So first show of the season approaches . Accrington show is organised by the Blackburn Model railway club who have over the years put on one of the must see shows in Lancashire in the North West of England. After some persuasion from the organisers the show will feature Cuyahoga and Republic Steel connected together in public for the first time. As some of you know the plan has always been to extend my Nickel Plate Road layout firstly with the steelworks and then with the Hullet Iron ore unloaders and ore boats that were a feature of the Lake Erie shore line. As expected it has not been plain sailing!. The high line on Cuyahoga has been dropped to match the height of the high line on Republic and I then fitted a pair of hinged legs to the outer end of republic to match the height of Cuyahoga. So far so good! But.. Cuyahoga's lighting rig was never designed to be extended and Republic's is a completely different height so Saturday saw me out with some 20mm steel box section and the big angle grinder. That sorted that problem and with the weather being fine I was able to get all the new supports sprayed satin black. Next problem was power supply. I have a standard power pack that all the layouts use that has three Marklin controllers and the NCE powercab built in plus 3v and 12v DC supplies for LED signals street lamps etc but i was only ever designed to run one layout at a time. All the DC functions would be used by Cuyahoga so after some head scratching I came up with a cunning plan. using a new connection from the power pack to Republic that will run DCC and I've fitted a switch inside the control panel that in effect connects all the section ,both inner and outer track, together and added extra 5.5 DC sockets so I can feed directly into the LED arrays on the Blast furnace and Open hearth furnace areas Now I have no intention of fitting decoders to all of my my 1950-60s era locos there are just too many but with Shasta being nearly completely converted to DCC there will be some sneaky chassis swapping for the show. The Southern Pacific and Burlington Northern GP35s and GP9 will donate their mechanisms to NKP bodyshells and I'll keep track of the different numbers (Fingers crossed!) It is going to be slightly complicated but I should be O.K. There will be five trains running at any one time and if I get a minute the dock sidings, roundhouse and carraige depot should see some switching moves I'm going to have to borrow the big call-out van from work to get it all to the show and I'll post a report and some pictures after the weekend of the 2/3rd of September I also realised the other day that 2018 will be Cuyahoga's 10th anniversary, doesn't time fly It has come a long way on since it looked as bare as this Kev
In a very cramped workshop all three boards together. Another low relief building added to the back of Cuyahoga and some minor repairs. Republic fully tested on DCC and working perfectly. I'll have to sort out the fireproof drapes at the show, they'l fit, but I'll need to move some of the velcro fasteners Spending the evenings cleaning and testing locos (i'll take too many, I always do!) I'm gonna need eyes in the back of my head when all this lot is running Kev
So.. After all the thrashing about we got to Accrington in one piece. The layouts went up fine and the heights worked out fine. I haven't fitted adjustable feet to Republic but made the lengths of its legs roughly mid way on the adjustment on Cuyahoga. As anticipated the drapes didn't line up with any of the Velcro fasteners so I had to fix a load more on. Because of time constraints I ended up with two supports for the lighting rigs quite close together. Round the back both layouts had their own control panels but to get the DCC output across to Republic from the powerpack I rigged up a phono cable to the control panel which fed into all the sections.
All weekend we had 5 trains running at any one time three on Cuyahoga (outer main line, inner main line and dock track) and two on Republic (inner and outer main) With republic being DCC we could switch the Blast furnace and sidings as well. Although I normally have switching going on in the roundhouse and docks of Cuyahoga during the show we just didn't have the manpower to do it this time. Main motive power DCC on Republic was a selection of GP35s and GP9s. Cuyahoga had GP7s, AZL 2-8-2s, E8s, the chop nose GP20 and the streamlined Pennsy K4 running most of the weekend with the Commodore Vanderbilt 4-6-4 and the NKP 4-6-4 getting an occasional spin out. Most satisfyingly the 3D printed ladle cars, when given a turn on the mainline, behaved themselves and ran quite well despite being very light. Video can be found at cheers Kev
Busy by the dockside While the PA1 Bluebirds wait for their next assignment an AZL 2-8-2 crawls past on a rake of empty coal hoppers (the silver boxcar is a translator car to allow the Marklin hoppers to be hauled). The Espee GP9 has just passed the Cotton Belt GP20 and in the background the Pennsy F units trundle along the high line
