The Choo Choo Barn Blog

Do you want to know anything specific?

This BLOG is for answering specific questions about the Choo Choo Barn display.  They can be most anything you can think of from the history to "How do you...?"  There maybe some things we don't devulge like financial stuff and business info, but I'll try to answer most anything else that I can.  I grew up here so I pretty much know what was done and how it was done from stuff my father made back when we just got started to the present time.  I even have some photos (actually, really bad photos!) of our early layouts in our home in Strasburg.

A couple months ago, I answered an email from a guy that wanted to know what I used for the Strasburg Rail Road cars. I also have been asked where the sky ride at Dutch Wonderland came from.  Another question I get often is how do we make our creek beds?  Well, this one will be answered on the Choo Choo Barn Display blog because we're rebuilding one of them this year.

So, don't be afraid, just ask!

Pipe Layer & Backhoe

For all you readers that have visited to the Choo Choo Barn, this photo may be familiar to you.  It’s actually the corner of the display at the park, just as you are about to leave and go back into the gift shop.  There’s been an animated backhoe and non-working pipe layer there for quite a few years.  I’ve been dying to do something there and this is the year.

First, I stripped everything off the corner, including trees, grass and plaster.  Here’s a shot of what things look like while I was tearing everything out.  You can see the outline of the original backhoe animation.  It's actually ready to be removed.

Next, I took a piece of cardboard (actually a cardboard box) and made a template of what I’m going to cut out of the display.  This is so I can cut a new piece of plywood that will fit into the corner.  I also use the template to plan out what I’m going to do.  I make notes, outline the construction vehicles and generally use it as a set of plans.  I then made a trip to Lowe’s for a nice piece of ½” plywood.  While there, I bought four good straight 1X4s, six feet long to use for the new mechanism to animate the Lady Gay river boat at Dutch Wonderland.  More on that later, when I get back to it.  Using the cardboard template, I marked the plywood and made my cut.  Now all I have to do is make the animations and put them on the board.  In an early post, I said I USUALLY make all my animations on their own individual board for ease of repair in the future.  WELL, this is one of those times that I’m not going to do that.  This corner will be a module with everything attached, pretty much like when I made the new fire scene back in 2000.

That's Eric and my cousin Steve (my electrician) helping with the new fire scene back in 2000.

I got everything into my workshop and started by cutting the plywood.  Next, I got out all my “toys” and laid them all out to see what could be done.  After moving things around and looking through my junk boxes, I settled on a layout.

 

   

So now it’s time to start some animations.  The first one I made was a backhoe that will be “covering” the trench the other equipment has made.  I was going to have a dozer or bucket loader going back and forth but I’ve made a bunch of these and I wanted a little different action for a change.  I’ve seen lots of places where they use a backhoe bucket to fill a hole or trench by running the hoe bucket back and forth and allow it to push earth around.  I grabbed an RC2 #14394 Case 580 Backhoe off the wall at the Strasburg Train Shop (now you know why we opened our train shop!) along with a Norscot #55061 Cat 420D IT backhoe loader, a Norscot #55085 mini hydraulic excavator ram hoe, an Athearn #77620 John Deere Ford C series flat bed truck, a Yat Ming #94205 1995 Ford F-150 pickup, a Maisto Jeep Liberty and a Kinsmart Lincoln Navigator.  I dug out my “toy box” that has a bunch of older die cast that I’ve accumulated over the years and found a Shinsei bucket dozer to round out my scene.  And now, back to the back hoe!

I started by taking the pin out of the hoe where the hoe arm is attached to the tractor.  I drilled out the holes the pin went through large enough to allow a .072 rod with 2-56 thread on one end (DuBro #801) to move freely.  I put the hoe arm back on the tractor, put the threaded end of the rod through the tractor and the hoe from the bottom.  I then threaded two 2-56 nuts on the rod in the open space of the hoe arm and while turning the rod and holding the two nuts, I passed the rod through the other hole.  I then tighten the two nuts against the insides of the open space in the hoe arm.  This allowed the rod to turn the hoe arm back and forth.  Of course, I had to take it all apart because the hoe arm tighten up when I tried to swing the arm the one way.  Once it was all apart, I filed the top and bottom of the hoe arm that the rod went through to allow it to move more freely.  Then I put it all back together again.  Once this was done, I epoxied the hoe arm to the rod and the nuts.  Now it was time to figure out the swing.

As usual, I drew a diagram of the swing of the hoe arm, measured out from the pivot point, drew an arc and measured the point of intersection of the arc.  This will tell me how far the arm on the motor must travel.  I silver soldered a 1/8” Du-Bro collar, #139, at the end of a piece of .064 X ¼” X 12” K&S brass, #245.  I measured from the center of the hole of the Du-Bro collar, one-half the distance of the measurement of the arc.  (If the length of the arc is 2” then I placed a mark on the brass at 1”.)  I drilled a hole in the brass at that point.  This hole is drilled for a Du-Bro E/Z #121 or #490 Connector, so the drill size must correspond to the size of the pin on the connector.  I use a lot of Du-Bro items when making animations.  Du-Bro makes lots of great linkage hardware for the R/C hobby and works very well when making animations.  I’ve had some of my animations running for a couple years using Du-Bro hardware which says a lot for Du-Bro hardware.  They have thousands of hours of constant use on them.  I then made another arm, this one for the rod the hoe arm is affixed to.  Through some more drawings and calculations, I came up with the correct length of that arm, silver soldered a DuBro 1/16” collar to on end and drilled a hole in the other end for another E/Z connector.  After I soldered the DuBro collar on, I drilled through the brass arm so it will slip onto the rod that’s hooked to the hoe.  I then cut a piece of brass wire, put each end through an E/Z connector, attached the motor arm to the motor, attached a cord to the motor, clamped everything to my workbench and tested it.  Any final adjustments will come when I attach everything to the bottom of the board.

After this, I worked on the rest of the animations.  After the animations were finished and the mechanisms attached to the underside and tested, I flipped the board over and started to landscape.  First, I painted the whole board with brown craft paint.  Once this dried, it was time to start landscaping.  You’ll notice that I did the majority of the landscaping in my workshop.

Here are some photos of the landscaping in progress.  I used mostly Woodland Scenics landscaping materials.  They make the best.  The ram hoe is to be breaking up rock down in the trench so I went to my shelf and found a jar full of small rocks that I had broken up for another project a few years ago.  This was some local rock that we used on pillars under our deck.  I save a few chunks for just this purpose, proving once again that I don’t throw anything away.  I picked out a bunch of these and set them aside.  I started with the sides of the trench by piling up Structolite to make it look like the hoe operator actually did something.  I then put the backhoe back in that is to be filling the trench back up and put plaster down to make it look like he was doing something too.  The rest was just my own imagination of what things look like at a construction project like this is.  I put lots of dirt and stones around.  It’s supposed to simulate a construction site, not a backyard so there’s going to be more dirt than grass.  When this is finished, I want it to be a job that starts with clearing trees, clearing the brush, surveying, digging the trench, breaking up the rock vein that’s going through the trench, putting in a stone bed for the pipe, laying the pipe, covering the pipe with more stones and then finally backfilling the trench.  A job from A to Z!

Here are a bunch of shots while putting the board into the Choo Choo Barn display.  I’ll have a totally finished picture a little later.

Scrambler & Ferris Wheel

2008 has started off with lots of repairs and re-dos. The first two animations that need work are the Scrambler and the Ferris Wheel.

Almost all animations are made on their own individual piece of 1/2" plywood.  That way, they can be made in my home workshop, transported to the Choo Choo Barn and put in to the display with as minimal amount of work as possible.  There are a couple larger scenes that we put in over that past couple years that you can see on the old Backstage section.  It’s much easier to work on things for the layout in my workshop, where I have access to all my tools and raw materials, than it is to try to take everything to the Choo Choo Barn, find a place to work and do it uninterrupted.  As I said, I work in my workshop at home.  You can see photos of my workshop in the Backstage section, also.  Here’s the link: http://choochoobarn.typepad.com/backstage/backstage/index.html 

Here’s a photo of the hole that was left behind after I took the Scambler and the Ferris wheel out of the display:

Sometime in September, I noticed a gear and part of a shaft lying under the Scrambler and when I picked it up, I immediately knew what it was.  During the course of the past couple years, the Scrambler must not have gotten any lubrication on the bearings of the shaft the goes from the large spur gear out to the pinion that drive the seat units.  Apparently, some dirt got in there and the shaft literally got cut in two pieces, it was worn completely through.  I knew that I couldn’t fix it until we closed so the Scrambler finished out 2007 with only two of the three seat units working.  I also noticed over the summer that one of the pieces of wire that takes up the drive cable on the Ferris wheel was broken off.  With the Ferris wheel still operating, I didn’t really worry about it, knowing that I’d have to work on it over the winter also.  So, both units came out of the display as soon as we closed so I could get to work on them right away in case I had to order any additional parts.

When I got the two units home on Jan. 5, I immediately decided to work on the Scrambler first, since I figured this would take more work than the Ferris wheel.  I loosened the motor connector and gently pulled the Scrambler off its base.  I drilled a hole in a piece of scrap wood, clamped it to my workbench and fastened the Scrambler upside-down onto the piece of wood.  This allowed me to work on the underside of the animation where all the mechanics are.  I removed the shaft with the missing pinion gear and made a new one that can now be replaced more easily.  I rebuilt the other two shafts at the same time so they are all alike now.  Once this was done, I decided to disassemble the entire ride and give a good cleaning and then repaint it.  I used Spray Nine and hot water along with a good stiff brush and cleaned everything.  Now all I have to do is repaint it, reassemble it, put it back on the layout and landscape around it. 

The Ferris wheel was next.  I removed the wheel and laid it on my work table.  Luckily, when I originally made the wheel, I used superglue to hold the cable guides in place so all I had to do was heat them up with my soldering iron and pull them out with pliers.  Of course, two more broke off so I filled them down and kept on working.  When I was finished, I found the right sized drill bit and drilled out all the holes, making new holes where the wires broke.  I cut pieces of K&S brass rod and glued them back in the holes.  I'll then bent them at a 45 degree angle and cut them off so they were only about ¼” long.  Here’s a photo before I did this.

The next thing will be a good cleaning and a new paint job.  I’ll have pictures of that later but for now, I have a couple more projects to get started on.  The next one is to completely redo the backhoe and pipe layer right in side the curtain.  It will be really exciting!  Five animations and lots of figures.  Watch for my next post and tell all your friends.