Spokane & BC Railway Circa 1955

Modelling what might have been in southeast BC and northwest Wasington

Category: Construction

Layout construction

Track switch machine controls or why can’t I find a 40+ year old switch?

Waaaay back in about 1979 there was a group of us who frequented an electronics store in Seattle called Radar Electronics. Someone found some neat toggle type switches that were used in audio applications, and thought they might work for controlling track turnouts. A variety of designs emerged, but most seemed too complicated for me, so I set about to come up with a very basic one that would be simple, reliable, and easy to assemble. I am in favour of having a small slot under the turnout throw bar and a stiff spring wire that comes up from below and moves side to side with just enough tension to keep the point firmly to one stock rail or the other. Other ideas used bell cranks, rotating bits, etc, but they seemed more than what was required to simply move the points from side to side. If you wanted a rotating switch stand that was a different issue, something that I have chosen to avoid.

Back to the toggle switches. They may have been sold individually for a price that is long forgotten, but the best deal was a box of 200 for $50.00, or 25 cents a piece, what a bargain! Needless to say everyone bought a box.

My simple design involves a piece of 0.025” or 0.030” piano wire plus two mounting brackets made from aluminum angle stock. The electrical part of the switches was basically a slide switch, and I have never liked them for reliability, plus they are not designed to handle much current, being mainly for audio applications. I decided on snap-action micro switches which are designed for higher current and are extremely reliable because of their snap-action internal design. One (or two, I’ll get to that part shortly) were simply screwed to the bottom of the subroadbed plywood and actuated by the lever on the audio switch. Short wires lead up to the track stock rails and the frog so that every inch of rail is live.

One thing worth mentioning is that it looks from the photos that I have soldered the spring wire to the handle of the toggle switch. This is true, but I don’t trust a simple solder connection so I put a 90 degree bend in the end of the spring wire, put it through a hole in the end of the handle, and then wrap regular bare hook-up wire around it tightly and then solder it all together. This encases the end of the spring wire in a layer of soft wire that is all soldered together. I have never had one come loose.

As for the need for two switches, this arises with the older Shinohara style turnouts that have a solid metal bar connecting the points to each other and then to the frog. This resulted in a large portion of the turnout that was powered as a single frog from the switch machine below. Now those points act as a switch when they touch their adjacent stock rail, and we have the micro switch below deck also trying to switch the frog. Because the micro switch transitions very quickly and no dead space, one or the other position ends up with a short circuit as the turnout points and the micro switch are both supplying power and get out of phase. The simple solution is to install two micro switches in such a way that as the points move from one side to the other the first micro switch opens, usually before the point has left the stock rail, and then the other micro switch closes sometime later as the point arrives at the other stock rail. This design has worked flawlessly on many Shinohara turnouts for many years. All of them are considered to be “not DCC friendly” but I have never had any problems using them with DCC and all sorts of rolling stock. It is all in how you handle powering the frog. In fact, that solid throw bar that is seen by some to be a source of grief, helps with the power supply to the points and frog. The switch frame below can be wired to the micro switches so that the spring wire driving the points provides a third route to power the points and frog. All it takes is the “break before make” design accomplished with two micro switches.

For other turnout designs that connect each point rail to its adjacent stock rail and only the actual frog needs to be reversed, one SPDT micro switch will suffice as it will route either stock rail to the frog as appropriate. This design has also been working flawlessly for many years with PECO and other turnouts.

These assemblies are operated with yet another simple design utilizing RC airplane parts, namely their 2-56 threaded clevises, threaded rod, and 1/4” wooden dowels. All of this idea was borrowed from Jim Petro down in Reno NV. Thanks Jim! I have used a few of the nylon control surface push-rods as well for hard to reach places that can’t have a direct straight dowel.

I also stole Jim’s idea for using PVC pipe end caps as recessed holders for the dowels so that the face of the fascia can remain clear and smooth. I even managed to track down and order several boxes of the exact make of PVC caps that he used because they were so much nicer than the ones locally available.

All of this is shown in the accompanying photos.

Now, the part about trying to find new switches? Well, I decided to see if there was anything available on the market today that would work in a similar manner to my 40 year old switches. Their application in audio amplifiers is long gone, with everything being computer controlled. I managed to source a bunch of sort-of similar switches directly from China after searching through hundreds of pictures of different models. I made a small mock-up to try them out and I believe that they will work just fine, along with the micro switches, but I have not installed any yet as I am still working on my stash from 40 years ago. Time will tell.

As for sourcing the micro switches, these used to be available from the many electronic equipment suppliers, many selling surplus stock, but all of them have now closed. There used to be a whole bunch in the San Francisco Bay area, but one by one they all closed. I was fortunate to secure quite a number on various trips down there, so again I should be well stocked for a quite a while. I am sure that suitable micro switches are also available online, probably from China.

Curlew and the quest for flat plywood

The town of Curlew WA was the most recent to be built and while loosely following the arrangement of the real Curlew, several liberties were taken to increase the number of industries serviced by the railway. As such, the model version ended up mostly flat with a lot of tracks. This suggested that maybe a different style of construction was warranted.

All of the previous benchwork construction is traditional L-girder with joists and two layers of narrow, laminated 3/8” plywood for the track sub-roadbed. This worked very well for Grand Forks and the mountainous areas, but it required a lot of fill-in between the tracks for buildings in town. So, I thought I’d try to laminate large sheets of 3/8” plywood to cover the entire area, with the thickness matching the main roadbed at the edges. I didn’t want to use the readily available modern pine plywood because it has a very thin veneer on both surfaces that makes it hard to plane down to get precise joints. I have always used good old fir plywood, so that’s what I went in search of. It seems to only be available at specialty lumber yards these day, so ok, a trip into Burnaby for a few sheets. Well, soon after getting them home I noticed a distinct curl to them, but I figured that with glue and clamps they would flatten out nicely. Big mistake! I soon realized that decent flat fir plywood is a thing of the past.

Cutting a very long story short about trying to flatten it, suffice it to say that even with a LOT of glue, clamps, and a laser level to check everything the stuff was so resistant to flattening out, that it was lifting up the entire benchwork at one point because of the strength of the clamps trying to bend it down. Everything just came up instead. That was solved with a lot of weights and patience. I did find out how great laser levels are in a darkened room where you can split the thickness of the beam on the edge of a bunch of 1×4″ pine blocks. Good enough for our work!

The joint between the sheets required quite a lot of planing to flatten it out where the tracks would cross, but thanks to the thick plys of the fir plywood, that worked just fine.

In the end it all worked out and is almost level throughout to prevent cars from rolling away.

Where in the heck is Darestof??

As you may know my layout is a work of historical fiction that is located in southeastern BC and northeastern Washington. That makes it very easy to select place names without needing to invent any. One name that appears in various places about the layout is the town of “Darestof”, which at the moment is at the end of the completed benchwork of the unfinished line southward into Washington. This name does not appear on any maps, current or historical. Suzy came up with the name one day and it stuck. It simply means “Da rest of the World”. This module is made from a 4′ x 8′ sheet of plywood and is designed to be moveable as the layout grows. It will always be the end of the line of whatever the current state of the layout is, and provides industries for switching plus a two track return loop to make operations easier.

The idea came to me a long time ago when I got tired of running train to the end of the track and then backing them up into town. I actually built two versions when there was two unfinished ends, but now that the staging track loops are in place, only one is needed for the remainder of the layout’s progress.

The first version was smaller with very tight curves, but did the job. It never had a name. 

Version 2.0 was larger and an earlier version of the current Darestof, but was on the opposite side of the plywood, being mostly a mirror image. The problem was that all of the track switches were on the far side from the aisle, so they were a bit awkward to operate, hence the reversal to the current configuration.

In 2018 Version 2.1 was made by flipping over the plywood and redoing the track so that the switches would be closer to the aisle. It was also moved further along to make way for the new town of Curlew.

The one drawback with the current arrangement of tracks is that while the track switches are handy along the front edge of the module, the basic direction of the curves makes it a bit awkward to position it in the room. It really should curve to the right as you approach it, but it curves to the left, requiring some messy extra curves on approach. Because of this, I may consider re-doing it yet again when it is time to reposition it. We shall see when the time comes.

White glue comparison

I always thought that all Poly Vinyl Acetate (PVA) “white” glues were equivalent. Here in Canada the most common brand is LePage “Multi-purpose white glue”, while in the USA it is probably Elmer’s “Glue-All”.

I have both and was interested in which might be better for gluing ballast and scenery materials. To see if there was any obvious difference, I poured a small amount of each onto a plastic lid and let them dry. After one day, I was surprised to see a very marked difference between the two glues. You can see it in the photo.

Both were peeled off of the lid and flexed. The LePage immediately snapped in two, while the Elmer’s simply bent. I left them for a few more days to see if the Elmer’s would dry out some more and become brittle, but after many days it is still very flexible.

Exactly how this will affect their use as a scenery glue is not clear to me, but I would think that a little flexibility for scenery would be a good thing, so I’ll keep using Elmer’s as long as I can get it.

Rock colouring “Rosetta Stone”

I am getting back to installing rock casting along a couple of steep slopes near the staging yards. I have been unhappy with using dilute washes of acrylic paint to stain the plaster rocks, as it is hard to control the colour you get, and any differences in plaster density show up as unnatural variations. This is especially noticeable when a different material is used to fill in between the plaster castings, such as spackling paste or some other filler. Patching between casting is necessary to blend the rock work into one seamless continuum, and any indication of where the joints are is very distracting. I had experimented with mixing special blends of different plasters to achieve the right density so that it would absorb the stain equally to the cast in place rocks, but this approach never really worked well and it was a lot of hassle.

Example of using up old pre-coloured bits with filler in between.

A much better way was found during some searching online. I remembered that Joel Bragdon uses a plastic foam material for his “Geodesic Foam Scenery” approach. This hardens to a plastic that does not accept stain at all, so I figured that he must have a different way of colouring his rock castings. While I do not use his foam material, I thought the idea would be worth pursuing.

Joel has posted on his web site a very good article about how to cast foam rocks, install them, and colour them.

He says that because the foam will not accept stain, it is necessary to paint it with thin washes. The trick here is that he first primes the castings with artists “Gesso” before applying the washes.

He explains further why this is the best material for the job, because, basically, this is exactly what it was designed for – acting as a base to receive paint and other materials. I figured that this should also work for basic plaster rocks castings, and pretty much any other material, as the colour goes on top of the Gesso. Long story short, it works very well, and the bonus is that anything can be used as a filler for the castings, without having to worry about how porous it is (or is not!). And, if everything goes completely wrong with the colours it is very easy to simply apply another coat of Gesso overtop of everything and start afresh.

One small problem popped up with applying white Gesso to white plaster. It is not easy to see if it is all covered when you are looking at brilliant white on white. A simple solution is to spray a very light coat of brown acrylic paint wash on the castings to give them just enough colour to tell where the Gesso was. Any colour will do as it will not be seen. You only need enough to give a bit of contrast with the pure white Gesso. I tried tinting the Gesso but found that it messed with the wash colours too much. Best to have pure white under the washes.

Upper rocks have Gesso covering the brown wash, most of lower is yet to be covered.

Ok, so now I have a great way to colour the rocks, but what colours to use? Everyone says to use photographs of the rocks you are modelling, and that is a great idea, but how do you achieve a specific colour if you are not an artist? Well, the engineer in me said that I need some formulas to follow, so I made a sample casting and set about to colour it in a patchwork quilt of colour combinations so that I would know what worked well and what didn’t. 

The casting was primed with Gesso in the usual way, and then stripes of colour were applied horizontally and allowed to completely dry. The next day I added the same set of colours going across the first set of stripes, so that I ended up with a checkerboard of colour combinations to use as a reference. Some of the combinations are completely useless to what I am modelling, but some other combinations look pretty good, and they are combinations that I would have never thought would work. This just goes to show how bad I am at judging colours!

An interesting observation is that for squares that have the same two colours applied, the end result can be quite different, depending on which colour was applied first. The last layer tends to puddle in the cracks and corners and imparts an extra measure to the overall look. Cracks tend to be in shadow and should therefore be darker, so it seems that the best approach is to always add the darkest colour last.

First coat horizontally.
After second coat vertically.

These two photos are a good example of just how difficult it is to capture specific colours reliably. Both of these photos were taken in the exact same place, under the same lights with the same iPhone, and yet the colour of the manila file folder beneath the casting is very different between them. All I can imagine is that the automatic white balance of the camera was affected by the different colours on the rock. The first is the more accurate colour, whereas the second has a very blue cast as witnessed by the grey stripe being almost purple on my monitor.

Now all I have to do is find the square that matches the overall colour that I want, and I’ll know the formula to achieve it. I can always add a third layer (or more) in spots to add subtle highlights, and this can be done at any time in the future, because it is just paint on the surface and not a stain that soaks into the plaster.

And, by thinning the acrylic paint on the brush by simply dipping it in water without a specific dilution will result in a natural variation of colour intensity, which is also a good thing.

Now I have about six feet of rocks to paint, so I better get busy!

Ballast adhesive research

Now that we have the ballast neatly placed between the ties and not on top of them, we need to fix it with some sort of adhesive.

The traditional material is good old PVA white glue, diluted with a bit with water. You mist the ballast with so-called “wet water” and then dribble on the solution to soak the ballast and then let it dry. Various tools can be used to apply the mixture, but the slickest is a rubber ear syringe as it holds plenty, and is very easy to control.

Wet water is another area of great debate, as the traditional wetting agent is dish washing liquid, but Isopropyl alcohol (IPA) or Kodak Photo-Flo can also be used. The simplest for me is the automatic dishwasher drying agent liquids, as it is just a surfactant and does not contain and real cleaning agents. I use 1/4 teaspoon in 32 oz or one litre, based on an article online somewhere by Joe Fugate.I did try to mix white glue with IPA and it formed a gooey blob and did not dissolve at all. I am not sure how well it will dissolve in a water – IPA mixture, so I don’t use that.

In recent years the press has been talking about using artist’s acrylic matte medium instead of white glue, as it is not as water soluble after it dries. This all sounded good to me, and I had been using it to fix the main ground foam scenery on the layout. When it came time to do the track ballasting, it was supposed to work there as well, so I used that. Well, at least for me, this was a big mistake. No matter how much I tried to soak the sand to make sure the solution penetrated throughout the material, it ended up very fragile and crumbled very easily. Not what you want on your track work! So, of course, more controlled tests.

I tested fixing small piles of sand on a wood base without any track to prove a point. Even with the sand completely soaked with wet water and then mixed thoroughly with matte medium mixture to the point that it was a slurry, it still didn’t hold.

By the next day, after it had completely dried and look good with no visible glue residue, it still easily crumbled with the press of a finger.

So, back to try the old trusty Elmer’s While Glue and water. Cutting to the chase, after repeating the exact same process, this time it resulted in a very strong bond that could not be broken with a finger. There was no hint of a white residue as some have reported with white glue. As for any residual shine, I did another controlled test to see how shiny the white glue really was. When using matte medium, it is recommended to mix it with water and then let it stand for about a week to let the white powder settle out. This is reported to be talc that gives the medium its flat finish, however it can also leave a white residue behind, which we don’t want. The interesting thing is that once you separate out the white powder, what remains is just the clear acrylic medium, and it is glossy. So as a friend said, why not just start with gloss medium and save the extra decanting step. So, I tested both decanted matte and gloss medium and found both to be weak at bonding the ballast. As to their shininess, I let puddles of all three materials dry on a dark coloured plastic lid.

Surprising to me, the decanted matte medium was the shiniest, followed closely by the gloss medium, and then the white glue. The glue looked positively matte in comparison to both of the acrylic mediums. 

I then did a small section of track to prove out the white glue approach, and while it looks awful when wet, it dries perfectly clear with no residue nor shine.

So, I am concluding that the white glue approach is still the best, in spite of more modern materials. 

One caveat that I should mention is that the glue I am using is the original, standard Elmer’s “Glue-all” white glue. I have no idea if the results will be the same with any other brand of white glue. I’ll leave those tests to someone else.

Ballast application technique

The tools

I am finally getting to ballasting the track on the layout. Much of it has been down for a few years now, and has been well tested during various operating sessions, so it is now time to ballast it and make it look complete.

Ballasting track seems to be such a simple process that there should be no need for any great details nor research. But, alas, such is not the case it seems. Everyone has their way of doing it, with better or worse outcomes, so this is just a small treatise on what I have figured out that works for me. If you have a different way and are happy with it, just keep on doing it. There are oodles of “how to” videos online that show all sorts of techniques. This is just what I do. I have no patience for using a small brush to push individual grains into place to make it look “perfect”. I need a technique that is simple, easy, repeatable, quick, and good enough for photography, and this fits that bill.

The basic process is pretty simple, but the details is where it gets interesting. I am using commercial track, so the rails are already in place when the ballast is applied. If you hand lay your track, then it gets easier because the ties can be ballasted before the rails are spiked down, which makes it much easier to do a neat job.

After the track is installed and tested, and has had some time to settle and reveal any issues, ballasting involves simply spreading the grains of material between the ties, and soaking it with some sort of glue.

f only it were that simple.

The first big question is what to use for the ballast. Commercial products range from crushed walnut shells (or something similar), to real crushed rock. Colours are all over the map, and as usual should match what you are modelling.

A long time ago I thought I would use Woodland Scenics ballast, as it seems to be the most popular and readily available. My first attempts with it were less than satisfactory, and cutting a very long research story short, I have changed to using some form of real sand instead. The biggest problem with the WS product is that it is not actual rock, but I’m told is ground walnut shells. While it looks nice, it is very hard to apply it so that it will lay down between the ties as it should. Being something other than rock, it is very light and tends to float once the area is wetted with water and glue mixture. Even misting it with water tends to easily disturb the particles, resulting in a lot of clean up work afterwards. And, the dye used to colour the material seems to soak out a bit and leave light coloured stains on the tops of the ties if the grains are removed.

Based on visits to friend’s layouts where they had used real sand and it looked great, I decided to experiment with that instead. I weighted equal volumes of WS ballast and sand and found that the real sand was 2.5 times as heavy as the WS stuff. It tends to stay put after application even when it is wetted and glued.

Cost is not really a factor, because this is a hobby after all. I did find the sand to be much cheaper, with the best deal being from our local landscaping centre were I got a 5 gallon pail full that I could barely lift for under $2.00. Such a deal! Another source is paver sand from a home improvement centre. It is all quite different in colours so it helps to search a bit and then get enough to last a while.

I also experimented with some other commercial products that are real crushed rock, but I found them to be far too uniform in colour, which may be suitable for some railroads, but certainly is not for where my prototype was. Also, it seemed to have a kind of unnatural sheen, almost translucent, under some lighting, that I didn’t care for.

OK, so how do I install it?

Instead of a spoon, or other open container, I use a small squeeze bottle with the tip cut off to pour it over the ties. After a bit of practice you can estimate how much to pour so that it will fill in between the ties without overtopping them. To spread it, I first use just my dry fingers to run back and forth along the tops of the ties. If there is too much to nestle neatly between the ties, I use a coarse paint brush to move some of it along. With the brush held vertical, the bristles will sweep down just a bit between the ties to remove some material. This will leave some grains on top of the ties, so a finger is again used to push them off into between the ties.

Most prototype track of the transition era had the ballast just a bit lower than the tops of the ties, rather than right up to the top. By working to arrange the ballast this way, a bit of room is left to easily push errant grains off the tops and into the space between the ties.

The one problem with your finger is that is is rounded, and does not completely get into the corner between the rail and the tie. For a final tidy up I use a cosmetic wedge sponge that I trimmed to just fit between the rails. This slides along the tops of the ties and pushes the last few grains into the inter-tie spaces.

Some videos show tapping the rails to settle the ballast off of the ties, but that doesn’t seem to work for me with the sand, I suspect due to its weight. It may work with the lighter materials. Try it and see how it goes.

Once the ballast is all nicely applied where it needs to go the next step is to fix it with a dilute glue mixture of some kind. Again, the issue of what to use comes up, so guess what, more experiments!

But that is the subject for the next post.

Here is the final result.


Installing switch machines in staging

I have been working on the layout while we are self-isolating at home. The staging track yard ladder switches are made by Peco and have an internal over-centre spring to keep the points aligned. When I installed all of them way back when, I decided to just go with the intrinsic power routing that the switches provide, and that has worked well. However, I didn’t provide enough separate feeders to sections of the yard ladders which resulted in one needing to align switches way beyond were you are in order to get power. This has proven to be a continuing problem, especially for guest operators. 

I decided after VanRail to fix this problem, and after considering the overall situation where the power routing is dependant on the points, I decided to retrofit the switches with my usual powered frog solution using microswitches for reliability. This meant that all of the track switches would have to be lifted in order to drill the necessary holes for the point throw wires and to reconfigure their electrical connections, but in the end they will all be fully powered and operate exactly the same as the others around the layout. Brian helped lift the track a while back, but I never got around to installing anything until this week.

The first step was to prepare the toggle switches for the main throw mechanism, and then install them under the staging plywood.

Here are some of the switches after modification:

I now have all of the upper staging track switches back in place, and all but two of the switch machines installed under the plywood. My back will only let me do a few each day because there is very little room between the upper and lower staging decks. Working slow and steady, with constant checking has proven to get them installed and working correctly. They still need all of the microswitches for frog power routing, but that will come.

The switch machines for the lower staging yard are easier to install because I can get underneath the layout, but re-installing the track switches was a pain. With only 10” of separation between the levels, there is barely enough room for my head to be able to see to reconnect the rails and replace the track nails. What fun!

November 30th work session

Another great session on Saturday. The scenery around Curlew is looking great thanks to the guys.

  • Brian pulling up the staging yard ladder switches so that we can rewire them the way I should have done it in the first place!
  • Tom continuing on the stream scenery.
  • Colin instaling supports for the fascia at Curlew.
  • Gordie working on the scenery base for the log pond.
  • Colin installing the fascia at Curlew.
  • Gordie’s log pond ready for some texture.
  • Tom’s stream bed looking very nice.

November 23rd work session

More work on the 23rd. See photo captions for details. Progress is great.

  • Tom helping Gordie enlarge the pond area at the north end of Curlew.
  • John and Ken assembling a mock-up building to start the planning for the Carson industries.
  • Ken and John with the start of the Pacific Abrasives plant mock-up at Carson.
  • Tom and Gordie checking the position of the stream bed at Curlew.
  • Tom weaving his magic for the pond.