Table Of Contents

Next Meeting at Babka's

Richard Abler

The Plant Manager

Barbara Abler

Next meeting at Babka's

Richard Abler

The meeting date is Sunday, April 30th; meeting time is 2 to 5pm. (Details)

The program for this meeting is "Constructing tunnel portals from concrete." The presenter is Jim Kimmel. He'll have some examples of portals he's built and will show us how he does it. Besides the tunnel portal program Glenn will discuss his water features - the stream and pond. He'll discuss the techniques he used to construct his concrete pond with his novel draining system.

Prior to the meeting, Barbara & Richard Abler will have their railroad open to CGRS members and guests before the meeting from 12 noon to 1:45pm and again after the CGRS meeting until 6pm. Barbara will have plants available for sale during the open house hours.

The Ablers and the Babkas are only about a mile apart.  (Details)

Glenn runs trains in rain or shine or sleet or snow. The meeting will be held light rain or shine. Bring along your own lawn chair if you¹d like to sit down sometime during the meeting.

The Plant Manager

Barbara Abler

Aristo-Craft's New Snow Plow

Charles Wiegand
G Scale Junction

LGB Model Railroad Club

Dave Lynn

Dear Group Representative:

The LGB Model Railroad Club (LGBMRRC) and its 2000 members, wishes to offer your organization the opportunity to have greater insight and input into the events of our Club. As more large scale organizations come into being, it is important that we establish a good line of communications for our mutual benefit. We think that a point of contact in each group would allow us to share information, concepts, and ideas and hopefully, more stories and articles for our publications. 

It was decided at our recent Board of Directors meeting that we begin an outreach program to established G scale organizations. Should this have appeal to your group, we would ask that a member of your group be appointed as a point of contact for mailings and information throughout the year. In return, we would provide them LGB mailings of new products (to include a catalog), a Club calendar, a copy of the BTO Newsletter, and other information as it becomes available. We would like that person to tell new members, as well as current members of your club, about the LGBMRRC. By sharing these items, we hope to gain new interest in our Club and possibly some new members. 

To accomplish this, we would ask that you appoint a member of your group who is already an LGBMRRC member or, if no one is a member, that the designated person join our Club, participate in the program and receive our information. Naturally, we would ask that this person also share items of general interest and newsletters with us. We would publicize articles and pictures from your club in the BTO so long as they referred to LGB equipment or LGBMRRC members, If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

I look forward to your response and trust that our relationship will enhance our mutual goal of sharing information and "having fun running trains."

(Signed) Dave Lynn
Membership Committee
Email: dlynn21369@aol.com

Covered Bridges - Part 1

Jim Shell

(Pictures coming soon.)

"Did you ever ride in a buggy through a covered bridge on a dark night? Remember you drove cautiously into the inky tunnel lest a stray sheep or cow, horse or robber might be in the closed darkness? Even the clattering of your horse's hoofs that rattled and rumbled the heavy, plank floor was startling."   Mary Fay Bryson. (From Out of the Wilderness by John Davidson)

Covered bridges, peaceful relics of a by gone era. Large, dark, rusty tin roof, missing siding, lose floor boards and in need of paint. Seeing a covered bridge takes us back to a time when things seemed more peaceful and less hectic. They are an interesting part of our history. As they are replaced, our memories of them begin to fade. 

Every covered bridge has its own memories, its own special place in our past. I remember seeing covered bridges on our Sunday afternoon family drives in the 1950s. The one I remember most was the Indian Ripple Bridge over the Little Miami River in Greene County, Ohio. It was one of the landmarks I always looked for on our way to Grandma's house in southern Ohio. The road curved around and down the hill then disappeared into the darkness of the covered bridge. My dad would honk the horn of our car warning anyone on the other side that we were coming through. Inside the bridge I could hear the creaking of truss and the occasional bouncing of the floor boards. I could see rays of sun light coming through the cracks in the siding and I liked to look at the large wooden beams in the truss. Then, breaking free from the monster, we sped up the other side of the valley. That was easy - no problem; but wait, it would be dark when we came home from Grandma's!

The covered bridge has served us in many ways. It provided shelter in bad weather. Perhaps it gave the swimming hole some protection for the skinny dippers. It was a place to hold church services, dinners, political rallies, picnics, parties, concerts, dances, town meetings, weddings, fights and hangings; and it served as a billboard for posters. Some covered bridges over canals had a trap door in the floor to allow the loading of canal boats. 

In 1994 my interest was renewed when the Greene County Historical Society asked me if I would author another book for them -one about covered bridges. At the same time I was looking for a bridge to put on the OE&L RR so I considered a covered bridge. Searching through my files I found a set of plans for a railroad covered bridge that had been built on the Chambers Logging Company line in Oregon (1924). The company carpenters were told to build a covered bridge and they did, but there was one problem, no ventilation. When the slow moving logging train would go through the 91 foot long bridge the engineers would choke on the smoke from the steam engine. To ventilate the bridge the carpenters took off some of the lower side panels. This helped the engineers but it exposed the truss to the weather. As I considered putting this bridge on the OE&L, I realized that this bridge would give me a covered bridge and allow me to see part of the truss on the inside. The unfortunate thing that we railroaders have to contend with is space. This covered bridge was 91 feet long and I only had space for a 54 foot bridge. I really had to play with the dimensions to come up with an acceptable representation of the bridge. (See photo.)

Last year I was given a large color slide collection on covered bridges. The slides date from 1955 to 1975 and are from Maine west to Wisconsin and south to Kentucky. In the collection are slides of nine railroad covered bridges from Vermont and New Hampshire.  One of the railroad covered bridges is the Bennington Railroad Bridge in New Hampshire (1960 photos.) The interesting feature about this bridge is that there is a wooden trestle at both ends. The trestle on one end is about twenty feet high with a road passing through it (see photo). This would be an interesting addition to a garden railroad.  

Covered bridges for the garden railroad. When designing your railroad you might have considered putting in a covered bridge but you didn't because it would take up to much space. Next month in part 2 we will look at the shortest highway covered bridges and their structural design. Part 3 will look at the shortest railroad covered bridges.

Previous Meeting

Richard Abler

Jerry and his crew walked us through how to regulate and adjust available light to get the best possible photos or videos or your garden railroad. He showed us "how to move the sun" to reduce or eliminate unwanted shadows. He also showed us techniques for filling in the details on  photographic objects. One of the "models" for the lighting demonstration was a preproduction model of the new Aristo-Craft wedge snowplow. The model carried the livery of the Chicago & North Western RR with a green body and yellow plow.

The nice thing about the lighting techniques is that we can do these with ordinary household materials. We don't need high-priced professional equipment. This was a great learning experience.

Bethany Beck brought in a big variety of goodies - more that we could eat. And the popcorn machine was working overtime to supply a hot, freshly-popped product. That stuff is hard to resist.

Bob Collins said he would be taking orders for metal wheels; this will be a large group purchase so that we can get the best possible price. If you want to order metal wheels get in touch with Bob (Details)

We were pleased to see some new faces at their first CGRS meeting. We also welcomed Dick & Gerrie Dobaj who made the trip from Parma (Cleveland) for the meeting.

Our thanks to Jerry & Bethany Beck for hosting a truly interesting meeting!

Laying Track (A followup from last month)

Stumpy Stone

As far as heat expansion, the totally free floating type of track seems unaffected. If you use aluminum rail you will find that it expands and contracts much more than brass rail. Floating track works well with it too.

First Call for Garden Railroad Tour

Richard Abler

A current list of open hosts follows. Some on the list have stated to me directly either in person or via email that they plan to be open for the tour on Sunday, September 10th. Others have indicated their desire to participate via the survey form at the annual banquet. In this latter case the family name appears on the list if any one member of the family answered 'yes' or 'maybe' to the question.

Here is the list as of early April: Babka, Beck(*), Bigrigg, Burns(*), Cheney(*), Coghlan(*), Collins(*), Dana(*), Dobaj(*), Duggan, Easterday, Hahn(*), Hill, Ketcham, Kimmel, Logan(*), Lott, McRae(*), Muchmore/Jones(*), Murday(*), C. Myers, Polsdorfer, Rosenblum(*), Shell, Uhlig, R Voit, and Abler.

If you are on this list and are NOT planning to be on the garden tour, better let me know. Conversely, if you ARE planning to be on the garden tour and you are not on this list, you had best let me know too.

Those names which have an asterisk: I need to have a description of your railroad and/or a clear set of directions to your garden (including any parking restrictions).

As in the past the descriptions and directions will be submitted to your neighborhood weekly newspaper. Addresses with a brief description will appear in the Dispatch on the Sunday of, and the Sunday before the tour.

Addresses and descriptions will also be included in the mailing from Columbus Recreation and Parks Department.

This promises to be our biggest garden tour to date. But there¹s a lot of work to do between now and then and I'll need your cooperation in getting your descriptions and directions to me on a timely basis.

Questions & Answers

Richard Abler

Q. How steep can I make track grades in the space I have available?

A. On most garden railroads grades are a necessary evil. You need to understand first of all how grades are calculated. Its really rather straightforward. Grades are usually expressed as a percent in the U.S. Thus, a 1% grade means the track rises one inch for every 100 inches of length. Of course, it also means the track rises one foot for every 100 feet of length, and so on.

Real railroads - the full-size kind - do everything they can to minimize grades, and you should too. A rough rule of thumb that I heard some time ago goes like this: If your locomotive can pull 100 cars on a perfectly level track, it will only be able to pull 50 cars up a 1% grade. For a 2% grade it will pull 25 cars; for a 3% grade you¹re down to about 12 cars; and for a for a 4% grade your loco would pull only about 6 cars.

There's another factor to consider. If your grade is also on a curve, that's like an additional 1% grade. That is, a 1% grade on curved track is really like a 2% grade on straight track. That is due to wheel and flange friction of the solid axles against the track.

Another factor to consider is use of metal wheels. When it comes to grades, metal wheels can also exert a negative effect. They are quite heavy, and their effect here is to reduce the number of cars your loco will be able to tug up the grades.

So you can see that grades exert quite an influence on train operation. Now, if you are planning to run only very short trains, grades will have less of an influence on your train operations.

If you need to climb a hill in a small relatively small space, you'll have to do what the real railroads do: build long spiral, gentle curves and/or use 'helper' locomotives to get your train up the hill.

You ought to do everything you can to keep maximum grade under 4%. You'll be more pleased with your train operations if you do this.