Tuesday night at the Huff and Puff

Post from Dave. More progress on my uncle Wolfgang's submarine rides kit for the Woodstock model railroad club layout. I still have a couple of items left for to design and print and paint and I will call it done.
Dave has made several printed models for our club, a light house is coming for the port.
Again there was control problems, don't know if it is too many engines running with sound or not. I don't know enough about DCC to diagnose the problem. It seems to happen when there is too many engines in the same block, or too many with sound running.
Larry M. Was out skating with his grandkids and fell, wishing him a speedy recovery.

Layout Quiz, part 2

Can you fined theses?

Where is Old Blue?

The upstairs view is great, but the lower level is just crappy.

The Dalmatian beside the fire hydrant seem to be rail fanning. Thanks to a friend of the railroad, Gary, for the last 2 items.

Tuesday night at the Huff and Puff

Mike had his dead rail Genoa out for a spin, and spin it did. Breaking in was causing some wheel slip. For more information on this engine see the Big Stacks ... link on the side bar.

The Genoa is a blur rounding the curve out of Herons Landing.
David was busy lazer printing and painting again.

Trial run of a light house, I want one of these.

Painted up skidder.

A sub in the harbour? We will have to send out a reporter to check out this story, stay tuned.
Pete's first DCC project hits the rails with with the start of a new paint scheme.

Pete reports he is happy with how it runs, although it needs the momentum adjusted a bit. I'm sure we will see more of this engine.
Busy night at Springbank.

What a switch (pardon the pun) Springbank was the bottleneck of the night.
Old meets new.

The old and the new converge behind Lakeview.

Tuesday night at the Huff and Puff

Lots of trains! There were 9 trains running with sound and guess what? The gremlins came, engines seem to take on a mind of their own. I guess we exceeded the limits of our system. We either need to limit the number of trains or shut off the sound.
I did not have my camera to catch Don taking out his snow plow for a test run before the big storm hits. I  also missed a picture of our new member, John pulling a long passenger train, and the chaos we call Lincoln.
But somehow we seem to stumble through and the trains keep running.

Sound decoder

Info from Jim Long

This from a friend at the GrandSytrand Model Railroad 

Wanted to let some of you in the club know about a new Sound Decoder Company. XLsystems. They made decoders for MRC and have decided to go out on there on. The decoders look like an MRC clone. The good part is there price. I have heard the EMD 645 turbo and it sounds great. The decoders come in Diesel with six prime movers. EMD 567, EMD 645 Non Turbo, EMD 645 Turbo, EMD 710 Turbo, ALCO 244, ALCO 539 Turbo. They have about 22 horn types. Steam is also available. Both in HO and N scale. The price is usually around 29.00 to 35.00 Dollars. They usually have a speaker included also. The have warranty and repair for there speakers also. I know this is not Tsunami or ESU but if you are modeling on a budget and want to put some type of sound in some of your locomotives this may be an option. I have ordered one to put in one of my ALCO locomotives. Here is there website. They are also being sold on Ebay.
http://xlsystemsdcc.com/

Also if anyone wants to follow my home model railroad exploits, which will have posts every once and a while, this is the blog address.   grantspassrailroad.blogspot.com
I'm working on the logging camp right now.

Friday fun

Larry vacuumed all the carpet as Glen and I added a few more details to the layout. Then Glen and a few others started running and found a couple of pieces of rolling stock were in need of  adjustments.
 It was found that the spur to Coastal Oil is too short to handle 6 of the longer tank cars, we will to make sure some of the shorter ones are always in the mix of the oil trains.
Found a good idea in February's MRH. Pete Smith uses a continuous, inset shelf on his Loon Lake Railway. It is about 6 inches below the fascia.

Meeting night at the Huff and Puff

This was actually a celebration of the completion of the longest construction project to date.

This guy celebrated too much. A big thanks to not only everyone that worked on this project, but also the patiences of our membership during the construction.
A look at new areas.

Ortona yard which includes 3 staging tracks, a storage track, a run around and a turntable. Background factories add to the scene.

The town of Ortona, nestled in the foothills,  built by Glen. The is a passenger station, freight house and an oil dealership, located here.

The town of Lakeview, which is completely new to the layout. The west end has a freight house and a coal dealer.

The east end is dominated by the sawmill, but there is also a passenger station and a dock. A gravel dock is also located in the harbour.

Layout Quiz

How well do our club members know our own layout??  In doing some rail fanning, your photographer discovered some interesting things around the layout. Sharp pictures were impossible because of constant movement by the subjects whose keen ears picked up
the presence of potential danger. 
So where is this full antlered moose located?? 







Now here's an interesting pair enjoying our layout. Yogi and his brother have found an ideal rock cave to live in. Again, hard to get a clear shot because they are intimidated by intruders, especially railroad engineers!  Note that Yogi has stretched himself to his full height at the sound of the camera shutter. 
So where do we find these two?? 







Ah, but who do we have here but the elusive Sasquatch, on our own layout even!!  Seldom seen out of heavy tree cover, he spotted a banana skin dropped by a careless hiker and took a chance that the camera caught. 
Where can you find our local Sasquatch?? 








If you have not met the Countess as yet, you haven't been paying much attention to the layout details. She is residing in her own fenced yard accepting the accolades for her fantastic milking record. 
Two people have found her. How about you?? 





The above could be made into a club pamphlet to be given out to visitors as added incentive to carefully look over the entire layout. Rewards for finding all four might be in order.