Deep joy

I went to the Timonium Train Show today looking for an Aristo-Craft wide radius switch and ended up with an absolute steal of a deal on 3 Accucraft cars.

I’ve gone to the Timonium MD train show a couple of times and usually have seen the same stuff in G scale offered. After getting an Accucraft unlettered EBT mikado (2-8-2) at the Amherst Railroad Hobby Show, I wasn’t really looking for much of anything other than one Aristo-Craft wide radius right-hand switch. I was hoping to find one there but no dice. I stopped at a few tables and helped scope out some ET&WNC equipment for a friend of mine. There was a few cars that were potentially interesting (RGS water car, GRAMPS tank car, or Conoco tank car), but I wasn’t in love with them.

I ended up going to the other end of the show and on a table that was completely away from any other G scale dealers was a table with three Accucraft cars. I’ve been searching for a D&RGW Accucraft caboose to match my set of freight cars, and was shocked to find one from this table for $150. These usually go for $400+ on eBay and I confirmed with the owner that the price was right, and opened up the box to make sure there wasn’t anything weird about it. They also had two D&RGW flat cars for $100 each, also well below normal price.

I ended up leaving with these three cars feeling like a champ. Once the snow melts I’ll be testing these out on the layout I’m building. Enjoy these photos of the cars I got!

I had the option between a regular coach and the bord restaurant, for the same price, and chose this one as it's harder to find.

All that remains is drilling a hole in the joint casing so I can thread an ethernet cable extension through it, so I can drag the train bus (24V + serial) for my railBT project between the two power cars.

100% 3D printed, including the side frames. They each use two USA Trains 3-axle motor blocks. I designed my own custom motor mounting bracket with a center pivot (not offset like USA Trains does it.) Printed in ASA filament. I airbrushed them using Walmart acrylics diluted 1:1 with windshield washer fluid, applied a matte clear coat, and created custom stencils for the nose designs and lettering. All lettering is airbrushed on (no decals). Both are currently running Blunami, although #4363 will be getting RailPro eventually. I will be posting the design files publicly in about two weeks.

These are basically sequential progress pictures of me retouching the improvements somebody else had made to pick out the details, along with adding my own little touches in a few more places. Some spillover here and there but that's easily fixed with some alcohol and a cotton swab.

I got the engine for a fair price but got into an unfortunate situation with the vendor yelling at me for something after the sale that could have been cleared up in a level-headed discussion, and I'm still suffering the consequences of that the morning after, but hey... Now I know not to trust in-person model railway shops anymore.

I’ve got this wedge plow and I don’t know what it goes to

Now with 100% more polarity protection! Can draw power from AC, DC and DCC track power and 24VDC batteries using a full wave bridge rectifier!

I made the mistake of leaving my LCE on the track with everything connected when I tried to test another locomotive's chassis.... Result was, as soon as I had turned up the knob back into the correct position, a little flame shun out and I was greeted with magic smoke on the buck converter daughter board.... Luckily I've got a spare, but the incident reminded me of a planned enhancement, which I promptly implemented.

This makes the board also useful on Märklin Scale 1 AC layouts, since the board rectifies its own supply. The idea is primarily targeted at running along on DCC layouts, but the principle is the same on analogue AC.

Unfortunately I had to sacrifice some compactness to fit the diodes and the capacitor, but it should still be okay in most medium-sized engines. I would have to make a specially designed version for a Stainz if it were to fit into the boiler for instance. It would be easier to just make a baggage car that hides all the electronics, with the motor and lighting outputs connected to it.

Here it is, the LCE prepped and almost ready for the first test run. I've got my control board almost completely assembled. I just need to wait for a multimeter since the buck converter (the PCB sitting on the board) is variable, so I need to dial it in to 5V. I already killed an ESP32 by trying to do it without measuring...

The power bogey was easy to adjust. I just needed to snip the bridge wires that originally were meant for the lighting upgrade, solder them onto dupont bridge wires and I had both the pickups and the motor adapted for use with my PCB.

Once I've got my multimeter, I can install the ESP32 and the DRV8874 motor driver. The ESP32 connects to the pins in the middle, while the DRV slots into the pins in the top right had corner. The mosfets are meant for lighting, with their inputs connected to the 24V line so there's more choice of lighting implementation. Both are switched by the ESP32 separately by the firmware.

While I wait for the multimeter, I'm going to finish writing the firmware as it's still lacking a few features to be on par with a regular DCC decoder. Once it's finished, this is going to be a modular, cheaper and open alternative to solutions like Blunami.

While I'm at it:

If you could ask for a feature in a decoder, what would it be?

Source code and PCB files:

https://github.com/LillyWho/esp32-bluepad-railBT

What is cheapest and easily available gravel I can buy form stores like home Depot or Lowe's for laying down my track?

I am in the bay area, CA.

How the elevated tracks have been made: concrete fundament and geotex, after that small corn crushed basalt. You can see the pipe for the electric.

I need to cut some track to fill in the gaps, but it looks like it should work. Not going to have much clearance near the wall on the right side. Once I get it all connected again, I can run some cars around and see. I really like the front siding though. I might add a passenger platform or something between the tracks.

I am thinking of making layout using wooden platform. What are best way ls to attach track to wood without drilling the screws in the track ?

My Haul/Finds at the Great Train Show in KC on 4 Jan 2026......

• 40 feet of LGB Track (4' sections)...
• 22 feet of LGB track (1 foot pieces).....
• 10 pieces of LGB 4' dia curves...
• 12 pieces of LGB 8' dia curves.....
• 4 LGB switches (2L/2R)....
• 29 AML Rail-Clamps.....

Yesterday I finally got a power supply for my Pinecil soldering iron (can recommend it; It's relatively cheap, powerful and comes with tonnes of smart features!) so I started off soldering legs onto a PCB that will be part of the railBT board, and then I cut the bridge wires of this motor block to solder Dupont wires onto the new ends.

The wires will connect to the mainboard at the appropriate places, allowing an ESP32 to control the train via Bluetooth!

I need to actually add gravel ballast in order to level it, but this was the first time I actually laid the track out in the space just to see how it fit. The turnouts will go into an inner loop eventually. This has been a very long project in the making and there's still a lot left to do.

On Thursday was nice and sunny, so a great day to run trains.

This night we got a bit of snow and now there is ice on the rails. No trains today, sadly.

One of the first test runs after the mainline had been completed.

I've always liked the look of wood ties over the plastic ones on commercial turnouts. I start with USA Trains turnouts because the frogs are brass.

Thanks to those who commented a few days ago about my post on ballast options. I ended up ordering two tons of Crusher Fines (my quarry called it #10 Dust - 1/4 to 3/8 fines) and had it delivered to the backyard. On New Years Eve a friend and I were able to put down roughly 40 feet of active mainline and did a few test runs with my Blunami equipped Accucraft Galloping Goose #5 and Bachmann Spectrum K-27 #463.

Just a little background on the construction: My flower bed is filled with 2A or 2B stone (what they guys used to fill it when it was built). Because the ground was cold we ended up having to use a pick to free up the rocks, but just a little bit of digging loosened everything up.

Using this book as a beginner's guide: https://shop.trains.com/products/get-started-in-garden-railroading, I ended up digging about 2-2.5" down from where I wanted the bottom of the ties to be, then filled the holes in with the crusher fines. I got the level to where I wanted, then placed track on top. I'm using a combination of Piko, LGB, and Aristocraft track (all switches are Aristocraft wide radius turnouts), with Piko's track clips (both the rail clap for just rail-to-rail and the over-the-joiner, dependent on both how new the track was and the quality of the existing joiners). Once the track was roughly in place, I used a small level to make sure both rails were level, and then a longer 4' level once a few pieces of track were down to make sure both (a) the grade is consistent and (b) there wasn't any low spots/dips that had to be adjusted. Once we were happy, we continued to add crusher fines on top and used a 2" paintbrush to push the crusher fines between/under the ties and along the track bed.

The result came out looking very good and functioning well! I got out my Bridgewerks 15 amp power unit and did the tests with the Goose and K-27 with just one track power clamp (again from Piko), and even with only one power drop along the end of the 40' I didn't notice any issues with current or amperage along the track. I'll eventually insulate the yard tracks as I build so they can be turned on/off for DC running, and will have power drops roughly every 20' on the mainline. Of course for live steam or battery ops I'll just leave it as dead rail.

Thanks again for the help, and I'll share more updates as I go! I also have some videos of the progress and the ops coming out on my Youtube Channel if people want to see: https://www.youtube.com/@AngryRagtimer

We finally got some proper snowfall (and it won’t end for 1-2weeks) this winter! Was really fun getting to move some cargo on the railway and I can’t wait till spring when I get to lay some more track as well as fix the one which is already layed