Tech Bros and Orchards

It’s Christmas, so it’s time for another anachronistic, inappropriate model!

If you’ve been in the San Francisco or Silicon Valley area in the last several years, you’ve seen long chains of large, unmarked buses during rush hour on our local freeways. These buses are the private buses for tech companies. Many of the large employers provide these buses as a way for their workers to commute. They’re especially important for convincing younger employees who want to live in San Francisco to come down to suburban office parks in the Santa Clara Valley. Facebook, Apple, Genentech, Salesforce, and others effectively run their own regional bus lines. The official term is usually “corporate shuttle”, but folks generically refer to these as “Google Buses” for the first company to run the buses.

Tech workers board a shuttle bus in San Francisco. From KQED article.

The “Google buses” are an interesting operation. They provide a way to get employees into offices that might be hard to reach because of the region's notoriously bad traffic congestion, allows the companies to fill the offices beyond what the parking lots or local roads can handle, and gives employees a nicer commute experience by giving them a way to work during the commute, minimize transfers, and be able to have confidential conversations without a competitor’s employee overhearing.

The buses are also a band-aid on Silicon Valley’s suburban growth. Because many of the tech campuses were built in former industrial areas far away from existing public transportation, the buses let employers use older buildings rather than fighting to develop large campuses near existing Caltrain, light rail, or BART, and allows them to recruit employees living in suburban areas that don’t have easy access to existing public transportation. The buses also cause conflicts in neighborhoods. Residents get frustrated by the large buses on previously-quiet streets, the buses often block traffic and city buses when waiting to start a route, and there have been many reports of rents going up in San Francisco neighborhoods when a corporate shuttle route arrives. Although there's less buses around post-pandemic, the corporate shuttles are still running.

Even though the corporate shuttles are much different than your typical city bus, the problems faced by corporate shuttles are the same problems faced by public transit providers. The companies need to create departments to decide on routes, negotiate for potential stops with parking, hire contractors to operate the bus, and negotiate with the cities when they complain about the new traffic. Employees get unhappy with route changes if a particular site refuses to keep providing parking and a bus stop, complain about the infrequent runs, and yell loudly when the Internet connection on the bus isn’t perfect when crossing a mountain range. Riding the buses can teach riders a lot about running a rapid transit service - factoring in the time between arrival at the destination and time needed to get back to the start for the next run, planning capacity and driver hours when most riders want only one or two preferred times, and noticing how most of the time for the route was spent on the surfaces streets before and after the freeway miles. The corporate shuttles also need to plan for disaster - handling broken-down buses, or re-routing buses. Google's bus system melted down one Friday when a concert at the Shoreline Amphitheater clogged traffic so much that the Google buses from the first campus stop couldn’t reach the rest of campus.

It’s hard not to see the buses around here during commute hours. You’ll see the white, silver, blue, and black buses on the carpool lanes, dashing around the streets near the offices, and clustered in parking lots during the day as they wait for the trips home. The buses started out as smaller 24 seat buses back in 2005 or so, but by 2010 most of the company was using full-size (and sometime double-deck) bus coaches. Back in 2012, some San Franciscans got curious about the big white buses going down their neighborhood streets, and started mapping the buses. They ended up drawing an unauthorized route map of the buses used by the different companies.

I spent several years working for one of those Silicon Valley tech companies with a corporate shuttle system, and most of my commutes to and from work was on a “Google Bus”. For the bus spotters among you, most of the routes I was on had the 2012-vintage Van Hool buses that a certain tech company had made to order, mostly single level but I occasionally was on routes served by the double-deck buses. Other routes and companies used the Prevost or even the Turkish-made Temsa. (All three companies are European; I’m sad that the Bay Area’s own Gillig never got into the Google bus business.) When my parents came to a “Bring your parents to work” event one year, they got to tool around between my company’s buildings on one of those same Google buses that I rode every day.

But, of course, I model the 1930’s, so a 2010-era bus carrying tech bros to former orchards and truck farm land in Mountain View isn’t quite my setting.

I’d known there were folks making model buses, but I didn’t know there were folks making accurate modern buses until YouTuber Interurban Era showed off one of Iconic Replica’s 1960’s era Flxable bus in Alameda County’s own A/C Transit colors. I’d seen these buses whenever we went to visit grandparents, so the models caught my interest. “I wonder if they have more modern buses?”

Yup. Iconic Replicas made models of Prevost coaches in HO in a variety of paint schemes, as well as the two level Van Hool buses. The buses aren’t perfect for a rivet counter; the single-level coaches lack the second exit door halfway down the sides seen on most corporate shuttles, and the models mostly tend to be available in eye-catching paint schemes. It looks like the company has made white buses occasionally, but they’re collectible and rare. They certainly haven't done the other colors often seen on Facebook and Apple shuttles.

Once I saw the models, I knew the layout needed some Google buses, regardless of how anachronistic they are.

I managed to find a pair of these models - the Prevost model in a Greyhound paint scheme, and a double-deck in a bright green “Tornado” paint scheme, and decided I’d try to convert these to Google buses.

The first challenge was disassembling. For the single-level model, there were screws on the bottom, and the clear plastic used for windows hinted that the model was actually a lower metal chassis with the upper half printed onto clear plastic. Unscrewing the screws wasn’t enough; it required a little bit of force to pull the two halves apart. The disassembled photo shows the latches holding the clear window section into the body.

Next challenge: how would I paint these? I tried several ways to remove the paint (alcohol, paint thinner, Dio-sol) and none moved any of the factory paint. I considered getting some real paint stripper and “doing the job right”, but decided this was a silly enough project that perfection wasn’t essential. I ended up masking both the chassis and windows carefully, primed with Tamiya primer, and painted with a gloss white from a Testor’s rattle can.

The final step was detailing. Most of the Google buses you see are stark white with a small reporting marks on the right side near the front door. (One common is "WEDRIVEU", referring to the contractor operating many of the buses.) I'd thought of pulling out the inkjet printer decal paper to make some custom, tiny decals, but decided anything I'd print wouldn't be readable. Instead, I grabbed some random text from a sheet of freight car info decals. Some black plastic parts (cargo hatches) break the monotony. I ended up dotting black paint on the model as appropriate, put some orange dots on the running lights I’d painted over, and called it a day. My spray can paint job didn’t hit the nose of the bus, so there’s still a Greyhound logo if you look carefully. I also couldn’t figure out how to strip the paint on the clear plastic, so my bus is going to “NEW YORK NY” instead of the more appropriate and cryptic “MPK” (Facebook) or “MTV” (Google). That's going to be a long commute from Campbell!

My Google Bus isn't my best modeling, but it was a fun project over Christmas. It's also reflects nicely on how Silicon Valley's changed from the 1930's to modern day, and highlights one of the iconic scenes seen in modern day Silicon Valley. I've still got a double-deck bus to do, but need to figure out how to strip the paint off the clear plastic safely first.

I’ll be interested to see whether I’ve modeled a Santa Clara valley detail which is just a reminder of the busy 2010’s, or a sight that future kids will immediately recognize. Although the corporate shuttles have returned to the Silicon Valley, they’re not to the volume of Before Times. Most of the tech companies are having trouble getting employees away from working-from-home and back into the crowded offices. There have also been plans to move tech offices closer to traditional public transportation. Former shopping centers near Sunnyvale’s train station were torn down and converted to office towers for tech companies. Facebook put in considerable effort to help rebuild the Dumbarton railroad bridge from Redwood City to Newark. They’d hoped the line could bring employees from San Francisco straight to their offices via the existing Caltrain line, or bring employees from Pleasanton, Newark, and Fremont across the bay. Google has been working actively on their Downton West plan for West San Jose, buying up properties and preparing for several blocks of offices near the Caltrain station. If I was redoing my layout to model 2020, I’d need to put in some Google office towers. All those projects could allow employees to use existing public transit, and make the Google Buses disappear just like the orchards did.

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Got suggestion on how to strip the paint off Iconic Replicas models? Add a note in the comments!

Bring in the Photographers!

Full disclosure: all photos here are mine documenting the weekend, not the shots the pro guys made.

Well, that was an interesting weekend. As part of preparations for the NMRA 2021 National Convention, Rails by the Bay, I got a chance to get my layout photographed for articles about the convention. Model railroading’s a lone wolf hobby for me, so I’ve never had anyone else doing serious photos of the layout. I instead got to sit and see how others thought of my layout, and how they worked to get great photos. I also changed a bit how I think about the layout as a result.

So let’s talk about aiming for good photos in terms of planning, preparation, and the photos.

If model railroading taught me anything, it taught me project management. Building a model railroad always involves a long effort to build something significant: deciding what to build, sequencing all the work, rolling with the voluntary and involuntary changes, and ending up with a completed model railroad. I found out about the photo sessions at the beginning of the year, and realized I had some time to finish a couple scenes that had been lingering. I used my usual tricks for deciding what to figure out what to do: fix what annoyed me the most, and fix what I was in the mood for.

Two projects won. First, long suffering Glenwood’s scenery finally got redone. I’ve written a bit about that previously, but to recap: it has the potential for an eye catching scene, the prototypical curve makes it easy to stage reproductions of historical photos, and who doesn’t like model trains in mountain scenery? I’d first ripped out the old scenery and fixed some notoriously unreliable trackage near and in the summit tunnel. I redid the hills and Glenwood Highway to better match the terrain. I then covered the area in trees. Normally, I try to build trees from Woodland Scenics kits, but this time I bought from Grand Central Gems at a recent train show, and had a redwood forest ready in days. I ballasted track, detailed the former turntable pit, and built a quick reproduction of the Glenwood station from styrene. (I’ll talk more about the station another time.). Glenwood needed a water tank, so I quickly grabbed one of the venerable Atlas kits and put it into service.

By the time the scene was done, COVID-19 had hit and the original deadline for the work - the Prorail operating event had been cancelled. We rescheduled the photoshoot for August, which gave me motivation for another project. This time, I decided to go after downtown Campbell. The Campbell scene’s always been a focal point for the layout, but the scenery and structures have been half-done for years. I’d built the station model years ago and scenicked the station side of the tracks. However, the opposite side of the tracks was still temporary buildings and little scenery. That included downtown Campbell, Sunsweet, the Hyde Cannery, and Ainsley cannery. This area provided some great scenes - space to photograph long trains, switching action, and lots of canneries. I started on a big push a couple months back to redo everything. For downtown Campbell, I redid the road and building bases, and started trying to pull all together.

I’d already done four of the five buildings for the downtown Campbell Ave., but had held off on the most impressive of the group - the Growers National Bank building that had been downgraded to the local movie theater by the 1930’s. (The building still exists in 2020, though I think they're still fighting about whether to allow it to become a night club.) I’d made a couple attempts at starting the bank, finding a suitably regal plastic model, but the space on the layout was tiny - only about twenty feet wide - and the model wouldn’t fit. Unable to do things perfectly, I just gave up and decided I’d do the model another day.

That day finally came as I cleaned up Campbell Ave. I tossed out my ideas of a "perfect" model and decided to just start building and see what turned up. Like the Dutch signal box, I finally got annoyed enough to just start building. Like that model, I used styrene sheet primarily. Again, large dimension styrene rod worked really well - the 2 foot inset for the doorway was simply 0.250 styrene bar, simplifying the construction. A leftover door and window served for entry. I used brick sheet for the walls; the detail along the roofline were strips of board-and-batten siding standing in for carved stone. I crafted the theater sign from styrene sheet. I would have liked to 3d print it to get the lettering perfect, but my older SketchUp software doesn’t seem to want to render 3d characters.

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Campbell Theater

Bank of Camera Close-up

With Campbell Ave. in, and the road glued down, my next project was fixing the Ainsley Cannery. The Ainsley site’s had a posterboard mockup ever since the layout was built; I still remember Byron Henderson complimenting me during an early operating session because the freight door spacing matched my 40 foot freight cars. Back in 2006, I had a great solution for the cannery - I’d found a YesterYear Models “fruit packing house” - actually a former Sunkist packing house from Riverside, California. The box has been gathering dust ever since as I waited for just the right inspiration to use it for the cannery. This was finally the time to pull the kit out of storage. The overall shape of the buildings are similar - both were a row of wooden barn-like buildings. Like Sunkist, the Ainsley cannery had an office in the end closes to Campbell Ave, and a loading dock dominating the front of the building. As a result, the rough arrangements of windows and doors would work fine as-is. One big difference was that Sunkist’s building had two joined wooden sheds, while the Ainsley cannery had two corrugated iron sheds and two wooden sheds in a line; historic accuracy went out the window in order to get a "good enough" model done as I ignored the corrugated iron sheds. I ended up cutting the Sunkist building in half, and using both ends side-to-side, and ignoring the different materials in the various sheds.

The Drew Cannery, formerly Ainsley

Preparation

All that major work took me up to last week. However, I still hadn’t done much of the preparation work, so I kicked into a big cleanup mode. Our photographers recommended doing a serious cleaning so extraneous dust or debris visible on photos. I also got rid of all the little problems I'd ignored over the years. Some was operating session damage - having folks handle models is always going to trigger a bit of damage. I fixed broken signs and bumped trees, repaired damaged cars, fixed scratched paint or bent grab irons, and filled in ballast holes triggered by past cleanups. I dusted off a set of “good cars”, and stashed away cars that were the wrong era or had visible damage. I fixed long-lingering projects -holes in scenery I’d never addressed, half done patches, and rough surfaces. Some were really quick - I’d never patched scenery when I’d rearranged the Wrights tunnel. Some were larger, such as finishing half-done spackling in the Meridian Road scene.

Most of the preparation work was the same I’d do for an operating session. For operating sessions, I’d also be worrying about reliability, cleaning car and locomotive wheels, testing that engines were working fine, testing couplers and trucks. None of that sort of work mattered much here - the trains would be stationary in the pictures. I was pretty relieved not to be doing a serious cleaning. Serious cleaning's always a huge time sink, and I always want to over-prepare - I’m always worried before operating sessions whether a balky engine or dirty track will make for an unpleasant operating experience.

Another great advantage of photos is that locomotives don't need to run well. The real Vasona Branch likely had small 0-6-0s switching the canneries. On my model, larger 2-8-0 locomotives instead get the job. I really like the little 0-6-0s, but can never use them for operations. They tend to be balky runners and stall way too easily. When operators are focusing on how to solve a switching puzzle, the last thing they want to do is deal with a stalling or broken locomotive; it interrupts the illusion of working on the railroad, and usually ends up with waiting for the layout owner to clean track, fix the engine, or provide another locomotive. With photos, however, a balky or stationary locomotive isn't a bad thing, for the trains don't need to move in a good photograph. I cleaned one of the rarely-used 0-6-0s, and it got a few chances to be on center stage. To be fair, it's still good to have working locomotives if only to quickly pull cars around the layout to a new photo site, but a photo session removes a lot of the worry of mechanical problems.

While some tasks such as wheel-cleaning and locomotive tuning don’t make sense for photos, other tasks not needed before operating sessions were needed. I’m usually a bit hesitant about putting detail on the layout. It’ll often get damaged during operating sessions. I’ve hoarded some details so they’re available when I need to fill in a scene to be photographed. The layout hasn’t always been at a stage where it’s ready for detail.

But hey, if the layout’s going to get photographed for real, this is the time for all that detail. I pulled out my box of various details I’ve hoarded during my time in the hobby. Every Woodland Scenics pallet I’d ever gotten from a detail kit went on the layout. Extra parts from a Fine Scales Miniature kit that couldn’t handle more crowding. All the 3d printed boxes, bags, lugs, and can stacks I’d printed went on any available loading dock. I plopped down figures where they were appropriate. I took a pair of 3d printed flagmans shanties and phone booths and placed them wherever they’d fit. I took the large fruit bins from the YesterYear kit and made a box yard for Del Monte #3, just as can be seen in photographs.

I also put in a bunch of telegraph poles along the right-of-way. I’ve had these on the layout before; they tend to get a lot of abuse, but they’re eye-catching. This time, I spent an evening assembling and painting a set of telegraph and power poles from Rix Products and Atlas. I also painted them a bit more carefully than before. Previously, I’d just painted the telegraph poles a quick brown and added a bit of green for insulators. This time, I made the colors stronger than last time - darker posts, silvery supports, green insulators. In place on the layout, they really catch the eye. For the Meridian Road scene, I also made a point of doing a power/telephone line paralleling the road which helps to make the scene even more realistic.

And thanks to some crazy times at work, I crammed a bunch of this work into the last week, and into a mad three days. We were also in the middle of a serious heat wave here in San Jose, so the hardest part was avoiding heat stroke in the garage, but on the plus side the matte medium dried really, really fast. The roof of the Ainsley cannery got painted just as soon as the glue holding the paper tarpaper on appeared to stick. I laid ballast in a bunch of places that had never been ballasted, and managed to paint and clean the rail in time. I decorated new scenes - bushes hiding a farmhouse along Meridian Ave, a path to the bathroom around the edge of the Rio Grande gas station, and a row of posts to keep parked cars away from the Campbell depot. I was bouncing back and forth between touching up scenery, weathering cars, and touching up structures. When I was checking old photos to get the sign on the Ainsley cannery declaring it to now be the Drew Cannery, I noticed a speed limit sign, and quickly printed up several of those to control the HO scofflaws. I was still touching up ballast and fabricating a set of stairs for the Glenwood depot a half hour before the photo session.

I never completely believed those model railroad magazine articles where someone built a well-detailed layout in a year or two. I couldn't imagine they had time to decide on models, do the construction necessary, or add the details. This week's mad rush convinced me it was possible. All I needed was some definite ideas of what should be built, an urgent deadline, a bit of wiggle-room on what counted as "good enough", some well-stocked supplies, and way too much manic energy.

And the Photographers Arrive

Dan and Doug, the photographers, were spending several days just photographing layouts in the Bay Area. They've also done this before for previous conventions and other layouts, and came fully prepared. Although I've read about model photography in magazines, this was my first chance to see pros in action.

They came prepared: lights, power cords, and various secret photographer paraphenalia. The extension cords helped when the breaker blew on the garage circuit - our 1960's house wasn't designed for this kind of model railroad lighting, and we quickly found another circuit to share the load.

Lighting the whole length of the layout

Dan also had lots of cool tricks so he could get into the scene with his SLR - mirrors to capture scenes the camera couldn't reach, beanbags to hold the camera steady on the layout, high tripod for the upper level photos.

And they took photos different from me, too. Some of that was expected: they visited the Vasona Branch for only a couple hours, so they were very careful to make their plan of shots, then slowly move around the layout to hit each.

Big difference number one from my attempts at model photography: they bring in lots of light. The Vasona Branch has a mix of lighting: the garage lights are cool white fluorescent strips, but I've got various cool white LEDs and warm white fluorescent fixtures lighting the lower deck. I'll usually just use the existing lighting when I take photos; if I'm really taking care, I might borrow a couple bright lights from one source or another. As a result, my photos often have weird colors if a scene has a mix of LED and fluorescent lights. Dan and Doug used two or three photo lamps. Their lights quickly overpower any layout lighting. They also didn't seem to worry about the narrow space between decks - bounce light off objects was enough to light the scene. Their biggest concern seemed to be getting the scene evenly lit, and avoiding shadows on the backdrop. In places where they couldn't get lights, they assumed they could photoshop in some sky into the black background of the garage door.

Dan and Doug use mirrors and a hand-held photo light to capture a train approaching Alma station.

Big difference number 2: The big surprises for me was just seeing what caught their attention. I haven't seen their photos yet, but they understandably looked for interactions between trains and the world. Signals were a common tool to add some action, as were road crossings. My best guess is that model photos need the extra busy-ness and action, and really need some focal point other than the train. The Vasona Branch's semaphore signals were common places for photos. (That was also true on the prototype; one real photo that inspired me is a 1920 photo of a passenger train coming into Glenwood. That photographer, like Dan, made sure to catch the train as it "split the semaphores".

SP Train 84, coming out of the tunnel at Glenwood

I also heard a bunch of interest about the farmhouse and orchard sitting in the blob where the tracks turn from San Jose to Campbell. This scene's always been half done and cluttered - details not glued down, ground not quite sloping correctly, the orchard too small to be realistic. I'd done a big cleanup of the scene in preparation for the photos - pulled out details, removed structures, and generally made it innocuous. But interest kept drifting back towards the farmhouse and barn. I'd started thinking about details as I was doing cleanup; I'd added a hedge to protect the farmhouse from the busier road. But the interest makes me think I should more seriously plan the scene out.

Dan and Doug also focused on the large details - freight cars and car models - rather than smaller details - not surprising because of the short time. They did spot one broken crossbuck that would have detracted from the scene; we pulled it out.

And that was pretty much it; they got ten good photos, and moved onto the next layout. I got to stare at the layout for a while; it's always fun to see the layout when it's been cleaned up for an open house or an operating session, and doubly-good when all the usual clutter in the garage has been relocated. Even though I'd crammed a bunch to get the layout in shape, I was still excited enough at seeing the layout in good shape that I finished off a couple projects that hadn't been done in time, replacing a remaining broken telephone pole, putting in some gravel around the Ainsley cannery, and fixing up the famous black walnut tree that sat at the start of Campbell Ave.

What did the photos show? I've seen the first photos, and they're great - Dan uses Helicon to combine photos taken at different focal lengths to get more depth of field. Looking at the photos, I see a few things to do differently.

• I'm vertically challenged. In a few of the photos, it's obvious I've been less than good at making sure everything's standing up straight. They're close, but as soon as several objects are in a photo: semaphores, building, water tank, telephone poles - it's obvious each has a slightly different idea what "up" is. I'll need to work on this, both ongoing, and fixing the more obvious offenders before I next take photos.
• Prepare for the story. I'd made sure to have cars set up in sample trains, but hadn't been good about choosing cars or trains to illustrate themes I'd want in an article about the layout. For example, large industries and lots of indistinguishable red boxcars is a big part of my layout, but I neglected to have a switcher ready at Plant 51, and also didn't make sure that the cars there were the uninteresting ones. I need to sketch out the story I want to tell beforehand, and share it with the folks doing photography.

What's next? The layout's clean and in good shape, and I'm excited to do some more building. Finishing Campbell is an obvious next step: the Hyde Cannery buildings are screaming out to be build. I'd held off on building the Campbell Theater and Ainsley Cannery because I wanted to make sure I did them right. However, my quick-and-dirty building rush seemed to work with these. Maybe I should just go build Hyde and see what happens?

The orchard scene's another obvious project.

Once both of those are done, there's obvious holes to fill. One advantage of cleaning the layout was that I got rid of all the building placed on the layout "temporarily" for lack of better space - a couple of farmhouses that never found locations, a drive-in market built for fun, a bunch of cars that needed repair. Now that the layout's opened up, I'm reminded that the area between Campbell and Vasona Junction is still completely empty. The Del Monte Plant #3 property's also still occupied only by foamcore buildings. There's also a stretch of bare plaster up on the upper deck near Alma. I'll need to take a pass on any of these scenes going forward.

If the last week's any indication, I know how to get those scenes done quickly: lock down my idea of the scene, build something that's "good enough" rather than waiting for perfection, and pull a bunch of all-nighters during a heat-wave.

Model Railroads and Technical Debt

Model railroading has taught me a lot. I can identify solvents by smell… and get nostalgic when I smell Dio-sol or Dullcoat. I learned how to repair mechanical devices, and convinced someone I might be a keeper when I fixed her CD player. Most importantly, I learned how to be kind to my future self, because I try to remember to make it easy to fix stuff on the model railroad in one year… or in ten years.

That’s a common lesson for model railroaders. Model railroads are long-term, large projects. The model railroad we build is going to last for several years, and we’re going to be expanding and repairing it along the way. The design and implementation choices we make years before will curse us years later. One badly placed switch machine is going to leave us with a sore back every time we repair it. Each time we cut corners wiring, we’re just forcing future-us to try to figure why that blue wire’s hanging loose, or remembering the wire color we used when we didn’t have black wire available. Every bit of track we can’t reach will be our bane every time a locomotive stalls or the track needs cleaning. Every model railroader has that moment of “what was this purple wire for, and where does it go?” early on in the hobby. After that we realize the benefit of using standard colors for wires, providing good access both to the track and to the mechanical and electrical parts below the layouts, the importance of labelling connectors and writing down designs - doing anything we can to avoid past-us making life difficult for future-us.

It turns out that’s a pretty useful skill in the real world, too.

I got to move some equipment I’m running into a new computer room the week before last. After I’d finished wiring it up, I asked one of the IT guys for help with something else. When he came over, he immediately commented on the state of the rack. “Wow, you’re using cable ties. And your wiring is neat - not like that other engineering rack.” He showed me the proper way to cable tie wire loops was with two ties, but he seemed pretty impressed that a software engineer was trying to keep wiring neat. The other rack, which I’d just moved my stuff from, had so many cables coming out the back that I couldn’t reach in to disconnect my machines. To be fair, the other folks in the rack were reconfiguring their stuff daily, and had a lot of connections to support; I was setting mine up for a single, long-term configuration with a much simpler configuration. Google’s original “cork board” server racks - now in the Smithsonian - highlight that you can be pretty successful even with messy wiring.

But model-railroader me was also wiring that equipment in the same way I’d want to wire the model railroad. I remembered the messy wiring on my first model railroad, and the pain I caused future-me. As a result, I made sure to steal cable ties from random benches, chose different colors for all my different cables, and neatly routed the wiring so I could get to the equipment and track down cable paths. Future-me (or future team-mate reaching in that same rack) should have an easier time, all thanks to past-me placing switch machines in inaccessible chambers between sheets of plywood, or tracking down intermittent shorts when teenage-me was splicing together wires with a couple of twists and bit of masking tape for insulation.

We worry about the short-cuts in computer programming just as we do in model railroading or in physical engineering. It’s become a popular topic in software engineering research as “technical debt” - delayed cleanup or quick-and-dirty implementations that complicate or block future changes. There’s even mini-conferences on the topic with research papers titles like “How do Software Practitioners Discount the Future?” Real engineering has technical debt too - think how commuter rail choosing to use low-level platforms (boarding at ground level) might never be able to move to high-level platforms (level surface from platform to passenger car) because of the problems transitioning from one to another. However, software tends to have more of these kinds of problems because everything’s up for grabs in software - we can build stuff any way we want, we don’t necessarily have conventions about how to do common tasks, and it’s often difficult to see those shortcuts from the outside. It’s common to tie together two bits of software with the ugliest, most fragile hack “that’s only needed temporarily”, just as I used alligator clips to temporarily tie together the power for two strips of LED lighting today. That’s less common in more traditional engineering disciplines; as far as I know, petroleum engineers never say “Joe, you sure you want to use cardboard tubes to join those two parts of the refinery while you’re testing?” (If you want a more nuanced argument about technical debt in software, read Kellan Elliot-McCrea’s argument that the term technical debt is mixing up a whole bunch of reasons why we have problems maintaining the things we build.

My current job involves writing tools to help software engineers build better programs: programs to test that the software can be built correctly, runs correctly, and has the performance we expect. Because our team has to have our infrastructure ready so that everyone else can make progress, that means we’re often building stuff as fast as we can, cutting occasional corners, and incurring technical debt so everyone else can build the things we sell. I occasionally take the same shortcuts in model railroading. Occasionally I route wires in ways that’ll make it harder to track down problems, or I’ll avoid adding a terminal strip to save on wire but minimize testing or change possibilities, or I’ll leave a switch machine near a joist where I can’t easily get to it. It’s ok in moderation, and it helps me make progress on the bigger task of building and completing the model railroad I want to build. I’ve been describing technical debt for our tools as us not trying to make future-us suffer too much, but acknowledging that some of our choices will make future-us suffer a little bit. “In ten years, we want to be laughing about the short-cuts we took and the pain it caused, not crying about a shortcut that kept us from meeting our real goals.”

That’s not a bad rule for the model railroad, too. As I was cutting in a new circuit for some LED lights for the lower deck, I wasn’t perfectly happy with how I was routing the wires, but I wanted to get everything completed and back together again tonight because keeping everything running is also a good engineering goal. And with luck, I won’t remember tonight’s short cut; if I do, I’m certain I’ll be laughing about the short cut in a few years once all the fluorescent lights are replaced by LEDs.

3d Printing in Model Railroading: The New Normal

Corey's D&RGW steel gondolas

A couple months ago, I shared my experiences selling 3d printed freight cars made in my garage. One of the first points in my talk was "you’re going to see lots more folks making kits this way in coming years."

And of course, we do see more folks making cars this way. Corey Bonsall recently told me about his drop-bottom-gondolas that he’s making on a Form 2 Printer. Corey’s model is the uncommon 42 and 46 foot GS gondola used by the Rio Grande and Utah Coal Route. It’s an uncommon prototype needed by D&RGW modelers. As I found with the Hart cars, gondolas are well-suited to 3d printing because of the complicated mechanisms and frames, need for inside-and-outside detail, smaller cross-section.

Corey is selling his models on eBay - $95 for a pair, which after my experiences seems like quite a decent price considering the labor involved.

Corey also detailed how he prints the models on the Formlabs discussion board. He made some different tradeoffs than I did. Corey 3d printed solid grab irons and steps rather than holes for wire grab irons. I'd gone with wire grab irons to match the resin models I've made; I love the detail, but I find drilling all the holes and placing the wires takes way too long. Corey's models shows quite acceptable detail, and also shows he added more detail than just a featureless bar. Corey also oriented the model for printing in a more clever way. He managed to tilt the model and add enough support structures to print the model in a single piece, with good detail inside and out. He widened the center channel for weight. Corey not only suggested usual lead weights, but pointed out that 3/16” tungsten cubes are pricey but available (about $6 / ounce as Pinewood Derby weights, but I assume there's cheaper sources. They're 1.7x the density of lead!)

These cars appear close to the SP’s G-50-9 series gondolas that Ulrich’s metal kits were based on. The Ulrich kits are still around, but like a lot of 1960’s models are getting scarcer. It would be neat to have another alternative for another of the SP’s iconic gondolas.

Meanwhile, I'm keeping my eyes peeled to see which other 3d printer owners decide to get into the model railroad manufacturing game.

Maker Faire in San Mateo: This Weekend!

If you're within driving distance of the San Francisco Bay Area, don't forget that the Bay Area Maker Faire is at the San Mateo Fairgrounds this weekend (May 19-21). Billed as the "world's largest show and tell", it's a huge, amazing World's Fair of crafty entertainment: multiple buildings full of folks showing off garage projects, manufacturers showing off the latest in electronics and tools, and tons of wacky and just plain interesting creations. I'd held off going for years because I wanted to spend the time on my own projects... but I finally went last year and found it quite amazing.

More importantly - for us as model railroaders - it's a gathering for our people. Much of Maker Faire is non-commercial; it has normal people showing off the things they've made with electronics (belly dancing outfit with an Arduino), machined metal, crazy Rube Goldberg devices (garage-sized spirograph that draws on the pavement with chalk), ham radio folks building high speed data networks, and parents helping kids understand biology by building cells out of Fimo clay.

And then there's all the crazy stuff that comes straight from Burning Man, like the Live Action Mousetrap game (with 5,000 lb safe crushing a car at the end), strangely lit art projects filling the darkened main hall, blacksmithing classes, oddly-shaped cars and conveyances, and sculptures shooting twenty foot high flames into the air.

More importantly, if you've had any questions whether the younger generation wants to make things, Maker Faire will convince you that the younger generation not only wants to build stuff with their hands, but is building some pretty amazing things. You'll see it both in the sheer number of kids watching and participating, and in the various clubs, and robot leagues, and craft projects that encouraging more kids to build things. Many booths are even interactive, allowing kids (and adults) to make something right there as a first step towards filling a garage with large metalworking tools.

Note that Maker Faire takes over most of the parking lots at the San Mateo fairgrounds, and the crowds are huge. Plan to either park at satellite lots and take shuttle buses to the fairgrounds, or take Caltrain to the show. Buy the tickets in advance, and bring comfortable shoes and a sense of wonder.

Details, details...

Now, if all that description didn't convince you to go, how about a quick run-down of what I saw last year, and what Maker Faire says about how we ought to be promoting our hobby?

Make Things, Share Things

Like I said, these are our people - many of the folks demonstrating at Maker Faire (or attending Maker Faire) have the same love of building things with their hands that we as model railroaders do. One maker space (shared shop and club) in Sacramento, for example, loved the idea of forming a team and working through a challenge. They built a spaceship bridge with multiple computer displays, and they'd have evening "operating sessions" where four people would work through some challenge set up by another - one person on navigation, another on engineering, weapons, life support, and someone sitting in Captain Kirk's chair. As a fan of model railroad operations, I can understand exactly what buzz they got out of a team co-operatively pulling through a problem.

Other booths were full of all the vendors selling Arduino, Raspberry Pis, and all sorts of other electronics that can run model railroad signals, or create a "working" car scale. I brought home a little Wi-Fi enabled microprocessor for a yet-to-be determined project on the layout. Other folks sold little boards that could be used to build a handheld device that could communicate with a cell phone over Bluetooth - just the right innards to make my own wireless throttle. Others showed off snap-together electronics kits to help kids get interested in electricity, or robots, or programming.

The folks selling all the modern shop tools were also there, with multiple 3d printer companies, laser cutters, huge CNC cutters that could carve full sheets of plywood at a time (now that would speed up benchwork!) For me, I found it great to compare the different printers and talk with the manufacturers. For folks less familiar with the different kinds of 3d printers and laser cutters, Maker Faire was the perfect way to see these machines in action, understand how they really worked, and what the resulting parts looked like.

There were also the crazy inventors that reminded me of a lot of my model railroader friends - folks making home-brew electronics for monitoring your car's diagnostics port, or some guys who had made their own pick-and-place machine for doing garage manufacturing of electronics.

We've all been enjoying many of the perks from the same electronics crowd in model railroading. In our local group, I know folks who are doing small-scale electronics manufacturing, or building CTC panels run off some of these bits of electronics. We're all quite happy about our garage manufacturers using those laser cutters to make finely detailed brick or designing kits for Southern Pacific stations. The crowd at Maker Faire are the same sorts of folks.

One Interest, but a Bunch of Directions to Explore

There's also the kindred spirits from near and far. This year, like last year, the Bay Area Garden Railway Society will be showing off large-scale live-steam locomotives. The historians and collectors were also represented, with the Computer History Museum bringing many 1970's era personal computers for anyone to come and try programming. For all of you who got a start programming on BASIC on a TRS-80 or Apple II back in 1977, getting to type "10 PRINT "HELLO"; 20 GOTO 10" can bring back some awfully fond memories. The Computer History Museum's larger projects have a lot more in common with railroad museums; Computer History Museum's restoration and operation of a 1950's IBM punch card-based computer probably has many of the same restoration stories as the folks getting an SD-9 running again... only with slightly lower amperages, and less grease.

Several ham radio clubs also showed up last year. I'm a little ashamed to say my mental image of ham radio operators is a bunch of guys tapping out morse code and trying to contact folks halfway around the world.

Their huge booth did match the stereotype a bit; they were offering ham radio license prep *and* license exams in the booth. But they also described themselves as "Not Your Grandfather's Ham Radio". The members pointed out that ham radio was a hobby for folks that liked building, experimenting with, and sharing technical projects that involved radio. These days, a ham radio operator is much more likely to be experimenting with high-speed Internet over radio than crowing about contacting a fellow operator in Russia.

I like that message. "We want to make things. Our hobby gives us a structure to figure out what to build next, past projects to build on and expand, and a community that will encourage and inspire us." Model railroading's a lot like that. We all have some interest in railroads, of course, but we all have our own reasons for being in the hobby: constructing models, experimenting with electronics, learning about geology, historical and architectural research, photography, or motors and mechanical engineering. We've got long-lived projects like our home layout or our particular subject interest that keeps us going. We've got a bunch of like-minded friends who understand our fascination with a particular locomotive, or freight car, or long-gone industry.

Like I said, Maker Faire is our people.

Be Interactive.

Maker Faire booths are often interactive; the goal isn't to get you watching someone doing something, but for you to do it as well. A friend from Apple, for instance, made a human-sized spirograph from bike parts, conduit, 3d printed parts, a scooter, and chalk. He sets it up outside one of the halls, and lets the kids ride around on the scooter while drawing patterns on the concrete. Like the Exploratorium, the infamously hands-on museum in San Francisco, Maker Faire is all about letting people touch, try, and make.

A booth last year was a bit more involved; they wanted to teach kids about the parts of a human cell, so they brought some Fimo clay and showed kids how to make little models of the cell by forming all the different bits in a multi-colored log. Slice the log apart, and the kid has a bunch of little clay cells. For a $5 donation, they'd go through the project with your child and send her home with a little reminder that biology was fun.

The fiber arts community went all-in, with a huge booth area and many volunteers teaching anyone interested how to crochet or knit. They even brought lots of spare knitting needles, crochet hooks, and yarn so folks could be sent home with a just-started project and the tools to complete it.

With model railroading, we're often not good at that kind of interaction and teaching. We can have a train show, but kids don't often get a chance to touch the models, let alone try building something themselves. Years ago, I remember a Canadian model railway show where one club had several modelers constructing models right there on the show floor, answering questions about the hobby, materials, and techniques the whole time. I loved it - both the chance to see how someone else models, and the chance to share tips while motioning with the specific model and tools. The modeling classes at model railroad conventions show how this interaction can draw people into the hobby more. I'd love it if we could find ways to introduce kids to model railroading - perhaps making a first freight car, or switching freight cars on a Timesaver (the PCR division's timesaver got me interested in switching as a teenager), or getting to make a quick cardboard building or hillside.

The breadth of Maker Faire is also stunning. I'd go from 3d printing or weaving projects from college art students, to a glowing robotic giraffe from Burning Man to scientists from Oak Ridge National Labs answering any and all science questions while making a supercomputer out of cheap Raspberry Pi computers. There was an entire section on living off the grid, gardening, and structures - I didn't even make dent that section last year.

And again, everyone was working to make their exhibits interactive. The Crucible, a shared shop for blacksmithing and metal arts, was doing their usual "shoot flames twenty feet in the air" schtick, but was also demonstrating blacksmithing, and letting kids paint and fire clay pots.

Next door, the civil engineering students from San Jose State were showing off their prototype for a monorail-like city transportation system. At a quarter scale, it must have taken several trucks to bring the vehicles, track, and supports, but they had it running automatically under computer control. Better yet, the students could talk about what they'd learned as they fabricated the rails and support, coded the computer controls to keep cars from crashing into each other, and worked through the economics. The students were obviously having a blast describing their work, even as the Crucible was setting off blasts of propane and flames forty feet away - with noticeable heat.

About Model Railroading

Honestly, I think model railroaders ought to be better-represented at events like this Maker Faire. The folks attending are our folks: interested in building stuff, in experimenting, in learning skills, and in sharing what they've learned with others. Maker Faire also shows the breadth of all the tinkerers and builders in society, from experimenting with lasers or modern computers to those who want to play around with tintype photography or blacksmithing, or the jury-rigged magic of the giant spirograph and live-action Mousetrap game. The focus on interaction - on letting kids and adults touch, and ask questions, and get a chance to see what the hobby is all about - seems essential to introducing new people to the hobby. Not everyone at Maker Faire might be interested in railroads. Those twenty-something kids who make the spaceship console, as much as they might be great candidates for yard master on a few model railroads I can think of, might never have caught the railroad bug. But if I brought out an operating layout of a yard and gave them a throttle, I suspect they'd appreciate the hobby and the games we play with model railroad operation.

How should our hobby interact with something like the Maker Faire? I don't think we need the NMRA at a table handing out brochures; we need to be interactive. We need to bring models, the people building models, and people operating trains. A couple friends and I talked a bit about an exhibit for the smaller Maker Faire run in San Jose every September. We thought about setting up a booth that could show the variety of directions in model railroading. We could bring some modules to show trains in operation, and talk about the historic research for Dave's model of the Santa Fe ferry slip in San Francisco. We could bring electronics, and talk about how John or Chuck built their CTC panels, and how the railroads kept trains from crashing into each other. We could build models with paper or styrene, give kids a paper building to cut out, put on the layout, and later take home. We could set up a timesaver to explain switching problems, and a loop of track so kids could handle a model train and get a sense for the fun of trains.

We never got around to that plan, but I think the idea is sound: share our hobby, share the fun of building things, and remind kids that they can make things too.

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Again, the San Mateo Maker's Faire is May 19-21, 2017 at the San Mateo County Fairgrounds, just south of San Francisco. The San Mateo Maker's Faire is one of the largest in the country, if not the world - think of it as the equivalent of the huge Springfield, Massachusetts model railroad meet for the Maker community. If you're not local, keep an eye out for similar events in your area. Although there are similarly huge events in New York and elsewhere, there's also a ton of local, smaller Maker Faires that still capture the informal, show-and-tell feel. San Jose's Faire, for example, may not require multiple days to explore, but there's more time to talk with the participants, and wander, and just enjoy the kids and adults getting excited about laser cutters, balloon rockets, pressing flowers, or making music on home-made instruments. If you're part of a railroad, science, or historical museum, consider hosting a Maker Faire to get all these sorts of weird folks together to show what they're making.