John's Alaska Railroad HO Scale Layout

September 6, 2023

Our train night passed the six year mark tonight. How time flies when you are having fun! Many thanks to all those who helped me achieve my dream: Mike Cooper, Nick Golgart, Ted Reynolds, Rob Reynolds, LJ Combs, Leigh Combs, Max Combs, Tom Koole, Paul Brown, Terry Combs, Allyn Yakowa, Mike Levine, Rick Eppley, Jackie Eppley, David Sloan and Jeff McCrea. And a special thanks to Terry Combs for preparing approximately 250 train night dinners and Jackie Eppley for approximately 120 salad bars!	I just couldn't resist buying these resin coal loads for my Walthers Trinity RD4 hoppers from eBay.	They look pretty darn realistic. I am going to make a list of our hoppers and gondolas to see if they carry products for them as well.

It was time again for a little bit of mainline track cleaning. F7A #1510 and F7B #1517 pulled the track cleaning car around the track about 30 times using six different cleaning pads.	We fired up the new Woodland Scenics Just Plug lighting system last week and discovered the cabin didn't light up. Rick did some trouble shooting and found the bulb in the cabin was bad. John talked with the company on the phone who said the bulbs were out of stock and they would ship a new one in a week and a half.	Terry's cabin scene will require dirt for the garden as well as a few other locations. Terry shoveled dirt from our property into a baking pan and put it in the oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes to ensure all microbes were dead. Terry purchased a blender at the Goodwill store so John could break up the dirt into fine particles.

Terry purchased this screen and John used it to filter out sticks, rocks and other unwanted debris.	The filtered dirt looked so real because, .....well, it's dirt!	John placed the filtered dirt into an empty Woodland Scenics bottle for future use.

While running trains, Rick discovered some of the Princess cars leaned while taking the north Anchorage yard turnout. Upon closer examination, it was discovered the frog was too low. Therefore, this turnout will be replaced. It was decided to order a high speed turnout.	Two of the Princess car derailed occasionally during tonight's operation. Taking a closer look, we found the trucks are bolstered "off center." A bit of research revealed this design enables better performance on tighter radius track. Since this design does not work well on Clayton's Alaska Railroad, we will replace these trucks with ones that are centered bolstered. Additionally, Rick will drill a new hole in the bottom of the passenger car to accommodate the new configuration.	Video: Rick is running an older passenger car roster to work out any ankle biters. So far, this consist ran smoothly.

Video: The same train from a railfan's point of view.	Video: If you follow these reports closely, you know we have termed short unexplained low power surges, Ghost of RailPro. While discussing this with Mike Cooper recently, he suggested putting a voltmeter on the track and recording the display with an iPhone for each operating session. Whenever we encountered the problem, we can go back and watch the iPhone footage to see the readings. Of course, when we did just that tonight, we didn't encountered the problem. Go figure!

September 13, 2023

Terry's cabin replacement bulb showed up in three days instead of the stated week and a half. The original bulb was incandescent while the replacement was an LED. Bonus! The legendary Eppley Shops replaced the bulb within 24 hours of delivery and then demonstrated it for everyone at Wednesday's train night.	John began work on Terry's vegetable garden. The multilingual instructions and diagrams were pretty straightforward.	The Xuron Rail Cutting Pliers doubled as sprue cutters. It was a little tedious cutting these small items. John definitely needs to purchase an LED Magnifying Lamp!

Putting the vegetable post through the hole of the leaves was like trying to push a camel through the eye of a needle. This procedure was repeated over 50 times and John became frustrated towards the end of the project.	Once the items were assembled, John turned them over and applied super glue. After letting them dry, they were laid out as they would appear in the garden. This enabled John to take measurements for the garden size.	Video: Talk about your bizarre occurrences, whenever F7A 1500 and F7B 1517 go downhill at TwentyMile, they continually surge (speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down). In the spirit of the Joy of Troubleshooting, we tried lots of different locomotives and different configurations, but never saw the problem again. Our guess is RailPro's locomotive speed matching causes this surging. The problem isn't a big deal so we moved on.

This unnumbered lighted dome car derails whenever moving south just past the Whittier turnout. Rick tried replacing the wheel set with a smaller gauge and got a short. The original wheel set was replaced.	Rick then discovered when he spun the trucks on the long end of the dome the derailments ceased. He labeled the truck and bottom of car with a red stripe so we can ensure it stays in this configuration.	In other news, the gallery car (bi-level) pulls hard. No fix is planned. An unnumbered diner was causing some problems so it was sent to the Eppley Shops for troubleshooting.

September 20, 2023

John and Terry focused their efforts on the cabin area. Laying garden dirt on top of the paint and Sculptamold would appear too elevated. Thus, the garden areas would need these two layers removed. John got lucky when he cut through the paint and Sculptamold to find they hadn't stuck to the Styrofoam. He cut the area in strips and was able to pull up the Sculptamold/paint combination.	As Mod Podge tends to dry clear, it will be used to hold the dirt to the Styrofoam.	Terry uses a brush to apply a thick layer of Mod Podge to the garden area.

Next, the dirt is applied heavily using an old Woodland Scenics shaker.	John created a cardboard template for laying out the vegetable garden. Later, Terry punched holes in the cardboard. Once the cardboard template is put on top of the garden, it will guide the pin into the garden for vegetable planting locations.	Our dinner tonight was a food fiesta! Terry cooked pot roast with vegetables, mashed potatoes and homemade bread while Jackie served her world famous salad bar. We ended the meal with a homemade apple pie using apples from John and Terry's new tree. Terry added a bit of vanilla ice cream to the still hot pie and.....Mmm!

John used a woman's nylon over the shop vac hose to collect the loose dirt from the garden. This dirt was added back into the Woodland Scenics dirt container.	The Eppley Shops completed their work on two passenger cars and were placed back into service. Shown here is coach 300.	Coach 400 was also returned to service.

Both cars had off center mounts which caused derailments. The Eppley Shops drilled a new hole in the center of the truck and inserted a new center pin.	Also, a graphite covered pad was inserted in the bottom of the car body between the supports. This will enable the trucks to rotate smoothly.	Video: Rick runs the modified passenger cars and experiences no derailments. There were two locations in particular where derailments occurred every time and the cars passed smoothly through each of these.

Since some of our lighted passenger cars sit on the Whittier depot siding, their interior lights remain on. We decided to wire the entire Whittier siding, including the barge loading tracks, into the swing gate. Whenever the swing gate is open the Whittier tracks will be unpowered. The first step is to cut the rails leading into Whittier.	Next, Rick rewires the Whittier tracks into the swing gate wiring. During the process, another wire accidentally became disconnected. It took a bit of trouble shooting before Rick finally tracked down the issue.	Video: This video shows how the swing gate's deadman switch kills the power to the Whittier sidings. Flipping the switch causes the passenger car's lights to turn off. Since the switch also kills power to the barge loading tracks, we can store locomotives there.

Tonight our Road Foreman looked over his shoulder and informed us precision scheduled railroading, which creates longer trains with fewer locomotives, may result in some of our locomotives being put in storage. Hopefully, we can find additional industries requiring rail shipments and thus build additional consists which in turn, will require more locomotives.

September 27, 2023

Work continues on the area surrounding Terry's cabin. John vacuums up the loose dirt on the garden area.	The goat yard receives a second coating. First, the Mod Podge is applied.	This is followed by a second application of dirt. The garden, corn fields and goat yards all now have two dirt layers.

Rick finds several of the hoppers are derailing near the double crossover. Track nails and air hose angles seem to be the culprit. Several tweaks later, the train runs flawlessly.	Rick runs a freight train and discovers some of the cars don't play well. Lumber car, blue hoppers, one silver coal hopper and the short brown flatcar are headed to the Eppley Shops for some adjustments.

Feel free to contact me at john@alaskarails.org
Page created 9/4/17 and last updated 10/23/23