Another successful night in the books at the RGW. Just back from visiting my son at OU (Oklahoma). Had a great time, went to the Tulane game and had excellent seats. Meanwhile my kid is getting settled into the routine of a college freshman. I also passed 250,000 views while I was gone. I cannot thank you enough for your continued support of our little project. I am simply awestruck by it all. As for tonight, Rey and I tested out the 'removability' of the Maple Valley Mill. Here you see it.... Here you don't... We needed to do some work on a curved turnout behind the scene. So we decided to get that done tonight. Rey is actually under the table in the second photo. In between handing him tools and such, I went back to entering locos in the JMRI program. Here are two Athearn SD75M's we added tonight. These are fantastic representatives of the prototype. I highly recommend them. Programming was a bit pesky, but both were eventually completed and added to active duty. While I finished these two, I also added new decoders to the Ferromex and Canadian Pacific locos featured last week. These are non sound and I decided on TCS brand. Performance was solid once they hit the layout. I also had Doug run CP7023 all around the layout. He did a little photo shoot along the way. He also did a black and white. Pretty cool. Well that's enough for one evening. Until next time, thanks for checking in! RAINIER GREAT WESTERN RAILROAD
Here's a quick recap from last night at the RGW. Reynold completed the upgrade on the Maple Valley curved turnout. It now has a powered frog and the wiring of the dpdt switch was redone to assure wire connectivity. So we went from this.... Back to this.... In addition, Scott switched out couplers on all the newly added locomotives, while I added the final piece, NS 8091, an ES44AC with loksound, to JMRI. On another note, my son sent these shots from campus of last night's supercell over Oklahoma City and Norman. I think he picked the right place to study meteorology. Well that's it for tonight. Until next week, thanks for checking in. RAINIER GREAT WESTERN RAILROAD
Not much in the way of an update tonight, but here is what took place. Scott finished decaling the two new trackmobiles. Here is RGW #7.... Meanwhile I diagnosed an issue with the decoder programming on BN2075. I love this Athearn GP 38, with the predecessor heralds. It's a cool loco, but may need remotoring at some point. Issue turned out to be a simple fix, selecting long vs short address. As for the rest of the evening, since everyone will be gone next week, we decided to grab trains and run at will. Had a great time. Rey used the new ES44ac and took a bulkhead flat train the entire 38 minute run around the layout. Only found one issue, the McHenry couplers on two of the new flats could not hold the curved turnout in Seattle Yard. Doug, meanwhile, took a tankcar train from Renton to South Seattle. I grabbed the new BNSF SD75 and ran into Maple Valley to grab three Boeing cars, then took them back to Renton for staging prior to delivery to the Boeing plant. Since I'll be on my own next week, I staged next week's project; swapping out two very old Lenz decoders with brand new Digitrax versions. I also have an LED order in the works, so hopefully they arrive before Tuesday. These two RGW locos were my first DCC experiments. While they still run perfectly fine, I cannot get JMRI to read the decoders. So I'll swap them out next week. I'll also swap out the McHenry couplers mentioned earlier. Well, that's enough for now, as always, thanks for checking in. RAINIER GREAT WESTERN RAILROAD
Very nice looking unit. I really like the sign that says If you think it's unsafe, it probably is. Sounds like something often said at Possum Lodge... except that they would add Do it anyway...
Here are some notes from my projects last night. The goal was to get two uncooperative locos set up with new decoders. As it turns out, since last week, I decided to do more than just that, I ordered new headlight LED's from Mission Models, so as I get to it, I will change out these locos' lighting as well. I knew I had old decoders in both locos, as these are two of my original units. The Atlas RSC-2 #44 had an old Lenz decoder. So old, I could not find the model number. I soldered up a Digitrax DZ126 to an 8pin plug and swapped it out for the old Lenz. I chose not to swap out the lights due to the late hour and with another loco to go, instead took it to the programming track and successfully uploaded it to JMRI. That was a good feeling getting that done. As for the Proto SW-9 #4, when that shell came off, to my surprise, inside was an original NCE decoder from 1996. It did not have an 8pin socket, so it was completely cut out and I soldered the wires to another DZ126. Again I did not update the lighting. By the time I took this unit to the track it was really late. Good news is the JMRI results were identical. It programmed right up and ran flawlessly. I'll consider last night a success as now every loco I have has been added to the JMRI roster. I'd say about half need speed matching, so still much work to do. Anyway, until next week. Thanks for checking in. RAINIER GREAT WESTERN RAILROAD
For the second consecutive week I'm on my own in the train room tonght. The goal was to get the new lights in the SW-9. This process took a bit more troubleshooting than I anticipated. The Mission Models LED's need a resistor between the decoder and the LED on the common wire. This wasn't really an issue, other than it necessitates determining how much of the leads to leave for later use. Once that was completed, I added about 1-1/4 inches of feeder wire and glued the balance to the long hood. Then it was on to the cab. The SW-9 uses the window inserts to hold in the engineer platform, but also the light enclosure. Once I pulled all that out I glued the LED into the enclosure. I set both aside to dry and started fabricating a platform for the decoder. I first measured the old decoders mount and then cut a piece of 020 styrene to fit the mounting pins. Here is how everything looks all taped in using kaptan tape. I realized after getting this far that the matte medium I used to glue the LED's would take much longer to dry. So that pretty much ended my evening. But as long as it was out, I did use the matte medium to reinforce the glue joints on the cab's all-weather windows. With that, my evening was over. We'll catch up with more next week. As always, thanks for checking in! RAINIER GREAT WESTERN RAILROAD
We are back from a brief respite on the RGW. Tonight was about making a persistent problem go away. A curved turnout at the East end of the main yard in Seattle has consistently played havoc with larger Athearn locomotives. Last week Rey and Scott decided that a very slight "S" curve existed just prior to the turnout. So tonight we began pulling turnouts up to try and reorient the track to remove the S. As you can see we pulled up 2 turnouts and a crossover. Once we adjust the track lengths and reattach everything we should successfully remove the S (located at the bottom of the picture). The downside to this decision, it necessitates moving all the tortoise switch machines. But it has to get done. In the interim, two new additions were added to our layout. First is the CAT tractor and lowboy with the front end loader. This is the 5th in the series. The other addition is the brand new Rapido Herzog ballast hopper. This is an exquisite model. I liked it so much I ordered another. Finally, the wife and I just returned from Norman visiting our favorite college student. We joined 102,000 rabid fans at the South Carolina game; which was a dud. The pregame at OU is full of entertaining events, not the least of which is a parade that starts with the Sooner Schooner and ends with the team buses. We have one more scheduled trip before the end of the semester. Our son is doing very well there, so it keeps the nerves in check. Anyway, more next week. Thanks for checking in. RAINIER GREAT WESTERN RAILROAD
Very nice ballast hopper! Those western-garbed people running along next to the Sooner Schooner... Secret Service escort?
Welcome back to the regular routine. After several sessions of players MIA, we actually had everyone there tonight. The big move was having Rey starting to put together the new layout at the West end of Seattle Yard. He made decent progress tonight, getting two of the turnouts back on line. Next step will be to start cutting and splicing the turnouts and the filler tracks. Ultimately we'll have to move the three tortoises under the layout, but that's down the road a piece. I asked Scott if he'd bring 3 cars destined for the AZ layout up to standards. All three were Milwaukee box cars picked up this weekend at the annual Boeing Club swap meet. He put in new couplers, metal 33 inch wheels and adjusted the weights to nmra scale. I really appreciate he did that for me. Meanwhile Doug and I started a new project. We started by removing all the trees on the middle transition section of the West wall. Then we started using a drywall saw and removed about 70% of the foam to the west of the tracks and to the facing wall. That took a bit of elbow grease, but was a lot messier than it was hard. Finally we hit the entire area with the shop vac. Here's the result .... Here's the backstory. I've hated this section for years. It's visually boring. It never had enough color or foliage. I suppose it was always destined to get torn up if I'm being honest. That said, with all the trucks, lowboy trailers and heavy equipment I have acquired over the years, I've decided to simulate a new road under construction leading to a tunnel. The next step will be to clean off the wall section, followed by filler (ie spackle) to recreate a level surface. I think this will be a quick turn scene makeover, we'll see. Anyway, that's it for now. Until next week, thanks for checking in. RAINIER GREAT WESTERN RAILROAD
Not much to add for this week as I'm spending time in AZ. That said, Doug sent me this pic from Reynold's progress on the Seattle mainline and yard throat. After improving the connectivity of each of the turnouts, he was dropping feeders to put them back into service. The great news is that we are probably one maybe two sessions from going live and in the end, eliminating a very bothersome glitch in mainline running. As for me, my father-in-law and I made a run to HD and picked up very nice Baltic 5/8 plywood for our subroadbed. We were able to take advantage of their "two cut" rule and have two 1x8 sections cut off. We also cut the second piece in half. Once home, we put the plywood on the layout, trimmed the excess and attached splice plates under each of the three pieces with glue and screws. An inspection this morning revealed everything went together as planned. So tonight we will add risers, elevating the mainline to it's desired 4" height. More soon. Thanks for checking in. RAINIER GREAT WESTERN RAILROAD
Looks like some good progress on the Seattle mainline and yard throat. Sounds as though this one of those you will be glad to have it done projects Benchwork for the AZ layout looks great!!! Thanks for sharing and Happy Thanksgiving to you, your family and the RDW crew!
Happy Thanksgiving to my Trainboard friends, hope you have a wonderful time with family. Here's a quick set of pictures from the PMBL work we completed yesterday. We have put the mainline risers in. The height is now 4 inches above the table top. The temporary riser in the center will be repositioned once we determine how much of the subroadbed we need to lay down the mainline curves. As a refresher, here's is the layout design for the PMBL. This will be all we can get to this trip, but it's been a productive couple of days. Again best wishes to you all. Thanks for checking in. M RAINIER GREAT WESTERN RAILROAD
Just got back in town from an extended holiday break. Hope everyone had a very Happy Thanksgiving. Before leaving Phoenix, we were able to put in more subroadbed. In this case the primary yard area for the PMBL. This area is 3-1/8th inches above the table top. At the workbench end, the connecting track will utilize a grade of 2.6° between the two sets of subroadbed. On the garage door side it will be 1.6°, both very manageable. We also insulated the accessory garage door before heading to the airport. I did not have enough to complete the main garage door, so that will be a project for the next trip in. I did notice a 5 degree drop in ambient, midday temperature, so a net positive. Upon arrival back home I was pleased to see Doug and Scott made progress on the road construction scene. They put down two layers of spackle to support the road. It looks great thus far. More soon. Thanks for checking in. RAINIER GREAT WESTERN RAILROAD
