too fat.	Jackie volunteers in the creation of our pine forests. She uses scissors to trim the Chenille into the shape the trees. Next, she wraps the base in floral tape which gives the appearance of bark. Our Chenille was flattened during shipping so she wets her finger and spruces it back into shape. These trees are set aside in foam board to dry. The final step is painting and sprinkling with ground foam.

March 24, 2021

Ted stopped by and put the last piece of framing on the backdrop. Added to the ever growing "to do" list is to prime and paint all the wood framing. Volunteers?	In an effort to prevent uncoupling on the "Smooth as Glass" curve Rick decides to install a series of shims. He created the shim pieces in his workshop at home. Tonight he cuts them to length according to actual on site measurements.	He installs the new shims and finds it keeps the passenger train from uncoupling. Adjacent couplers still move up and down, but not enough to come uncoupled.

Rick uses his custom built track testing car and discovers the voltage changes polarity when transitioning between two particular segments. This proves there is a software bug in the RailPro system which will be addressed with the company.	John worked on miniature pine trees over the week in anticipation of train night. Jackie takes these bumpy Chenille pieces and trims them into tree shapes. She then wets them to remove any flat spots created in shipping.

Feel free to contact me at john@alaskarails.org
Page created 9/4/17 and last updated 4/4/21