Michael, I did a bit of research, Dow 3110 RTV is still available, 3110 is a low viscosity mold compound that does not require de-airing on simple molds. It also has a decent shelf-life. We used to sell before Dow changed their program on who was able to offer it. It is also used as a potting compound for electrical assembly’s. If you plan to do further mold making/castings, you might look at it. Dale
This is a bit tardy, but the app I use to post to the thread was having difficulty communicating with TrainBoard. Thanks to RBrodzinsky for putting it all right again! Last week we poured our first set of median barriers in the new mold. The Smooth-on product sets up fast, so neatness didn't count. We pour it in, then make use of a baking pan to push the plastic off the mold without making a mess. Later, about 30 minutes, we remove the new barriers and with a little clean up they're ready for the layout. Meanwhile Rey was putting some finishing touches on a pesky turnout. We also did more locomotive running to test our track. One other point of note, I was in SoCal this week and while there, visited Justin with Orange Empire Trains. His grand opening was this past weekend. Super guy and a first responder! Check his online store, he has very good prices. I couldn't pass up this fully equipped Kato SD40-2. That's all for now, got to get on the flight home. Thanks for checking in. The Rainier Great Western HO Scale Railroad
Hi Michael, It’s awesome to see trains running. Things are looking really good. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Thanks Greg, I appreciate your interest. Miss you at the layout. M The Rainier Great Western HO Scale Railroad
Fairly short update tonight. I'm pretty sure pictures of guys addressing track issues isn't desirable, so we'll just skip those "action" shots! We pulled out several sound locomotives tonight and set up the sound CV's. I like to turn the sound way down so that they don't overwhelm the entire layout. I usually set the master volume (varies by manufacturer) CV to "30" which is completely subjective. Then I go up or down by 5 steps until I like the loco's overall sound level. Scott brought over the newly decaled Asplundh shredder truck. This small improvement makes a big impression on the scene. Lastly, we are having reverser issues. We have 5 on the layout, all are MRC's. We are having trouble crossing over the reversing segments. We seem to run into this every time we start to run. I'm over it. So we are going to switch out the MRC's with Circuitron AR-1s. Hopefully this cures our reset problems from this point forward. More next week. Thanks for checking in. The Rainier Great Western HO Scale Railroad
Wow, hard to believe it has been since May 4 that I last posted, but here goes. We have been dealing with a mysterious short for the past 4 work sessions. It has caused us all to reevaluate our existence in the hobby. In fact, there have been some frayed nerves at times trying to cipher a solution. Last night we finally made some progress, running a train for about 65% of the layout without interruption. We hit significant areas of dead track, but we believe that is because we pulled all the MRC reversers offline in order to troubleshoot our issues. Now that we think we have the issue solved, we will systematically put them back on line and see where we get. One thing this process has taught us is that a set of detailed schematics, with the blocks clearly defined and electrical drops outlined on them, is ESSENTIAL. I haven't seen the top side of my layout in weeks. I'm happy that it appears my penance is coming to an end. More soon. Thanks for checking in. M
I have well over 100 turnouts on the RGW, turned out one of our oldest curved Shinohara #4's never had gaps cut behind the frog. We don't use the frog for power routing, so gaps are cut and we use feeders to give power behind the frog. Finding it was a complete fluke. It was a section of track we had never used, so the turnout had never been thrown. We decided one night to throw every turnout just to rule them out as culprits and voila, it surfaced. Nobody had ever noticed the gaps were missed. But the flow of electricity sure did. The Rainier Great Western HO Scale Railroad
Well we FINALLY found all the electrical gremlins and fixed them. Last night we successfully ran a locomotive and a few cars around the entire railroad; all 1800 lin ft of mainline without issue. We did find a few ballast issues and one clearance issue, so we'll be working to fix those next week. Bottom line we are one week closer to operations. Woohoo. One item of note from last night, Scott surprised me with a logging vignette he scratchbuilt. It fits perfectly with our mainline log clearing scene. He even scratchbuilt the chainsaw. I am so grateful to have good friends that are such skilled craftsman. Until next week....Thanks for checking in. The Rainier Great Western HO Scale Railroad
Another evening of testing, track cleaning and ballast refinement for the crew of the RGW. In doing so, however, the boys had some fun running locos all over the layout. Here is the newest addition to the fleet, a Kato SD40-2 in Santa Fe livery. Here she is passing Black Diamond: And then crossing the Molzahn Bridge: Any time we found a snag, everything stopped and we fixed it. In one case, we were running a 737 carrier and realized some of our prior work had encroached upon the right of way and needed to be torn out. I hate when that happens but the fix worked, clearance was restored and the look is as good as ever. While several of us were doing that, Ed was putting the finishing touches on our rolling scale. It simulates weighing each car as it passes. We'll have more action pics next week and we hope to be ready for ops by mid July. Thanks for checking in. The Rainier Great Western HO Scale Railroad
Doing some track and clearance testing today. Here is a sample. Hope you enjoy it. Thanks for checking in. M The Rainier Great Western HO Scale Railroad
It must be an utterly fantastic feeling, reaching this point and seeing how well what was once just on paper has come together.
Very nice Micheal, I could have sworn I heard flange squeal on that curved trestle! You guys have something to be very proud of!
Thanks for sharing. I have enjoyed it. But, I don't find the lack of weathering bad. Just the coloring. What I see locally are orange and black CN and they are almost always clean and shinny. Like the big tankers that head south. Please keep it coming. Rich
I have no personal objection to clean locomotives in particular. Having grown up with C&O/Chessie/CSX in enchantment blue and crud, I often wished someone knew where the wash rack was. Personally, I like them a lot cleaner than that and feel no obligation to weather anything beyond a day's road grime if I don't want to. For my money, the RGW is a superb model railroad just the way it is.
If I had time to weather with any consistency, I wouldn't know what to do with myself. We'll get there someday. The Rainier Great Western HO Scale Railroad