Page 19 - January February 1997

secured, Aldridge was planted between North Judson and Frankfort. Both these towns are almost besieged with railroads - another small line won't hurt. It probably won't even be noticed! N.Judson is on the real EL main - other roads there are C&O and PC. Frankfort is a crossroads of the PC, L&N and N&W, about 75 miles almost due south, and another 40 miles or so south brings us to Indianapolis.
If the fictional Aldridge line is dropped south from N.Judson to Frankfort (and conceivably further on to Indianapolis) it passes between the towns of Flora and Delphi. The former (east of our line) is on a PC line heading north, and the latter is on a crossing of the N&W and the L&N, to the west of our line. By planting Aldridge itself between these locations, our fictional EL line picks up an interchange from Delphi, bringing N&W and L&N traffic in from the north-west, and another interchange from Flora bring- ing PC traffic in from the south-east. This is more than enough to keep us busy! The overall fiction then becomes a "what if the EL (or more likely the Erie RR) had built itself a gateway south to Indianapolis?" scenario.
The advantage of a recent base- board extension making Aldridge operate properly as a through station, as originally intended, is that numerous trains can be run as through services having no local business at Aldridge itself. These trains could come from as far afield as Chicago or New York state and terminate at Indianapolis. This, in my view, elevates Aldridge out of the 'glorified switching layout' category.
The next type of service comprises 'through-ish' trains stopping briefly to set out and/or pick up pre-blocked cuts of cars, but doing no local switching as such. In fact the cuts of cars involved would probably be related to the interchange transfers rather than serving local Aldridge industries, as the latter would more likely be serviced by way freights. These "stopping, main line trains" could also come from some distance, or else operate only the 75 miles or so between North Judson and Frankfort.
Then come the way freights, which will definitely operate only between North Judson and Frankfort, doing most of the local donkey work at Aldridge. Most of the cars for the Aldridge local industries would be collected from, and delivered to, the yards at N.Judson and Frankfort, rather than be dropped by the through services, though quite possibly some of the cars brought by the interchange runs would be for spotting at Aldridge indus- tries. The way freight locos.' switching activities would also involve the next cate- gory of service - the transfer runs bringing cars from the PC and N&W, maybe also from the L&N. [At present we do have enough PC power and cabooses that their transfers can be depicted using PC power. At time of writing, EL power operates any other interchange services, but with mod-
ellers usually being inveterate motive power collectors, I'm sure that by next showing there could be NW power and/or L&N diesels too.]
We decided as a matter of principle that Aldridge was "no longer important enough to warrant its own switcher". Any car brought in by a transfer run and having an Aldridge industry as its destina- tion, would be spotted there by the next available way freight engine. This power would also be used to make ready blocks of cars to be picked up by the next trans- fer runs, and for the next EL "stopping through freight".
So, having finally gotten to the point where we can list what services ought to appear, the final questions are "how many, in what order, and what ratio one to another?" Some of these refinements have to be honed by experiment, but I find it convenient to assign railroad-like symbols to the services, even though few would merit a symbol in real life, and as one of my co-conspirators commented, we should really have train numbers, not symbols - maybe we will have both! Thus we have CHIN, a Chicago to Indianapolis non-stop through freight, while CHAIN would be a similar train setting out or picking up cars at Aldridge. [An extra ser- vice in the same direction, during the same day, would become, for example, CHAIN2.] The return (northbound) service would of course be INACH. (Yuk!)
A North Judson-to-Frankfort local would be NJFR (no "A" is needed as all locals do business at Aldridge.) A N&W transfer run from Delphi to Aldridge would be NWDA, its return would be NWAD. A similar job called for the L&N would be LNDA. Note that unlike the real railroads, these symbols are not meant to represent importance or priority - they are simply short codes to enable us to know what kind of train we are talking about, perhaps to write on a 'flip-over' type of card system to select the next service run, or to build up a timetable of sorts.
How would we decide exactly how many, and what mix of, trains to run? I believe in suck-it-and-see to some extent. List out all the possible services one would like to see, then shuffle them into the most likely order of numerical promi- nence. (For example we would probably only have one PC transfer each way per day, but maybe three non-stop EL through freights each way, a couple of 'stopping' through freights, one way freight each way, and so on - maybe!)
Then simply run the trains, do the switching, see how long everything takes at scale speeds. Within a couple of oper- ating sessions, one can get a feel for what is possible and desirable, and make what- ever adjustments seem appropriate. Over a longer period the system will become honed and efficient (he said) and small variations can be added or deleted as the mood takes. - No, you can't run your Big Boy - take it over to Calder Northern! (No offence, lads.)
ATHEARN DASH-9
MODIFICATIONS
Andrew Knights
Looking at the array of goodies on LSWR's stand at Farnham, I succumbed to one of Athearn's GE Dash-9's, preferring the Athearn livery details over the Kato's slow running properties. Apart from pro- totype considerations, and track on my layout that would make Col. Stephen's weep, the very long wheel base and new chassis design produced a tendency for the loco to go straight on at curves - it has vertical and fore-and-aft play but no side play. Solution was as follows:
Remove body and steel power connector, disconnect drive to rear truck and drop truck out of chassis. This model uses a large bearing plate for contact. Drill and tap the bolster 10 BA and insert a 3mm 10 BA stud, leaving a little over 0.5mm protruding from the bearing side of the bolster. This takes up most of the track displacement.
Using a Xuron tool I carefully cut 0.75mm from each arm of the worm cover. This was the only modification I made to the front truck bearing.
Invert the loco and remove the wheel keeper plates. File the steel bearing plates for the centre axles. I brought these down to a point just below the moulded axle slots. The depressions in the centres of the keeper plate sides were also filed down to just above the base. The middle axle of each truck now has some degree of float. On assembly, the rear truck worm just fouled the bolster when the drive was twisted. A skimming of less than 0.5 mm freed this.
On my tighter curves, with Kadee 5's on cars next to the loco, the car starts run- ning on 4 wheels! Intermountain to the rescue. An Intermountain box is modified as follows: remove lip from front of the top of the box. Cut the back off the bot- tom and about 1mm from each side. Assemble coupler so that the ears on the coupler are slightly ahead of the trimmed sides. This modified box is inserted into the hole in the loco pilot. The hole might require filing out - use this filing to adjust coupler height if need be. When installed, the coupler should just be able to touch the pilot at either end of its swing. 18" curves? No problem.
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