Welcome back everyone! I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving and long weekend. Let's get started. Thanksgiving: As predicted, was a nice, quiet holiday, relaxing in fact. I made my pecan pie and cheese ball the night before and spent the morning cooking up all my favorite dishes. Ang contributed with her signature dishes and we settled down about 1:30 to enjoy our feast with some red wine. We later relaxed in the living room where I talked to my parents and visited by phone. A nice holiday. Friday: As predicted, a busy day, but we got everything done. Looks like I'll have three new Athearn Genesis B&M GP9's on order. Saturday: I worked on getting all the Christmas decorations up while Ang decided to rake leaves. I was able to get our small light display set up with the dusk to dawn feature and finish getting all the summer items inside for the long Midwest winter to still come upon us. Sunday: We planned and subsequently left early for my favorite hardware store for supplies and maybe some other Christmas decorations. Unfortunately, they did not have much. I've noticed a lot more houses decorated this year and this was reflected in the stock, rather, lack of at the store. I got my sheet of hardboard, more wood glue and some things for the house and left. At home I had a pretty big list of items that I had to get done before doing train stuff but I did manage to get the hardboard cut and glued on the HO layout. That was it and with what I call the "Christmas madness" now in full swing, it will probably be January before any serious model railroading will take place. So how about you? What did you accomplish this special, long holiday weekend? Let us know. We'll assemble again in the normal schedule on Friday, December 4th to start the cycle all over again. Until then, have a great week, stay safe, stay healthy and as always... High Greens!
Hope Y'all had a great Thanksgiving!! So ---- Wednesday and Thursday: After running Thomas and friends around my layout with our Granddaughter, she asked if "we" could build something ("together") - she is 6 mind you. So, I pulled out a "Rico depot" that I have had for many years. She was delighted. So, "we" started the build. LOL -- I built it. She was over joyed to remove the parts from the sprues. This was our first build. - Hopefully, one of many. I am now thinking of building her - her own layout. Using Kato Unitrack. Friday: Nada. Saturday: Starting wiring the street lights for both main streets - and, I started removing ground cover for a track relocation project. Sunday: Stared the day pulling out Christmas decorations for the Wife. Then I modified a few power poles - to replace some that had been damaged over the years - from reaching around the layout for various things. Thanks, Wolf
Got most of what I wanted to do over the long weekend. I got the A&D caboose (Funaro-Camerlengo kit) right at 60+% done. Have to get the roof finished plus do all of the end rails. That will take some time. The floor wasn't too bad. Fitting the tool boxes underneath tension rodding was a trick. Had to do a lot of filing on the tool boxes. I have included a shot of it below along w/ the proto-type caboose. Also spent quite a bit of time tracing a LocoNet issue on my Digitrax system. I was getting 9 "beeps" on start up which means there is a "device" issue. I sent a maintenance ticket to Digitrax, they responded to check the batteries first, then unplug everything and trace. I disconnected the loconet after changing batteries in the DCS-200. Normal startup. So I crawled behind my main panel/electrical area under the layout and found the PM-42 circuit breaker had one of the 12V power wires loose from the terminal. Can't imagine who crimped that? Should be fired. Anyway, fixed that as well and everything is fine now. Also spent time Christmas decorating yesterday which ate into modeling time, but... it's Christmas!
Some works here and there, just finished the tracks scale. Picture here: https://www.trainboard.com/highball...modular-layout-wip.115210/page-5#post-1159696
I built a loop for my son when he was really young for a Thomas the tank HO version. It was my first attempt at a layout as well.
Main Layout Build Thread: https://www.trainboard.com/highball/index.php?threads/crawford-and-cherokee-frisco.133630/ With the extended holiday weekend, and the decision to stay put at home, I began the task of lengthening the run-around on the south end of Weir City. You can see the plan modification on the main layout build thread. The idea is to improve operations by lengthening a run-around formed by the cross-over and tail track. The layout was originally built without the brickyard (last section on the lower right in the plan, see top of page). After this was added, it was clear from operating that the existing run-around is too short and makes this area too much of a switching puzzle. The change will also provide for a single, small team/yard track, which was prototypical-ish (3-tracks). Original Plan and Re-Design area: The original sections: I soaked the ballast and scenery with some diluted isopropyl alcohol (yes, from my precious reserve). The carved areas were re-leveled with some filler. I managed without too much damage to the scenery and preserved the small trestle/culvert. A repair to the grade crossing will be in order, but the PC ties at the end of the section remained in place to preserve alignment. I had a spare left-handed FastTracks turnout in code 70, needed for this area. The roadbed is down and the flex track is roughed in. Here it is as of today, with a few (awaiting decal) 40-ft test cars. The tool in the lower right is something you can get from Micro-Mark and assists in keeping the track spacing constant (2-inches or so). Over the next few weeks, I will get this finished up with switch machines, glue down the track, and re-scenery the sections. Take Care All, -Bob T.
My weekend started on Sunday however I was able to take some N scale passenger cars to work with me. I wanted to install some interiors. The only seats I could find in N scale we superliner interiors. I’m working on old time 1800 coaches. I have three I am working on. A coach, combine, and observation. So I went to work cutting and fitting the seats. When I finally was able to get into the cars I found that Athearn’s window glazing was a one piece set up glued to the bottom of the car with a ledge in the center. So the seats look interesting. I stopped working on them to see if there was something I can do to make it work better. I also took apart a Bachmann caboose and added window glazing as well as a figure. Sunday I received the last package of supplies I ordered for the modules I’m building. I now have all the structures to build. Today I start painting parts. Now all that is left is to find the figures, animals, vehicles, and some parking lots and I will be golden.
Had a quiet Thanksgiving weekend just my wife and I. We did have a nice video call with our nephew and his family on Thanksgiving day. My time in the train room was more limited than I had hoped but I did get the sub-roadbed in for the back line. This will be the Western pacific / eastbound paired track. The gap in in the photo is where another bridge goes. I also got a start on the sub-roadbed for the front or Southern Pacific track. I also got the new low profile wheels installed on a pair of my old Kato U30C's. At the computer I ended up doing some more data entry on the N Scale database and also got one of my surplus items listed on ebay. Hope you all enjoyed the weekend whatever you were doing.
Received my PCBs and parts during the break and assembled the first four (of twenty) OpenLCB (LCC) IO boards as a quick test: This is how I received the PCBs, it is panelized as a 2x2 setup. Each panel has 126 SMT components and 30 through-hole components. It took around 30-45 minutes to populate all of the SMT components and then around 8 minutes in the reflow oven. Of the four boards I had three components needing to be reworked (one resistor that flipped off the pads, two inductors that shifted off the pads). I realized I did not have the correct 3v3 LDO so I left it unpopulated and ordered the correct one which should be here Wed/Thurs at which time I'll add it to the boards. This is the first one nearly fully assembled, since the 3v3 LDO is not populated I added a jumper to feed the ESP32 with 5v. The meter above the board is an OpenLCB (LCC) bus voltage/amperage monitor, the bus can provide 15v (nominal) 500mA. This node peaks around 70mA during startup and settles around 65mA when powered via the bus.
Thursday was excellent. Got the bird in the oven on time. Had a nice, long video chat with my daughter and her boyfriend. I am happy to report that the turkey did not die in vain. Gravy was declared the best ever according to my son and the apple pie was as good as it gets. Friday was about leftovers and getting ready to travel on Saturday. Saturday we watched a soccer match, had brunch and hit the road to return my mother-in-law to her home. Sunday we did chores and put out Christmas lights for the mother-in-law. My brief modeling time was on Thursday evening while everyone was feeling slow from the feast. I put a decoder in a new N scale Thomas. Works great. It went really smoothly as I was able to get the install done between dinner at 5 and pie in the evening. Here's a shot of the finished install: Stay safe
I did not complete any (HOn30) project(s). I did make some progress on a couple of car kits. Not as much as desired, but at least I did spend some time at it. Even came up with a small idea for adding a brake wheel detail to a couple of cars.
Local radio news was commenting this morning about how on-line Black Friday sales skyrocketed this year. And similarly how more people are decorating. Which I am already seeing such happening here- It had started well before Thanksgiving. A favorite website where I download Old Time Radio programs has been overwhelmed since this virus mess began, with a record bandwidth use over this Thanksgiving. Shows that a lot of us are staying home.
Nothing of visual impact done over the holiday, but a lot of important structural stuff. I rounded some of the curves causing derail issues, but that barely leaves enough room for the station throat on the one side. No collisions yet, so I think the clearance will work. If nothing else, I can hold trains into and out of the station until that main line curve is cleared. I got the Accutrak II speedometer and an education on scale speed. After 55+ years of equating the number on the power pack dial with speed, I got a real eye opener when my ACS-64 zoomed around the track at 189 on 80% power. I'll eventually be programming all my engines to 5 to 10 percent over prototype running light, just because the climb is long. One climb in particular will require operator intervention to maintain speed (i.e., more throttle on the uphill,) but I think that's cool. We leveled out the roadbed on the incline and are still testing. One of the things I learned is that I was a little too ambitious with using superelevated Unitrack on the elevation changes. I think it would probably work much better on flat surfaces, but it's too late to change things around. I have a derail point in a transition curve going into a straight. The cause is the front wheel is still on the incline at the curve, so it does not catch the rail as it turns. Stupid physics. I have placed a shim to temporarily solve this problem by functionally extending the superelevation, but we'll probably spackle (keep the extension) or sand (make sure the transition track is flat) for a permanent solution. I will probably spend the week continuing to do southbound testing. Got too excited a couple of weeks ago and glued prematurely-lesson learned. I started roll testing my rolling stock - discovered a couple of my cars don't roll, and it causes drag issues on the motive power, leading to derailments on the superelevated curves. They're "bad ordered" until I can get some new trucks. Still having issues with the Bachmann J. Seems I can program the road number, but I lose the sound volume, or I keep good old '3' and get fantastic chugging. Does anyone know which of the Econami decoders is installed? Decoder Pro gives me too many choices. I'd prefer to restrict single-byte addressing to create permanent MU sets. Have new equipment coming - a 6- and 4- car Kato SP set in Daylight colors (slightly used, but allows me to mix and match with the Daylight set), and another ACS-64. One ACS handles the grades with up to 9 smoothside cars (remember the "anachronistic" part of my RR name) but two running in MU should haul an extended Broadway consist. Can't wait for all my non-DCC motive power to finish being converted. Right now, I'm restricted to using the BLI Alcos, the ACS-64, one UP E8A, and the J on the main. Also have to test SceneIt's BLI heavy Mike. Have Fridays off for the rest of the year, so no excuses.
"Taking your model railroad stuff to work"! That's what I'm talking about! Great idea! Great projects going on. The Mogul is done. The tender is not. Too much time "Holidaying". Went to daughter's home for Thanksgiving and back on Friday for a chore. Saw oldest daughter (now off quarantine) Thursday afternoon as well as grandson's family. Glad all had a fine holiday. Now I need to get back to work.
Worked on several things this weekend and made some progress. One of note was cutting up some pvc pipe to use as silos for a grain elevator. It's a mini milestone of sorts as it is the last big build for the layout. I'll be down to more small scenery and details.
After the food orgy coma I was able to get a few things done. One of the many projects I made headway on was one of the elevators in Enid Oklahoma I decided to build. I'm doing 3 of the many elevators that Enid has and this one is actually a seed company elevator and it is small compared to its neighboring terminal facilities. The project is slightly modified to fit a stub track. Enid is the inland grain shipping capitol of the US (75 million bushels capacity) and has several times been able to boast of being holder of the largest grain elevator in the world. Now Hutchinson, KS holds the title.
