Finally, Decals for The Masses

After several weeks of trial and error I think I've made a real advance in producing decals. There are a ton of variables that had to be tested but in the end it was probably more serendipity than anything else. Here's what I came up with....

The Photo EZ emulsion film seems to work the best of the different brands I tried. The High-Res works great for this application.

I used transparencies for ink jet printers. I had to print the same image twice on the same transparency twice to make it dark enough to work properly with the emulsion.

I tried various artificial lighting but sunlight works the best (and cheapest). Circuit Bridge has a list of suggested exposure times. I found they were too short. Rather than the 20 or seconds recommended I left the film exposed for almost a minute. Anything less left the film underexposed which means the entire piece of film disolves in the developer (clear water) and washes down the drain.

Between the double printed image and the exposure to sunlight I was able to produce a screen where even the smallest lettering was clear and usable.

Leave the film in the water for at least 15 minutes. Rinse it with clear water. I use a drop or so of Dawn dish detergent and gently rub the film with my fingers to loosen up the unexposed emulsion.

Once the screen is rinsed leave it dry in the open air and light....

Latest Screen

The screen I created ended up being a negative which is not what's needed. You should be able to read the text in the normal fashion.

I use screen printers ink. It is very thick so it doesn't flow easily. I use it at this consistancy with no thinner of any kind

The screen should be placed with the emulsion side up. I fasten one edge down with some scotch tape and make sure the screen is flat before taping down the opposite edge. I use a brush to pile some of the ink at the edge of the screen and then I use a plastic or rubber squegee to spread the ink. I apply slight pressure and holding the squeegee at an angle I move slowly across the screen...

Best Yet

This is the first print where the lettering around the logo was visible. It's also possible to read the small class numbers and reporting marks. The sample shown here is actually meant to be used with the CNJ diesel set I'm creating, so it will eventually require colors. For freight cars and such the white lettering is just fine. I was able to reproduce these results on clear decal paper. I forgot, however, to spray a coat of clear to seal the decal and the ink washed off. The label says the ink is permanent on metal paper, etc. Maybe I didn't let it dry long enough. I made another decal and sprayed it with a clearcoat. I'm still waiting for it to dry. I tried to get an image and had to play with the contrast a bit so the white showed better against the white background. This is a clear decal with a white paper backing...

Actual Decal

At this point I'm pretty confident that useful decals can be made with this process. The costs of materials is pretty low. All that is required is Photo EZ sheets, screen printing ink and clear decal paper. There may even be a way to print directly on the nodel itself. Haven't tried it yet.

Another observation I have comes from working on the CNJ units. The test unit I did came out great. The "real" units did not...

Test Unit Left, Ruined Unit Right

The reason seems to be the masking tape I used. I switched to Testor's tape and that was a mistake. I should have stayed with the Tamiya tape. The Testor's is too stiff and will not conform properly to the contours of the model. As a result there is quite a bit of overspray. This is not an issue with Tamiya...

Tamiya: Good

Testor's: Bad

I tried to salvage the models. Stripping them again might cause problems. The shells, especially the Baldwins, are liable to break. So I masked off the blue and resprayed the orange. After that dried I masked off the orange and shot another layer of blue. They came out much better. Not perfect, but passable...

Rescued CNJ Units

Since I believe I'm now able to make the decals for these units, I tried to tint the white ink I have to make the orange and blue. Didn't like the way it came out so I'm ordering two small jars of ink in the appropiate colors. A four ounce jar cost about five bucks.

Regards,

Frank Musick

Building a dream layout on a nightmare budget

The Average Eastern Railroad

Diversity

One of the things that makes model railroading such an interesting hobby is the diversity. I'm not sure if there is any other leisure time endeavor that covers quite so many areas of an individuals interests. You can try your hand at just about everything. For my own part this includes quite a few things, including inventing the crazy tools I use.

In the past day or so I've covered quite a lot of ground, interest wise. I started out trying to perfect that turnout I'm building. It's own its third or fourth revision. If I don't like the way it came out I try again. So far I haven't gotten where I want to go. Each time I try, however, I develop new methods and new ideas for the next attempt. The last version was pretty good, but I can do better. One thing I learned was that the NMRA standard for track guage is "sloppy". We can build our track to a much tighter spec. I've been tightening up the tolerances on the turnout and it seems to work a lot more reliably.

In addition to the turnout, I also started the actual painting of the Jersey Central diesels. The new F7 shell is here and I cleaned off the factory paint. I used the Testor's Tangerine to paint all four shells. Trouble is I didn't think it all out. A 1/4 oz bottle is not enough paint for four shells with multiple coats. I had to mix my own tangerine using Model Master "Mango" and Insignia Yellow. The mixture is roughly 1:1...

Jersey Central Diesels

I'm waiting for the paint to dry before I mask the units for the blue coat. The Baldwing units seem a bit light in color, but that's because the plastic they are made from is translucent. Painting the inside of the shell should fix that right up.

I usually run trains while I'm at my workbench and I noticed the PRR L1s was having a bit of trouble. I flipped the beast over and noticed the wheels were dirty. I tried cleaning the wheels with a knife tip but decided that wasn't gonna get the job done. So I took some styrofoam and quickly made a cradle to hold the locomotive upside down. I then took a short section of track, a 6 volt DC wall adapter and chunk of weight from an old HO engine and created this gizmo...

Maintence Cradle/Wheel Cleaner

The weight slips into notches cut in the cradle and holds the track to the tender wheels. This supplies the juice to turn the drivers. At 6 volts the wheels turn at a moderate speed and I can lightly apply the brass brush seen in the photo to the wheels. It only takes a few minutes and the drivers are good as new...

Cleaning Locomotive Drivers

While I'm on the subject of maintenance I found that I need to keep track of what I do. There are some things I may want to remember about what I'm doing on all this equipment. To do this I made up a maintenance log using Microsoft Excel...

Maintenance Log

The main purpose of the log is to keep track of what needs to be done to what item on the roster. Things like couplers that need to be body mounted, weight and wheels to be upgraded, DCC and such.

I also found that one of the Lehigh Valley PA's I recently purchased has a decoder. The locomotive was making a noise and when I took off the shell I saw it had DCC. This gave me reason to pull out another of my weird contraptions, Decoder Central...

Decoder Central

Think of it as a portable workbench for DCC installs. I took a pine board I had laying about for some other project and mounted a length of track on it. I then installed my MRC decoder tester with all it's various clips and connectors. There is some wood pieces to hold motors in place so they can be tested too. I also fastened an Atlas Commander and Generator to the board. The Commander is set up for programming only.

(A brief word about the reasoning behind that, if I may. The Commander has a devestating flaw. The device can be attached to the layout track and a separate programming track at the same time using two different sets of terminals. It cannot, however, actually do this. It will destroy itself. To keep it from doing so an "either or switch" of some kind must be installed. I destroyed my first unit this way. To protect the second one I originally used a DPDT so that the unit cannot connect to both tracks at the same time. When I found one cheap enough I bought this third unit rather than mess about with that. One operates the layout and this one programs decoders.)

Now that I've scared the hell out of everybody who has considered buying an old Atlas system I'll program a decoder.

Unlike current DCC, the Atlas system  can only use double digit decoder numbers. While it would be nice to have the decoder ID match the locomotive it's not a problem for me. On the Average Eastern itself all the engine numbers have only two digits anyway. Out on the Class 1 mainlines I use the last two digits of the locomotive number. Case in point the Lehigh Valley PA I had mentioned. Since the loco bears the number 611, the decoder ID will be 11. Simple enough.

For those who are interested I took some images of the process of using the Commander to change the decoder address. When the Commander boots up it displays the last address it was controlling, in this case #01...

Atlas Commander

To access the programming mode you press both the direction buttons at the same time. This brings up a menu that allows you to access the various functions of the controller. You move through the menu by pressiing the plus or minus buttons. In this case I choose the Pro menu item...

Decoder Programming Option

Pressing F0, the Enter button, selects the programming mode. The Commander displays that it's ready to read register 1 (CV1 in current DCC terms)...

Register 1

Pressing the F0/Enter button again starts the read function...

Read Function

Pressing F0/Enter once more causes the controller to read the current value in register 1, the decoder address, which in this case is 03...

Current Decoder Address

I want to change the address to 11. To do this I hit the plus button until 11 shows on the display...

New Decoder Address

Hitting the F0/Enter button sets the new address. To make sure it works I take the locomotive out to the layout and test it. I have to place on the Average Eastern tracks as the AE is the only part of the layout currently controlled by DCC. I set the layout's Commander to address 11 and crack the throttle...

DCC On The Layout

I'm not sure how the speed steps are set on the decoder, but this is LV 611 moving through the yard at Average

One other thing I did in the last couple of days was work on some scenery. It's not much, but it's a start...

East Portal, Gateway Tunnel

And finally, some train watching...

Regards,

Frank Musick

Building a dream layout on a nightmare budget

The Average Eastern Railroad

Turnout

Buiilding a respectable looking turnout that actually works took awhile. I had to develop the construction methods and tools. I caved in on the soldering. While I can solder wires, I have real trouble with these turnouts. Instead I built the turnout using various adhesives. I tried super glue, contact cement and a couple of others. For the most part I settled on tiny drops of the gel type super glue. It's easier to control and it allows some fiddlin time to line things up.

The turnout appears to be very conventional but there are small differences in construction. On my turnout I decided to piece the turnout together rather than build it and then cut isolating gaps in the rails. The frog rails and closure rails are separate pieces of raiL The frog point and "wing" rails that make up the frog are also separate parts, but form a subassembly that should be isolated from the rest of the turnout electrically. 

Turnout Parts

I used the fixture I had made previously to hold the various parts together while I made things up. The file and a rubber band function as a clamp to keep thing together...

Assembly Fixture and Clamp

Rather than worry about angles and such I just filed by a guestimated length and then folded the rail to create the frog points. I made the points and stockrails using a double sided homemade fixture for filing...

Filing Fixture

I also made some track gauges using some small lucite levels, the kind that come as keychains. I used a razor saw ( the small ones made by Zona, Xcel or Xacto) to cut slots for the head of the rails. On one of the levels I used both sides. On one side the slots are spaced for the normal rail gauge. The other side has slots spaced for the width of the closure rails. I use that side to hold the rails while I glue up the throwbar...

Closure Rail Jig

I found I could also use the rail gauge to form the wing rails. It's easier to show then explain. Maybe you get the idea...

Forming Wingrail

While the glue on the throwbar was setting I went on with the rest of the turnout. I assembled the frog and glued it in place. The stock rails were then placed using the level/gauge to space them properly. The frog rails were then lined up with the frog and gauged to the stock rails....

Frog and Rails

I show the turnout with all the ties in place but it was actually constructed in a similar fashion to soldered turnouts. I glued ties at strategic places that would hold things together during assembly...

Sans Points

The last part of the assembly was installing the closure rails. This subassembly is actually fed up though the turnout from the bottom. I leave the long ties at the throwbar off to make room for this. Once the closure rails are through I line them up with the frog and add glue to a number of ties to fasten the rails down. I do not put any glue on the ties closest to the draw bar (about 8 ties). This part of the rail needs to be loose to allow the points to move. I then glue up the long ties on either side of the throw bar...

"Finished" Turnout

The ties, by the way, are actually plastic strip cut to length. I use .030 thick by .060 wide. I think Evergreen might be the only company that makes these. The ties on this turnout are placed by hand, I don't cut them to length ahead of time. I glue several strips to the bottom of the rail and then cut them to length. I do this five strips at at a time using the cutoff's from the previous five. One bag of strips, about $3-$4 at my LHS is enough to do one turnout.

The rail I use is from Atlas code 55 flex track. I just pull the tiestrip off of the numerous "cut-offs" I have around.

This turnout is a prototype and as such was a test bed for construction, adhesives and materials. The rest of the turnouts will be handled a bit different. Fortunately I designed the Average Eastern to use a "standard" #7 turnout. The parts for both left and right hand turnouts are the same. Any curves are formed at assembly time. Closure rails, guard rails and points can be made in batches. The longer rail can be a bit oversize and trimmed to the proper length at assembly.

I'm currently building a jig using .015 thick x .060 wide plastic strips that will allow me to layout the ties for turnouts without the tedium of gluing one at a time. I'm going to go with Pliobond for the adhesive. Pliobond can be applied to the bottom of the rail and allowed to cure ahead of time. The glue can be reactivated at assembly by heating the rail.

Regards,

Frank Musick

Building a dream layout on a nightmare budget

The Average Eastern Railroad

Jersey Central FD-42's

This exercise in futility was accomplished when the turnout building got to me. I took another shot at the tangerine and blue Jersey Central units. Although I don't have the decal thingie perfected yet, I was able to get closer to the goal. I only have the proper ink in white at present...

Pennsy HO Scale

N Scale Jersey Central

Now I have to figure out how to make orange and blue to match the diesels. Which brings me to our current adventure, masking and painting the CNJ F units. The A unit shown here is not one of them. This is a broken shell that hurtled a scale 600 feet to the hard concrete below...

Concrete and Models Don't Play Well Together

The real one is in the mail and headed this way. In the meantime I practiced on the wreck. I have two sets to paint in this color combination including an A-B set of Baldwin "babyfaces". I want to get it right.

When painting two tones like this I start with the lighter color first. Really can't be done the other way. To many coats are required to cover a dark paint with a lighter shade. I used Testors Gloss Tangerrine for this attempt. It's meant for automobile models, but this is a GM locomotive after all. Close enough. Actually the color seems very close to the real CNJ paint. It even has that ambiguous "Is it orange or yellow?" thing going just like in the photos of the actual units...

Testors Gloss Tangerine

After the first color dries, about a day, the model gets masked so the second color can be applied. On the F unit I ran the tape (Tamiya) over the side intake grilles. The tape comes down to the top of the upper riveted panel. I run it right around the cab and across the winshield opening. The front of the roof is masked so that the orange follows the angle of the windshields. After both sides and the roof are masked I start masking the nose. On these units the orange stopped at the anticlimber...

Nose Mask

The orange extended a short way to either side of the anticlimber but still on the front. The color curves up toward the cab sides. These curved portions of the painting are not as hard as  they look (I know, everybody says that). There are a number of ways of masking the curve. For this project I chose the simplest. I use straight sections of tape and mimic the curve by creating a multi sided polygon instead of an actual curve. At this scale it's very easy to suggest a curved line...

"Straight" Curve

Fortunately, the real CNJ units may have been masked in a similar fashion. If you look closely you see that some of the curve is not actually curved. Gives me a fudge factor...

"Restored" CNJ F-3

The unit pictured is actually a restoration and not necessarily an actual CNJ locomotive but you get the idea.

After all the tape is applied I use my fingernail to "burnish" the edges where the colors meet. I want to seal the mask as best as I can. To ensure the lines will be crisp without paint bleed I spray the masked model with a clear overcoat. This should seal the edges of the tape and keep the paint where it belongs. A very light coat is all that's needed. I you get too happy with the airbrush you end up with this....

Thick Coat Of Clear

Although the paint won't be seen when it dries it will hide the detail of the model. Not a good thing as it will show up in the next color, only more so...

Too Much Paint

If it ends up like this the best thing is to strip the shell of all paint and start over, something I'm not gonna do on this broken shell. After the clear coat dries, I spray on the darker color. Make sure you get get all the sreas that are supposed to be blue. I missed the lower skirt on one side and had to shoot a layer of blue there.

After the blue dried I peeled off all the tape...

CNJ #57

The lighter color looks a lot better this time around, not the ORANGE of previous attempts...

Previously On Milepost 15...

The blue I used on the latest attempt is Model Master royal blue. It's probably too light. I'll probably use the Blue Angel blue I used on the first go'round. I personally don't like the way the curve came out. I did better on the earlier paint job.

If I can make those matching decals I should be all set.

Regards,

Frank Musick

Building a dream layout on a nightmare budget

The Average Eastern Railroad

This Is Getting Serious

The fun continues. I had a bit of money from birthday gifts and started looking for more Atlas turnouts. As it turns out there aren't many code 55 switches on E-Bay. While I was looking, however, it ocurred to me that I could probably afford one of those FastTracks turnout fixtures. As I remembered they were about $50 the last time I looked (years ago). Surfed to their site and WHAM!. The N scale fixtures are no longer in stock. Apparently they only make them when somebody orders one. This is probably not a frequent event as they now charge $218 dollars for said product.

Hmmm. Went looking for used ones on EBay...Negatory. I did find a rather intreresting thread about the jigs, including one about the fact that folks who buy the fixtures stop using them after a while. Seems as though they are like training wheels. You store them in the garage or sell 'em once you learn to ride the bike. There was also a fellow who stated he doesn't use them because he found another way. For him the hardest part was making the frog. He gave a link to a site that shows a pretty nifty solution. If you go to Model Railroader you can look at it yourself...Incidently the site is NOT a Kalmbach site, which gave me a chuckle.

Anyway, I tried it and it works...You set the bend as suggested and file it until it can be folded...

Filed Frog Point

I found that it worked better if I filed a bit more...wider, not deeper. By "overfiling" I found I had some fudge room on the angle. The rails can be brought closer together creating a shallower angle.

Once started with the frog point I had to continue. I wanted to see if making turnouts really isn't "rocket science". Well it isn't, sorta. You do need a certain skill set, apparently one which I don't have quite yet, like soldering. I used one of those printable templates from the FastTracks site and built the urnout on top of it...

Using Printable Template

I cut the PC board ties from a large PC blank I bought at Radio Shack years ago when I had attempted this once before. I tinned the bottom of the rail and used flux and other solder related references. The end result was something only Victor Frankenstein could love...

Frankenstein's Turnout

Nonplussed I decided I WILL learn to do this. Instead of starting with with the frog, I began with the switch points. I grabbed a couple of pieces of rail and went to work. First I made a tool. I took a piece of wood about a half inch square and six inches or so long. It's not very big, but it doesn't have to be...

Point Stick

On one side I cut a slot with a razor saw. The slot is just big enough to accept the "toe" of the rail base...

Point Filing Jig

I also made some markings to show me where to file. The short spaced area is the area where the point will contact the stock rail...

Point Side

I flipped the stick over and cut another slot. This side is for filing the stock rails. The markings are the length of the inset for the points to rest against...

Stock Rail Side

I used a bastard file to shape the rail. I thought of using my Dremel, even tried it out. It's faster, but hand filing is just as fast but with better control. A bit of filing and I had points and stock rails in hand. Then I used the method mentioned above to make the frog point.

About this time I realized those FastTracks fixtures must be really helpful when trying to assemble the various parts. Rather then spend the $200+ I made my own. It's crude, but it seems to work. I took a chunk of hardwood I had laying around and cut some grooves in it using my "Jap" saw (a razor saw used by Japanese woodworkers). The slots are just big enough for the head of the rail, the turnouts are assembled upside down...

Railhead Slots

I copied the FastTracks fixture and made right hand and left handed jigs on the same block of wood. The curved slots were made with the same saw. The blade is quite flexible and can be used for cuts like these...

Turnout Assemble Fixture

There are slots to hold the points, frog, stock rails and wing rails. I can assemble the switch, but more importantly I can see where the points will rest in relation to the stock rails and what has to be done to make the wing rails fit the frog. It's pretty obvious where the point rails need to be bent to match. I tried soldering the PC ties on again and although it came out better this time I still can't solder any better than I can weld (you don't wanna know). At least some of the solder joints stayed together...

FAIL!!!

I'll keep at it. Can't possibly be as hard as it looks.

Regards,

Frank Musick

Building a dream layout on a nightmare budget

The Average Eastern Railroad