It's been a 17 year wait, but tonight marked the unveiling of the HO Scale Tacoma Union Station at the Washington State History Museum. The layout has been built and is operated by the Puget Sound Model Railroad Engineeers. All of the structures in the layout are scratch built by excellent craftsmen. In my younger days I was a Charter Member of Psmre and I'm a very proud guy tonight. Union Station was always intended to be the center piece of the layout and until tonight a facsimile stood in its location. But the best HO Scale modeler I've ever met, Gail Hendrickson, took on the challenge and it's finally complete. Do yourself a favor, if you're ever near Tacoma, go to the museum and head straight for the 5th floor. It's an incredible railroad in every sense.
Merry Christmas to all of Trainboard. Thank you for following and contributing to the RGW. We very much appreciate it. Have a wonderful and prosperous 2019. Michael
Maybe Black Diamond just needs one of these. At a bargain price no less. https://www.ebay.com/p/Elgin-Pelica...Parting-out/838584329?iid=221868611047&chn=ps BTW, Very nice work.
I'm thinking this guy might serve the community better... https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https://www.ebay.com/ulk/itm/112122202872 Thx
Here's a quick recap of our Tuesday work session. It was our first since before Christmas. Scott and Doug spent the evening installing the L-channel under the deck. Once it is in and we complete the structures that will go in to hide the deck risers, we will affix the LED light strips to the L-channel. Rey continued his kitbash on three more log cars. Ed began the wiring and installation of the master on/off switch for the yard panels. In this shot he has cut out the hole for the in-fascia switch. I spent most of the evening applying an India ink wash to the sidewalks in Black Diamond. Then I set out to clean up the mess from making the flower baskets. That's it for this week. More soon.
Tuesday we were back at Wain's working on the yard panels. More soldering and assembly. We hadn't seen much of each other since before Christmas, so it was as much a night for good fellowship as anything. But we made good progress. The Franklin Yard is ready for install and the South Seattle yard is about 75% complete as you can see here: I'll be doing my best to get the Interbay Pasco yard wiring up to speed this weekend. We may be only a couple of more Tuesday's before we get these babies in their rightful place. Thanks for checkin in.
Tuesday evening was chock full of wires, solder and silicone caulk as we spent the evening working on the yard panels. It started with Ed coring out larger holes in the posts of our push buttons. Rey then threaded the wire through and Scott soldered them together. Scott also wired up multiple LEDs, including the appropriate resistor. Then back to Rey for placement. If you zoom in you'll see we affix the LEDs with clear silicone. Doug and I completed more ribbon wire for our panel and I brought home the push button switches to get them wired by next Tuesday. It really feels like we are close. Thanks for checking in.
Short and sweet update today. We completed our last night at Wain's for the extended future by wrapping up as much of the panel wiring and mods as possible. Doug and I spent the evening putting in LEDs into the Interbay/Pasco panel. Rey and Scott worked on similar items on the South Seattle panel. Ed added ground busses to both panels when the opportunity presented itself. Wain set up a working test with multiple tortoise machines and everything worked great. So fingers crossed. By evening's end we packed everything in my truck and headed home. Both panels are in their final stages so the excitement is building. The next step is to clear off the two yards and set up the yard panel, the megapoints controllers panel and two conductor wires to each tortoise for an above ground test. If that works we'll begin the install. That's it for now.
Great Stuff Michael! You have a great bunch of folks willing and able to work with you. That is very special. I enjoy watching your, well all, your efforts.
Yeah, and I have to install 3 switch machines and I’m scared to death!!!!! You and Tom are my hero’s!
They are on the way. I’m sure I got it too. I’ve been thinking on how to mount them. I used hollow core doors with 1” of foam over. I plan on cutting the bottom of the door face out and making a mounting plate to attach inside the door. It should be a piece of cake. I may not even need the plate, just attach to the inside face of the door. These are the Smails and have the decoders in them already. Thanks Michael. The panels look great!
I mounted mine on 1/4 plywood. It's great bcz you can just loosen mounting screws to make adjustments or replace them, not take them off the bottom of the subroadbed and then have to reconfigure the screw holes. But we also use a linkage system (that you can see on my website) that might possibly be a perfect application for under a hollowcore door and a layer of foam. M
Thanks Michael, I’ll take a look. I just got back from our club layout. I spent the morning packing rolling stock, vehicles and locos in tube for storage. We have been informed by our landlord that our rent will be going up. The rent in the area has now reached about a dollar a square foot. We have roughly 1800 square feet of space. So our rent will be going from 500 a month to just under 1800 a month. New owner so we figured an increase would be in the works. So between moving the club to getting ready for ProRail, I’ve been a busy camper lately. Take care, Dale
Just a quick update on the panels. At the megapoints end the boards get 3 wire pin connectors which are coded with their opposite connection and a number for placement. In this case Route Led 3. Those connectors go on the routing board They are then soldered to ribbon cable and brought back to the panel. At the other end, we are in the process of attaching the respective wires to the directional LEDs. Here is an early shot of that work. The LEDs are bound together so that as one turns green the other turns yellow. After soldering the common leg, it is trimmed off. All the LEDs are placed in their respective position and fastened in place with clear silicone. Here you see the route LEDs in place. As of Tuesday, my panel had all directional LEDs wired. You can also see the ribbon cable at the far left of this shot. Next step is wiring the route LEDs and finally the push buttons. Then we're ready to test this baby. That's all for now, thanks for checking in.
Last night was our first test of the Interbay/Pasco yard panel. We actually started the night before, removing just about every obstacle we could from the yard itself. Amazing how clean it can look when it's not buried in cars, locos and construction materials. We then brought the boards in from the garage workstation and set them up on top of the table. One last check of the rat's nest, er, quality wiring and we set up the boards. Here is a video of the set-up just prior to us doing testing. The red buttons control switches, the green buttons control routes. We had a couple of loose solder joints, which frankly given there are hundreds of solder joints and how many late nights I spent on this project is outstanding. The route buttons have a glitch somewhere, we can make it run perfectly in some cases, but not others. So we will be running another test next week and hope to start stringing the cables to the actual turnouts after we get the kinks worked out. That's it for now, getting closer to another red letter day on the RGW. Thanks for checking in. M
