Track Talk Live on the Road: August 2016

Well, good evening, everyone. This is Track Talk Live with Steve Doyle, Mr. Clack, and Doug Hodgdon, Mr. Clickity. You know we're official because they gave us coffee cups.

So we know we're gonna be around, at least another month. Track Talk Live from Model Railroad Academy with Allen Keller. Allen is taking tonight off. He'll be with us, we hope, again in early September, but we've come on location tonight. We're broadcasting from the historic Wayzata Depot in the western suburb of Minneapolis called Wayzata.

It's on the shores of beautiful lake Minnetonka. And tell us just a quick thumbnail sketching, the Depot here. Well, this is an absolutely beautiful Depot. It's been preserved and Keep talking while I show them. This is the outside.

It resides on what used to be the Great Gardener Railroad, and it's 110 years old. Mhm, 1906. Built 1906, and you'll see a little more of the Depot later but it's just such a beautiful setting here at the Depot, and it not only faces the railroad track but on the other side of the Depot is Beautiful Lake Minnetonka. Absolutely. You'll see a little bit of that as you walk around outside.

It's got the best of everything. Yeah, well Model Railroad Academy, as you probably know, because you signed up either for the free newsletter, a weekly newsletter which is full of all things model railroading, talks about building your layout, designing, building your layout, improving your layout. Really, we exist and all the people who support us, to inspire you to do more model railroading and tonight, as we do once a month, and now we've decided because we get so many questions online and from viewers like you, who are sending in questions live, which you can do right now, we are going to do two a month. See how that goes because there's so many questions we don't end up getting to. So thank you very much for your input and for those of us who, those of us who are part of the show, it's really very heartening that there are so many people out there who watch us live all around the world.

I know from the last couple broadcasts, we've got people in South America, in Australia. New Zealand, England, who are watching us. It's middle of the night over there. Good morning to everyone on the other side of the world. They're just getting up.

So let us know who you are. You can send in questions live. Because we are live on location, we may not, I'm going to be walking the tripod around while Doug is doing some interviewing. We may be a little rougher edge than we normally are. So please excuse any of the technical difficulties or if the camera happens to go upside down.

But anyway, we're going to be taking a tour of the Depot and then there's a G garden scale just outside the Depot. We understand that maybe there's a freight that's going to be coming in while we're, during our hour long broadcast. We're hoping, maybe within the next half an hour. Yep, so, but anyway, let's get to your questions right now. Don't forget to sign up for a free e-newsletter, which is chock full of news, model railroading.

You can follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Our first question, which was pre-submitted, you get a chance to do that in the few days before we do these broadcasts, is from Bill, in I believe, New York City, he says, I have three questions: when designing a shelf layout using commercially available metal standards and brackets, I want to keep the layout thin and lightweight. If I use foam insulation board as a sub row bed what's the minimum thickness that should be used? That's question number one. What material and what thickness should I use under the foam board in order to attach tables for cables and screws for switching sheets?

Question two. Question three is any preference in using Homasote or cork for a road bed for this type of construction? I use a sheet of Homasote, I know you have as well but they could also use Homabed, which is already bevel and glue that right down to the paint board but let's talk about thickness. There's lots of considerations on that. One of them being the spacing of the bracket sized support, right?

Well true, the thicker the foam the more structural integrity it has and then there's a question about how often do you want to have these brackets? If you're doing 16 inches on center, you can afford to get by with a thinner foam and then I was going to mention about the supports. So, what I did on my rail is I put, I actually one by material flat on top of the brackets, which in turn supports the foam structure. Mhm. And then that also allows you to screw in attachments for cable clamps and that sort of thing.

Any wiring that goes underneath and rather than trying to screw it in the foam, which doesn't go very well, you can screw it into that wood, and so you have, if you go into the other stud, you're 32 inches. So, it kind of depends on, are you gonna be dancing on your layout when you're done with it? Or not? Yeah, exactly. Are you gonna, well they're not gonna be moving it if it's attached to the board.

Yeah, so it's gonna be important to watch. So two inches or one and a half or one inch? Well, it all just depends. If it's two inch, you might wanna do a ravine, say down into it. So two inches would give you a chance to scoop out some of the paint board or blue board as it is in some parts.

More later. So anyway, thanks for your question, Bill. Tom in St. Paul, Minnesota, so just to the east of here, is in HO and HON3 and he says I bought rechargeable nine volt batteries for my DCC controllers. My problem is that after charging the batteries four or five times they don't seem to hold a charge anymore.

I would think they should last longer than that. I agree they should. Mine last a lot longer than that but is there a certain reliable brand of rechargeable nine volt batteries of other models which I used with better results? I use lithium and they seem to charge for me well but you can over cook, normally. Well, that's, yeah.

I mean, it's just, you don't want to leave them on over night because, generate heat and Right, it heats up the battery, there is that. There's a unit called a battery tinder which is a little more sophisticated, that will actually kick off when the battery is going full charge. You can use this in your car when the battery is up for full charge, then it'll stop so it doesn't over cook the battery, and that's a battery, if I sit for a long time and the battery's getting weak, then you think I gotta plug it back in again, But, that prevents the overcharging the battery and that kinda solves what just happened. But would you recommend lithium? Yeah, oh, please do.

Yeah, not a traditional, The batteries are getting better all the time, so it's not a part of the, Okay, Marvin in California asks what's the best way to install a smoker to a KATO SD 40-2, or is there such a kit available? I know for buildings, Sleuth makes a smoker, if you will. I don't know about that scale. You're probably more familiar with HO than I am. We're both in S now, but you spent years in HO.

Well there are smoke units available for HDO. HO kinda smoke units But you're gonna be limited by, Right. You know, HDO uses them of all the time and more than Steve, but I would say that whatever you do you're probably gonna have to do some modifications. You could probably get smoke unit that would fit somewhere but then to get up to the exhaust stacks on the locomotive, might have to build some kind of tubing to get the smoke up there and then maybe like you were talking earlier maybe some kind of a blower to actually Yeah, actually brush it out as opposed to a steam locomotor, where it would just kinda come out in puffs, 'cause that wouldn't be realistic. But then you can, if you do have DCC, you can control that on of the CD functions.

That's true, so you have to be kinda an inventor to make that one work. Okay, Wayne in Oakland, Florida is in N scale, he says, I'm building a layout from an existing plan in HO. It calls for 36 inch radius curves, How do I translate this radius to N scale? Well 87 over 160, Exactly that's the comparison between the two scales 87 being HO and 160 being N, you divide that you get point 54 and then you take that times 36, and that comes out with come on, quick math, What'd you say it was, 19 point, 19.5 inches. Thank God for the calculators on cell phones.

I can't do that in my head. It's been a few years since I've done that math. Harry in Pinehurst, North Carolina asks, what's the best type of lighting for model railroads and then how do I determine the electrical requirements for model railroads? Electrical requirements vis-a-vis the lighting or vis-a-via how much power? I would say one maxim is you can't have too much power.

So if you're installing electrical drops, put 'em everywhere, 'cause you never know if you're running little wall boards to power lights and animated sort of things, even the Miller engineering animated signs, you're always gonna be looking for more. You can never have too much power around the layout. Now if you're talking about the lighting, that's another thing. There's as many answers as there are people in model railroading as to which lights are best. So, talk about your experience?

We'll we were talking earlier about this and we've mentioned this on the show before, for my layout as an S scale switching layout, is was two feet by 18 feet and that means 36 square feet, and I'm using all LEDs. I switched over. I did have halogen lights originally, on my layout and I got LED strips imported from China and now have 6,000 LED lights over my layout and I figured it out mathematically with a calculator not my head and I found out that I actually have one LED per square inch Wow. Pretty close. Yeah.

The good thing is they don't put off too much heat. They don't put off heat, and they don't take very much juice. I mean, I've used, I mean, the trains themselves take such little turn. Yep, yep. So the main thing is, in the old days your lighting took way more current than the trains, but nowadays with LEDs, its just amazing.

A lot of others, color emission, we did talk about color emission. Yep, yeah, do you like natural light? Do you want something to look colder or warmer because even the new LEDs these days, which are dimmable, come in various warm, some cold temperatures and what have you. That's Kelvin, and you'd probably want to check and see what's your favorite thing. You can, you could experiment.

I happened to have track lighting for my, as I say, show lighting, and I've experimented between the new generation of LEDs which are dimmable and old halo- or not halogen, but old tungsten spotlights or flood lights, I tend not to use spots, but you want as even lighting as you can from as many sides as you can. You know, just to take these shadows out. Dealing with shadows is tough. 'cause you get shadows going all different directions. That's not realistic, so you're hazy kinda lighting is usually the best solution We talked also a lot about if you want to enhance the depth, then you have a warmer lighting in the foreground and cooler lighting in the background.

Cooler lighting in your backdrop. Yeah, but experiment around, visit other layouts and see what you like and don't be afraid to experiment. You know, most of us, that's how we learned, either by observation and or making mistakes, trying this, that doesn't look good, try that, ah, that's good. Definitely experiment. LEDs are kind of the way of the future and they don't take much heat they don't give off much heat, if any, and they're really, really low power.

And you can try taking photographs and see how your layout looks in the photograph that might help you too, so, yeah, experimenting is the best. Yeah, okay Joe in Phoenix says, I built my train table, fastened by four by eight plywood and half inch Homasote to it. I have electric to four sides of my table. Now, where do I go? I hope you have a better plan than that, Jo.

Go to the hobby store and get some track. You know, laying track would be a good thing but having an idea of what you want to do within that four by eight sheet is important, so if you've not done a drawing or a mock-up of some sort of scale to know how big a raise you can have, let's see, he has an HO, do so, and then, electric meaning, electrical power drops, or, I mean, it's good to have electrical power on all sides of the table because you're going to be doing, feeders to the track to make sure you've got even electricity, even current going all around the track, so you don't have a slow down in a deader area and then all of a sudden picks up again. So, he lists himself as a beginner, and one thing that every model railroader learns sooner or later is that your beginning layout is more or less a practice anyway. Yeah, well most of us only had one chance. I've only had one chance.

So I wouldn't worry too much about it. I would just go ahead and try some things, we certainly welcome your comments. Mhm. In the future if you have more questions, but And you're actually, you've started a series of articles on Model Railroad Academy on designing and then building a layout. So, if you are not a member yet, we invite you to become a subscriber, but do sign up for our free weekly e-newsletter, which is full of news and video clips, and just keep you up to date on what's going on in the world of model railroading.

But your series is of particular interest again because this is the stage, it sounds like, he kinda, do you have a plan, do you have a design? Do you have some track sectional or otherwise that you could just lay out there and just kind of experiment? Do you like this? Do you like the way it goes? Will there be spurs?

You know, where are you going to put your buildings or Rocky Mountains? Lots of considerations and we're here to help you if you want to send us questions back, okay? Yep. We don't have any questions coming in live yet but we invite you to just send them in and we'll continue with the questions. We'll take actually two more questions and then we'll have you talk with our special guest, Terry Middlekauf right behind us, whose a station master here at the historic Wayzata Depot.

Steve in Nebraska is in HO and he goes, what's the importance of having all the same couplers on the train cars and engines? Well, ease of coupling, I suppose, You wanna follow NMRA standards, which gives you , and you can buy little things that show you, do you have your coupler set at the right height, to then couple with others of the same height? I'm not sure how critical it is to have them all be the same. I use some dumpy couplers in S scale but I also use Kadee couplers 802s, 806s but I also have some very small Kadee fives which are actually HO scale on some of my older box cars and they seem to work fine. But how critical do you think it is?

Well it depends on what you're doing with the train. I mean, I think that they have to be reliable, you don't want your train coming uncoupled in the middle of the train, inside of a tunnel or something. Yeah, and that's all happened to us. Yeah, they have to be reliable whatever you do, so If a car is gonna come uncoupled when the train derails it will happen where it's in the least reachable spot on your layout and ask us how we know. But if you have done a couplers, you will have to lift up one of the cars to uncouple and that gets to be a bit of a pain, but I have both and you just accept that.

Well, I would have to say, like, am I switching right now? Because I do actual switching, the couplers have to be reliable and work well because I'm coupling and uncoupling a lot. Using a pick? In my case I do use a pick, you can from the top but I used a side pick, but Okay Anyway, yeah, Of course others might use magnets between couplers and others operate with a magnet underneath the road bed. So when I bring two cars together, the couplers gotta work, they gotta couple.

Mhm. So, depends on what your do. Okay, one last question before we introduce our special guest. Where can I find videos or instructions on converting older HO locos to DCC. Well, there are lots of books out there, pamphlets on that subject.

There will be videos on our site, as a subscriber, you get full videos that probably will show you how to convert DC to DCC. There are lots of YouTube videos out there that, just watch and if you, if there's anyone else in your club, if you have a club, ask them. Have someone install it right in front of you. It doesn't take terribly long, but ask questions and see how it's done. I know it's intimidating because I found it intimidating the first time I did it.

But boy, if you take it slowly and you test as you go along, it's a cool feeling of satisfaction when you finally pull off the test track and the bell starts and you hear the engine come alive, it's spectacular. Older locos, you know, yeah, they can take it easy but there are certainly sources of information out there for you. Yeah, I mean , I think all of us went through that way back in the beginning, we burnt out some decoders 'cause we didn't know exactly what we were doing but I think the main thing is you follow the color code on the lens diagram, and then make sure your motor is isolated from the frame, because if you're starting with DC, normally one of the polarities is in the frame. Yeah. So you have to make sure your motor is isolated and then follow the color code and you know start off with an inexpensive proper non-sound decoder and some, I think most DCC decoder manufacturers offer a replacement and compensation.

If you've burned out. Yeah, don't remove any of the plastic jacket, 'cause that will void the warranty. Ask us how we know. I'd say, just go for it. Once you get used to, it's not really that complicated.

It does seem to be intimidating so I appreciate your question. Go for it. It's not as easy with the more modern engines which sometimes you just have to put the harness actually just plug 'em in. Wait two weeks. Yeah, sometimes it's tougher to get the wire inside of a locomotive then it is the decoder, but.

You just have to experiment. Okay, a break at 7:20 central time and we remind you that this is Track Talk Live from Model Railroad Academy with Allen Keller. I'm your host, Steve Doyle, along with Doug Hodgdon, Mr. Clickety, I'm Mr. Clack and Doug, I'm gonna now step behind the camera, I want you to introduce our special guest for tonight.

Here we go. This is Terry Middlekauf our buddy that is the Station Agent over here at the Wayzata Depot, the historic Wayzata Depot. We'll let him give a little background on the Depot and what's going on here in the operator's bay. Okay. Okay?

Well, as you said, this Depot was built 1906, so that's 110 years old. It's the third Depot in Wayzata and was built by James J. Hill and it is to him was supposed to be the showplace showcase Depot on his whole line. It was very modern for its time. Uh oh.

Well what to do you know, we have a BNSF freight train coming right behind us, so we'll have to speak up a little bit but you'll see how close we are to the tracks. Exactly. We get about eight to ten of these trains a day, both directions, but at any rate, when this depot was built there was no electricity in Wayzata so everything was powered by gas and so on, as well as batteries down here were powered to, used to power the signals so that they, here he comes... Yep. Its used to power the signals so that the engineers knew what to do in the dark.

It has the original terrazzo floor, radiators, James J Hill's desk, the safe, the telegram equipment still works. Do you mind turning that on for us? I'll turn it on. Here's the original radiator, that must fascinate everyone. Okay, and Terry also has a really neat schematic that downloads information on the train activity, the whereabouts of the trains.

Yep, but the computer is not original. But it does show us exactly where the trains are. Well, its kinda like asking the weatherman is it raining out? And you look outside, there's the train. So Wayzata is right...

Right here. Right there on the screen. This is the Willerton and, its called ATCS monitor and a lot of guests on Monday come in here are gonna ask, well, when's the next train coming? Right, right. And we used to have, and so on, but now we can tell 'em exactly where the trains are.

Neat, really neat. Yeah, this is the original Telegraph. They used telegraph originally to do their business on the railroad and then they switched to telephone and this is the original telephone they did not use a handset because the operator was normally transcribing a message to pass on. Yeah so they use the headset that you can see here. And when they wanted to talk there was a bar down here on the floor that you push to talk, and so on.

The messages that he recorded ended up triplicate. One for the engine, one for the caboose, and one for the file and the messages for the engine and caboose were put on these train folder hoops. So you, when you hear people saying you know, hoop up the orders That's right, You'd actually hoop them up. The orders were put up here on the string. And they would branch straight across.

You'd hold it up to the locomotive. Yep, and it tells the engineer to slow down if he's got a message. We would show the supporter board branching out and the signals outside would reflect the division. This is just repeated, basically what it would look like to me, the engineer, on the train. Red meant stop, yellow meant either you got a message or a train order, green said keep on keeping on.

And there's one for the eastbound, and one for the westbound. Today, we use this telephone and it's an old rotary telephone built in the 1940s and it is the telephone that we use to communicate and so on. In addition, over here on this side it looks like a telephonic change but it's actually a test panel that was used to attach the telephone lines or telegram lines, east of here and west of here. Was there a short, was it open? And it's also used to test the relay which was just used to pass the message from the field sounders to the loco sounder, and you could also attach the key, which was right here, and by the way, that was what, close to SOS I think.

Say Terry, you got Prince Albert in a can? You know it's It's an old joke and I bet you he's never heard that before, right? No, no, no He's talking about that little, on the, Right here, it's actually an old Prince Albert can that was used to add resonance to make a loco sounder sound louder. Ah, that's cool. And it actually worked.

No, I'm not gonna say it Well, Terry, thanks so much. We're going to get back to a few more questions and we're gonna have you show us the other side of the depot. Okay, sounds good. Thanks very much. I'll set the camera back up here again.

See how we all look. Are we ready in position pretty much? We're all in focus. Ah, we're pretty much in position. Actually, train station improvement.

Okay. So, John has asked, and we got John live in San Diego can you talk to modeling hills and valleys, rolling terrain, on an N scale layout? Well, techniques are pretty much the same no matter what the scale, shorter, probably G scale. Mhm. There's lots of different ways to do that.

You can start with scrunched up newspaper, and then, you know the good thing N scale is it's not very big. If you're dealing with a bigger scale, such as we are, on S or O scale, then you I've used cardboard strips before and then use the almost like plaster paper towels and lay it over the hat and as it starts to dry you can start to form rivulets on the hills and things like that. What else have you done? Well, I think everybody has their favorite. Yeah.

Some are messier than some others. Yeah, I would experiment with different ways and I think we've mentioned before, but, you know it's nice to just take some newspaper, for example maybe newspaper, cardboard and make a shape, You build it up, and then you can see what your seeing Yeah and if you don't like it, you can change it but, kinda figure out what you wanna do ahead of time and then there's multiple ways of actually creating scenery. You can make ribs out of rigid foam, vertical ribs that will support the scenery. I mean, there's Hydrocal, there's sculptcamold, there's Mhm. All kinds of plasters.

What I usually do is build up the paint board and then use a hot knife and kinda carve those. Phoenix has that new material now that you can shape I forget the name, but you can shape it into a mountain. Plaster gauze is another one. Yeah, yeah. I would just experiment and if you have any more questions down the line get a hold of us again and we'll And there are videos, full videos, on creating mountains and scenery on Model Railroad Academy.

So we would invite you to become a member and you'd get the whole anything else. But next question, let's take one more. Someone has asked, what is your guys' opinion on Bluetooth control trains. Okay. Okay.

I like it. So, is that what the guys up north are using? Well, they're using their I Phones to control the trains. You know, it's all so new, I mean, I think it's cool and technology is really cool. Mhm.

But I personally don't know of anything really serious that's come out on Bluetooth although if our, see where is that, where's our friend calling from? Oh is that it there? I would say just, if you have some ideas let us know and we'll try to do some more research. Yeah. That's an interesting, Yeah and definitely a wave of the future, you know like controlling it off your cell phone.

Yeah, we've had people talk about animation which is another really interesting phase of model railroading that's building so yeah, please send us your comments. Okay. Why can't, this is Bill, why can't locomotives be controlled by a wireless signal rather than though the track? It would save much track cleaning, wiring, etc. it seemed like a no brainer, but obviously it's not that simple.

Well, you're talking about battery, you know? If you're gonna control like that and battery powered motors take room, you know? And the batteries are getting smaller and smaller these days, but, so you're fine in a G scale and Oh, a lot of it. A lot of G scale are already doing that. Yeah, because they don't want to clean their tracks.

Yeah. Other than clean the crud off of it. Right. So I think the technology is coming around where you see more of them in smaller scales, maybe even a connection to Bluetooth. Yep, let's see, Stuart in England, how are you?

Cheerio! Is an N gauge, cheerio! How to solder. It depends on what your soldering. Are you soldering brass engine pieces or are you just soldering wire to track?

We need a little more information, but there are lots of tutorials out there either in pamphlets, booklets or YouTube that can show you how to do it. But essentially you need probably a 20 to 40 watt soldering iron with, again, depends on what you're soldering, whether it's a chisel tip or whether it's going to be a fine point, soldering iron. You get some soldering rosin and a little bit of flux, if you need that, which helps spread the the solder out across the joint or whatever your soldering and Bob's your uncle, as they say. I would just practice, learning in practice. You know, get some scrap metal, get a soldering iron, some solder and flux and some scrap metal and just play with it.

Yeah. Don't touch the tip. Yeah. Especially on your tongue. Yeah, don't lick the soldeing iron.

Exactly. Hey I wonder if this is hot? Patrick in Chatham, Ontario is an O scale. He says, what type of glue do you recommend for gluing laser cut kits or fine scale kits? I use mainly a good grade white glue, such as well bond as well as CA.

I'd like to know your preference. I use type on two, which is a yellow carpenter's glue on most of my laser cut kits, but I've got some, some guys in our Pines and Praries group that use Ailene's tacky glue. Gives a little more time to set up and it is slightly flexible, so you can, it takes a little bit of jostling, but it sets up in a little longer, and you can correct a little more quickly than with the yellow glue Once you put that yellow glue on there, same with CA, but you have a favorite glue, a superglue, right? Well, I was gonna mention, you know, something else I do with the yellow glue you can buy the white glue in those little craft bottles, so when I have an empty white glue bottle I put yellow glue in there and its much easier to handle, so if you're going down Oh, good point. A little thing, you just have a little line that big Yeah, but as you know, the big yellow glue bottles give you a tip about like that, You put more on than you probably need to.

So I use yellow glue I would say on something that would be more structural and then I found that the superglue I liked the best is the new gorilla super glue, not the regular gorilla glue, but gorilla super glue. Yeah, that other stuff expends too much. The lifetime was so much better, it really sticks great, I haven't had any trouble with any kind of surface. So that's my favorite super glue. Do you keep them in a fridge?

No, I don't have to. Oh, that one you don't? No, I just The regular gorilla glue, once you open it you need to keep it refrigerated or it'll go bad on you. Yeah not that I've tried to advertise it for Bill, unnecessarily, but you know it's just my favorite glue. Yeah, Carl asks, he's somewhere in the US, I would like to see an in depth series of videos on what the differences are between what can be done on DCC versus DC layouts and not only HO, but all scales.

So would we! Tell out bosses that. Yeah, no, there's really not that there's not much difference. I mean, it's just depends on one scale has more room to put the decoders in Right, that kinda thing. And, sound is another you know, sound and some animation with the engines is another consideration, certainly, eminently more controllable, I think with DCC.

Well he's also talking about DC and DC is becoming kinda old technology now. I mean, everything had to be kind of manual or toggle switches and all that kind of stuff. So there's really very little comparison between DC and DCC as far as animating your, your equipment or operating it or stationary code, and all that kind of stuff. I mean, it just really, very little comparisons. Two different worlds.

Yeah, okay, Carl, I'm sorry, Mike, in California asks what's the best way to clean track? We had that question virtually every broadcast for you. So we won't get into it in depth but Wahl Clipper oil the favorite of Allen Keller but other people like to use a and that's what I get in and do as much as I can. It's a little hard to get your hand down in the tunnel portals but you have made one yourself that actually, a block of wood and on the second block. Just put a little weight on it underneath the car and pull it around and that will tend to get off most of the gunk.

You know what I've heard about outgoer G scale hacks. Don't tell your wife this, but you lift it up and put it in the dishwasher. Oh, yeah. And then put it back down again. You don't want to tell her that.

What? Where? So, let's see, Earl in Ohio asks, do you over O gauge? Well, Allen Keller did not in his series of layout tours that he has produced, an excellent series of historical tours of many, you know some of the layouts no longer with us anymore and some of the owners have all gone to the big round house in the sky but we do intend to be representing all the scales. Z scale, HO scale, N scale, I'm not doing them all in order but you know, Doug and I happened to be in S scale Doug started in , well, S and then you moved to HO from American flyer.

As a lot of us did and then you go up to O scale, Lionel and then up to G scale which is a really growing part of the model railroading scene these days. Well, there's some cool stuff being done at all scales. I mean, N scale it's probably like one culture of modeling and then you'd go up to like, say G scale or bigger, then that's another culture. Kind of depends on how you want to build your models or what you want to do with them. Yeah.

There's a lot of variables there, so, Yeah. Okay. We'll take one more question. Then we're going to hop out into the other part of the Depot. I have a loco by KATO and it will not start.

This is coming from Edward, who's an HO. If you move the fly wheel it will go, any ideas? Well, oiling might be That would be the first, To start Yeah, I'd try that first Clean it, make sure there's no gunk, if it's you know Yeah, could be a little ground up somehow Possibly, but otherwise it may be a defective motor you want to replace. So, see what, if you haven't called KATO people, you know, call them and it might still be under warranty or you know, KATO's always been pretty good about parts and so if you had to buy a new motor, I don't think that would be an issue. Yeah, wouldn't be the end of the earth.

So we're gonna pick up and kind of move and see how this mobile broadcast goes. We're using a mobile hotspot on out phone. So we're gonna go up to the other side of the Depot and Terry is going to continue the tour as they say, walk this way. Oops. Okay, so go ahead and where are we now?

Well, we're walking into the Depot waiting room and guess whose waiting here, Terry. Hi guys. Hey, so where do we find ourselves now, Terry? This is the waiting room for the Wayzata Depot. The passengers would come in the Lakeside door, they've arrived by horse and buggy or later on, by automobile and Or by boat?

Or by boat, yeah. And they would buy their tickets right here at the ticket window, and this is the original ticket rail and so on. A lot of this stuff in here is original as well. The floor, again, terrazzo floor, radiator the Coke machine. It's a 1955 And it does work?

And it still works. It's not original. It originally was at the drug store across the street and one of the daughters of the owners of the drugstore donated that to the Wayzata Historical Society. And then above it? Above it is the, on the top is a route map that shows I think this comes from a 1960s traffic timetable from Chicago to Seattle and Tacoma and through Portland.

And you can see Wysetta up there at the star. It wasn't there originally, Yeah. But we added that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Below that, is the train bulletin.

It's the actual schedule in September. I think of 1956. 55 it said. 55 okay. Well, that's just my eyes We sell probably as far as Cokes are concerned, maybe six, 700 cokes a day or a week or a year, rather.

And as we can attest, the Coke tastes better coming out of a bottle. The depot benches, now are they original? Those are the original benches. Those were made in Chicago and along the wall over there are a couple of displays of O gauge trains. The top one is probably older, 19, late 1930s.

Lionel. If you go over one, its a model of the Union Pacific Big Boy that was scratch built. The engine and tender were scratch built. The stock cars were all built from kits. As I say, originally, there was no electricity in the city of Wayzata when the Depot was built so these lights have been added since.

What would happen when the passengers came in, they would go down the hall, check their luggage, come in here and buy their tickets and leave on the track side doors. Mhm. All right. Well, Terry, thanks so much for joining us and thanks to you and thanks to the Wayzata Historical Society and the Wayzata area Chamber of Commerce for inviting us in and letting us Duke. No problem, you're very welcome.

We'll go outside for a few minutes, Doug. Let's take a couple more questions here. Okay. Sitting on the Depot bench should be all right? Yes, sitting on the Depot bench.

Okay, let's do that. Let's see, how do we wanna set up? These benches have been sat on probably, maybe many thousands of times. Okay. Oak, solid oak.

You know, I should get down on my knees and say a few prayers when we're done. Yeah. Presidents have come through here, right, Terry? Absolutely. Absolutely, so, anyway Well we did mention that Wayzata was a resort area back in the early days.

It's still beautiful of course. Yep, we'll see that in a second when we go outside. So Joseph says, I have a switching layout using camera switches with plastic frogs. I am expanding and have acquired eight English switches. Don't know if they're a power rod or not.

Should I make all the frogs neutral like the others? And how would I do that? Well, I would say if you're using say people switch, there is a wire feeder that comes with the switch that feeds the prong and for best operation I would actually use that feature rather than having it and I would hook it up, then you oughta switch control whatever it might be, so you're using switch motor like say Tortoise or something like that. We have contacts on there to actually feed the prongs so for best continuity, you know, in case you have dirty track, or dirty wheels, its worth it to hook both of them up. Okay.

Thanks for your question. We've got a couple more coming in live. What's the best material to use for a base on a platform, plywood or foam? Aha, well, people, I think more people are using foam nowadays. As a platform is this going to be modeling?

Well, we don't know. We don't know. As we talked earlier, there was a fellow that was asking about having a, depending on what kind of structure you need, I mean some of the guys, like, people actually have to crawl on the layout to get out. How strong would your layout have to be? Mine's strong.

I get up on top of it and have, the guys can get up there and paint the backdrop and get all the work on the hills, the scenery. Build it stronger than what you think you're going to be, Yeah. But if you're not moving, and you're not planning to get up on it and everything is reachable, then you can probably go more light weight. Yeah, yeah, then you just need more support if you got foam, as we talked earlier you're gonna need more support under the foam to keep it from sagging , you know there's, you know the question about how thick a foam board you used And then we also mentioned the fact that you can use Homasote road bed the precut Homasote road bed on top of the foam like Homabed, where you actually have the road bed shape and then if you put the Homasote on top of the foam then you have something that's like Yeah, okay, a couple more questions coming in. Do you have any advice for making outdoor trains tornado, or generally, weather proof.

The first part, you gotta put your tongue in cheek, but weather proof, obviously, G scale, you have more experience in that I mean, would you leave them out in raging rainstorm anyway? Well, a lot of guys they have outdoor railroads and like say a canopy or something like that they can park the train under and back so they're actually not sitting in the sun and rain continuously. Some guys bring them inside. Yeah. I actually worked with one guy who actually had a door to the side of the house running right into his downstairs area from the outside but I would just not leave them in the sun, and rain, and weather unless you're using it.

Tornadoes? If they're lead you're probably fine unless you take a direct hit. Believe us, we're in tornado country up here so. One other question, Steve, I've noticed there are no signals on your layout. Could you explain why?

Actually I do have signals on my layout, I've got a few bridges. Mhm. And half signal bridges and I've got some semaphores we're working on getting those in but I wanted to get them in there There are wires going underneath the layout, I just it's one of those things I'm going to get around to, you know, if I'm 92% finished, or 90% finished that's in the last 5% where all this will be animated and maybe computerized, you know maybe the signals will be controlled by DMRI. Now you have detectors though, right? Yes, yep.

You gotta have detectors. Yeah. They're all in there It's just I'm gonna get around to, but the signals are in there you probably didn't notice. I will be showing other parts of my layout or look at the Great Model Railroader Great Model railroader from 2016. Last fall.

Yeah, well, it came out in fall but, it's peer review. So, give it a look. I don't get any cut of that. Bob Weary did an excellent job photographing it. I just gave him a pallet and he did all the rest of the work.

Steve's got a fantastic eye . Thank you. Can someone explain what stamp mill is and what materials are used in it? Well, it's part of a mining operation and you see a lot of times, built on hillsides and tell me more about that. Where they're basically big hammers.

I mean, they're just big standard hammers Stamps, boom. That smashed the ore and the idea was to separate the ore from haling. Yes, yeah. And then so, and then they, they ran out of water, which would operate the locomotives so power run out and water , so they were built on a hill so they could use running water to actually Gravity. Operate the stamps, so there could be a whole lot of them in a row and just go They progressively smash the ore into small pieces.

Mhm. Okay, should we head outside here? It's, we've got about 14 minutes left Oh yeah. You're watching Track Talk Live from Model Railroad Academy. I'm your host, Steve Doyle, managing editor and this is our associate editor, Doug Hodgdon.

Clickity and Clack. Yep, you'll have to put up with a corny joke as long as they keep us hired. So, we're going to head outside now and we're gonna see the G scale layout that's out there, the garden layout. So I'll get Roger in here now. Okay, Roger come on in , let's go on out there and we'll talk about it.

How are you? Thanks for joining us. So as we're walking we're gonna have you tell us a little bit about Yet bet. We'll stay close to Steve's so we can get the sound. I don't know if Terry has already told them about, Well not much about the outdoors.

The development of this Yeah, go ahead and fire it up for us. The fourway project with the Wayzata Historical Society, we are the Minnesota Garden Railway Society. The Lake Minnetonka garden folk that does all of this and originally did our plantings and the city of Wayzata of course which owns the property and built a wall and filled it full of dirt for us. 2010 we started construction, moving the dirt, scultping the hills, laying the track starting placement of the buildings and all of that kind of stuff. So this is our seventh summer now of operation.

We've got two loops, one outside dog bone shaped loop, which is level, and then an inside over under figure eight. So we can run two trains simultaneously. We do have a crossover out there so we can run the trains from one or the other, but the purpose of this is not to do operating sessions We ready to put the trains on, let them run And the kids love it. Kids love it. That's the whole idea.

Let the kids see the trains run, let the whistle blow and that kind of stuff. And we know that G scale is perhaps the fastest growing along with Z scale, go figure. Go figure, yeah. Exactly, the two extremes. Right, right.

The smallest and the largest as far as we know. Well, largest until you get into, probably real, Quite small. Really operating, one to 120 point, point something Yeah. Yeah, the two extremes. So, what are the reactions of the kids?

Oh, fabulous. When the kids are here, we can end up with as many as 15 or 20 kids literally running around, chasing the train. So it's just absolutely phenomenal. So, we've had a lot of questions from people asking about you know, having these out in the weather. Do you have any particular considerations?

You don't run this in the winter. You don't want the trains out in the weather, obviously. So the trains go in, but everything else that's made for a G scale, essentially is built to be outside. The tiny strips that we have for the rails, have UV treated plastic. The plastic in the buildings is also treated with UV preventive stuff.

All that is meant to be outside and of course the plantings, those are all, in this case hardy to Minnesota so all the planting stay out. So at the end of an operating season, we take maybe some of the more fragile buildings and put a little maintenance and that kind of stuff. The trains go in some of the details go in, everything else stays out and does just fine. Well we appreciate you giving us a short Cook's tour of the layout. Beautiful job.

Glad you're here to enjoy it. Thank you very much for having us and Doug, we've got another question coming in right now. I'm model HO scale, I have a DC layout, what is the most easy and economical way to add sound? I have several older Bachman spectrum DC locomotives and would like to add sound. So let's talk about that as we go over to the bench.

Well, you know, there used to be sound modules that you could use with DC but I don't even know if you can get 'em anymore. I mean, the technology has changed so much. The old sound units would basically increase in volume as you turned up the speed. I mean, that's, they were very simple, but you know with DCC now, I just, I don't know. Maybe you could find one on eBay or something.

Mhm. Well, go ahead and have a seat here. You were talking about the train order board up there, This was the original that came with the Depot. They now have it off the track. They're thinking about maybe putting it back in location on the Really cool.

Push it back up. Yeah, and there is the outside the Depot, the Gable end of the historic depot. So why don't you have a seat and I'll set the camera back up and we'll take a few more questions before we wrap this up. Say Hi, Doug. Hi Steve!

Okay. Why don't you scoot down that way Oh, okay. And I've gotta be somewhat tethered here. Okay, you've got the monitor then. So, I've got the monitor here and so, let's see, what else, someone has asked, without JMRI and with tortoise switch machines, how would you do an interlocking system?

Aha! Good question. The old fashion way! Diode matrix. Okay.

Let's talk about that. Well, you know if you think about what the real railroads had to do before computers, they would have the same problem, and basically what they did was use the relays, a fast motion and slow motion relays in a kind of a domino fashion and of course the, you know the logic was that the fail safe was red and so the default would be red. If anything went wrong, it would be red. Mhm. So you had the, you had to go through a whole lot of tests before you could get a clear signal.

Yeah. Which involved activating these relays and it'd be like putting all that dominoes together. If all the dominoes lined up, okay, then they'd get a green. So it was, that was the technology then. And you can simulate that on a model railroad using diode matrices.

Of course we can do a whole episode on diode matrices Yeah. And if this fella here is interested, get a hold of us and we'll talk more about that. Absolutely. Let's go to another question that was pre-submitted. How can I index a Walthers turntable and is at accurate?

Newer ones, I think from Walther's have an index in the system. Works with DCC. With DCC, but I think the experiences, at least my experiences, I still need to pulse, Yeah. I don't use a Walters, I use a Bowzer turntable and I'm just kind of trying to line it up visually. I can pulse my switch either backwards or forwards to bring it into alignment, but you know that's how I do it.

How about with the older systems? Well my system that I had, I had a, basically a clockwise and a counter-clockwise button that I can kind of go back and forth, I'd get it close and I can go a little bit to Yeah. you know, get it lined up. So, my first suggestion would be put the turntable near enough to the front edge of the layout so you can Yes. Actually see if the rails are lined up.

Yeah. Don't have it four feet back and not accessible because you know, if you're off just a little bit you have a derailment in a place you don't really want it. So that would be my theory. I think those Walther's turntables are pretty dog gone good, They're certainly the best thing out, I mean, Yeah, yeah I mean, the best technology out there, but, still don't 100% trust me. Okay.

Jeff in Iowa asks, he's planning a Z scale coffee table layout using a lot of tracks spanning three heights without switches or crossing for a single train. If I run feeder wires throughout the layout do I need to use rail insulators as well? They would be DC, not DCC. I don't think he, you don't. Well, he's running a single train if we get that right I mean, there's really no reason to cap anything.

Yeah, yeah, so you don't need the insulation. Multiple feeders are good because he's got quite a bit of track, you know so multiple feeders strap them all together and that's it. Yeah, imagine you can have probably about 50 miles inside of them. Don't you think? That's a lot of railroad on a coffee table.

Here's David in Greenville, South Carolina says he's been in the hobby for over 52 years. This is probably more a, I think a comment and maybe, it's not a rant because he actually has a good sense of humor. He says that he's more or less withdrawn from the hobby because the hobby, such as it is, has become too expensive. We're now seeing locomotives in the $300 price range. He oughta to see what the price is in S or O scale.

I mean, they, and on up. How about buying a new car. I bought my first car for about 300 less. Exactly. So he said, well who can afford these items at the prices?

Are these manufacturers and vendors nuts charging these kinds of prices for a piece of plastic. And then he gave a pretty good comparison of what you could get for that much money these days. Which of course we can't put on because this may be a family show. Yeah, right, right So, but he, I think he's saying, it's, how can you afford these things? I'd say, certainly use eBay.

If you're patient enough you can find just about anything you want on eBay Yeah. And if you have the chance to get it at probably close to the price you want, but as far as the hobby going, and as he says, he notes, that hobby shops have gotten away from selling model railroad equipment. You know, that's kind of the way of the world. It's, the worldwide commerce is going away from brick and mortar and becoming much more of an online experience. If you're not comfortable doing eBay, have someone help you with that.

Tell 'em what you'd like and they can do a search and you can get an alert and if something comes up, but there, we hate to see you drop out of the hobby after being in it for 52 years, because you're the guys we need. Flea markets, I mean there's all kinds of old stuff for sale at flea markets, all the time. Oh, yeah. For sure. If you want more detail, you can do it yourself.

I mean, that's what we all had to do in the old days. And he's an HO and you can go to a flea market, thousands and thousands of dollars, unless you're looking for a rare piece, it's all, pretty achievable depending, we're all starting on, or we'll be starting soon on retirement funds and social security and yeah, you do have to kind of watch what your disposable income looks like and be careful not to suddenly go and buy a 20, a $2000 dollar brass engine. I'll still see green boxes and I go crazy. Well, model railroaders do tend to buy more than they really need anyways. Yeah, I know, I was just at the S scale convention in Novi, Michigan with a bunch of guys from the Pines and Prairie's S scale workshop, and I see orange boxes from Omnicon and I see S boxes or green boxes for Hoverland and purple boxes for River Raise and I know it's brass.

Oh my God. Brass is just wonderful, but I know that I've got more than I could ever hope to run now and you just, you have to be a little more discreet about you're income situation. So you have to go to the used market, I mean, I bought my first brass engine for 30 bucks. You know, what are you paying now? I mean, so the technology has improved though to, right?

Yeah. The models are way better than what was sold. Let's see if we have one more live question coming in and then I think we're going to have to wrap it up. Without JMRI and with tortoise switch machines, oh, we've already answered that one. Sorry about that.

We'll take one more question here. What do you think about using Bachmann's EZ track in turnouts on a fairly big layout? Well, you'd want to design it well to know, Yeah. because they come in pre-curved section pieces. It's not flex track, so you're going to be hindered somewhat in maybe doing exactly what you want to do with spurs.

More restricted as to the curve radius and switches and all that kind of thing and so, yeah, there's a personal choice, again. Yeah, but not impossible. It just, plan it well, designed it out actually put it on life sized pieces of paper and move the sections around and see if it is where it's most convenient for you to reach from all angles. If it's one you can walk around where you intend to have industry, you're gonna have sidings, where your structures gonna go. So, all these things come into play.

Again, I'd recommend that they read your series on designing and building a model railroad layout from scratch. One other neat thing is, I found out that, with that EZ track, because the road that is hollow, it tends to actually generate some noise. So we found that if you glue the easy track down with a rubbery glue, like a matte medium, then you have the rubbery surface of the track, to actually, road bed and track actually, and it helps with the sound. It helps mitigate some. Yeah, exactly, or you could put it on Homasote too, right?

Yeah. Just to help, Yeah that would be something. Yeah, well, anyway, that's all the time we have tonight from the historic Wayzata Depot in Minneapolis. This is Mr. Clickety and Mr.

Clack and we're going to see you I think in a couple of weeks on September 7th, so look for the alerts you're going to get to submit your questions in advance and we do read them in advance and we go right down the list and if we didn't have a chance to answer it this week hopefully we can get to it the next week or just please resubmit it again. I think we've gotten to all the live questions tonight and we do appreciate those. Thanks for watching live. Thanks for telling your friends about it. Don't forget to click on the window right below this and the bar right below the picture here and sign up for our weekly e-newsletter, which is chock-full of news about designing and building and improvising and just really helping you get motivated with the model railroad hobby.

If you gotta layout, improve it, think of a new aspect of it. That's what we're here to help you with and to give you that support and a hardy handshake, to all of you. Send us comments. And send us comments. We don't like bad comments unless, you know, it's about us because we're a very thin skinned.

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