The Rainbow (Ridge) Connection | Thunder Mesa Model Railroad

Howdy folks, Dave here at Thunder Mesa Studio, where I am back with a long-awaited update on the one that started it all, the ON30 Thunder Mesa Mining Company layout. Yes, it has been a long time, and I know that some of you may have been wondering if I was ever going to get back to this project, and I admit that I have neglected the layout somewhat as I had worked on other things and tried to solve the design problems of rebuilding the old layout in this new space. At this point, I'm not even sure if I could tell you how many different track plan iterations that I've been through, and I even built an entire new canyon section just to take it out again when it became clear that that wasn't the direction that the layout was going. But as I continued to tinker around with things here in the studio, a clearer vision of the railroad began to emerge. If I get stuck on a project, sometimes I'll just stop drawing and planning and start moving things around. That usually sparks new ideas and new possibilities that I just couldn't see before. For example, one day I just stuck a couple of the Thunder Mesa town structures up here where the mill was always supposed to be located, but I ended up liking the Disney-esque way that it looked so much that I decided to move the depot and all of the rest of the town Another puzzle piece clicked into place when I decided to move the layout parallel here to the goldfield in Calico, creating this nice 4-foot wide aisle. This was done to make more room for the Barlow Pass layout, but the result got me thinking that it might be possible to reconnect Calico and Thunder Mesa. When I built Calico Mountain several years ago, I added this switch to nowhere, just a possibility for future expansion with no real idea of where it might eventually lead. Well now, it seems pretty obvious. What if I built a 2-by-4-foot connecting section between the two, giving much more room for Thunder Mesa town and the riverfront, and increased operational possibilities for both layouts? Well, that's exactly what I've been up to around here, and I'm calling it the Rainbow Ridge Connection. I'm calling it that because all of the structures that I built for Rainbow Ridge will be finding a new home here too, expanding and filling out the story of Thunder Mesa. Now the reason I know this is all going to work is because both layouts are built at the same height, with the main track level 52 inches above the floor, so they already line up pretty closely. As you can see, I've already made a start on the construction. Put this shelf in, which is made out of 1-by-4s, and this will support part of the weight of the new section. I've leveled it here and attached it to the wall, going straight into the studs, which are on 16-inch centers. I've also gone ahead and constructed a simple and lightweight box frame for the new section. This is also made out of 1-by-4s, and it should line up nicely with the existing benchwork on both layouts. And now I just need to squeeze it in place between the two and clamp everything temporarily until I get it all level. There we go. Nice fit. Now I just need a couple of subtle adjustments to get everything lined up just so. At times like this, I'm glad I put everything on wheels. As I've done in the past, I'm going to connect these layout sections with some 1-quarter-inch bolts, washers, and thumb screws. I know you can't see it, but directly on the other side of this fascia is another 1-by-4, just like this one. Okay, it's not going anywhere. Of course, I can take the whole thing apart for when it's time to paint the backdrops, which will be pretty soon. Now I've got a bunch of 1-by-3 risers that I cut. These are 6-and-a-half inches long, and I'm going to clamp them in place on here temporarily so then I can lay the plywood deck on top of that and get it perfectly aligned before I screw them down in place. All right. Here goes nothing. There we go. Now we got it. Well, that's about as good as I could hope for, I think. Well, I've discovered that these two layouts are not perfectly at the same height. These would be connected to each other in a very different location, so variations have creeped in. I've got a slight grade now going here between Thunder Mesa and the Calico side, but, you know, nothing we can't deal with. Now I can start permanently attaching the risers. I'm not going to attach the deck to the risers yet, though, because another step in between now and then. Okay, I got all the risers in, and now you can probably see why I chose to build most of this in place. It's a lot easier to make those little adjustments that need to be made. Just sketching in the track plan now because I want to give you a little bit of insight into what I have in mind here and why I'm so excited about it. You can see now with the Rainbow Ridge structures in place that the town is going to wrap all the way around this corner in kind of an L shape. And right here in the middle of town now we have this Y, and this is for turning both locomotives and entire trains around, reversing direction. And the great thing about this is that now that it's connected to the Goldfield and Calico trains from Thunder Mesa can turn here. They can go to the Goldfield and Calico, use the turntable there, come back and do a lot of point-to-point operations. And the Goldfield and Calico trains can come and turn on the Y here as well. Minimum radius on all these curves is going to be 18 inches, which is fine for all of the larger Goldfield and Calico equipment. I've got the Rainbow Ridge structures mocked up here, so there'll be a really nice background for this entire scene, kind of continuing the story of the town around the corner here. And, you know, a really nice nod to Disneyland of the past, which is something I've always wanted to do with the layout. Then there's going to be a left-hand switch coming off the Y right here, and that's actually going to go to a small engine house. Just a single-stall engine house large enough to hold quarter locomotives and small 4-4-0s. And I like the fact that it's right close to the general store here, because if you go to Big Thunder in Anaheim, the track runs around like this, and the train storage is right behind there. So, a nice little bit of symmetry there. Over on this corner, making sort of a nice transition into Calico Mountains, then Boothill with the Undertaker shop there front and center, so you'll be able to see the animated ghosts on the inside. Straight shot looking in from here. But one of the most exciting things is that this whole area here is going to be the new Thunder Mesa riverfront. This is where Fowler's Landing is going to be located and Canyon Queen riverboat. And I'm even adding a little wharf right over here with a spur of track going out to it. So basically now I just need to take this piece of plywood up and cut the shape of the river out, and then we can put all of this into place. Okay, now this can go right back on here. And then the big chunk that I cut out becomes the riverbed. I'm not going to waste any time here. I'm going to go ahead and start putting in the cork roadbed. This is some HO scale Midwest cork roadbed, which I know has become very hard to find. And I'm actually using the last of it that I have right here. I will probably need to finish this up with some sheet cork. I've ordered some that's 3-16ths of an inch thick. That's the same thickness as this Midwest cork roadbed, so it matches up very nicely. You get a nice, smooth transition. I've actually notched out the fascia and part of the roadbed here so I can match that up, make it nice and smooth. Well, now I have begun basically paving this entire area with a Y, and the switches are going to be with that sheet cork. I get it in these 12-by-12-inch squares, which are supposed to make a corkboard wall. You can also get it in rolls. I really like the squares better because they're flat, and you don't have to spend a lot of time trying to unroll and flatten out the cork. So right now I'm just cutting the pieces to shape and gluing them down with some wood glue and some weights and some thumbtacks to hold them in place until the glue dries. Once that's all in, I will go back and redraw the track plan one more time. I've also started to rough in some of the landforms here with the pink foam. That's just to make it easier to know where the cork needs to go. Another thing I'll need to do once this is dry is go back with a straight razor blade in between these sheets to make sure I didn't glue these two sections of layout together. I'm just taking a fine, sandy block and going over all of the joints between the pieces of cork so that when I start laying track, I get a nice, smooth surface there. And laying track is exactly what we're going to do next. But before we jump into all of that, I just wanted to mention that when I draw the track plan full size on, I like to use the actual track components as much as possible, especially the switches and sharp curves like this 18-inch radius curve. That way I can just lay them on here and outline around them and then find the center line. It makes the entire track layout much more accurate. And speaking of turnouts, there's a small modification I need to make to each one before we start putting them down on the layout. I use Pico ON30 track and turnouts throughout the Thunder Mesa and the Goldfield and Calico layouts. I've been using it for years and years with no problems. I love the turnouts. They're very robust, virtually bomb-proof. But there is an improvement that you can make to them. If you plan to have polarity routing here from the frog, say from a frog juicer or something like that, or a switch machine, and that is to connect a wire to the frog. There's basically two ways to do this. Well, more than two, but the two simplest ways. The first way is to solder your wire to these little thin wires right here that bring power from the frog to the point closure rails. The advantage of this is that it's completely invisible. You drill a hole down through the bench work and run the wire down through there and nobody can ever see it. The disadvantages of it is that it's kind of tricky to do if you're not great at soldering. I'm a mediocre solderer at best, and it's really, really easy to melt this plastic. Another thing you can do is accidentally break this connection down here where these wires attach to those point rails and then, you know, kind of defeats the whole purpose of the whole thing. There is an easier way to do it, fortunately, and that's the way I think I'm going to do it on the rest of all these turnouts. And that way is to run the wire up through here and solder it somewhere on these frog rails, right about where it comes to a point right here. It's easier to get to, you're less likely to mess things up, and it's still fairly easy to hide with the paint balance and stuff like that, so that's what we're going to do. The nice thing about these Pico turnouts is you can solder this wire basically anywhere on the frog and get the same result electrically. This is some 28 gauge wire. This is what I use as hookup wire for all the track on the layout. I'm using green for the frogs because when I go to wire all of this, probably in the next installment of the Thunder Mesa build, I use black and red for the inside and outside rails. I'll run this up through here to kind of just jam it into that point. A little flux on there, that's some no-clean flux. And I'm using some 6040 rosin core lead solder with a nice hot soldering iron. That should do it. Then we clean any flux or excess solder off the top of the rails there and we're good to go. A little odorless mineral spirits. Clean that right up. That's because we've got a good solder joint. And we snip off about 24 inches of wire. That should be more than adequate. I'm going to start with this Y-switch back in the corner. I've marked where I need to drill a hole for that wire to go through. Get my alignments right. That's pretty good. Okay. Another component to make all of this work electrically are these little insulated rail joiners. And I'm using them on all of the diverging rails on each one of the turnouts of the Y. That's so I can isolate each of these track sections. And we'll have a polarity reversing unit down under the layout so we won't have a short circuit when the train goes around and changes direction. These are some 18 inch radius sections of ON-30 track. Now you can't buy sectional track at ON-30. You can only get turnouts and flex track. But I find it easier on something like this where you've got these sharp curves coming out of straights to use pre-curved rail. So you can't buy it, but you can make it. And what I do is get Atlas HO curved sections, in this case 18 inch radius, remove their ties, remove the black plastic ties, and then slide the rails, the pre-curved factory rails, into the ON-30 ties. And then you've got a piece of ON-30 sectional track, which makes this kind of job much, much easier. I'm not fighting with it to keep the curve aligned properly. This slips right into place. So, you know, there are some times where sectional track does have an advantage. I rarely ever spike down or solder the rail connections on turnouts. I usually just leave them free floating and let the track ballast hold them in place. So I'm going to spike down the rails in between here, the track in between. I've got some micro-engineering medium spikes. These are for hand laying track, but they also work well for this. This plastic on these ties is soft enough that I can just push it down through. And I usually choose a spot right next to the cast-in spike there. And I'll go, you know, about every fifth tie or so, push those down. And that's more than adequate to hold all of this in place. Now, in case it isn't obvious, none of this is new track. I didn't go out and buy anything new. This is all old track recycled from the last version of the Thunder Mesa layout. Okay, on the last leg of the Y. And this is kind of the trickiest part, because this is where everything's got to fit together, just so. Get that measured right. By George, I think we've got it. This is the final turnout. Right here where the two layouts connect, I've got a little free-floating piece of track that's not going to be spiked down. That'll make it easier to separate the two, if I need to do that. And this should be the last connection. By the way, I've been using this Xuron flush-cutting rail tool this whole time, rail nippers. I don't know that Xuron makes them anymore, but you can get a very similar tool from Micromart. Sometimes you need to trim the tie-off right here, where it's coming into a turnout. Okay, let's get this spiked down, and we'll be done. Let's test out the track work with some rolling stock. Get that little grade. A little wharf. Not too far. The engine house spur. Okay. Now the Y. Not bad. Of course, the real test will be when we get all this track wired up, and I can run some locomotives back and forth through here under power. That's probably going to be in the next installment of the Thunder Mesa build, Thunder Mesa Reimagined, whatever we're calling it this week. Right now, I want to go back and detail the track a little bit and add some ground throws to the turnout. I want to show you how I do that. I always like to take the cut-off ties left over from laying the track, cut the spikes off, put a little glue on the back. I'm using some Eileen's Tacky Glue. And then slide them in under these spots where you've got gaps between the sections. Makes it look much more finished. Now, I prefer to operate the turnouts manually on the ON-30 layout. It just makes me feel more like I'm actually working on the railroad. And the best thing I've found to be able to do that are these HO scale ground throws from Caboose Industries. Yes, they are designed for HO scale, but I find that in HO they look kind of big. But in ON-30, they look just right. And you can use them with these Pico turnouts with just a couple of simple modifications. First thing you might notice is that on the throw bar here, there's a hole on one end and then a peg on the other end. For our purposes, we want to use the side with the hole, so I'm just going to cut this off right about there. We're not going to use this peg, so we'll throw that away. These are made out of tough and durable Delrin plastic, and I can honestly say I've never had one break. Now, where the ground throw is going to sit, I've added a little pad of cork here. It's about 5 8ths of an inch by 1 1⁄4. It's coming out right where that throw bar is located. And the next modification we want to make is to this throw bar on the turnout. It's got a little nub there, and we're going to want to cut that off. I find this is easier to work with in place if you put a little shim under there. I'm going to cut this off flush with the top of the plastic throw bar. I'm going to be using a short length of .025 inch music wire to connect the throw bar here to the ground throw. So I need to drill a little hole right there to receive this. I've got a size 70 bit in my pin vise here, just a little bit, just a smidge bigger in diameter than that wire. I want to place the hole just between where that nub was and this other nub. I don't know what else to call them. Just kind of in the meaty part of the throw bar here. Now I want to come about an eighth of an inch and bend an L that went into that music wire. And then just using the width of the needle nose pliers, come around and bend it one more time to make it into a U shape. Then I'm going to snip the end off. It's got a little hook like that. You just have to thread that wire around down through the hole like that. That little hook I put in the end is going to keep that from pulling out. Now I can put the ground throw right over the top here, making sure the orientation of the lever matches the orientation of the point here. I'm going to mark right where I need to bend this wire and cut it. Again, I'm going to bend it straight up, again into an L shape, and that an eighth of an inch up. Now I want to extend plastic ties out with some O scale 4x8s. Straight out onto our little pad using some Eileen's tacky glue here. Now I need to align everything before I permanently affix the ground throw, and the easiest way to do that is to put the points over. I've got a little shim here. This is some 1-16th of an inch thick basswood. Those shims are going to hold that centered. Ordinarily, I'd wait for this glue to dry before doing the next step, but for demonstration purposes, I think we can go ahead and put that down onto the wire. Just roll that around into place. Straight up and down. Then we can secure the ground throw. And I'm going to do that securing with a couple of track nails. Right down through those ties and into that cork pad. Oh, I love it when I plan to do that. Now I know that some of you who are watching who may have experience with these caboose ground throws, you might be asking why I didn't remove the spring from the Pico Turnout or just use an unsprung ground throw. Well, the short answer is I've never had a problem with it. I really like the sprung points on the Pico Turnouts. It gives you a very positive lock on the point rails against the stock rails on each side. The longer answer is that I have a theory that the two springs working together actually add more tension pushing the points up against the stock rails, and they help to compensate for any slop that might be in there from installing the ground throw. Either way, it's always worth it. Now I just need to do the same thing on the rest of the turnouts. Except maybe for this one coming out of the tunnel back there. It's a bit of a long reach through scenery and trains to get to the ground throw if I was to put one there. So I haven't really decided what I'm going to do back there yet. I might use some sort of cable actuator or something like that. I'll keep you posted. Now as I was finishing that up just now, I realized I neglected to talk about a really important topic, and that's clearance. You need to make sure you have plenty of clearance for your largest equipment to get by when putting things next to the sides of the rails like these ground throws. On an HO layout, you can put them much closer. In ON30, the cars are longer and wider, so you really have to pay attention to that. And that's why I cut my little tie extensions to be about an inch and a quarter long, giving you plenty of clearance to put those ground throws in. I did mention that we weren't going to be doing the wiring today. I'm saving that for a future episode. But I do want to give you some insight into how a Y like this functions and some important things to consider if you're going to wire one. What a Y like this does is it allows an entire train to turn around in a relatively small amount of space. Basically a three-point turn. Going that way, back in that way, go back that way, right? And, you know, that's no big deal. It's very efficient if your train is running on steam or diesel power. But if it's electric and getting its power from the rails, that does cause a problem. Because when that train reverses directions and tries to go back the other way, it's going to create a short circuit. Even if you're using digital command control, DCC, like I am here on the Thunder Mesa layout, and you're not controlling the direction of the train by switching the polarity of the track, that polarity still exists and it's something you have to think about. And that's why I was careful to put insulated rail joiners here for all of the turnouts coming to the Y. You need to do that anyway with these Pico turnouts because you don't want power going back towards the frog from this direction. That'll cause a short circuit in the turnout. But there's an extra layer of complexity when you've got a reversing section like this. So you need to completely isolate one of the legs of the turnout, or one part of the turnout like this if the entire train will fit in there. Unfortunately, I don't think an entire train will fit into any one of these curves on the Y. So we need to isolate one section coming out of the Y for a reversing unit. And by reversing unit here, I mean a polarity reversing unit. On a DCC layout, we're very fortunate to have a little item like this. This is made by MRC. And you simply hook two of the wires up to your section that you want to have the polarity reversed and the other two go to your DCC wiring bus that's running through. And it automatically detects a short circuit using very, very small amounts of current and then switches the polarity automatically to that section of track. Now, I've determined that I'm going to use this section right here between the Y and the connection with the Goldfield and Calico. And that'll be our section that's connected to an auto-reversing unit. One of the great advantages of DCC systems is that it doesn't matter which way the train is coming in. It could be coming in from the Goldfield and Calico side. It could be coming in from the Y. This unit will automatically detect if there's a short circuit, if the polarity is wrong, and switch it in an instant. If I were wiring for DC, I would need to have separate polarity control switches for each of these sections. One for this one, one for the Goldfield and Calico, and another one for the rest of the Thunder Mesa layout. Fortunately, DCC makes things much easier and we don't have to worry about anything. And with that, I think we're going to call it a day. But I've got to tell you, I am so happy to be back working on the Thunder Mesa layout again. This is exciting. I really love the direction things are going in. I'm excited about all the new little projects I have to develop over here. And I hope you are too. I hope you're subscribed with those notifications turned on so YouTube will let you know when the next video is coming from Thunder Mesa Studio. And in the meantime, you can also follow for free over on Patreon at patreon.com slash thundermesa or on Instagram at thunder.mesa or check out the resources available on the Thunder Mesa Studio website at thundermesa.studio. As always, a big, big thank you to our Patreon members who help to make these projects and these videos possible. Until next time, keep moving forward everybody. Adios for now.