Several items:
1) UP 4-6-6-4 challenger by Tenshodo with TCS 1517 decoder and lots of LED's.
Chumstick Canyon trestle.
Whitefish.
Seattle's freight/passenger yard throat.
2) This car was shorting. The intermountain all metal wheels sides were contacting the metal trucks so replaced with brass axle with plastic wheels.
3) The PRR K-4 4-6-2 by BLI seems fixed that had the bad universal joint between the motor and gear box. Ran a 15 car train both east and west on the mainline (850' should 'do it').
Skykomish. This picture shows off my new shrubs that I 'planted' along the 'right of way'!
Waverly.
Chumwater Canyon trestle.
Nice connecting hose detail on the engine and nomenclature.
4) This Miller sign went bad on me. Emailed Miller Signs and they said to just put the sign in an envelope and they sent me a new one. Nice service.
5) PRR S-2 6-8-6 turbine. Model is by Alco models.
Wanted to get some resemblance of a turbine sound for this engine. From what I've read and videos of BLI's S-2 and Lionel's S-2, it makes a 'swishing' sound versus what I have on the scaletrains UP 8500 turbine and the C&O M-1 turbine. Another modeler suggested using 'blowdown' function.
videos:
Skykomish:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4sOrtT2Jq8
Leaving Hillyard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Zu4GwQPG8
View of driver mechanism (no pistons).
Went into decoderpro via SPROG and screen 'volume groups'.
'Blow down' had a setting of 6 and it was very loud. I had to, first, change it to zero to turn it off and then set it to 20 to get a respectable volume ( at least for me). Not sure why I had to turn it off, first, to get the volume to change!
Then I clicked on 'throttle', clicked on the asterisk to get next set of functions (ie 11-19) and clicked on 'blow down' to check how the volume sounded. I had to try several different volumes until I found one I liked. The videos will show that.
For Digitrax, getting to the next set of functions is easy. Hold down the 'FUNC' key while pressing 1 and then I pressed F8 for F18 function (for TCS 1517 decoder). One negative is, if the engine is put in reverse, F18 has to be reset again when in forward. The 'chuffing' sound volume was reduced to zero.
Cab interior. I had to paint the throttles!
6) The LCC signal system by RR-Cirkits is pretty sophisticated. Besides giving the correct color signals for the next 4 blocks, when the train passes the opposite direction signal changes to green in case the engineer wants to back up.
