Boxcar Double or Nothing: Part 1

For my final modeling act of 2022, I stripped and repainted a pair of 40-foot boxcars. My primary motivation for starting this project was to practice masking a two-color paint scheme before I attempt to paint my GP30.

Microscale decal set 87-57 (on the left) has lettering for 5 different freight cars, one of which is TP&W 40-foot boxcar #6001. This car was painted red-orange with white stripes; the Microscale set includes decals for the lettering only so it requires a two-color paint job with masking for the stripes. Herald King decal set B-430 (on the right) is also for a red-orange TP&W 40-foot boxcar with white stripes. Back in 2018 I made a model of TP&W #60024 using this decal set and liked it so much that I tracked down a second decal set (these are long out of production) so I could do a second car. The Herald King set has decals for the white stripes so it doesn't need masking, but I figured I would go ahead and do this car now too.

Prototype photo of TP&W #6001. Date and photographer unknown.

As shown in the photo, TP&W #6001 had an 8-foot Superior (flat-panel) door and no running board. I decided to model it using an Accurail PS-1. The Accurail car is not an exact match for the prototype, but it has the correct door width, it's relatively easy to remove the running board, and (most importantly) I already had one on hand that I wanted to use. 

I've had this Accurail PS-1 for many years. It came factory-painted red with white boxcar data but no railroad lettering. It's been just sitting in its box for quite a while.

Accurail doesn't include Superior doors in their PS-1 kits but they do sell them separately. These doors are intended for one of Accurail's 50-foot boxcar kits and required a bit of trimming to fit my PS-1. 

The Herald King decal set is for a 40' car numbered in the 60000 series. For this car, I started with an Accurail 40' AAR boxcar lettered for the Great Northern. The Accurail car has a 6' Youngstown (corrugated) door. The prototype cars in the 60000 series had a variety of doors, and I decided to go with #60038 after finding a prototype photo that showed this car had the same door as the Accurail car.

 

I liked the 1960s-era red Great Northern paint job on this car, but I was willing to strip and repaint it because I'm a bigger fan of the 1970s-era TP&W red-orange and white paint scheme.

I used Super Clean Degreaser to strip the factory paint and lettering from both cars. The red paint on the PS-1 washed off very easily after soaking in the degreaser for about 24 hours. On the other hand, the red paint on the Great Northern car was much more stubborn and required a multi-day soak and a lot of scrubbing with a toothbrush to mostly remove. 

Here's the former Great Northern car after stripping the paint. I couldn't quite get all of the paint off, especially on the ends and the corners, but this should be good enough.

Here are the modified PS-1 body and doors prior to priming. I filled the running board holes on the roof with scraps of styrene, trimmed the plugs to match the surrounding roof, applied putty to gaps, and filed and sanded everything smooth. I had to remove about 1/32" from the bottom of each door so they would fit this car.

I primed both cars with Vallejo Grey Surface Primer (70.601). When I've used this primer in the past I haven't thinned it because the Vallejo FAQs say that thinning diminishes its polyurethane component and "the less dilution the better." However, I've had to spray it at a high pressure (~40 psi) due to its viscosity and it's been difficult to get a uniform coat. In one of his YouTube videos, Vallejo master painter Don Suratos recommends thinning the primer 1:1 with his "thinning sauce," which is a mixture of 2 parts thinner to 1 part flow improver. I tried his method for these two boxcars with excellent results. Many light coats of the thinned primer at 25 psi produced an excellent finish. I will always thin the primer from now on.

Here's the primed PS-1.

I let the primer dry for about 24 hours before spraying the sides of the PS-1 with Vallejo Model Air 71.001 White. For models like this one that will be decaled, I like to add Vallejo 70.470 Gloss Medium to the flat Model Air paints so they will dry shiny enough that I don't have to apply a separate clear gloss coat. A 2:1 ratio of paint to gloss medium has worked well for me. I also thinned this mixture 4:1 with the "thinning sauce," so the complete mix worked out to:

• 8 parts paint
• 4 parts gloss medium (70.470)
• 2 parts thinner (71.261)
• 1 part flow improver (71.262).

The primer is a very light grey, so it was difficult to tell where I had applied the white paint. For future models that will receive a coat of white, I might think about using a mix of grey and black primer for a darker undercoat. 

After the white had dried for 24 hours, I masked off the stripes on the PS-1 body and doors. I used strips of blue painter's tape for this. I used the prototype photo of #6001 and the Accurail doors to estimate actual thicknesses of 3/16" (about 16 scale inches) for the upper stripe and 5/64" (about 7 scale inches) for the lower stripe. 

I applied the masking tape to the doors first, then used the door as a guide to place the masking on the car body.

Here are the two cars prior to being painted orange.

I used Model Air 71.086 Light Red for the TP&W red-orange, mixed with gloss medium, thinner, and flow improver as described above. Next time around I think I'll try using the thinning sauce in a ratio of 3 parts gloss paint to 1 part sauce instead of 4:1 because the gloss medium is rather thick. I had some trouble with the paint drying in the tip of my airbrush, and I think additional thinning would probably help with that.

The first coat of Light Red always looks very yellow, but it gets much redder with additional coats. I applied the paint in many thin coats. I have to exercise a lot of patience to resist the temptation to apply thick coats for faster coverage.

Here are the painted PS-1 body and doors, ready for the masking to be removed.

The upper white stripes turned out great on the doors, but some orange bled under the tape on the lower stripes around the tack boards.

The stripes on the car body had a few small spots of orange but were otherwise pretty good.

My biggest fear for the masking was having the white paint pull off with the tape, but luckily this wasn't a problem except for one catastrophic spot on one of the door frames.

The bad spot where both the white paint and primer peeled off down to the red plastic. I'll touch this up, but thankfully this spot will be mostly covered by the door.

Overall I'd give myself a "B" for the painting and masking job on #6001. I think it's pretty good overall, but some touch-up is needed. There will be a Part 2 of this post once I've completed the touch-up painting and decaling of both cars.

Proto 2000 GP30 Drive Overhaul

In the spring of 2020 I purchased an undecorated Proto 2000 GP30 on eBay with the plan of eventually finishing it as TP&W #700. The seller's description noted that some paint had flaked off of the frame, which didn't seem like a big deal to me. I wasn't prepared for the mess that awaited me when I received the locomotive and took my first look inside the box. 

The paint was coming off of the frame in tiny flecks that coated the motor and drive train. It looked like someone had seasoned the mechanism with black pepper. I've never seen anything quite like this before and I don't know what would have caused it. It was a real mess, but I do enjoy cleaning and have been kind of looking forward to this project for a while because it will be very satisfying to get this unit cleaned up and operational. The tune-up turned into a rather involved project that took me several months to finally finish.

First, I completely disassembled the mechanism. A few more surprises awaited me.

There are four screws that attach the big weight to the frame. Two of them are at the ends and two of them are hidden by the fuel tank. I was not expecting the fuel tank to be attached with tape, and it was surprisingly difficult to remove.

I also wasn't expecting to find masking tape on the bottom of the motor. I guess this tape was intended to ensure that the bottom motor clip and/or orange wire wouldn't make contact with the frame.

I've read many horror stories of Proto 2000 truck gearboxes being filled with a grease that solidifies to a peanut butter-like consistency as it ages. I was pleasantly surprised to not find that stuff in my GP30.

It was altogether unsurprising to find that all 4 axle gears were split. This is perhaps the defining characteristic of Proto 2000 locomotives from the 1990s.

I discarded the axle gears and gave all of the remaining truck parts and universal couplings a bath in warm soapy water to wash off the oil and paint flakes. I gave the frame a bath of a different sort.

I soaked the frame in Super Clean degreaser for a couple of days to remove the rest of the flaking factory paint. A tennis ball can works great for this job. It has a tight-fitting lid, and it's almost the perfect size for 4-axle HO locomotives and 40-50' freight cars.

It would have been ironic if the Super Clean failed to remove the remaining paint from the frame, and indeed the frame didn't look much different after soaking for 24 hours. However, the surviving paint came right off with a little scrubbing with an old toothbrush under running water. I thoroughly rinsed the frame with water, let it air-dry, and repainted it with flat black spray paint from Ace Hardware.

I learned the hard way that it is essential to put insulating tape on the frame below the motor. I had completely reassembled the locomotive without this tape, and when I tested it on DCC it took off at a constant speed that I couldn't change with the throttle. Even though my ohmmeter showed no continuity between the bottom motor clip and the frame, adding polyimide tape between the motor and the frame solved the problem. Luckily the decoder was not damaged.

I opted to replace the Proto 2000 Blomberg sideframes with better-detailed Athearn parts. TP&W 700 rode on traded-in trucks from F3 #100. These trucks had a mixture of square and sloped bearing caps that differ from the roller bearings on the Athearn sideframes. The square and sloped bearings really stand out to me, especially because the trucks are painted silver, so I decided that it would be worth the effort to carve off the cast roller bearings and substitute aftermarket square and sloped bearing caps from Details West. 

I was hardly looking forward to carving off 8 cast-on roller bearings, but the job was less tedious that I expected. It wasn't practical to use a file to smooth the affected area, so I mostly scraped the area smooth with my knife.

After I finished carving off the cast bearings, I glued on the Details West parts with cyanoacrylate. Two of the prototype sideframes had 2 square bearings and the other 2 had 2 sloped bearings. The square bearings looked pretty good to me, but the sloped ones just didn't look right. The Details West parts seemed too bulky to me and not sloped enough, and they also have a bolted-on plate detail where the prototype is smooth. I looked into other options and found some Athearn Genesis parts. The photo above shows the Details West sloped bearing on the left and the Athearn sloped bearing on the right. The Athearn parts looked much better to me, so I carefully popped off the Details West parts with my knife, scraped off the dried glue, and glued on the Athearn parts.

When I went looking for alternatives to the Details West sloped bearing caps, I thought there was an Athearn option but I had trouble finding it. My searches for "Athearn sloped bearing" came up empty. Eventually I figured out why: "sloped" is misspelled as "slopped" on the package. Oops.

The locomotive made a squeaking noise when I test-ran it after installing the modified sideframes. The squeaking was caused by the wheels rubbing against the sideframes. I solved this problem by adding shims of 0.040" x 0.010" styrene to the backs of the sideframes.

I swapped out the 2,500 gallon fuel tank that came installed on the model with the 1,700 gallon tank from the parts bag. I didn't like the idea of securing the fuel tank with tape, so instead I used two 0-80 screws. It took me way too long to realize that the air reservoirs are supposed to snap over the sides of the frame. Until I figured that out, the fuel tank was a really loose fit.

The Proto 2000 GP30s came equipped with low-voltage headlight bulbs. I decided to replace these with white LEDs. I used NTE #30143 white LEDs that I bought at Micro Center. These LEDs come packaged with 220 ohm resistors, but these were too small for my application. The spec sheet for these LEDs list a forward voltage of 3.2 V and a maximum continuous forward current of 25 mA. On DCC, I measured a voltage of 13.6 V across the headlight pins. I calculated the minimum resistor needed using Ohm's Law as follows:

The closest available resistor at Micro Center was 470 ohms, and the next size up was 1,000 ohms. I bought and tested both. These LEDs are extremely bright and I didn't notice much difference in brightness when using the 470 ohm versus the 1000 ohm resistor. I ended up using the 1,000 ohm resistor to keep the current well below the LED maximum. 

The LEDs I used, and the assembly I made for the rear headlight. The resistor is on the cathode (negative lead, yellow wire) under the heat-shrink tubing. The resistor can go on either the anode or the cathode; most examples I found on the web show it on the cathode for some reason, so I did it that way too.

Converting this locomotive to DCC was a real headache, though I have to admit that I made it a lot more complicated than it really needed to be. TCS makes a decoder, the LL8, that is designed to be a drop-in replacement for the original circuit board in these locomotives. However, the LL8 is quite a bit more expensive than other TCS decoders that are more universal and have fewer functions. My cheap side won out and I opted to trade what I thought would be a little more work for a less expensive decoder.

The TCS website has a helpful library of decoder installations in a wide variety of locomotives. After looking at several different installations in similar Proto 2000 locomotives, I opted to try the DP2X. 

I reconnected the wires to the 8-pin socket so that it would face upward. I covered the frame below the plug with polyimide tape to prevent a short. I used one of the original circuit board mounting screws to hold the socket in place. 

The DP2X is a tiny circuit board that plugs right into the 8-pin socket.

Everything seemed good with the DP2X installation until I test-fit the body shell. The shell fit, but the DP2X was pressed up against it. When I test-ran the locomotive in this configuration, the shell did get warm from being in contact with the decoder. I doubt the decoder would have gotten hot enough to melt the plastic, but this still didn't seem like a good permanent setup. I installed the DP2X in my Atlas C424 (TP&W #801) instead and went back to the drawing board for the GP30. 

I ended up using a TCS T1 instead. I thought about hard-wiring the T1, but had I done so I wouldn't have been able to disassemble the locomotive again without unsoldering or cutting wires. I ended up keeping the Life-Like 8-pin socket and using a Digitrax short harness to connect the 9-pin plug on the T1 to the 8-pin socket.

Here's the locomotive along with the T1 decoder and the Digitrax harness. I had to rotate the 8-pin socket by 180 degrees from how I had it set up for the DP2X to get the pins in the correct orientation to use the harness.

Here's the final installation. The wires on the "short" harness were still a bit too long, so I had to gently put a Z-bend in them to get the decoder to sit where I wanted it. In this configuration the top of the 8-pin plug might touch the shell, but the decoder definitely won't.

The shell fit just fine on the reassembled drive with the T1 decoder. The truck sideframes look great, and I'm glad I took the time to modify the bearing caps.

And with that I finally have the GP30 drive ready to go. I'm going to take a break on this project for a while and paint the shell for TP&W 700 at a later date.

DCC-EX

I've debated for a while whether I should convert my layout to DCC. My venerable MRC Tech 4 power pack has done the job up to this point, but some sort of walkaround control will be necessary once I finally do build my planned shelf extension to the current tabletop layout. I've been hesitant to make the switch to DCC primarily for 2 reasons: cost and increased complexity. I priced out the DCC starter systems from Digitrax, NCE, and MRC and concluded that it would cost $200-$300 just to get a walkaround DCC system, not including the cost of decoders. Being a somewhat miserly individual, it was difficult for me to justify spending this much money on a control system for my small, one-train layout. On the complexity front, I've been reading about DCC technical issues for years in hobby magazines and online forums. I deal with software gremlins enough at work, and the thought of introducing debugging into my hobby was not appealing. 

If I had been in this situation 20 years ago, I probably would have just purchased a DC walkaround throttle. Today, however, a DC walkaround throttle wasn't a great option. There are very few options for new ones, and I was surprised that even the prices for used ones on eBay weren't that much less than a starter DCC system with far more capabilities. Plenty of circuits for DC throttles have been published over the years, and while such a setup could be built for relatively low cost, I'm not well-versed in electronics and I knew it would take me a lot of time to pick a design, find and purchase the correct parts, and assemble it. It therefore seemed inevitable that I would eventually convert my layout to DCC, but I continued to be hung up on the cost. 

The game-changer came last year when I learned about DCC-EX (formerly DCC++EX), an open-source DCC project based around the Arduino microcontroller. DCC-EX is billed as a do-it-yourself DCC system for less than $100, which appealed to both the tinkerer and cheapskate in me. I acquired the necessary parts over the summer and built the system this fall. The combined cost of the system components was indeed less than $100, but there are a few caveats:

1. DCC-EX requires a computer, and for convenience it kind of needs to be close to the layout. I was fortunate to already have a surplus laptop that could become my layout computer, but the system would cost more if you had to purchase a computer to use with it. 
2. The only way to control trains in the most basic DCC-EX setup is to do so through the EX-WebThrottle on the computer. To get my desired walkaround control, I use the Engine Driver app on my smartphone. As with the computer, I already had a smartphone that would work but the system would cost more if you had to acquire a suitable wireless device for walkaround control.
3. The system developers have volunteered substantial time and effort to write the code, test the system, and provide comprehensive instructions. The code may be a free download, but I also made a donation to support the project.

From left to right, the Arduino Mega, the Arduino Motor Shield, and the MakerFabs WiFi board. The Mega is the brains of the system, the Motor Shield provides the power to the track, and the wifi board allows me to use a smartphone as a throttle. I purchased both Arduino boards from Amazon. I had to order the wifi board directly from MakerFabs in Hong Kong, and it took a while to arrive.

Assembly is pretty simple; just stack the boards and run two jumper wires from the Mega to the wifi board. The Motor Shield only has screw terminals for power inputs, so the thing sticking out to the left is a barrel plug adaptor for connecting the power supply.

I used an adjustable "wall wart" power supply for the Motor Shield. As shown, I set the output voltage to 15V. I used a separate 9V wall wart (not shown) to power the Mega.

I rearranged the shelves underneath my layout to make room for the computer, and I mounted the DCC-EX system nearby on the layout frame. I used some old Code 100 sectional track from a previous layout to make a programming track on the shelf.

My TP&W GP35 was the first locomotive in my fleet to get a decoder. Because it has a 9-pin plug, I used the TCS T1A. It was a very simple, plug-and-play installation.

I thought the instructions on the DCC-EX website were very good. I had no issues assembling the components, loading the code, and running my GP35 with the computer-based throttle. The only thing in this process that wasn't super clear to me was when to connect the Mega and Motor Shield to their power supplies. I probably connected the Mega power supply sooner than I was supposed to, but that didn't seem to cause a problem. I think you're supposed to wait until after the code is loaded onto the Mega to connect the power supplies.

The only place where I had trouble was getting the Engine Driver app on my phone to connect to the DCC-EX system. With my phone connected to the DCC-EX Wifi network instead of my home wifi network, the instructions made it sound like Engine Driver would automatically discover the DCC-EX network but for some reason this was not the case for me. I had to manually enter the IP address and port number, and I had a hard time figuring out what the port number should be. There is some conflicting information in the videos on the DCC-EX website, but eventually I figured out that the correct port number is 2560, as shown on the screen shot below. 

I've been using DCC-EX for about a month now, and so far I like it. Having wireless control has been great, and though I'm still adjusting to the slider bar on my phone, I don't really miss having a knob for speed control. I haven't done any programming beyond changing the address, but at some point in the near future I will probably mess around with the speed tables and momentum. This might sound a little silly, but what I probably like the most about DCC so far is bright headlights. I've been so used to dim or dark headlights when running at very slow speeds on DC that it's a very noticeable and welcome change to now have the headlights be at full brightness all the time. 

I'm almost done with my second decoder installation, and that will be part of my next post.

Let There Be Streets

Over the last few months I've added some streets and grade crossings to the layout. I wanted to have streets in place prior to making scenic contours and build the grade crossings prior to ballasting the track so I wouldn't have to excavate ballast away from the crossing locations.

Streets

For the streets themselves, I used 8-mm EVA foam purchased from Michael's. I've seen others make very convincing streets with EVA foam, and I had no interest in using plaster for streets again like I did on my first layout. I chose the 8 mm thickness so I wouldn't have to use multiple layers to get the road surface at an elevation slightly below the tops of the rails. 

The foam cuts nicely with a sharp X-acto knife, but I found I needed to change blades frequently to avoid getting a rough, tattered edge when the blade began to dull. I cut scale 24-foot-wide strips of foam from the roll and then trimmed them to fit on the layout. 

I used yellow carpenter's glue to attach the foam to the plywood tabletop. A plastic knife was handy to spread a thin layer of glue on the bottom of each piece of foam.  

The foam retained quite a bit of curvature from being rolled up. Real streets are a bit higher in the middle to promote drainage, but not quite to this level.

Quite a bit of weight was necessary to keep the foam flat while the glue dried. The wood spacer is there for more even weight distribution to avoid making impressions in the foam. The brown "distilled water" is water that I've used to clean paintbrushes, by the way. 

Success. A nice flat street.

I plan to paint the foam streets at a later date once I have the surrounding scenery in place.

The "Hill"

I get a little defensive when people deride Illinois (and other Midwestern states) as "flat and boring." Florida is extremely flat, and yet I never hear the same criticism leveled (pun intended) at the Sunshine State. While my native Peoria region has plenty of topographic relief, I do have to grudgingly admit that the area in and around El Paso that I'm modeling is indeed pretty flat. However, there are subtle differences in elevation that I hope to capture on the layout. The east-west downtown strip along Front Street that faces the TP&W is several feet above the track level, and the north-south streets dip down where they cross the tracks. I decided to add a small "hill" to the north-south street (Elm Street) that runs down the middle of the layout. I used two different sizes of wood shims to make the slopes with a piece of moulding between them to flatten out the crest. My Surform plane worked well to shape the moulding and I used a 60-grit sanding block to smooth out the transitions.

Paved Crossings

As best as I can tell from photos, most of the grade crossings in El Paso were of the type with a single railroad tie on either side of each rail and asphalt pavement up to and in between the ties. I built two curved crossings like this using styrene strips for the ties and lightweight spackling compound to fill the space between the rails. 

Both styrene "ties" have an L-shaped cross section. The outside ties were made by laminating 0.030" x 0.100" and 0.040" x 0.060" styrene strips to form an inverted L to clear the molded spike heads. The inner ties were made by laminating 0.040" x 0.080" and 0.020" x 0.100" styrene strips into an L for wider flangeways. I glued my faux ties to the actual ties using cyanoacrylate gel. The molded spike heads served as guides. 

I removed the cork roadbed within the street footprint so I could butt the foam right up against the track. I made a paper template for cutting the foam to the correct shape.

To clear the actual ties and roadbed, I had to make a notch in the underside of the foam. I first sliced the end of the foam parallel to the road surface, then made several light vertical passes on the bottom of the foam until I had connected the two cuts. A sharp, new knife blade was essential.

The plastic knife also made a good applicator for the spackling compound that I used to fill in the middle. A moistened scrap of foam worked well to smooth the spackle between the styrene "ties". The additional water caused the spackle to shrink a bit as it dried, so I came back later and applied a thin final coat. I lightly wet-sanded the finished surface with 320-grit sandpaper to both smooth the surface and remove the thin coating of spackle on the inner "ties."

 

I primed the "ties" on the first crossing I built with Vallejo gray primer prior to installation and figured I'd paint them later, but for the second crossing I spray-painted the "ties" with Rustoleum Camouflage Brown before I glued them down.  

Wood Crossings

For the two crossings on Elm Street, I used laser-cut wood crossings from Blair Line. These come in straight versions as well as curved versions in a number of different radii, and I thought they would be a simple, drop-in installation. Unfortunately, the wood crossings turned out to be the more difficult of the two types of crossings I made for the following reasons:

1. They're too thick for Code 83 track. The Blair Line wood pieces are 5/64" (0.078") to 3/32"(0.094") thick, in other words approximately equal to slightly greater than the 0.083" rail height. I built styrene jigs to hold the wood pieces in place and guide the final thickness as I sanded their bottom sides with 60-grit sandpaper. I thinned the pieces that go between the rails to approximately 0.060" thick. The outside pieces need to have an inverted "L" profile to clear the molded spike heads, so I thinned them to 0.030" and glued them to thin strips of 1/32" basswood.
2. The curved crossing is too short for a 2-lane street. The Blair Line 21-23" radius curved crossing is about the same width as the straight crossing, but a curved track takes a longer path through the street and therefore needs to be longer than a straight crossing. Luckily the Blair Line crossings come in packages of 2 so I had additional material available to lengthen my curved crossing, but of course now I don't have enough material left over for a second crossing.

My modified Blair Line crossings. The stock curved crossing has 4 sections but is too short, so I cut the 5th section to make it long enough to span the scale 24-foot-wide street. The outer pieces of the curved crossing at left are upside-down to show how I made them L-shaped to clear the molded spike heads.

I used an ebony Minwax stain marker to stain the wood crossings. 

The finished wood crossings.