The K-Rex

Since I haven't managed to accomplish much this week (night shift will do that!) I thought it might be interesting to put up a picture or two of Slate Creek #45, a Bachmann K-27. It is the largest locomotive to date on the Slate Creek roster. This locomotive is doubly special in that it received the whole "K-Rex" treatment from Dave Goodson of Northwest RCS ... the suspension is locked at the #1 and #4 drive axle to prevent excessive lateral play, the counterweights are all hand shimmed (this was before Bachmann started providing corrected counterweights) and the electronics are all brand new from pilot to bunker. The locomotive has RCS Radio Control, NiCd batteries, and Phoenix 2K2 sound, with a specially made mechanical chuff timer to replace the optical one. The headlights have been replaced with incandescent bulbs, as have the lamps in the class lights on the smokebox. The tender now has a rear headlight; at the time of these photos it had not yet been installed.



No.45 carries the standard Slate Creek graphics, and eventually will receive a round number plate on the smokebox, and the same graphite treatment that all Slate Creek locomotives are gradually being given, as well as a crew, authentic tender coal, and other details. I'm even considering getting hold of a road pilot to provide a variety of interchangeable "looks" ... though I have to say the plow is one of the reasons I particularly like this locomotive. Of course, I'm cheating: This photo is actually on the locomotive's shakedown run on Dave's Colorado Consolidated after the K-Rex treatment (he took the photos too!) ... I have a couple photos of #45 on my railroad, but his makes it look that much nicer! (We'll do more on mine later with roster shots of everything, and with the eventual scenery!)

Another historic photo

Just because it doesn't appear anywhere else, this was the original "poster" shot from the old railroad. You can tell it's REALLY old because the locomotive that would eventually become Slate Creek #31 is still wearing White Pass and Yukon colors. This photo was taken in the tunnel portal into the living room, behind the couch, approaching the old Summit station .... and shows that while the old Slate Creek had a lot of room for improvement, it still had its photogenic moments!

The Pre-Prehistory of the Slate Creek

The railroad in its current iteration is actually the second railroad to carry the Slate Creek name. The first was my very first try at a railroad, ever, and was a very interesting approach to a layout.

The first version of the Slate Creek was in a basement apartment in Westbrook, CT, and started when a friend asked me if I'd be interested in living in the apartment. As we were looking at the place, which was the basement of his raised ranch, I pointed to the shelf running along the wall at the top of the foundation, and jokingly pointed out where I was going to cut the tunnels so that the train could move from room to room. He said he didn't see a problem with that ... and before he could change his mind, I moved in, and started cutting holes!

Originally, the railroad was going to be HO, or even On30 ... but for Christmas that year, my brother gave me a sidetank porter, and two LGB side dump cars... and the die was cast. From there, though, I made some mistakes that would come back later to haunt me. First, I selected LGB R2 curves and R1 switches not realizing the limitations that that one choice would eventually put on the railroad. While the original porter and the soon after acquired Shays #4 and #5 would take the trackage, there were some obvious problems just in what the train looked like rounding curves. Much of that was excused though by the unique route of the train.
The main line started in the bedroom, crossing over the head of the bed and running along the approximately 6" shelf that ran the length of the walls where the top of the foundation met the frame of the house. The track then passed through a storage room that wasn't mine (but the landlord allowed me "trackage rights" to make the railroad work) and into the living room, passing behind the couch, and over a swinging bridge that allowed folks to enter and leave via the apartment's main entrance door. From there the track passed through another portal into the storage room/kitchen area, and down a 4% grade passing through the bathroom, under the front door landing, and then back up the 4% grade into the bedroom. First time visitors were often shocked at the presence of the track, but even more by the passage of a train as the track crossed the top of the toilet tank and then exited through a portal next to the sink, into a closet, and from there into the bedroom.
In the bedroom, half the room was landscaped into mountains and a yard area, and then back to the main line toward the bed.

Equipment was a hodgepodge at best. Most of my friends at that point used to say "it doesn't really matter... it's all G scale!" when I talked about what to get, and honestly the Shay didn't look bad with the Big Hauler stuff, or the LGB caboose, so for awhile I had an ecclectic mix of 1:22.5, 1:20.3, and even some 1:24 and 1:29 thrown in for good measure. Eventually, though, it just began to look "wrong" to me, and I started to think more along the lines of scale fidelity. At that point Bachmann released the 2-8-0 in 1:20.3, and it wouldn't take the curves ... and the magnitude of the error I'd made was fully revealed.

For better or worse, it was about that time that my then fiancee and I determined that I would need to move to North Carolina ... meaning that the railroad that had only just been up and running for a year and a half would move too. The good news was, the new residence had a basement of some 40x40 feet that would be available to start over, and correct the issues of scale and curvature, and from which I could remove the grades all but entirely.

Today all that's left of the Slate Creek Mark I is the mural in the living room, and some stray track and scenery that hasn't been pulled up yet. The mountains in the bedroom and bath are gone, and the track has all but disappeared. The non 1:20.3 equipment was sold off, although most of the equipment lettered "Slate Creek" went to a nice fellow in Wisconsin who built a really nice looking large scale railroad around his rec room ... they share track space with an Aristo Mallet and a project you'll see chronicled here in the next couple of weeks, an Aristo Mikado that I'm customizing for him. The logo remains, and the 1:20.3 fleet is nearly larger than the old ecclectic fleet once was.

The old photo gallery for the old layout still exists, and can be seen at: http://home.earthlink.net/~mbrown31/oldscry.htm

The Story So Far

In the beginning, the basement was dark. Eight legged monsters moved to and fro and four legged scavengers scurried about in the corners. And, a voice said, "Let there be light." When that had little effect, with the snap of a lightswitch, the landscape took form.

Suffice it to say, the first impulse was to turn the light back OFF. Her stuff would have been enough, but then you add MY stuff to it, which we did when I moved in, and the result was a nightmarish scene that would probably have made for a whole new series on HGTV had the producers been around to get a decent look at it. Unfortunately, the small army of production assistants that would have arrived to help sort, organize, discard, and dispose of the pile of junk showed no signs of making an appearance, so it fell to us to start digging. SEVEN truckloads to the local landfill later, and countless trips to the local Goodwill dropoff, and we found that where the white elephant jungle had been, there was now an approximately 40x40 foot room that was suitable for the construction of model railroad benchwork!
I should probably point out at this junction that my wife, Caroline, is entitled to awards and accolades for supporting a hobby that many women don't understand a bit. She agreed to turn over the entire basement (well, almost) for the railroad, and has always been willing to help clean out, clean up, and help adjust family finance to make the project possible. And she's actually into the whole railroad mystique, something I hear not a lot of wives go for. I'm sure she'll turn up as the topic of a future post ... but the story of the early Slate Creek would be incomplete without discussion of how she helped make it all possible.

At this point it was time for benchwork, and this brought in a new set of indispensible help, my brother Nathan, and his friend J-Me (see photo, left) who made the trip all the way from Wisconsin to build open frame benches for my train. The project took place in a couple of chunks, as we had to relocate a water heater, and remove an old oil furnace that were effectively blocking the ROW, and re-organize the remaining stuff in the basement to accomodate the new benchwork build over and around it. Slowly, though, the benchwork took shape, and the subroadbed, and then it fell to me to lay track.

I decided that I would use Llagas Creek code 250 track, using narrow gauge ties, and code 250 nickel silver rail. While my locomotives are slowly being converted to battery power, I'm still reasonably happy with this choice, as I plan to have a working signal system at some point, and therefore need some good electrical properties on the track, even if eventually the engines won't need it for power. I decided to save a few bucks, and order the rail and tie strips seperately and assemble my own track ... this was a MISTAKE. Eventually, I bought a track tool from the folks at California and Oregon Coast that holds a tie strip with a series of short fingers, and got good at using Armorall and some elbow grease to slide the rail into the tie strips ... but for all that work, pay the extra few bucks and have the track shipped assembled! I bought some carpet padding from the local carpet store, and laid it down on the subroadbed before laying the track, primarily to minimize noise between the train and the benchwork.
Llagas provides a screw tab every six inches or so, and so far I've not had any major vibration or noise problems with the screw going directly into the subroadbed using those tabs. The Slate Creek has a pier area, a yard, and a main line all of which are in place and operational at this point. The switches have been added at Midway, and the sidings roughed in there, and there are plans for sidings at the mine, and the crusher/concentrator plant. The yard's enginehouse area will be completed as soon as I can manage to install the turntable, which is already on hand, and just awaiting the bench modification to put it in place.

I'll be back with a more in depth tour soon.

Introductions and Beginnings

One of the more challenging parts of putting a site like this together is determining where to actually start. After that, it becomes easier to throw out the "weekend update" or a series of photos, as the visitors already know who you are, and what you're about.

So, by way of introduction, I'm Matthew (OV) ... born a Connecticut Yankee, and more recently moved to the "Piedmont" of North Carolina, though the local wisdom is that I'm in no danger of shedding my "Yankee" title, and I'm doing my best to maintain my New England voice too!

The Slate Creek Railway is my 1:20.3 scale model railroad which has thus far been confined to the basement, but the backyard is just a window away! An indoor railroad in large scale is less common than the outdoor variety, particularly in 1:20.3 where the 45mm between the rails represents 3 feet instead of the 4 feet 8.5 inches of standard gauge represented by 1:29 and 1:32 layouts, and the models are therefore proportionally larger. But the railroad is air conditioned in the summer (important in central North Carolina!,) and heated in the winter, and allows for a lot of interesting possibilities with respect to scenery that would never work outdoors and exposed to the elements. This website will chronicle the construction of the railroad (not my favorite part, as evidenced by the glacial pace of the scenery!) as well as the locomotives and rolling stock, and as things develop, I hope the operations and backstory will develop here as well. My shop is now up and running, and I hope to be able to document progress on a number of kits that have been waiting for some time to see the light of day. These include a couple of Bob McCown's steel EBT boxcars, a Northeast Narrow Gauge coach, a Don Winter (OV) flanger, and the now semi-famous Azalea, though mine is very different from the ones the rest of the group are building . . . more about that later.

For now, welcome, and enjoy the tour . . . I'll be back soon with some history, and even some prehistory of the railroad to date.