Tourist excursion railway Free-mo module - Part 1 of 3

Happy Fathers' Day to all the dads.

In my last post I promised to show pictures of the new Free-mo module I have been working on throughout Covid-19. 

The premise for this two-section module is the home for a tourist excursion railway. The idea came out of watching both our Free-mo group and the visiting public during public shows. Many of us operate fairly modern rolling stock because that tends to be what the public recognizes, particularly those under age 60. However, many of us also like to run steam locomotives from time to time. This creates a bit of a disconnect because it is not particularly prototypical for steamers to be seen running concurrently with modern diesel power. Many of us enjoy visiting tourist excursion railways and many of these operate one or more steam locomotives in their fleets. By having a module designed around a tourist excursion railway we can have "the best of both worlds".

My module has a spur track with an ash pit (so locomotives can dump the ashes left over from burning their coal fuel), an operating water tower (no, there is no real water but the water spout moves up and down by way of a servo and there are several very convincing sound tracks that play when this happens), an operating coaling tower (no sound effects but the coal chute moves down by way of a servo controlled by an Arduino micro controller and then returns to its raised position following a predetermined time) and a sand tower (which is kit bashed from an Atlas styrene kit).

The water tower is from Broadway Limited Imports and is completely self-contained when you buy it. All of the electronics and sound effects are built in. It is very well made and operates very reliably. It costs around US$120.

The coaling tower is a Campbell craftsman kit which can be built to emulate one of two different Colorado water towers, one in Durango and one in Chama. I built mine to emulate the one in Durango, modified in two major respects. The prototype was designed to accommodate two railway tracks. One track is for cars unloading coal into a pit beneath the track and the other track has the chute where coal is loaded into locomotive tenders. Because of the space limitations I must contend with, I decided that it would be plausible for both activities to take place on the same side of the coaling tower, thus requiring only one track. I located the coal pit on the same side as the coal chute. The coal is moved from the coal pit to the other side of the structure by way of either an auger or conveyor where it would fall into the coal buckets which transport the coal into the hopper in the upper reaches of the coaling tower. The other modification consists of a small strip of brass fashioned into the shape of 1/2 of an upside down canoe. This is glued under the coal chute and the coal chute itself is modified to swing up and down freely on hinges. Hidden in the coal pit is a servo and attached to a bell crank on the servo is a piece of stiff piano wire which pushes up under the inverted "brass canoe". Upon the press of button wired to an Arduino circuit board the servo slowly lowers the coal chute to send an imaginary flow of coal into a waiting locomotive tender.

I have built small wooden sheds on both sides of the module with momentary-on push buttons to operate both the water tower and the coaling tower. These buttons may be used by not only train operators but also the public. I thought that inviting the public to be able to press a button to see  prototypical animation might be of interest. I know I always enjoy the ability to interact with exhibits in museums,  for example. If this is well received I shall incorporate into future projects other animations that can be triggered by the public.

In addition to the scratch-built pedestrian overpass discussed in my last post I have now completed a scratch-built engine house, the doors of which can be opened or closed by pressing a button recessed inside one of of the chimneys. Each door is operated by its own servo and the electronic control of the servos is by way of an Arduino circuit board. One press of the button opens the doors, one after the other slowly in sequence. Once open, the doors may be closed the same way. The visible door hinges were all 3D printed. All windows of the engine house consist of frames and mullions I created and printed on my 3D printer. The window glazing is glass. I find that microscope slide glass for window glazing provides a completely clear and distortion-free window which won't scratch over time the way clear plastic does. You can't beat this technique if you want to be able to clearly see inside a building. 

The engine house is lit by a strip of LEDs hidden under the centre beam which runs length-wise under the ceiling. I originally planned to make the roof removable so it could be lifted off to see the roof structure detail and the detailed interior. However, as I wanted to wire the push button into the chimney this would have involved some sort of electrical contact between a removable roof and the building structure itself. As this is a Free-mo module the structure will already be subjected to more handling than if it were mounted on a fixed home model railroad. Instead of a removable roof I opted for a "cut away" roof which still has a significant portion of fixed roof as well as a cut away portion through which viewers can see inside the building. I felt that this was a better option, especially at the many train shows where this module will hopefully be seen post-Covid.

Finally, the pit beneath the track level, complete with staircases, was 3D printed.

Other structures on this module include the pedestrian overpass discussed in my last post. This has not yet been fastened down and for the pictures has been placed roughly in the position where it will ultimately be placed.

Not yet installed are three additional structures:

1. The station where passengers will load and unload trains is built and ready to install.
2. The trackside shed which will serve as the ticket office is built and ready to install
3. In the early stages of construction is a railway museum that I am scratch building. This will be a cut-away two story structure, complete with basement. The top floor will contain a miniature model railroad.

Below are a few pictures of my progress to date. I shall add more pictures of the completed module from more angles when it is complete.

On the far right is visible a fenced-in boardwalk. This is the end of the area where the public can walk after crossing the pedestrian bridge. The back side of the sign describing the sand house and its purpose is visible. The area on the left side of the picture is yet to be scenicked.

Structures from right to left include the edge of the coaling tower, the Broadway Imports water tower (which I painted and weathered), the ash pit with conveyor and the pedestrian bridge.

The engine house is the building on the left.

The engine house showing the cutaway roof and the covered area with sliding door and railing where the visiting public can look inside the engine house from a safe position.

The view through the cutaway roof. The chimney on the right contains the push button to operate the engine house doors.

The visible hinges on the doors, the window frames and the window mullions were all designed by me using my 3D printer software and printed on my 3D printer. The window glazing is glass, made from microscope slide covers.

In this shot the pit under the rails is visible in the engine house. The rail spur on the left is where the railway station and its platform will be located. This is where the tourists will get on and off the trains.

Pedestrian overpass scratch build

One of my Covid-19 projects has been the construction and scenery work for a new Free-mo module. I'll elaborate further about the module itself in my next post on June 21. However, in order to make this module work I needed to devise a method of enabling pedestrians to cross a double-track mainline. There are pedestrian overpass kits available online but my situation would require that the kit be modified.

Aside from a few minor scratch building projects such as building a loading ramp I have never tackled a major scratch building project. This seemed like the ideal situation to try my hand at scratch building a pedestrian overpass.

I started with the following samples of pictures from the Internet:

Next I searched online for building code measurements of handrail height, rise over run of stairs, etc.

As for the supporting structure I had on hand a large number of styrene girders and various iron work left over from a large trestle I had build a number of years ago using several Micro Engineering steel trestle kits. Here is a sample (the partially completed items are the beginnings of the supporting towers):

I had nothing for hand rails or stairs that was suitable so I designed in three dimensions and printed the following parts using my 3D printer. I can't believe how useful this 3D printer has been not only in the model railroading hobby but also around the house - it is as useful as my computer printer for paper.

This is the final product.

You can see that both stair cases do not extend on the same side of the bridge section. What you can't see from this picture is that one of them had to be built an angle larger than 90 degrees from the bridge section - about 96 degrees. Both of these features would have required some significant kit bashing of a commercial kit. The design and construction of this bridge was a lot of fun and provided me with something to focus on while isolating from Covid-19.

My next post on July 1 will show the bridge "in situ" on the new Free-mo module along with another scratch built project, this time a building.

Illuminated Push Buttons

My last blog entry showed a picture of push buttons containing LEDs which light up green to show the direction of a turnout (i.e., the direction the train will take based on the position of the switch points). I find this much nicer looking and tactically more satisfying than throwing a toggle switch.

As Tortoise (by Circuitron) switch machines are the "stall-motor" type they are normally operated using a toggle switch because it is desirable for constant electrical current to be powering the machine, thus ensuring that the points are held tight to the rail. A momentary push button switch would not normally work with this type of switch machine.

I am an enthusiastic subscriber to Model Railroader Video Plus, the online video service of Model Railroader Magazine. I have learned a great deal from the many high quality, professionally produced videos. In my opinion this service is well worth the cost.

One of the video series I followed in MR Video Plus was the step-by-step design, construction and scenicking of their Canadian Canyons N scale portable layout. While I do not currently model in N scale, all of the information provided is transferable HO scale. A couple of the episodes in the Canadian Canyons series provided a very detailed step-by-step description of how to use push buttons to operate Tortoise switch machines.

At the heart of this setup is a Digitrax DS64 Quad Stationary Decoder, as follows.

Each DS64 can operate up to 4 switch machines. It can be programmed to operate either a stall-motor machine like a tortoise or a snap-type electromagnet switch machine. Once programmed to switch machines the DS64 can be used to move the points using either a mechanical switch (my preference) or you could move the points using your Digitrax controller (which I can't be bothered with).

A Tortoise switch machine has 8 electrical contacts on a contact strip. The two outermost contacts are wired to the outputs of the DS64 - this is how the switch machine is moved. The inputs to the DS64 can be a momentary on push button switch. Any such switch will do.

The MR Video Plus episodes introduced me to a very neat type of push button switch sold by Mouser electronics (Mouser part number 612-LP1OA1AG)(the "O" is an "oh" not a zero). Here is the data sheet from the Mouser site:

These switches have four electrical contacts on their base. Two of the contacts constitute the outputs of the switch itself (they close the circuit when the button is pressed) and the other two are wired to a green LED mounted inside the clear button. There is no internal circuitry to operate the LED.

Reference was made above to the 8 contacts on a Tortoise. The other 6 contacts are actually two pairs of 3 contacts. These can be used to power the switch frog, operate signals or in this case to operate the green LED mounted in the push button. It is necessary to include an appropriate resistor in the LED circuit to protect the LED from excess current. I use a 560 ohm resistor when the LED is wired to a 12 volt DC circuit.

In the MR Video Plus design they used only one Mouser switch to power each turnout. Pushing the button once moves the turnout in one direction. Pressing again moves it in the other direction, and so on. I decided it would be better to use two Mouser switches for each turnout drawn on the control panel, as follows:

The green LEDs are powered by one of the three contacts on one side of the Tortoise. The momentary off-on switch for each pair are mounted in parallel to the inputs of the DS64. The blue light is unrelated to the turnouts - it shows that an uncoupler is powered.

I find this method of operating turnouts nice to operate and nice to look at. Thank you MR Video Plus for introducing me to this concept.

Here is one location under my layout where I have three DS64s, enough to operate twelve Tortoises: