Yep, they are Caboose Industries 222S Sprung for Code 55. I went totally manual and there's not an electric switch on the entire layout....yet. I hope to work out putting twin coils in routes using JMRI's Panel Pro for the hump yard. That way you can push 1 button for whatever class track you want. Picture of the hump yard? Will do, but it's pretty rough so far. How much have I spent? All of it. KB
Maybe not all, but enough to cause the worst financial disaster since the Depression. Or is it just coincidence?
I feel your budget pain. I am trying to figure out if I can fashion a set of Bethgon coalporters out of leftover drywall mud. Jamie
17 months and 14 days after this: I had my first Operating Session. I expected plenty of problems and the first crew was carefully selected having already experienced their baptism of fire. Now that we've proved it can run, I can open up a session to more users. The first 10 minutes were a disaster. After that, things settled down. We did experience an unknown Digitrax problem after the first hour that we haven't yet solved. The PM 42 was giving us shorts on the first district, but there were no trains there. Resetting the command station worked for 10 minutes and the short reappeared. Larry Keller* goes down in history as running the first train on the CCSB 2.0 (The * is because Gil picked the first train order, but had problems out of the yard. Larry bypassed him to become the first. I am sure this will be be debated for years to come.) Jeff Lindstrom works the WSS/HPT&D. Jeff has learned to never volunteer for anything again.
WOW--congratulations on the first OS!!!! I was just looking at your website over the weekend and it looked like you were getting close. Thanks for all the progress reports. I know I say this all the time, but it is a HUGE boost for those of us that are in the earlier stages of construction. Your layout is especially motivational for me; although mine is much more compact, I am trying to accompish a very similar look and feel to what you are doing. These updates keep me fired up thinking about what it will be like when I get to where you are now. Jamie
Thanks Bob and Jamie. I pushed hard to get a couple of guys together so I could make sure the track, wiring and ops schedule would work. I wanted to try it out before I continued with sidings and scenery. Everyone was pretty happy. When I nailed the first board on the new room, I had a picture in my mind of what I wanted it to look like, I just didn't know how to get there. I knew I wanted all black to set the layout back from the foreground. I knew I wanted it well lit, and the CFLs fixed that. Knew I wanted C55 with very fine ballast from another layout I had operated on. No regrets there as long as the #5 switches hold up. Everything else just fell into place. KB
Your most recent pics have definitely sold me on the black fascia. The only reason I would not do black is if I instead do a very dark tone of my room wall color (brown), but I will only do this if I can get very close to the "black effect" you show above. Jamie
KB, Wow what a great job you did. Thanks so much for sharing your work. Keep posting those fantastic pics! Congrats on a job more than well done! Steve
I have been following your progress and the layout looks great, looks like the ops session was a great time, fantastic work of a very high standard, all my best, Jan
Kevin, congratulations! Operating session are the main reason why I am building my layout, and this probably applies to most of us. However, your link to Blogger site in your signature is still not working properly
We are already planning Ops #2. That is one of the main reasons I built it, for large Ops sessions. Thanks. Have corrected the link to my blog.
I want to know whenever you decide to do another op session because I want to run monster trains on that yakin river bridge and the other parts of that beautiful layout. I'm wanting to know what the longest trains ran on the the Linwood area: and do you have S-line and R-line wye area?
No R-Line or S-Line. I just couldn't make them fit. If I had done away with the Winston Salem Southbound, I probably could have, but the WSS is why I did this to start with. And there's the K-Line Greensboro to Kernersville, Winston or somewhere. That's a mainline and 3 branch lines. That would be a nice layout. Maybe on my next one, ha. The longest train that can run from staging to staging is just under 12 feet. Don't know how many cars that would be. Right now most trains have 16 cars. Two reasons, (1) any loco can only handle about 10 cars up the 3% grade as heavy as I have them weighted. I only have enough locos for 2 per train. (2) that's all the cars I have. PS - You don't have to wait on an Operating Session, you just have to drive to Lexington.
This weekend with all the visitors out of the way, I went back to scenery. I pulled all the trains out of the yards (in part to test a short problem which turned out to be a defective PM42) and ballasted both yards. I also added a few background trees to Charlotte Yard, but couldn't do much as there just wasn't any room. I was able to do more with Danville Yard and incorporated two pieces I had salvaged from my old layout. They don't fit perfectly into the new scenery, but I wanted a bit of the old with the new.
