John's Alaska Railroad HO Scale Layout

July 1, 2020

During the week I crafted a land form that transitions from TwentyMile to Flint Hills Refinery. This required a combination of foam board, expanding foam and spackle. After lots of sanding and a coat of paint the three pieces were ready to put into place.	The transition increases four inches in elevation. Currently it looks kind of hinky, but once covered with trees, rocks and grasses it should look pretty good. In the meantime it will prevent trains from falling to the floor in the event of a derailment.	As mentioned last week 10 of the 41 switches aren't functioning properly. Tonight Rick and LJ do some tweaking so they all function smooth as glass. One particularly pesky switch requires lots of modification in addition to replacement of a piece of adjacent track.

One of the switches in the APU is refusing to work. LJ pops out the large adjacent foam board, crawls under the bench work and slithers up between the joists. No minor adjustments will fix this malfunction. LJ asks Max for some assistance, but he is too busy dreaming up solutions to the world's current problems.	LJ repositions the Tortoise switch machine and the switch now operates properly. Tonight will be LJ's last night with the crew as he's accepted a lucrative job offer in northern Kentucky. As the longest serving member of the construction team his presence will be sorely missed, but his talents are very much appreciated.	Rick's marvelous efforts are shown here as 24 locomotives were successfully converted to RailPro. I am so thrilled! Many thanks to John Gray for analyzing my passenger car derailment problems and proposing some great solutions! Stay tuned.....

July 1, 2020

During the week I crafted a land form that transitions from TwentyMile to Flint Hills Refinery. This required a combination of foam board, expanding foam and spackle. After lots of sanding and a coat of paint the three pieces were ready to put into place.	The transition increases four inches in elevation. Currently it looks kind of hinky, but once covered with trees, rocks and grasses it should look pretty good. In the meantime it will prevent trains from falling to the floor in the event of a derailment.	As mentioned last week 10 of the 41 switches aren't functioning properly. Tonight Rick and LJ do some tweaking so they all function smooth as glass. One particularly pesky switch requires lots of modification in addition to replacement of a piece of adjacent track.

One of the switches in the APU is refusing to work. LJ pops out the large adjacent foam board, crawls under the bench work and slithers up between the joists. No minor adjustments will fix this malfunction. LJ asks Max for some assistance, but he is too busy dreaming up solutions to the world's current problems.	LJ repositions the Tortoise switch machine and the switch now operates properly. Tonight will be LJ's last night with the crew as he's accepted a lucrative job offer in northern Kentucky. As the longest serving member of the construction team his presence will be sorely missed, but his talents are very much appreciated.	Rick's marvelous efforts are shown here as 24 locomotives were successfully converted to RailPro. I am so thrilled! Many thanks to John Gray for analyzing my passenger car derailment problems and proposing some great solutions! Stay tuned.....

July 8, 2020

The swing gate opens with great difficulty. This could be due to settling of the layout, but the true cause is uncertain. Tonight Rick replaces the slide mechanism as well as raising the feet of the tables on both sides of the gate. Some fine tuning of the slide securing mechanism is performed as well.	Two reverse curves (one at the dreaded "S" curve and the other north of AML) cause passenger car derailments. John Gray's best solution proposes straightening out these curves. Tonight Rick tackles the reverse curve north of AML. He lays track over top existing track to survey a possible change.	The above video shows a successful run of the proposed track. In future weeks, the old track and foam board will be removed, new risers, cleats and plywood added, and new track laid. The "S" curve will be a totally different creature as fascia will also need to be removed and rebuilt.

Fifteen cars use the horn hook type coupler. I purchased 25 pairs of Kaydee #150 metal "whisker" couplers.	Some of the couplers were easy to remove like the hopper above while some were downright cantankerous. Rick helps with the pesky ones. A few of them use some truly funky stuff which require patience and persistence. P-30 uses a special post/clamp coupler which requires Rick to take it home for special reconstruction. The bottom line is all railcars were converted over to Kaydees.

July 15, 2020

Now that the Engineering Change Order (ECO) is approved the modification of the S curve north of Alaska Marine Lines (AML) can proceed. The work will take place over two evenings. Tonight Rick relocates the switch which involves separating track and switch from the painted cork bed, unsoldering the wires to the Tortoise switch machine, relocating and re-soldering and finally tacking everything in place.	After testing the Tortoise switch machine and finding its operation to be satisfactory, Rick adds cord bed under the switch transition. Next week the track north of the switch will be put into place. This will involve cutting and removing foam board and putting in plywood with riser/cleat support.

July 29, 2020

Remember those backdrops I ordered back in March where the company shorted me one? Long story extremely short, my replacement got lost in the cracks. The company no longer responded to my emails so I decided to buy another one on eBay. I never got it. Once eBay interceded for my refund, the company called me, explained what went wrong and sent me out another. After three months of anguish I finally obtained the replacement and took it to Digital Fringe for mounting. Hopefully, mounting of the backdrops can take place in the next few weeks.	Over the past week I cut out the foam board at the AML reverse curve. Underneath was a support shelf. Rick will need to move this shelf to the south to support the end of the foam board shown at right. I found a nice piece of half inch plywood that would fill the hole. After tracing the removed section of foam board onto the plywood I used a jigsaw to cut it to size.	Tonight Rick and I began removing the old road bed. The Liquid Nails applied by Tom did its job well and it took quite a bit of effort with paint scrapers and a large knife to remove it.

While I continue to work on clearing the first section of cork roadbed Rick moves the support shelf for the foam board plus builds support pieces for the new plywood section. Both the old and new plywood sections must be the exact same height or the track will have a small hump which could lead to derailments. Rick spends a lot of time making sure this new plywood section levels out on all four corners.	With the new plywood section in place Rick tacks down the new piece of cork roadbed. After several track nails bend due to the toughness of the plywood Rick uses a pin vise drill to make small holes so the nails slide easily into place. He locates the nails carefully so the rail ties cover them. [Note: the re-purposed plywood section has a small square hole on one side. This will be filled in later with foam board.]	As the evening draws to a close there is not enough time to complete the new track section. However, Rick does attach the new track to the switch so John can run trains over the week. Next week we will complete this section and then begin on the dreaded "S" curve.

Feel free to contact me at john@alaskarails.org
Page created 9/4/17 and last updated 8/6/20