"Common Wire" John here; the layout does have a reversing circuit at the three turntables there Electricity operates in ways that may still not be fully understood by us laymen. And that time we had the derailment, we just shut down each block one by one to quickly isolate the problem lol.
It isn't the first time they've stolen from Social Security. Your right there ought to be a law against this.
All-right John, Your layout runs amazingly well. I've operated those turn tables and they work amazingly well. Just amazing. I think I over used amazing. But it is Amazing!!
Amazingly, the Gulf & Pacific Railroad misses amazing Rick H. and his amazing knowledge of amazing trains and operations! John
Conditions and circumstances I can't share here right now. Now has me wishing I was back in Big Bear Country. I miss the Gulf & Pacific Railroad and the Operator Extraordinaire. This is Model Railroading as it should be. Right back at you Sir John A. I miss it to. Above: Steve and I working the end of track at John's Town. Above: Here's John and Steve preparing for the evenings operations. We had loads of fun working the Gulf & Pacific Railroad. You never wanted to be late. They'd dock your pay. Wish I had never left Big Bear Country to move to Idaho Country. I don't see anyway back at this point.
We had a good group of BVMR's, Bear Valley Model Railroaders. A bunch of guys I miss dearly. Going from front to back, left to right. John A., the owner of the Gulf & Pacific Railroad. First names only: Ron, Russ, Steve, Peter, Richard, and Rick. Working the Gulf & Pacific Railroad. Steve is working the throttle while I play brakeman, conductor and switchman. We used hand signals as realistic or close to the 1:1 foot scale, miniaturized. To avoid swinging our arms and smashing things on the layout. I did enough of that trying to reach over the layout to uncouple a car. Sorry, John. Sigh. It was, Loads of fun. One more. This will be as close as I ever get to being a conductor. All photos courtesy of John Acosta, and posted here with his permission. Thanks John!!
Some interesting history behind these guys. John is an Architect and Engineer. Note worthy owner of the Gulf and Pacific Railroad. Did I already say that. Yep, I did. Peter, a retired Trolley Car operator. Richard is an engineer for the Knott's Berry Farm, narrow gauge railroad. Ron, is a retired Conductor for the BNSF. Me...a short stint with Union Pacific, as an agent. Russ, is retired who has had us over to operate his Garden Railway and HO Layout. Steve, (rest in peace) had a unique HO Model Railroad. There are others not pictured here. Hat's off to all of you. Salute. One thing we all had in common...go on guess...you got it right the first time. A love for Model Railroading. Most of the time we enjoyed getting together, bantering about, and just talking Trains. Mostly at Carl's Jr. in Big Bear Lake. A shout out of Thanks to the Managers who tolerated us. Now ask John about the light over my right shoulder. Later!
Thank-you for the likes, your comments and dropping into see what's going on. Not much on the layout and from the sound of things I may be moving, again. Not at all happy about that. So, contemplating on whether or not I want to continue work and progress on the layout. We shall see what happens next.
Thanks for your comments and concerns expressed. Here's an update. My daughter has one girl in High-school and the other in College. She choose to send both to Parochial School Systems or another way of saying it, Church sponsored school's. At an exorbitant cost these days. The house they bought to put dear old Dad in is now worth more money then they can ignore. They are looking to cash out this piece of property, to pay for the girls edumacation (spelling intended). Don't I wish I had an RV to house me and my layout. Then it's no problem and I'd simply move around from campground to campground. Now, there's an idea. Others are doing that with their school bus mobile homes or Schoolies. As some call them. I can only wait out the situation and see how things develop. I figured something like this might happen. Of course my crystal ball doesn't work all that well. I'm intuitive but I don't see the future. I have some things on my bucket list I want to do. This will change all that and I'm not really prepared for this. I was hoping to get a few more years here to get caught up but that doesn't look feasible at the moment. Thanks to the influx of Californian's, Oregonian's and Washington-ites all moving here to get away from higher taxes and to retire. The cost of homes has increased, even though it's a buyer's market. It's not cheaper to live here. In the first week I was here I realized that some grocery's cost 5 or 10 cents less per item while others were more expensive. Cat food is higher here. That is if you can find it and get it. Right now the store shelves up here are all but empty. That doesn't stop with just cat food. Everything has slowed down. At first it was toilet paper thanks to the Chinese Disease. Now the trickle down of food products over all is slowing down. Lucky, if I can keep my poor man shelves stocked. Well, I don't mean to go on so. Felt I owed you an explanation. I will continue work on the train layout. Get my wiring all labeled and wire nutted. Ready to make a move should I be required to. I like the RV thing. Later!
Speaking of stores. I need to run up to Winco. In the meantime here's something I found on You Tube. More to come. Later.
Another fun time picture of you switching Davidsville! On another note I'm mailing you one-way tickets from Nampa to Big Bear; starting on the Union Pacific, then Santa Fe to Cushenbury, then the Gulf & Pacific from Cushenbury to Big Bear, all on a through sleeper. BTW while at Cushenbury don't forget to put the switch back the way you found it. Thank you. John
Did I forget to put the switch back...again?? So much fun John, so much fun. I will accept that train ride.
