NASA Ames 75 Years Open House

There were crowds. It was hot. And it was awesome.

Pascal and I had a great day at NASA Ames.

Arc jet explanations. Too bad they didn't fire up this plasma making thing for real. But there was a model that explained the concept well.

At the intake of the largest wind tunnel.

Future Flight Central backstage tour.

Inside Hangar One

Space Plant

Roundhouse lights

The kit comes with bases for lights, but not bulbs. For the interior lights I installed 12V grains of rice from MicroMark. I wanted the warm glow of incandescent lights on the inside, since there will be some cool white lights on the outside lighting up the Lokstation area. I wanted only one, or at most two connections for lights inside the roundhouse. The leads on the bulbs were too short to reach all the way to the rear wall, so I extended them with magnet wire reaped from the motor of a broken kitchen appliance Pascal and I took apart a while ago.

Lights installed. The magnet wire runs along the roof trusses.

Night time.

Ready for installation on the layout

Servo Control for the roundhouse doors

This weekend I spent a little bit time to put together the mechanics for the roundhouse doors. As mentioned before, I want the doors to open and close independently from moving a locomotive.


I replaced the supplied spring-loaded mechanism with Micro RC servos. The servos are mounted in a scratch-built support structure made from 1/8th inch styrene.

Test-fitting supports

Servos mounted and fit into place

Time for some spray-painting...

I spray-painted the styrene pieces, mounted the servos, and fit the piano wire in place. The video at the top of this post shows the result. When installed on the layout the cables will leave the roundhouse through hidden holes in the roundhouse floor and the decoder mounted underneath.

Talheim Controls

I've grown unhappy with the arrangement of the Talheim control panel and tonight decided to see if I can make the setup work better.

Back when I didn't have much more than the Intellibox and S88 feedback decoders, I built a shelf, mounted the decoders and the Intellibox on it, and that was it.

A few years later, things got a little bit more crowded.

The local panel for Talheim is in a somewhat awkward place, and still not properly fastened. There's quite a bit of dead space to the left and the right of the Intellibox, and I'd really like to put a UP5 panel along the frontedge of the layout.

The solution is to move the Intellibox a bit to the right, the local panel for Talheim to the left, and put the UP5 to the right of the Intellibox.

That seems to work better. Let's see if it actually is when I run trains the next time.

Fog

Today's fog as seen from Hwy 85 at Monterey Highway going North.

sunset

Beautiful sunset today.

Bicycle Tube Patching

That metal thing found its way into my bicycle tire when I was commuting to work in the morning a couple days ago. It took two patches to repair the damage. A small one where it entered the tube, and a larger one on the opposite side.

I have little confidence into my ability to make air-tight tube repairs. For now the patches are holding up and seem to be tight. We'll see tomorrow morning...

Update Oct 6, 2014:
Seems to be holding up for now...

Update Oct 26, 2014:
... for a couple days. The patches are not quite 100% tight.

Coaling Bunker Done for Now

The coaling bunker is at a sufficient level of completeness to put it into the layout and move on. I did some more fine tuning on the coal carts and finished installing the crane hook and rigging. I gave the crane some light weathering to fit in with the rest of the bunker.
The service track in the front will be covered up with concrete. Even it it were balasted, I didn't quite expect it to look this weird.

I mentioned before this is a kit-bash. Here's my model with the original arrangement on the box. I kept the general idea that the locomotive track is in the rear next to the crane and protected with concrete wall. The wooden wall bits are intended to be lowered and raised as delivered coal fills the bunker. However, since there isn't much storage near the service track I didn't bother to install bunker walls along the track and ran the cart track alongside the service track instead.
The wall on the left of my model is made from two pieces of Noch foamwall, that I sliced in half to reduce thickness, glued back to back, and topped with a piece of strip wood to cover the gap. While the coloring of the foam piece was hideous with some concrete color it now matches other concrete brick in the area.
Note how I folded the stairs to make more efficient use of the available space.

The coaling bunker is boxed in between the turntable, the engine track, and Ef tower. Unfortunately it is somewhat hidden from view behind Ef tower. You can't always win.

I'll postpone motorizing the crane until I have a bright idea how to link a motor to the axle of the crane without causing a wobble effect on the crane house, as well as turn it in a way that doesn't make the coal cart wiggle violently along the way.

Stairs safety and More Coal

I made additional handrails for the stairs from strip styrene. This took quite a bit longer than I expected.

The coal heap on the right is now also done.

The basics are done. I need to finish the crane, add some detailing, and a couple workers.

Coal

Real coal. The glue is still wet.

While the glue dries, I'm modifying the stairs

That's better.

Overview of tonight's progress

Getting dirty

I shaped the coal heaps for the bunker from insulation board tonight, painted them black, dirtied the grounds, and glued the heaps in place.

 

Shaped coal heaps put in place

Coal heaps painted black

While the paint dried, I weathered and dirtied the grounds of the coal bunker. Heaps glued into place.

I'll let that all dry overnight. Then it's time to add the coal.

Rails for the coaling bunker

I went by the Trainshop yesterday and picked up a piece of code 40 N-scale flextrack. That is some fine rail. Just right for the dinky cart tracks in the coaling bunker. Since the coaling carts don't fit on N gauge track, I removed the ties and superglued the rails straight to the bunker base. There's also small turntable to move the carts between the tracks. I started weathering the walls and pilings.
After finishing the stairs for the crane, coal and appropriate grime and dirt will be next...

Adding rails and the turntable

Done for tonight.

Selection

Left-overs from last night. Life is tough.

Automated Train Control arrives on the Welztalbahn

The automated "demonstration mode" in operation on the Welztalbahn. Trains are controlled through a JMRI jython script. Each engine is managed by it's own thread in the script and observes signal indication along the route. An additional thread lines turnouts and sets signals to Green (Hp1 or Hp2 as appropriate) when the section to the next signal is clear, and a train is approaching. Signals reset to Red (Hp0) when the train enters the protected section. If no train is approaching, signals show Red (Hp0).
I.e. the engine threads behave like a human engineer, and the signal thread behaves like a human dispatcher would.

As a train approaches a red signal, it slows down to restricted speed and coasts to a stop just before the signal. This is implemented by setting restricted speed ono detection block before the signal, and using a timer upon entering the detection section before the signal. The duration of the timer is relative to the length of the detection section, and set so that the longest train is entirely in the track as much as possible. This will be important for automated meets in Emsingen and Talheim in the future.

The script also supports automated station stops for passenger trains, so they might stop at the station even though the signal is already green, which is entirely prototypical behavior. The same

At the moment 3 trains are chasing each other on the same route. With some additional logic I should be able to run an opposing train on a different route that shares track with the first route.

As is the script is useful to generate some action on the layout during an Open House without me having to pay much attention that trains don't run into each other.

Emsingen Lokstation Coaling Bunker

I'm building the coaling bunker for the Lokstation. The tracks around it are curved, and there isn't a whole lot of space, so it was clear from the beginning that the base plate from the kit won't be used. I need to build a new base that fits my track arrangement, and kit-bash the parts from the kit to fit. Also, the area I have available is larger than the bunker from the kit, so I have to come up with additional wall pieces as needed.

Emsingen Lokstation. Coaling facility seen from the north-east...

... and from the south-east.

I decided to raise the crane a bit higher and build a small concrete pedestal similar to the one in the kit, but smaller. This was completed reasonably quickly from a couple balsa sticks. I carefully marked clearances from the adjacent tracks, arranged and placed the concrete walls from the kit, and spray painted the walls.

There will be some narrow gauge tracks inside the bunker for the coal carts. I'll probably use modified code 55 N scale track for that. While looking at the layout of the bunker I realized that the stairs I carefully arranged to the crane base take up quite a bit of space, and the prototype would have likely constructed them in a more space saving manner, that also keeps the stairs clear of lifted coal carts.

At least this will solve the problem of the floating stairs neatly...

Tail lights are pretty

It took me a lot less time than expected to ride my bike to the Blossom Hill Caltrain station this morning, and I had the pleasure of just barely missing the previous train. At least I got a little video out of it.

Dinner

Our meat plate at La Fondue last night. Various kinds of chicken, game, beef, and sea food, including oddities like kangaroo, alligator tail, or antelope.

What a feast.

Storage Expansion

Imagine ...

You return from a business trip and find this blocking the entrance to your layout room:

The play kitchen I built for our first child years ago from an IKEA IVAR shelving unit has outlived its usefulness and was banned from youngest child's bed room while I was away.

Time to convert it into layout room storage...

Before.

Pascal helps with wood-working.

IVAR fitted and installed.

3 1/2 hours later. We're done.

The IVAR unit has just the right depth to fit under the Talheim industrial area. There is a diagonal support brace along the wall right behind the paper towel roll, and an electrical box next to the legs in the rear. We ended up shortening the legs along the wall, raise the shelf a couple inches to get maximum usable space and screw it into the wall. We also added risers and a new cross-brace to the front legs to better support the weight of the shelves.

I need to build a space saving car card box for Talheim, since the MicroMark box I used before was just too bulky and got in the way.

Still on time

The inbound flight just arrived, so the plane for my flight to SFO is at the gate right on time. We're on-track for an on-time departure.