A Graphite "Solution" for Better Operations

Even though I clean regularly and treat all of the rail on Thunder Mesa with NO-OX (see last month's video log), I still find it useful to treat trouble spots here and there with graphite in order to improve electrical conductivity. In the past I've used graphite sticks for this but personally find them to be a bit messy and inexact. My goal is to get the proper amount of graphite right on the railhead where it's needed, and not in the rail web, ties or ballast. To that end, I've come up with an easy to make and use graphite solution that can be applied where needed with a paint brush. The solution is similar to the commercially available Neolube but is thinner, lasts a long time, and costs substantially less.

To make my graphite solution, I start with "Generals" compressed graphite sticks from my local art supplier. I like the soft 4B sticks since they contain more graphite and less clay than the harder sticks. The softer graphite is also easier to sand down into the fine powder required to make "paintable" graphite.

I start by sanding down almost an entire stick with some fine 220 grit sandpaper, catching all of the graphite dust in a wide, flat-bottomed plastic container.

The next step is to add two or three tablespoons of 70% isopropyl alcohol. The amount is not critical, you just want enough to make a nice brush-able liquid without clumps. You're after a paint, not a paste. 

Mix well with a soft brush, then test the solution on some scrap paper. It should go on a transparent medium gray - not black. If it's too thick, add more alcohol.

When the solution is ready, simply paint it on the rails in any trouble spots. It will go on very dark and then dry lighter. The alcohol will evaporate from the solution very quickly, leaving a thin layer of graphite on the railhead. Wait until it dries completely before running any trains over the area.

You only want a very light layer of graphite on the rails. If it builds up too heavily, simply wipe the excess away with a cotton cloth. Once it is completely dry, run your trains over it and the graphite will be evenly distributed on wheels and track.

Sealed in its plastic container, one batch of graphite solution can last many, many months. If it dries out, simply add more alcohol to reactivate.

Final Thoughts

I'm very pleased with my graphite solution and enjoy how well my short-wheelbase locomotives operate on the layout after applying it. I find it to be particularly useful on turnouts where just a dab between stock rails and points can greatly improve their electrical performance. However, when I first posted this idea on one of the model railroad forums I frequent, I was immediately taken to task for "over-applying" graphite. Dire consequences would ensue, I was warned, if I continued down this dangerous path. There would be short circuits, arcing, loss of traction, and power jumps across gaps with this blasphemous liquid. I was even told that only invisible, microscopic amounts of graphite should ever be placed on the rails, as if it had some magical homeopathic quality that would be destroyed if it was ever used in detectable amounts. I'd like to see the data on that. I have never experienced any of the dire consequences warned about and have only enjoyed happy railroading. It is true that less is indeed more when it comes to graphite, but you do actually need to get some on the rails for it to do any good. What you don't want is a pasty build-up and that is very easy to avoid.

Anyway, I hope that some others will give this solution a try. It works well for me. Thanks for checking in, amigos. Adios for now!

Aerial View, Exspansion and the Town of Thunder Mesa

It's been six months since the last aerial view update and a lot has happened on the layout since then. Much progress has been made in the Big Thunder Creek area and new benchwork has been added to the Thunder Mesa section to bring it in line with the new plan. Work has also begun on a new design for the town of Thunder Mesa, along with all of the necessary wiring for the lights and sound effects in that scene. Let's stoke the boiler in our imaginary airship and take a flight high over Thunder Mesa to see what's new.

Six months ago: May 2, 2014. That pesky Calico section was just starting construction. Good thing I didn't get too much further.

This morning: November 8, 2014. Old benchwork for the Calico section has been removed and the Thunder Mesa "island" section moved out 3' from the back wall. 

The new "folded dog-bone" style plan that I'm now working from. As well as a new layout for Calico and the addition of San Lorenzo, this plan calls for big changes in the orientation of Thunder Mesa town. For those keeping score at home, this is the third (and hopefully final) location for the town.

Moving in a little closer we can see the recent work done on the Never Mine and Big Thunder Creek. Replacing the paper model mock-up of Thunder Mesa Mill (to the right of the creek) with a finished structure is high on the list of projects to tackle soon.

Flying around the bend we get a view of the new layout for Thunder Mesa town. Six inches of new benchwork was added to the end of this section where it formerly butted against the wall. This created room for a much longer passing siding and a more visually appealing presentation of the town - while still leaving room for a 30" wide aisle.

Just a Little Bit Bigger

The original, central Thunder Mesa section of the layout is now 8.5' long by 4.5' at its widest point. If I ever have to move, that's about as big as it can get and still have any hope of being able to pick it up with a couple other guys and carry it out the door. It started out as 3' x 6' and just hasn't stopped growing. A 54" x 6" chunk of new real estate has been grafted on to the back end to make more room for the town and vastly improved operations.

Extending the benchwork 6 more inches. The rounded end will be covered by a 1/8" masonite fascia. The turntable will be relocated to a new section at the end of the aisle with an expanded yard and engine facilities. 

Here the old track and roadbed has been removed and everything scraped clean down to the plywood. I use Elmer's wood glue to affix my cork roadbed, making it easy to remove when soaked with water and pealed up with a putty knife.

New 1/2" plywood top in place. This will act as support for the town and sub-roadbed for the new tracks. The turntable hole will be covered by the base of the town module.

Midwest HO cork roadbed has been glued down and some Peco On30 flex-track laid for the new passing siding. I used Powergrab silicone based adhesive to hold the track in place. The parallel tracks heading off the layout at top will connect to the new yard and turntable section.

The Little Mining Town of Thunder Mesa

My town of Thunder Mesa is based on the little mining town that stands above the queue on Disneyland's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad; structures that were once part of the little mining town of Rainbow Ridge on the old Nature's Wonderland Mine Train. I created plans and built paper model mock-ups for the town structures several years ago when first starting this project and those mock-ups have come in very handy over time in helping to visualize the various incarnations of Thunder Mesa town. Some of the mock-ups are now a little worse for wear and tear, and all will be retired as they are replaced by detailed structure models one by one.

WED site plan for Rainbow Ridge at Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Disneyland. © Disney. The structures at the park are tiny and built in very shallow relief - almost like movie flats. I've tried to stay true to the general layout of structures while allowing for more realistic depth and the operational needs of a model train layout.

The town is being built as a separate module, much like a stand-alone diorama that plugs into the layout. This will allow much of it to be built and detailed at the workbench and will also minimize the risk of damage should the layout ever need to be moved. Sound and lighting effects are also integral to the town's presentation and will be completely self contained within the module.

A base for the town module was cut to size from 1/4" MDF.  A box frame of 1" x 2"s was built on top to add strength and prevent warping.

A power strip was installed to bring current to the LED lights, and to the sound module in Big Thunder Saloon. A mini-plug connects the module to the layout's effects panel and a 9v power source. The red painted screws denote the positive terminal; important to keep track of when working with LEDs.

Here, the contours of town are being roughed in with 1" thick EPF (pink foam) and some foamcore for the more gradual slopes. A retaining wall along the front edge of town will separate it from the tracks below.

Overall view of the town module. A dirt road will cross the tracks at grade and then wind up through the town. Stairs and wooden boardwalks will connect the structures.

Moving the layout out from the wall has created all new vistas and photo-ops. This should make for a dramatic and compelling scene when completed with the backdrop in place.

With the town module roughed in and the new benchwork and track in place on the Thunder Mesa section, I can turn my attention to building the frames and supports for the Calico, San Lorenzo and Coyote Canyon sections. There's also still some work to do finishing up and detailing around Big Thunder Creek and, of course, many, many structures to build. Should be fun! Thanks for checking in, amigos. Adios for now!

The Never Mine: Part II ~ Happy Haunted Halloween Edition

Grim Grinning Ghosts Come Out to Socialize with the Addition of a Haunted Mine Tunnel!

Click here for part I

Welcome foolish mortals, to the Never Mine! Happy Halloween!

Just beware of hitchhiking ghosts!

At the end of September I described building the shaft house and head-frame of the spooky, abandoned Never Mine. In today's post I'll detail construction of the mine tunnel base, including the addition of a happy haunt who only comes out after dark. Then we'll finish up the scene with a tailings pile, timber crib retaining wall, and all of the final landscaping details. Follow along with the photos and captions to see how it all went together.

The base for the Never Mine was carved from two layers of 1" thick Balsa Foam laminated together with wood glue. Most of the carving was done with #2 and #11 hobby knives and a hard, 5H pencil. A random stone foundation for the shaft house was integrated into the carving. Here I'm test fitting the top beam of the timber framing for the mine adit. 

For my happy haunt, I cut some 1mm clear acrylic sheet to size and fogged the surface with fine sandpaper. Then the outline of the ghost was painted from behind with thick black acrylic paint. The acrylic sheet was cemented into place and all of the edges blended with spackle. 

A hunk of Baxter's Butte was cut away and a simple power bus made from two strips of thin brass sheet was glued in place.  Accessory power from a 9v transformer feeds this bus and all wiring leads from the model were soldered on to it. Special care was taken to keep track of the positive bus as LED lights are polarity specific and will not function if the positive diode receives a negative charge. Here a 5mm green LED has been soldered into place to illuminate the ghost.

A quick check to make sure everything would fit and work properly.

The carving was painted with acrylics to match existing rock-work on the layout and the mine adit was finished with scale 8' x 8' beams and 1" x 12' planks stained with a shoe dye and alcohol mixture. The boards were distressed and broken to look as if they have been there for some time. The nail holes were added with a sharp 5H pencil.

Here is the entire assembly installed on the layout and the lights turned on. The shaft house has a single blue LED and the hoisting shed has a flickering amber LED as described in part I.

The carved base was glued down and blended into the existing scenery with Sculptamold. The mine structures above merely sit in place and can be easily removed if required. A short length of Micro Engineering code 55 N scale bridge track was added to represent O scale 18" gauge mine car tracks emerging from the tunnel.

I had originally planned to build an abandoned ore tipple to go with the Never Mine but later decided that such an imposing trackside structure would detract from the tiny mine above. Instead I opted for a timber crib retaining wall and tailings dump - a very common site around old mines. The first step was to rough in the dump pile with EPF (pink foam).

Here the tailings dump has been smoothed out and blended into the cliffside with Sculptamold. It was then given just a quick coat of Raw Sienna since this base will be entirely covered by scenery materials.

A couple of rickety, broken old ladders were scratch-built from strip-wood to provide a way up to the mine - albeit a hazardous one. It's nothing but fun to build details like this.

The timber crib retaining wall was built in place from 3/16" diameter dowels, stained and distressed to resemble old timbers. Here I'm backfilling behind the cribbing with small rocks and dirt from Sedona, AZ. This was later cemented in place with diluted white glue.

The slope of the tailings pile was textured with Polyblend sanded grout. It was mixed in a paper cup with a small amount of water to form a thick paste and then stippled on with a cheap paintbrush.

The grout was allowed to dry for a couple of days and then it was stained with thin washes of acrylic paints to represent colorful minerals, and to blend it with the surrounding scenery.

Another layer of fine rocks and dirt was sifted over the tailings pile and cemented into place with diluted white glue. Then more rocks, bushes, cacti, weeds, broken boards and other miscellaneous bits of debris were cemented in place to finish up the scene.

Cacti, bushes and other details near the shaft house foundations. You'd have to be pretty brave to climb those ladders!

The boarded-up mine entrance. The ghost is invisible during they day and only appears when the structure lighting is turned on for night operations.

Overall view if the tailings pile. The weedy overgrown look contributes to the story of a mine that has been abandoned for some time.

With the completion of the Never Mine, just about all of the scenery is now finished on this side of Big Thunder Creek. I'm sure that a few more details will be added here and there, but I was happy to get the haunted mine finished just in time for Halloween. I had considered adding a sound module to this project but decided it would be a little too much with the sounds of the creek, mill and town right next door. Hope you've all enjoyed the tale of the Never Mine and following along with the build. As always, any questions or comments are more than welcome below. More to come real soon. In the meantime, here's a video showing the lighting effects and documenting the Never Mine build. Adios for now!

The Never Mine: Part I ~ The Shaft House and Head-Frame

The Never Mine. Abandoned to the elements back in '85, some folks claim the old place is haunted.

Legend of the Never Mine 

High above Big Thunder Creek, on the rugged slopes of Baxter's Butte, rests the Never Mine. This is old Badwater Baxter's original claim, the oldest developed mine in these wild canyons and the same rich find that started the gold boom in Thunder Mesa Country. According to legend, when Baxter first set out from Fort Wilderness in 1865, the naysayers and local know-it-alls at the fort canteen told him he'd never find anything prospecting in that weird hoodoo country. Old Baxter just grinned beneath his big mustache, slapped his burro on the rump and said, "Never say never!" And the rest, as they say, is history. 

Though it was undoubtably a rich find, misfortune and strange goings-on seemed to plague the Never Mine right from the start. Mysterious cave-ins, inexplicable equipment failures, frequent accidents and more than a couple of grizzly fatalities soon gave rise to rumors that the claim was cursed or haunted. Evidence of an old Indian burial ground had been found nearby and it was commonly known that the local Ute people held the entire Mesa as sacred. It's no small wonder then that Baxter became a little addled by all the misfortune and eventually sold the claim in 1877. He drifted west to Discovery Bay where the remainder of his years and his fortune were spent experimenting with outlandish airships. The Never Mine was taken over by the Rainbow Ridge Mining Co. which was later acquired by the TMMC. By all reports, the strange happenings continued until the rich ore finally played out and the mine was abandoned in '85. 

Today, the dry desert wind whistles through the timbers of the old head-frame and the mine opening has been boarded up to keep out the curious. Or perhaps, to keep something in. Rumors of hauntings persist. Some foolish mortals say that on certain nights, when clouds obscure the stars and the zephyrs howl down the canyons, strange apparitions and ghostly voices seem to emanate from the long abandoned shaft house and the dark, gaping drift of the Never Mine.

The Model

The shaft house and head frame of the Never Mine; a little less spooky when photographed outdoors in the brilliant Arizona sunshine. The crooked smoke jack is a nod to the original Rainbow Ridge Mine that helped inspire this structure.

Inspiration for the Never Mine came from several sources. The design is loosely based on the Rainbow Ridge Mine, a tiny structure that once stood above the first tunnel on Disneyland's original Mine Train Thru Nature's Wonderland. The overall look and weathering was inspired by scouting trips to southwestern Colorado's Red Mountain Mining District.  The name, "Never Mine," is a direct reference to a bit of Imagineering humor: A signpost in the queue area for Disneyland's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad points the way to several local landmarks, including Dinosaur Gap, Coyote Canyon, Busted Flats and Never Mine.

A signpost at Disneyland. 79 miles to the Never Mine? I think it's closer than that.

I began the structure with no real plan, just modeling by the seat of my pants. Generally, I wanted a small and interesting looking abandoned mine to help round out the scenery near Big Thunder Creek. I had long thought that something which looked a little spooky and haunted might be just right for this spot and a paper model mock-up of a generic abandoned mine held the space for a couple of years. Follow along with the photos and captions to see how the shaft house and head-frame for the Never Mine went together.

The available space for a mine was pretty tight, only about 5" wide by 3.5" deep. Fortunately there was a lot of vertical space to play with and my solution was to simply stack all of the mine elements one on top of the other. A shaft house and head-frame sits on a stone foundation directly above a mine adit, which in turn will sit above a trackside ore tipple. The cliff face with the adit, or drift, was carved from Balsa Foam to match the surrounding scenery and the hoist house was laid out with 1/16" thick illustration board. The door and window are styrene Grandt Line catsings.

The tiny shaft house is a scale 8'x8' with a 24" wide catwalk on two sides. The illustration board structure was spray painted flat black. 

Coffee stir sticks were distressed with an X-acto knife and razor saw, adding woodgrain, splits and knotholes before being stained with a mix of Kiwi black shoe dye thinned with alcohol. The stir sticks are cheap, readily available, and scale out to about 11" wide in 1:48. They were cut to size and then glued in place over the illustration board with yellow carpenter's glue.

A foamcore jig was created to keep the head-frame supports straight and true during assembly.  The head-frame was built up with scale 8"x8" timbers following photos of similar structures I'd seen in Colorado. 

The head-frame was glued in place to the side of the shaft house. For added visual interest, the head-frame sits an inch (4 scale feet) lower than the shaft house.

The problem of where to put the hoist mechanism on such a tiny mine was solved by building this simple shed between the legs of the head-frame.  I guess there's a little steam hoist in there that must draw its water directly from the nearby creek. The sooty smokestack is a painted soda straw.

After assembly, the shaft house was dry-brushed with acrylic Buff Titanium to simulate old, faded whitewash. The Grandt door and window castings were primed and then dry-brushed to match, and signs were printed out on heavy paper to decorate the structure.

Grandt nut/bolt/washer castings were installed in logical places on the head-frame and watercolors were used to further age and weather the boards. Here rust stains are being added with a #1 sable brush. I mix up a batch of burnt sienna and ultramarine watercolors to create varying shades of warm grey. These are then brushed on to simulate age, rust, soot, water stains and other weathering effects. The watercolors soak right into the wood for a very realistic look and if the color gets too heavy it is easy to scrub off and blend with just a bit more water. If you try this technique though, take care, too much water can dissolve the yellow or white glue on your carefully constructed model. 

Here is the rest of the head-frame assembly and the parts hidden by the shaft house roof. The sheave wheel is from a 1:43 Model T truck, turned down with a rotary tool. The brackets holding it in place are painted paper with nut/bolt.washer castings affixed.

Before the roof was installed, lighting effects were added in the form of two 5mm LEDs. A blue LED emits a ghostly glow through the frosted panes of the shaft house window, while a flickering amber LED simulates a mysteriously rekindled firebox glimpsed through the roof of the hoist shack. The LEDs are wired in series with 510 ohm resistors soldered to the positive diodes of each bulb. A pigtail of wires protrudes from the base of the structure to connect to the layout's 9v DC accessory buss. 

The shaft house roof was made from illustration board with paper corrugated roofing. The roofing was cut into scale 4'x8' panels and painted with red oxide primer before assembly. Weathering was done with watercolors and brown, black and rust colored chalk powders. 

Rafters and rafter ends were created from scale 1"x8" stock. The crooked smoke jack is a Grandt Line casting with the crook created by sawing off the uppermost section, filing at an angle, and then glueing back in place. The jack was airbrushed silver and black and then weathered with powdered chalks.

Another view. The hoist cable is black painted elastic thread.

With the shaft house and head-frame complete I can now turn my attention to the mine adit and ore dump down below. There will be a lot more on how I built those coming in a future post. For now, thanks for checking in. Comments and questions are always welcome. Adios amigos!

Click here for part II