Sunday fun

New quad unit is down, light is on but no one is home? Glen, Trent and I spent a lot of time sorting out the car cards and removing the ones that are no long there. Then we redistributed the remaining ones. One track at Tuck will hold a short passenger train and the other container freight. The CP passenger train was repositioned to the runaround at Elsewhere. Reliable Electric will replace the garage at Valleyview.  We are now short a few hopper cars, so if anyone has some extras, we could use them and maybe a couple of stock cars, the rest we are O.K. Ralph and Don worked on the branch line and decided not to double track the tunnel. Don, Trent and I talked about adding signals to the upper loop, tunnel turnout. Projects on the go include replacing track on the branch, putting signals on the upper loop switch, and figuring out one for the turnout after Warwick, putting in a turnout for Reliable Electric at Valleyview, putting in a turnout at Heron's Landing to make the old passenger track a runaround, making up Waybills for the container track at Tuck, and for the Power Plant and the Coal Mine, which will now be switched like a normal industry, no more unit coal trains.

Wellington changes.

Sometime in the future Wellington will be changed. What we don't like is that some of the switches are not easy to work. For an example, the ladder for the yard is the wrong way around. So we have asked for ideas for a new track plan. The area is 2 feet wide and 20 feet long. The incline down from Zorra Cement and up from the loop must stay, everything else is up to change. Some ideas include, swapping the yard and the turntable/engine house, then the runarounds and passenger tracks could end at the turntable, or not, 2 passenger tracks for the station, and industry locations. Get your thinking caps on.

Meeting and work night.

Great meeting. Discussed the problem with some of the throttles (engine creep and jack rabbit speed changes, about 3 have this problem.). We will try moving the transmitter, but why are just some affected?  Maybe we should try those on a different layout. One was sent back to Digitrax and they said there was nothing wrong with it?  Officially voted and agreed on a few projects. We will change some of the branch line to code 100. Elsewhere's run around will have 3 tracks, the middle 1 will be the mainline and the outside 2 will hold passenger trains. The program track will no longer be joined to the mainline. The passenger track in Heron's Landing will be changed into a run around. A set of signals will be tested for the turnout on the upper loop, more on that latter. A donation came in to fund most of the above, thank you. Ideas to redo Wellington were asked for, more on that later. It was also a work day. Taylor cleaned track, Bill cleaned up, Jim put in a main shut off switch, Ralph and Donald worked on the branch line it seems everyone was doing something. A dip in the siding to Hay Co. was repaired. We also decided that new members will be voted on, in the future.  All in all a good night with lots done, thanks everyone. Another idea was to install small shelves in front of each town so that car cards can be stood up while switching, it may also protect the car and throttle boxes. The idea for a location to send containers came up, maybe at the Lincoln team track or the Tuck siding.  We also talked about having someone switch Lincoln, Wellington, and Springbank, and when the new track is installed on the branch, some can switch it, that's 4 more people operating. This would eliminate some of the bottlenecks as freight trains would simple drop off and pickup  blocks of cars.

Sunday Fun

Well the problem branch line tunnel is no more, that's right the code 70 track, the tunnel and the rock face are all removed. Now instead of  using less than standard track support, it will be replaced with a good plywood base and then laid with code 100 through both tunnels. Quad 2 was moved to the west end of Heron's Landing and new main feeder wires were strung to the mid section of Heron's Landing, the lower main line to just past Jutland, the upper mail line from Valleyview to Trent's Hill and the turntable. The system was then tested without a problem. Quad 1 powers Wellington, Elsewhere, and the upper and lower return loops. At the same time feeders were added to the Quarry tracks. It's a good thing Tuesday night is a work night as there is a lot of clean up to be done. As a preview to the meeting, we need funding for about 10 lengths of flex track and a turnout for the branch line. Also 2 turnouts and 4 pieces of flex track for the passenger tracks at Elsewhere and a turnout at Heron's Landing for a new run around there.  Sometime, maybe, in the next year, we might want to move the turnouts in Wellington to the front, which might call for a complete rebuild of Wellington, so anyone who would like to submit a new track plan please do so, I'm sure if we put our heads together we can improve on what we now have. As a note of interest some of our wiring problems at the start, turned out to be 2 faulty plug in units and a couple of bad daisy chain wires connecting them.

quad 2 on new board

Ralph and Trent are cutting up the tunnel

supervisor Don and Jim rewiring leads to quad 2

leave these two alone for a minute

tunnel and track removed

Sunday Fun

Introduced a young boy to the wonders of model railroading, by the smile on his face it will be hard to keep him away.  Tate picked up on things quite fast and even switched a freight train. We tested out the island branch track through the tunnel and had a lot of problems, we may have to put in code 100 track sometime in the future, just to make it more reliable. Again the idea to adding 2 sidings at the west end of the Elsewhere yard came up. They would hold the Heron's Landing and Wellington passenger trains. This would allow other passenger trains to go to the Wellington station and the siding at Heron's Landing could be changed into another run around track. Both projects will have to wait for discussion and funding.

freight train from Wellington passing through Valleyview

Tate and his Mom discuss switching moves at Springbank

New Quad Unit

Over the past weeks preparations were underway for our third Quad Unit. Wires have been run not only to install it under Lincoln, but also to move 1 of the other Quads down near Warwick. The power supply for the switch on the wye was also moved under the loops, now it is turned off when the main power switch is turned off.  Plans are under way to install a 120 volt switch under the loops that will turn off all power to the layout, so nothing gets left on. On Sunday the third Quad was wired in and tested, only had to switch 2 wires and all was well. This Quad now powers the island part of the branch, Miller, the lower main from just past Jutland to Mount Tom and the upper loop from there to the other side of  Springbank. This effectively cuts both the upper and lower mainlines in half, providing a more consistent power supply. Now a derailment effects a much smaller area. A new feeder was installed on the island and tunnel repair was also completed.

Tuesday night at the Huff and Puff

Well there was a lot of huff'n and Puff'n with 9 or so different trains that ran. We started out with nothing working, but soon found the problem, the memory was over loaded, Jim Long fixed that with a reset sequence. The ideas from the last posting were discussed so now everyone can ponder them. One I did not mention in the blog is to move the Heron's Landing Passenger Train storage track to a new siding at Elsewhere and make that storage track into a third run around at Heron's Landing. Something else to think about is to change the siding to Sunset into the Ore Train destination instead of a staging track. One quirk on the lower loop is that one or two engines speed up there, while others don't, at present we have no solution to this.

all trains meet at Lincoln

switching Springbank

leaving the port