Ken's Draft

Wow, just wow!

What an amazing idea Ken! A tremendous opportunity to render a unique and complex operational environment! 

I'm not sure I understand how you'll set up DC electrical blocks to manage the movement of individual locomotives, especially on tracks where they'll be stacked up together. 

Jeff Allen

Shops

A DC shop that big will definitely be a challenge to wire for DC.  Shops tend to handle individual units not consists (service tracks handle consists).  I would think really you are more building a big display diorama for your GP60 fleet than an functional shop complex so most of the tracks can be just a SPST switch to kill the track.

I am thinking if sixty

I am thinking if fifty locomotives are on that layout none will need to move as there will be no where for them to go. Now if he put sound decoders in all of them he might need two or more boosters to handle the load....and it sure would be loud!

Central issue is control...

Hi Jeff,

Thanks; you "got it" in terms of what I have been thinking about. I think this is what happens when you are determined stubborn enough to model an entire 50 loco fleet. :>

Since DC is a budget "given", it is cheaper and facilitates the realistic operation/movement of locos to simply toggle up rather than go DCC. 

Assuming 9-10" blocks (so locos can be parked as they are in the prototype), I'm looking at a significant number of blocks:

section 1: 38 blocks, 9 turnouts

section 2: 58 blocks, 12 turnouts

section 3: 62 blocks, 13 turnouts

but those numbers are neither intimidating nor problematic for me, especially since I'm approaching it using TOMA. With only one or two exceptions, blocks wouldn't bridge over a (benchwork) section gap.

The thing I am doodling through right now is the control scheme vis-a-vis the layout design (iterative process).

Thinking of the facility as two zones primary "zones" (West and East)....There's a natural break in the design in that the West side of the facility is serviced through one of the main line connections and the "West" stores lead (which also would reach the wreck shop and scrap/deadlines. I think I'd need to move the turnouts from the run-through/run-around and two machine shop leads to connect to the A/D track directly.

The "East" zone would then handle loco moves between the shops, the A/D track, and the siding.

Given the above, any feedback on controls? 

Ken

Ken Weidner (soranitty) 

Modeling NS 1995-2005 in HO, including the NS GP60 fleet

A lot of toggles!

Ken (there are a lot of Ken's on this forum!), I add that up to 158 blocks, each one with an on off toggle.  That's 158 toggles.  That's more than 3 times the number of locos you have.  A quick bit of googling suggests you can get economy dcc decoders for somewhere around $16, and you can get toggle switches for maybe as low as $4.  So, 50x16 = $800, 158x4 = $632.  My point is, going DCC might make it significantly more fun to actually operate the layout, and it may not be as much more expensive than plain DC as you might initially think.

Cool idea for a layout by the way.  You could add a little stub staging off one or both ends to receive locos needing work from and send rehabilitated locos out to.

DCC

Save yourself some money and build it for DCC from the start. If you don't, you'll just be converting it to DCC later.

Randy

Number of operators?

I am really appreciating what you're going after here Ken, that "rainbow of locos" will be spectacular. 

And you're clearly giving a lot of thought to the control scheme, and as someone who has yet to do my first from-scratch decoder installation I totally understand why you're rejecting the DCC route. But I would also encourage you to think twice about that. It seems to me that this layout will be missing an important element of its natural life if there's only one loco on the move at any given moment. More than one cab means 158 cab selectors, which will distract from getting your mind into the scene, I would think. 

And to me sound is an important texture in a facility like this, even if the cacophony factor needs to be managed a bit carefully. 

Maybe a gradual conversion of your fleet can become part of your design and plan?

Jeff Allen

stub staging!

Hi Ken!

Stub staging - why didn't I think of that? That is an easy addition, and I have a module that will fill that purpose exactly. Thank you!

The good news on the financial front is that I have the switches on hand, so that is not an expense for me going forward, while DCC would be (and $800 is only for decoders!). 

You are absolutely right and put your finger on one aspect of maintaining a fleet of 50 locomotives is that everything multiplies by 50 (think detail parts). When I started out (too many years ago), I was rebuilding Athearn GP60s, but then changed course and completed the fleet with 4 Fox Valleys, 12 Athearns, and the rest P2Ks. There are also 5 duplicate shells/locos reflecting the (horse head) livery that appeared later in my era. Only one is DCC so I can run it when I'm visiting others' layouts. It seems as though I am always trying to balance the trade off of where my train $ go.

Thanks again! Ken

Ken Weidner (soranitty) 

Modeling NS 1995-2005 in HO, including the NS GP60 fleet

Sound and space

Thanks Rob. I don't think the entire NS GP60 fleet would be in the shops at the entire time, there's a good deal of foreign flag traffic, and the stub staging suggestion from Ken should allow me to relieve pressure/volume in the shops.

I'm envisioning 1 loco in each shop "bay" - that's 19 or 20 right there. If half are full, that's 10 locos. Some of the shops' "traffic" are headed to scrap, while others are awaiting rebuilding. So in a way, some locos can be thought of as scenic elements (scrapyard/boneyard/deadline as LDE?).

I'm really glad you mentioned sound. I'm also a musician, and a layout of locomotive works definitely calls for a "sound design." (intended, sorry!) 

Many locations that we model generate unique sounds (steel mill, coal mine, auto factory). That raises a couple of questions:

• Do sounds come directly from a locomotive, or do they come from using the locomotive in a specific part of the facility?
  • As an example, the startup (break-in) shed sounds different for different locomotives, but all those occur right there in that location.
  • The other shops (cleaning, paint, emissions, wreck) and structures (turntable, power plant) create their own unique sounds, again, location specific.
• Could sounds of locos originate from different locations within the shops and be independent of the individual locomotive? The design decision there is one sound system vs. (50+ x $ound decoders).
• What sounds occur at a shops facility that don't occur on a mainline or switching? To that end, I'm looking to visit Altoona, mic in hand to listen/record as well as watch.

Thanks again! Ken

Ken Weidner (soranitty) 

Modeling NS 1995-2005 in HO, including the NS GP60 fleet

perhaps gradual conversion

Thanks! 

Maybe a gradual conversion of your fleet can become part of your design and plan?

It definitely could be if financial re$ources for trains increase substantially.

All of the advice I've seen (here and elsewhere) says design for DCC or I'll regret it if I want to switch later. I'd need to learn quite a bit about DCC to know how to wire it now for DC so that switching to DCC later would be less painful (or even doable). That probably has some implications for turnouts, what's a lot of soldering anyway? 

I've been looking at control panel schemes that would facilitate two cabs initially with the ability to expand another two as well. That might be a Main-Zone-Local approach adapted for my purposes; I just learned about MZL here in the past week and will be reading more about it soon...

Ken

Ken Weidner (soranitty) 

Modeling NS 1995-2005 in HO, including the NS GP60 fleet

Backshops

Caveat:  Anybody can do whatever they like, its their railroad.

Backshops should not be confused with service tracks.  Service tracks have a constant ebb and flow of engines through them as trains arrive, power is serviced and trains depart.  Backshops not so much.

A back shop is shift work.  Engines are spotted once a shift, then blue flags are put up and very little moves for the rest of the shift.  An engine going to the back shop is going in for generally heavy work.  The engines are scheduled in weeks or months in advance and are routed to the shop.  When they get to the shop they wait days or weeks for their turn to come up, then they are spotted.  Normally the work done in a back shop takes days or weeks to accomplish.  Wrecks or complete rebuilds could sit there for months before they are worked into the shop.  Most engines do not come to a back shop directly from a train.  The trains go to the yard.  The yard sends the power to the service track and then the service track bundles up the stuff going to the shop.  Most of the engines going to or from a back shop are hostling moves between a service track to the shop.  On the outbound side the engines are hostled back to the service track, fueled, sanded, serviced and then cut into consists which are placed on trains.

While many people are excited about backshops, I much prefer service tracks, way more activity.  The proposed backshop might turnover 3-4 engines a day with the majority of the inventory never turning a wheel, but the service track might process 100 engines and every engine will be moved around in the course of a day.  One of my favorite memories was riding by Altoona shops on the Broadway Limited back in 1980 and seeing an engine from every railroad in the NE in the dead lines.  I saw more CNJ engines dead that day than I saw live actually operating, living in Phillie.

I fully expect that engines will be switched around all over the place on the layout and that's fine, I just wanted to explain how a real back shop functions.

Electrical

You might want to consider having "track" toggles and "spot" toggles where you will have multiple engines on a track.  The track toggle kills the power to the entire track and the spot toggles kill the power to just one spot.  That might make it quicker and easier to control whole tracks and make sure an entire track is dead.

Also remember that you will need "spots" on leads.  If I have 5 engines in a storage track and I want to dig out #3 to spot it, I will couple into 1-2-3, pull them out, set #3 over, then shove 1-2 back into the track.  When I set #3 over that means I will have to have a way of killing it while I make the switching move.  That means a "spot" on the lead.

Have you considered making the majority of the engines you will be switching around dummies?  It is very common to have engines around a backshop dead, so having them unpowered would make things waaaaaaaaaay easier.

wow, great concept, just the drawing is exciting!

Whether you go for service tracks, repair in place or back shops, this will be photogenic and a rarely-modeled subject.

Thanks for sharing neat ideas and an uncommon challenge of control.

dummies!

Hi Dave, thanks for this and you other comments (I'll reply to them separately). 

Yes, I have about 10 for so Athearn GP60s (and other locos) that are in varying stages of undecorated/primed, and my intent is to largely use those as dummies. That makes it easy in DC to have the SWs or Trackmobile move them. One is primed, several are undecorated, and a few more will get some extreme weathering. And of course, non-GP60s will get sent to the shop by NS and foreign flags.

I think I understand what you mean by the "spot" for locos being hauled out of storage lines when their number is called for the shop. All of the various shops leads on East or West leads have space for either 1 or 2 locos, and the run-through track would always be available to the East lead as well. Also the west lead that runs from lower left to top center would serve the same purpose for locos pulled from the storage tracks at far left (South). Does it sound like I understand what you mean? (shrugs)

Best, Ken

Ken Weidner (soranitty) 

Modeling NS 1995-2005 in HO, including the NS GP60 fleet

thanks...NS modeled the whole thing already

Thanks Mark...

A shout out to two sites that been invaluable doing research on the site are Chris R. Toth's nsdash9.com (tracks comings and goings and revisions to the entire NS fleet) and L.R. Myers' altoonaworks.info

At Altoonaworks.info you'll find some photos of the facility when opened for employee appreciation/family days (someone adopt me, please!). It also includes a look inside the buildings; one photo shows a big whiteboard with all of the locos in a a rebuild program going through the different steps in the process. That picture alone helped me figure out which buildings were essential to what I wanted to do and which weren't. Some of the buildings date back to 1889!

One of the pictures there is of the "model room" in which NS has an HO scale model of the works (for the main shop, that's 27 tracks x 5 bays deep each). Of course, you can't reach the middle of it (!), which is the first thing us modelers might think about), but it is more an architectural model/diorama and I don't even know whether it has any provisions for power to tracks, etc. I don't have the need or resources to duplicate their "model," but a compressed interpretation of Altoona was intriguing, and the doodling started from there (hence "New Alton" - I don't have space for repeated vowels, much less #8 turnouts!)

There are some TV programs on JLS on YouTube; they can rebuild locomotive in 6.5 days. The also build entire locomotives (including Gensets). It's an incredible place and certainly has captured my modeling imagination.

Best, Ken

Ken Weidner (soranitty) 

Modeling NS 1995-2005 in HO, including the NS GP60 fleet

service tracks *and* shops

Thanks, Dave.

I mentioned in the OP that this would connect to a larger layout - my plan is to include service tracks for exactly the purpose you described. That would be one of the sources of locos from the stub staging mentioned earlier that I think is an outstanding idea.

A lot of us have an odd assortment of locomotives from different roads (auctions and train shows and stores, oh my!)...This is the kind of layout that creates a reason for them co-existing "on stage" at the same time. Also, my era (1995-2005) includes the NS/CSX split up of CR, and I *love* patches! That's what makes the aforementioned photos albums of JLS posted online so cool - there's always something different to see.

Best, Ken

Ken Weidner (soranitty) 

Modeling NS 1995-2005 in HO, including the NS GP60 fleet

a wiring solution for New Alton Shops from YouTube

Hi again,

Thanks again everyone for the comments. It's the seasons to be modeling....

Last month I ran across a channel by an N scale modeler on YouTube that provided me a model for organizing the control aspect of this layout, which will be complex....so a manageable organization logic is essential to me...

Mike Fifer posted a video "How to do layout wiring on the ACTRR" which explains his use of telco wire (Amphenol 25 pair cabling) for his N scale layout. I'm planning on adapting Mike's approach to my DC locomotive shop works in HO....

My terminal blocks of choice are (telco) "66 blocks" that can be purchased pre-wired with 2 25-pair Amphenol cable terminations (100 wires each). Using buswire for common (North) rail, two 66 blocks will cover all 180+ DC blocks I need for track power. Another "66 block" will cover the 35 or so turnouts (with 30 wires to spare). A punch down tool (under $10). (yes, I know that is not RP)

I bought a relatively inexpensive 72 foot length of 25-pair Amphenol cable with one female connector, which will allow me to create sections of wire/cable that will run from the "66 blocks" (1) to switches on the control panel or (2) (under the layout) to the track feeders (or turnout wires). If I need more, they are inexpensive enough that I can pick more up as I need them. Since they have 50-pin disconnects, each module/section can be separate with no disruption of wiring, whether from the move is from one end of the basement to another or to another location.

By necessity and design, I'm a frugal hobbyist. I've used telco wire for years on my DC layouts with no problems whatsoever. So a shout out to Mike – thank you! – and I'm interested in any experience other folks have had using these connectors.

Ken Weidner (soranitty) 

Modeling NS 1995-2005 in HO, including the NS GP60 fleet

@ soranity

Nice info's.

Did you have any link about this wiring and Amphenol wiring?

wiring

Hi Marc,

Sure. Forgive the rabbit hole nature of this post.... 

Awhile back I was looking at a stash of (old) hard disk cables - SCSI format, since they have 50 conductors per male/female interface. IIRC, they are called Centronics 50-pin connectors. There has to be a way I can use all that wire (all those connections), right?

I found that 50-pin SCSI cables are the exact same format as Mike Fifer demonstrated using in his YouTube video (see my previous post): Amphenol connectors.

Back to Mike Fifer's application: He says one reason he uses these because they have a color coding scheme built in (telco color codes, available on wikipedia) – and he has a background in telecomm. Mike F also said he uses them because they allow for a quick disconnection, which allows him to troubleshoot, disconnect panel from the layout (and work at it on the bench). The Amphenol connectors match up conductors 1-50 for me, so after a continuity test when I first get the cable, I now have all the colors identified (necessary because what some cable vendors used for "brown" or "red" can look awfully similar). I can snip my 75' cable down to 8' foot lengths for my 6' modules/sections, and have plenty for the entire NAS project (3x 3'x6' sections). 

Hmmm....I have a track plan with a lot ridiculous number of blocks and good number of turnouts, and these handle lots of different signals through 24-26AWG wire....I wondered and started sketching out possibilities...and here's what I've learned (so far).

Amphenol connectors connect 25 pairs of wires at a time. You can find them described as Amphenol connects (or cables) most often, and there is an abundant supply on eb*y. They connect to terminal strips called 66 blocks - that's where the fun begins, as far as I'm concerned, anyway.

Look up a couple of YT videos on how to wire "66 blocks (origin has to do with a Western Electric part number back in the day, and nothing more). Each 66 block has 50 rows of 4 conductors each (call them 1A-B-C-D, 2A-B-C-D). Within each row, A-B are connected, and C-D are connected, but there is no built in connection between B and C. In telco use, bridging clips are used to join B and C, so the dial tone (or other signal) comes through A, and is linked through to D, which goes to phones/date lines. Repeat 50 times for 25 pairs of lines.

My application of the 66 blocks won't use bridging connectors between B and C - which means there will be 100 contacts on each 66 block (50 per side).

That sold me, and I started doing some investigating. Turns out the SCSI cables can be used for a short run (e.g., within a control panel), and then each module (or section) will have its own Amphenol cable – or two, depending on how many conductors I need per section module. For New Alton Shops, that'll add up to 50 blocks (Section 1), 74 blocks (Section 2), and 61 blocks (in section 3) give or take. The number of turnouts in the current plan is 10, 10, and 12 respectively. I intend to do what Mike F does in that turnouts and blocks are carried on different cables. 

Then I found that some 66 blocks are available pre-wired, with 50 conductors pre-wired to each side of the block, and come with a built-in male or female Amphenol connector for each side (one to A, the other to D). That means I can bring wire to the B column to connect to conductors 1-50 and to the C column to connect to conductors 51-100....all that is needed is a "punchdown tool" ($10-$50, plentiful). 

So (no schematic here, but Mike F's video does the trick):

1. Connections between power sources and the control panel will be "normal"
2. I'll be running 18-24" of unbundled Amphenol cable conductors (color-coded) from the control panel to one of 3 66 (pre-wired) blocks for track blocks and 3 other (pre-wired) 66 blocks for turnout – one of each for each of my three sections.
3. An Amphenol cable will connect to the pre-wired Amphenol connector built (and wired) into each 66 block , and 1 block cable and 1 turnout cable will run from the control panel floor to the underside of each section.
4. I think I'll likely put two 66 blocks on the underside of each section, then run single strand wire to each track block or turnout.
5. Since this is all-DC, all-the-time, there will be a track common buss and an accessory common buss, which will get connected to each block and each turnout.
6. The above cuts the number of wires from control panel to the layout itself by half. In the case of New Alton Shops, that is 434 wires I don't have to run.

So right now I'm getting read to proof-of-concept each of the circuits I'll need on the control panel for (a) block power, (b) turnout power, (c) turnout indication lights, (d) turnout indicator lights for paired turnouts, and (e) regular turnouts that are paired with one side of a three way turnout (two appear in the track plan). I have a CDU on order so that as soon as I've worked out the turnout control circuit, I can add LED indicators for the control panel to those functioning turnout circuits.

It may seem somewhat cart-before-horse to spend this much time and energy thinking about the control plan for a layout, but the complexity of the New Alton Shops leaves me little choice. I'll likely start a building blog for NAS once I have a couple more details worked out and have a clear plan for progress. As is, I have a 2x4 "rotisserie" that allows me to work on the module/section while sitting at a stool or standing, and allows me to rotate it (wiring side up). The only way I can do this much wiring/soldering with this many miles on my back is to flip it over (wiring side up). :>

Please let me know if I muddled anything, or if this was helpful. Best, Ken

Ken Weidner (soranitty) 

Modeling NS 1995-2005 in HO, including the NS GP60 fleet