Trolley Malls

Is this a new trend?

Somebody brought it to my attention that The Grove At Farmers Market in Los Angeles had a double-decker trolley running through it. So I made a date night with Cindy and we drove out to The Grove for dinner and a movie. Sure enough, there is a trolley! Battery powered though, no overhead wires, but a trolley all the same. The Grove makes for quite a romantic date, so we have been back on a number of occasions.

From what I understand, the trolley is built on a vintage trolley chassis from Boston. Talking to the conductor he noted that the new design includes a wider staircase to accommodate the larger sized Americans of the 21st century.

Now I come to find out that the Glendale is jumping on the trolley mall band wagon! May 1st of this year was the grand opening (I would have gone if I had known) 0f Americana At Brand (The mall is on Brand Ave).

Where The Grove At Farmers Market went with a double-decker trolley, Americana At Brand went with a two-car setup instead. And like The Grove, the trolleys negotiate the meandering, pedestrian only, idealized streets among many faceted buildings trimmed with many sparkling lights, and fountains spraying jets of water into the air synchronized to music.

I haven't been to Americana At Brand yet, so I think a romantic date with Cindy is in the cards soon! Yessir! A romantic date is in the cards!

Photo gallery of the Americana At Brand trolleys being built:
Visit The Grove At Farmers market:


Visit Americana At Brand:

Birney Mania!

Having worked my butt off, I now require a procedure to have it reattached. This procedure, known technically as a “vacation” takes about two weeks to complete, and will commence immediately!

This Birney project is at a good stopping point anyway (if a project coming to a stop could ever be a good thing). I’ve done as much as I can at the moment while I’m waiting for parts orders to come in.

A very important component I’m waiting for is this: Hollywood Foundry has announced that they are putting into production a “Ready-to-go” chassis for HO 4 wheel Birneys! According to their website, this chassis will feature:

* Fixed 28mm wheelbase, suited to 8 foot wheelbase Brill 21E trucks

* Mashima 1015 motor with 15:1 gearing, both axles driven.

* Cast brass Brill 21E sideframes.

* Etched brass life preservers under both ends.

* Operations mode switching between 2 rail DC, DCC and common rail with trolley pole switched overhead.

* Provision for LED head-lamps and interior constant brightness lighting.

* Choice of HO Gauge (16.5mm) or HOm (12mm)

Perfect timing on that announcement! Any later and I would have missed it.

So it’s with some disappointment that I have to box up this project for a while. I never really gave Birney cars much thought until this one showed up on eBay for cheap. I knew that San Diego Electric Railway had Birneys on their roster, so I bid on it ~ and won! My excitement for the project grew as I researched this funny little car. Coincidentally, even my Yahoo groups HO Traction Modeling and Interurbans (and of course Birney Cars) were having a flurry of Birney topics! Then came the announcement from Hollywood Foundry! It was in the stars! I was on a real high, feeding off my infatuation of the Birney car to keep this project moving forward. So, yeah, it sucks, but I got to box it up.

The thing about boxing it up is, that it will be out-of-sight, out-of-mind. Then when the day finally arrives when the chassis shows up in the mail, I’ll open up my Birney-in-a-box and I’ll experience a renewed rush of Birney Mania, yessir! Birney Mania!!!

Birney Project ~ Marker Lamp Holders

Noticing that the headlight for this Birney has a tube to mount the headlight bulb in, I thought I would use a similar method for mounting the marker lights.

I simply cut a ¼” lengths of brass tube stock and soldered them in place. The bulbs fit perfectly in the tubes but stop at the cutout. I’ll have to fashion some sort of clear lens.

A similar technique was planned for the destination sign but using square tube stock, but now I’m leaning towards just mounting the bulb just behind the sign so that it not only lights the sign but also the interior of the car. That way it will cut down on the number of bulbs on this trolley. As it looks now, what with 2 headlights, 4 marker lights, 2 destination signs, 2 route sign bulbs (on the roof), and maybe 1 more interior light in the center of the car, that’s 11 bulbs for this little guy! That’s a lot of lights. Yessir! A lot of lights!

Birney Project ~ Lets Open A Window!

Early 20^th Century air conditioning = opening up a window. A majority of historic trolley photos I see depict the trolleys with their windows in various opened positions. Only in the colder areas of the country are trolleys seen with all their windows closed.

Unfortunately, San Diego has the finest weather in the country (now there is something I don’t think has ever been stated before!), so windows are almost always open to take advantage of the fair weather. Why “unfortunately”? ‘cuz now I gotta open some windows on this model as all traction models are made with all their windows closed. Which is fine because if they did, the pattern of open windows would be identical on every car of that make. And it’s easy enough to open them, just takes some time and precision.

Before. Here in this close up of the Birney car you can see the vertical posts of the window frames coming up out of the side wall, up through the transom and into the upper side wall. The window sash can be seen on either side of the post and the lower sash rests on the side wall. These, or a portion of, will have to be removed in order for the window to appear opened.

After. So I took a file to the sashes. The window on the left I filed away all the sashes to depict the window fully opened. The center window I left closed. The window on the right, all of the lower sash was removed and only filed away half of the side sashes to depict the window opened half way. The filed away lower sash will have to be re-added to its new, opened location at the bottom of the window glass.

Adding glass is one of the very last things to be done to a model (especially after painting). So, through the magic of Photoshop, I’ll simulate what would happen last. The “glass” (clear styrene) would be one big piece glued on from the inside. The styrene would be cut to fit the various sizes of the window openings. The lower sashes I’m going to cut from styrene strips, paint and then glue onto the clear styrene from the front. The upper sash, where seen, will be glued onto the clear styrene from the back to simulate the effect of being behind the transom glass.

And there you go! Opened widows. Now “Ride & Relax” and enjoy that fine breeze, yessir, enjoy that fine San Diego breeze!

Dandy

Birney Project ~ Drilling out the Marker Lamps

Prominent! That’s what I find those marker lamps over the center window to be. So I decided to drill them out so I can light them.

Standard practice was, as I understand it, that there are colored “gels” that fit in between the lens and the lamp thus changing the color of the light seen. When the lamps are in the rear end of the car, they display red. But what they display when on the forward end was up to each individual traction (trolley) company.

Steam railroads had standard practices that were recognized around the country when it came to marker lamps, and some traction companies elected to follow these, such as:

White = Extra or Special car, not scheduled on timetable.

Green = Another car following on same schedule.

Etc… You get the idea.

Or traction companies could elect to display white to compliment the headlight, or just run them dark.

Color? I don’t know what San Diego Electric Railways practices would have been when it came to the color of these lamps. So I’m going to have to make an educated guess. Of course if YOU know what color they were, please leave a comment at the bottom of this post. I would be most grateful.

What color I’m going to display I don’t know yet until I actually get to the lighting part of the project. But I decided that adding the marker lights would be worth the effort and will add to the entertainment value of the car. Yessir! Add to its entertainment value!

Dandy

Birney Project - Opening up the destination signs.

One of the modifications I want to make to the Birney car is to open up the solid brass destination signs so that I can have it light up.

The destination sign is over the short window on the left. Ken Kidder has the shape of it stamped in there, so that simplifies things some.

Start by drilling small holes large enough to accommodate a miniature ream.

A ream is basically a cylindrical file.

Ream out the holes into a roughly square shape so that it can accommodate square file.

I highly recommend using some sort of magnification while working with such tiny models. That’s Dave wearing his Optivisor®.

Hack away at the brass now that the square file fits in there, roughing out the shape of the opening.

Easy does it now with the flat file, carefully leveling out the edges into straight lines out to the final size of the openings.

Corners are the toughest. Your file with the sharpest edge will determine how sharp the corners of the opening will be. I find that a three sided file has the sharpest edges.

And there you go. An opening where once there were none. Took about an hour to do, and I still have the one on the other end to do.

Then I'll have to figure a way to light it, but I’ll worry about that when I get to it. Yessir, worry about it when I get to it.

Stripping Paint from Brass Models

Stripping paint from a brass model is actually quite easy and inexpensive. Here is a technique I use:

Step 1: Disassemble the model. Remove anything that is not brass.

Step 2: Submerge the model in a 50/50 mix of Original Pine-Sol and water. I let it sit over night.

Step 3: The paint flakes off easily. I use an old toothbrush to get the paint out of the tough corners and crevasses while rinsing with clean water.

Voila! Yessir! Voila!

Ken Kidder Birney

I acquired this little guy from eBay (I really need to get out to the swap meets!). This Ken Kidder model is very close in appearance to the San Diego Electric Ry’s 300 series Birney cars.

Taking close-up pictures of a model really help in determining what needs to be done to get the model looking prototypical. Right off I can see that the retriever is on the opposite side of the headlamp, window arrangements on the doors are different, details are a little oversize, etc. But I’ll probably let all that slide, I don’t want to drive myself crazy with such things few people will ever notice.

Work I will do includes drilling out the headlight to accommodate a bulb, open up the destination sign to accommodate a light-up one, maybe add the security bars across the windows, add the route number sign on the roof, and add seats and figures.

Since I was able to buy this model relatively cheap (especially for being brass), it will be the proving ground for developing standards and techniques for the models that come after it. Such as the type of motors, trolley poles, interior and exterior lighting, etc. And I have to come up with a satisfying decision as to the color! Early San Diego cars were painted “Mission Yellow”. What color exactly is “Mission Yellow”?!?!

First order of business, strip off the old paint. Yessir! Strip!

Glass Beading

Man! All the little details that need to be taken care of! Now I’m installing beading for the clerestory window glass. Though I’ll probably use Plexiglas, since this thing is designed to be portable, I don’t want to risk shattering glass from all the handling. I never gave the mechanics of window beading a thought until now. It fun, but time consuming, yes-sir! Time consuming!

While I’m building that, take a look at a trip I did with my family on a Mud Wagon. You can read all about it on my A California Adventure blog.

Fancy New Banner

As you can see, I've been having fun with Photoshop. What do you think of my fancy new banner? Here is the color version:
Your comments and suggestions are always welcome. Just click the "comments" at the bottom of the post you want to comment on. It's one of the fun features of blogs! That way I'm not here just professing by myself ~ YOU can add your two cents to the discussion.

So let me know what you think of my new banner. The horsecar is kind of bothering me. I think because its a downshot and everything else is from ground level, so I might change that. And my goofy mug. I might take that out.

Overall though, I think the banner kind of makes my blog look quite official. Yessir! Quite official!

Yet More Fun With Engineering!

With principal construction done with the valence it’s now time to trim it out, hide a multitude of sins with wood filler, trim the roof slats in the front to a nice arc, and a bunch more sanding.

While taking these photos I noticed that the curved roof slats are pulling up the front of the frame! Compare this photo with this earlier one of just the frame and you’ll see what I mean.

Luckily, it’s not so noticeable when it’s in place on the display case. It’s actually a nice arch. In fact, it almost looks intentional. Yes-sir! Looks intentional!

Dandy

More Fun with Engineering!

It's too late for me, but you can still save yourself! That is if your reading this to learn how to bend wood. See, the problem I was having was, even though I was steaming the wood, it would rather just angle towards where I was trying to get it to go instead of bend in a nice arc to where I wanted it to go. As you can see in the photo below, the roof slat is almost straight. Not the curving arc as seen in the blueprints.

In this close up shot below, you can see where the roof slat would rather break its bonds and bite into the support its attached to.

I figured out a solution, but unfortunately, it wasn't until the last slat. Turns out that cutting the slats to length before installing them was the problem. The secret is to keep them long and cut them to size after installation! First, The slat is nailed and glued to its support beam. This is allowed to dry over night.

Then, using the natural springiness of the wood, grab the end of the slat and bend it down. The longer the wood slat, the more it arcs when its end is pulled down(the shorter the wood, the less it arcs)! All this without steaming it! I couldn't pull it down too much because it would arch way more than its neighbors and be out of line.

Too bad I didn't figure this out sooner. Oh well... live and learn. Yes sir. Live and learn.

Fun with engineering!

Here is a quick update on the continuing saga of building this lighting valance. I ran into an interesting, unforeseen engineering problem (due entirely to my inexperience). Let’s see if I can explain this...

While installing the front roof slats (starting from the center and working towards the sides), that extend from the front of the clearstory and curve down to the very front of the valence, I discovered that they were fanning out in the front.

I think I know why this is happening. The big arch of the roof requires the roof slats to cover more “ground”. You can see what I mean in the front view photo. The front edge of the roof slats are only required to cover the horizontal distance from side to side. But the back ends of the roof slats are required to not only cover that side to side distance, but also the vertical distance of the arch which, at its peak, is 6” higher than the sides.

So what that boils down to is; the fronts of the roof slats have to cover the 57” from one side to the other side. The back end of the slats that are butted up against the clearstory have to cover 59 ½”, another 2 1/2” further.

Fortunately I was using a square the whole time. So I thought the slats were moving slightly while I was nailing, so I would compensate with a slight gap at the top to keep things square. But the problem persisted until I finally figured out what was going on.

I guess what I should have been doing all along is sanding a slight taper to the roof slats to compensate for this. And that’s exactly what I started doing with the slats that extend clear across the roof. In the last photo you can see that the first full length slat took the brunt of the tapering. After that each full length slat was sanded with a more reasonable taper.

So all I’m saying is, things are turning out a little less than perfect. But really, who the heck is going to notice? Not many. Everybody’s attention should be focused on the layout anyway. After all, the layout is the real attraction. yessir! The real attraction!

A 4-4-0 eBay score!

I’ve gone far too long without a post ~ sorry!!! I’ve been wrapping up animation for the Space Chimps game for the Nintendo DS. (It hasn’t been announced yet so sshhh!!!)

So here is a little something to hold things over until I put together a more robust post. Since I left off with a post about a steam locomotive, I’ll go with that theme.

This is an eBay score from a year or so ago; An H.O. brass model of the Virginia & Truckee locomotive #1, the “Reno”. An import by United from the 1960s.

I’m not modeling the V&T, but the Reno model is very typical of locomotives built in the 1870’s. . Below is San Diego & Cuyamaca #3 built in 1881 for the California Southern Railroad. Except for the smokestack, they are very similar in size and detail.

This photo was shot near where I grew up, but it doesn’t look anything like it did in the photo! When I was a kid I would watch a couple of SW1500 diesels pull the peddler frieght through here. Today the San Diego trolleys sweep through here on double tracks!

Anyway, slowly but surly (the only way I can afford it!), I’m putting together a right impressive stable of motive power. All I need now is a dang layout to run them on! Yes-sir! A dang layout to run them on!

A Ten Wheeler eBay score!

What a score this was! MEW (Model Engineering Works) H.O. brass 4-6-0s are very rare and hardly ever come up on eBay. And if they do, they auction off for quite the pretty penny (the last one I saw months ago sold for $700!!!).

So when this one came up, I bid my entire budget of $300 thinking I didn't have a snowballs chance of winning the bid. (Whenever I get cash as a Christmas or birthday gift, I stick it in my “mad money” fund for just such of an occasion).

Whats more amazing, I was literally under the knife on the operating table having surgery on my thyroid when I won this bid!!! My surgery lasted from 12:30 to about 4pm, the auction ended at 3:20pm! I was unconscious and victorious!

Isn't she a beauty? I'm in love...

Looking every bit the relative, this is San Diego & Arizona #11, an 1881 vintage Rogers locomotive. The 4-6-0s sure footedness were particularly well suited for southern California's hilly terrain. Often showing up in historical photos, I've been a fan of these ten wheelers since I was a teenager. So this is indeed a happy occasion for me.

Man! Only a few weeks in to 2008 and its already shaped up to be a fantastic year! Yessir! A fantastic year!

Clearstory Frame Assembly

Furniture grade plywood is nice stuff. Costing about twice as much as regular plywood, it has a nice smooth sanded finish to it. Since the layout is residing in our dining room at the moment, it should look really nice. So I sprung for the furniture grade plywood.

After sifting through their entire stack of 4’ x 8’ plywood, selecting their finest piece, I dragged it over to their saw for cutting. Before I even showed up to the lumberyard, I carefully planned out how to cut the 4’ x 8’ sheet most efficiently so that I ended up with two profile boards for the ends and two strips for the clearstory windows. The lumberyard only does rough cuts, the contouring I’ll do at home with my jigsaw.

If you look closely at the top piece of wood (as Thunder dog is doing) you can see how I drew out the final shape of the contour boards. Below it is the contour board cut out.

The kid at the lumberyard did a lousy job cutting the clearstory strips, they went from 3 ½” wide at one end to 4” wide at the other end, a mistake I didn’t catch until I got home. An unfixable mistake. But I can’t return the whole thing ‘cuz I already have the contour boards cut out. But, the plywood does seem a little too flimsy to me for this framing, so I decided instead to construct the clearstory windows from 1 ½” x ¾” “sustainably managed tree-farmed select pine”! This is some strong, beautiful wood. And it’s available at your local do-it-yourself lumberyard.

Hey! Things are shaping up. Look at that, its looking like it’s supposed to. The clearstory widows were attached to the profile boards, and then the profile boards were attached to the outside frame. All that’s left to do is to start nailing on the roof.

But first, I have bevel the outside frame so that the curved roof will conform to it. And then the whole thing needs to be sanded smooth. So... I better get to sanding. Yessir... better get to sanding.