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slateworks
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Hello folks. Many if not most will not know me as I haven't been around for over 4 years, having removed all my posts on Updah some time ago for reasons that I won't go into. However, under the new seemingly more liberal regime, I'd like to come back and continue to tell Updah's story, the original 300 plus posts of which can't be reinstated and it remains to be seen whether what I post now is sufficiently interesting to others or not.
As background, I'm a Brit with absolutely no first hand experience of the USA, its historical culture or scenery so everything in Updah Creek is a figment of my imagination born of visits to the movies, TV and a few books so likely full of errors which I hope can be forgiven. Updah is a sawmill site developed into a small township which is now experiencing a relative boom in the 1930s and is staging a Country Music Festival attracting large numbers of out of town visitors.
The narrow gauge railroad has progressed from being just a logging line to a main line connector with a loco service yard, freight depot and partially burned out three stall roundhouse. Short trains bring in the visitors and take them through the offstage logging sites on daily excursions and there is an eclectic selection of steam and IC motive power and conventional and less usual rolling stock used for both passenger and industrial use.
The townsfolk, under the leadership of the towns founder and patriarch and his family, have fully taken on board the benefits to be had from the visitors to the Country Music Festival and have organised a parade of vintage wagons, manning them in costume of their era as an added attraction whilst some "big name" performers are rehearsing on the performance stage.
If it's of any interest, my Flickr albums showing the many builds, both railroad and township orientated are here
slateworks’s albums | Flickr
and my associated YouTube channel of very amateurish videos is here.
Channel content - YouTube Studio
Thanks for your patience as all this is really to reintroduce myself and I'm looking forward to reconnecting with folk I haven't spoken to for some time and hopefully meeting new faces as time goes by.
DougLast edited on 9 Mar 2023 07:52 pm by slateworks
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Doug
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corv8
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Doug,
glad to see you here again. Progress at Updah has been under careful scrunity all the time.
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Gerold
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2foot6
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Hi Doug, glad to see you back on Freerails, please post the old photos and new photos of the progress. I enjoyed reading the articles you posted in the past....Peter
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slateworks
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Thanks for the welcome back chaps, much appreciated. I don't think I can bring the past back in any form as it would take far too long but I'll see what I can offer since my last post from when I vamoosed in May 2020.
Doug
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Doug
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Kitbash0n30
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slateworks wrote: with absolutely no first hand experience of the USA, its historical culture or scenery so everything in Updah Creek is a figment of my imagination That's okay, even we who have firsthand experience of only the USA find a certain percentage of it to mostly be figments of imagination.
As it happens, I have been following your photos on Flickr but had become a bit baffled as to where I had originally seen them to follow. Now I am reminded!
Recent passenger cars are a nice project.
So, when are the On30 Brussels sprouts coming?
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See y'all later, Forrest.
Screw the rivets, I'm building for atmosphere
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Steve Fry
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Pity the original posts have gone. Are there any links on YOUTUBE, etcetera? I have a sign post on my layout stating Updah Creek to name a location (Gn15 layout).
Steve
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slateworks
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Hi Forrest. I'm flattered that you're keeping up with the Flickr photos and so glad to hear that my general ignorance of real life USA may not be unique!
Thanks for the kind words on the passenger cars, fun projects using my usual process of kit bash, scratch build and stuff from the bits boxes. Oh, and the Brussels sprouts won't be appearing in Updah but could be, in one form or another, in one of Daniel Caso's brilliant productions.
Last edited on 11 Mar 2023 05:15 pm by slateworks
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Doug
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slateworks
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Hello Steve and thanks for looking in. Yes, I'm afraid I screwed up when I removed my posts in a fit of pique and they aren't saved anywhere so can't be repeated.
There are no links on YouTube or Flickr to any thing else, just the photos and videos that appeared once on here so no description to go with them.
Hopefully what I post in future will give a flavour of what Updah is all about and of course I'll be more than happy to answer any questions that might arise.
Last edited on 11 Mar 2023 05:15 pm by slateworks
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Doug
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slateworks
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As a starter, here's the chapel car, one of those that I think Forrest kindly referred to.
I foolishly dived under the layout and into some supposedly empty storage boxes only to find a dodgy liveried Bachmann passenger car and a couple of Soundtraxx Soundcar decoders and keep alives, bought ages ago and for what purpose I couldn't then remember. Well, they had to come out of hibernation, didn't they and a new distraction blossomed.
The car was a pretty dreadful Hawthorne Village production looking like this.
 a (0) by slateworks, on Flickr
So the first action was to strip it down to its constituent parts, remove all the glazing and get rid of the livery by giving it a spray of grey primer, Hycote in this case as I'd run out of Halford's, and then a spray of Marabu cocoa brown outside and Humbrol sand inside to bring it more in line with Updah's other passenger cars and trams. With priming and a dark topcoat no paint stripping was necessary so a fairly simple job.
 a (2) by slateworks, on Flickr
 a (4) by slateworks, on Flickr
The roof also had awful insignia on each end so that was primed and sprayed with Halford's satin black which will be much "flatter" when weathered.
 a (3) by slateworks, on Flickr
The decoder and keep alive are modest in size and will be secured in the roof void
 a (1) by slateworks, on Flickr
but the car's power pick ups only operated on one side of each truck so the next job was to install pickups on the opposing sides, the insulated wheels. This was done by securing pickup strips, trimmed to size, on the plastic stub posts that take the securing screws for the truck frames, soldering a wire to the strip and running it through a hole drilled near the truck pivot.
 a (5) by slateworks, on Flickr
A piece of thin styrene was secured between the tab on the pickup strip and the truck frame to eliminate any chance of a short as the frame is live to the other side wheels.
Also there is a moulded tab on the pivot post that engages in a slot in the main underframe to stop the truck turning through 180 degrees and putting the live side wheels on the wrong side of the track, the original configuration using the live wheels on one truck set opposite to those on the other to give DC positive and negative pickup for the car lighting. I wanted all the live wheels to be on one side giving negative pickup and the insulated on the other for positive so on one truck I decided, rather than completely rebuilding it, to cut off the tab and make sure the truck was still the right way round before putting it on track. Not really a problem as the new double wire set up inhibits the truck revolving much more than its original amount anyway.
So decent power supply now established, I could look at other issues. The first is the lighting, as supplied a GOW bulb and just the one. I wanted LEDs and more of them so three are now attached to the body cross members and are 0603 super golden whites. They should give a reasonable light level and be more yellowy than plain white.
 a (6) by slateworks, on Flickr
I haven't bothered to make light fittings as they wouldn't be seen anyway and the wiring, those white hairs, will sit hidden in the roof void.
 a (7) by slateworks, on Flickr
G-S Hypocement will secure the decoder and keep alive in the roof after connecting them. The decoder offers several optional sounds such as horns, whistles, brakes, generator and so on as well as its main function, the clickety-clack of wheel on rail and while several are probably superfluous, I'll look at them in due course to see if they offer alternatives to those that will be available on the attaching loco. A 26mm x 11mm rectangular sugarcube type speaker will also be secured under the floor of the underframe, hopefully looking like a battery box or the like as it is only 4mm deep
A chapel car could be tagged onto the rear of the train that never runs on time if the Forney can show it can pull an extra car and I suspect that Madamme Molly's Comfort Cars will probably fill that gap with their gambling, drinking and "relaxation" facilities!
 u (9) by slateworks, on Flickr
 t (3) by slateworks, on Flickr
 q (3) by slateworks, on Flickr
More anon.
Last edited on 11 Mar 2023 05:14 pm by slateworks
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Doug
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slateworks
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To progress, the seating has been repainted and the ends of the seating moulding have been surgically removed and transplanted to the opposite end so the seats are now facing the right way in the congregation's area.
 c (1) by slateworks, on Flickr
With the construction of a new interior wall this also allows for the Rev. to have his own quarters, albeit suitably spartan, with the foundations for a narrow bed and a table to eat from and to prepare sermons on. The table will be suitably covered to eliminate the scorch marks from the hellfire and damnation texts that will be written on it over time!
 c (2) by slateworks, on Flickr
He of course retains the comforts of stove and loo - or is it a wardrobe for his clothes? - and has the use of a door in the new dividing wall to access the flock. All will be more detailed as this proceeds to some sort of completion.
On a more practical note, a transparent false roof has been cut from a piece of packaging material and stuck to the body cross members. This will restrain the birds nest of wiring from falling onto the congregation, who in a moment of contemplation might have thought it was manna from heaven!
 c (4) by slateworks, on Flickr
The speaker has been wired and glued to the underframe,
 c (3) by slateworks, on Flickr
its wires taken up through the floor and routed to the rear of the chassis where they emerge together with the power leads from the trucks inside the loo/wardrobe to be connected to the decoder which will then be secured to the clerestory roof underside.
 c (5) by slateworks, on Flickr
Last edited on 11 Mar 2023 05:14 pm by slateworks
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Doug
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Reg H
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I love the detail. The pool table kind of blows me away.
Reg
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slateworks
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Thanks Reg, you're most kind although it's actually supposed to be a Craps table just made up with balsa frame and a cloth printed on my inkjet printer from an image found on Google Images.
Great fun to research and build using a Testor's 1/48 scale cable car kit as the car foundation.
Doug
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Doug
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Kitbash0n30
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Nice work keeping those wires out of sight.
Bachmann's G scale versions of these cars have the same kind of loo compartment detail & yes, it is a great place for routing wires.
> Something you might want to do, looking at that last photo,
is ...
... on the loo window, they were frosted glass on the real cars, so it would work to either lightly sand the inside of the window at that location, or, paint the inside with thinned white paint.
Here's a sample,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Blue_coach_%28B%26O_1890%29.jpg
And another,
http://www.buffalocreekandgauley.com/ROLLINGSTOCK/Passenger/PassengerCars.html
Last edited on 11 Mar 2023 03:13 pm by Kitbash0n30
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See y'all later, Forrest.
Screw the rivets, I'm building for atmosphere
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slateworks
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That's a very valid point Forrest and thanks for the examples.
However, these posts are a catch up as the model was finished some time ago and I don't rally want to risk damaging anything now it's all together, especially as the transparency isn't too noticeable at normal viewing distance. With my declining eyesight and 82 year old fat fingers, damage would be quite a possibility knowing me!
Your advice is noted though for any future projects along these lines.
Last edited on 11 Mar 2023 05:11 pm by slateworks
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Doug
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corv8
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.... I always admire what you (and others) do in those larger scales... many things impossible to HO guys or those even risking to go still smaller.
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Gerold
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slateworks
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You're very kind Gerold thank you. Yes, as the scale increases, detail becomes more possible but then it is also more on show. Lesser workmanship and errors thus become more obvious.
Having age related declining eyesight and increasingly shaky hands doesn't help either, but this modelling lark is FUN, so one keeps on going!
Last edited on 11 Mar 2023 05:12 pm by slateworks
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Doug
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