Great Northern railway

That sounds good, Sam!  I stand corrected. 

NMRA MCR DIV 7 spring train show.

My division and it's held in my 'back yard'.

One day event.

Gym,

large hallway,

narrow hallway and...

cafeteria.

S gauge.

S gauge, scale.

Battleship with lighted smoke as guns are fired.

Live steam.

20 bucks purchase to add 3 short tracks to the passenger yard for 3 short passenger trains.

GNRW 3rd Saturday of the month OPS.

Usual pizza 'first'.

Videos:

Many of the cars are vintage metal Athearn/Varney and wood Silver Streak/Ambroid kits.

PRR DD-1 electrics:

First 'road test'.

Kept the train 'short' due to not knowing it's 'pulling power'.

Tye:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-esmL3EwUUo

Marias pass:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcFwwOABRpk

Departing Havre:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zj9GFGuC9XI

Willmar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQkfSrHXbx0

Skykomish:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL8OBbpIj9o

Ben's C&NW 2-8-2 21 car freight:

Skykomish:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMD8zByNXHI

Tye:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8j88sTFu2w

Chumstick canyon trestle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhk7CYU8B6k

Willmar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3xa_y_eJ4I

GN Z-1 4 unit box cab electrics 45 car freight:

first 'road test'

Willmar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quOghDjFo8E

Glacier:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZAReNPP-Ro

Chumstick canyon trestle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj2wFoJOrbQ

Willmar (west)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZQiLHccjTc

PRR DD-1 electrics at Willmar.

Ben's C&NW 2-8-2 at Glacier.

GN Z-1 4 unit box cab electrics 41 car freight at Havre.

Glacier.

Some 'land scaping' that Ben did on his layout.

PM multiple items.

SP&S Z-8 4-6-6-4 shorting.

Video: Tye freight drag.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF4H3Ll6ooA

Tender wheels were shorting.

Put some Kadee insulating washers on the insulated side of the wheel sets.

Tender centipede wheels touching outside frame.

Put some Kapton tape along the inside of the frame on the insulated side.

Painted many moons ago.

Has a functioning vestibule cab.

====================

C&O H-8 2-6-6-6 not moving.

Video:

Also, painted a 'long time ago'.

Surprisingly I have no 'road' videos of this engine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLN1dsVWBtM

Tested the motor with the tender removed and via a DC power pack and all good.

Removed the tender shell to check the decoder and it, also, was good.

Never force stuff: had to remove the hand rails on all four corners from holes to remove the frame from the top of the tender.

Tested on the programming track and nada.

Thought I'd reload the engine address and all's good.

Unusual for the address to get 'lost'.

============

GN Z-1 box cab electrics.

Lead truck 'jumping the rails' once in awhile.

Some solder wrapped around the axle.

==============

A couple freight cars derailed.

Replaced the plastic wheels with metal.

Sounds more 'scale' anyway when rolling on the track!

Ross club weekly Tuesday night meeting:

videos:

Nick's new diesel acquired at our local train show last Saturday:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZKxKA8ii6c

Mark operating the GN Z-1 4 unit electric 44 car train:

Hillyard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCD_suyGyiA

Departing Havre:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leJ6kv75JJo

Joe dispatching.

GN Z-1 electrics at Tumwater canyon trestle.

Mark operating the GN Z-1's at Seattle's incoming track.

Nick 'switching'.

Passenger yard expansion.

I need 4 more short tracks at the end of the passenger yard for 5 'short length' trains.

Warm enough to go out to the detached shop and cut up 1/2" ply and homasote 6' long by 8" wide with one end 'angled'.

Glued....

and nailed the homasote to the ply.

There are 4 short trains on one passenger track plus another in the Seattle's freight yard that make it difficult to run any train but the nearest one to the turnout.

One Burlington Zephyr.

PRR Aerotrain.

Milwaukee Hiawatha.

UP M-10000

The Electroliner in the freight yard.

New extension added to the existing passenger yard.

Since it's at the end of the yard, it won't interfere with 'people movement'.

Supports are 1"X4".

'Dry fit' of turnouts and track.

'Train lengths' versus 'track lengths' makes my 'expansion' feasible.

Very 'cost effective'; 60 bucks to get turnouts and track and I already had the wood.

Track installation in the passenger yard.

No track 'hand laying'; just commercial stuff.

There's 1500' of hand laid track plus 100 hand made turnouts: Lazy in my old age!

The passenger yard adds about another 250' of track.

The first turnout (right handed) added to the existing track.

Cut a lot of the ties (under the rail and between the two tracks) in case I need to flex part of the turnout.

I got a good 'deal' on some #6 turnouts but they were code 70.

Squished the rail joiners and soldered  the code 70 on top of the rail joiners.

Cut one of the turnouts about 2.5" shorter to get all the turnouts close to each other since space was critical for the trains.

4 new tracks plus the original gives me 5 more passenger tracks.

A cardboard divider from a box of candy raised the 3 code 70 turnouts to the 100 code rail.

Turnout points used to provide 'juice' to each of the tracks.

Prior to installation I used a Dremel wire brush to clean all points, stock rail and ends of the rail.

Caboose hobbies 'ground throws'.

I cut a V notch under the 'ground throw' to insure no binding.

Clear plastic 'protector' reattached to the side and the 5 short passenger trains can now depart without having up to 3 trains 'in front of it'!

I put labels with the engine address at each turnout.

There is a long lead track to the 5 passenger trains.

Hopefully, I don't do anything stupid like acquire another passenger train

The addition looks great!  My guess is you will acquire another passenger train...or two. 

New delivery.

UP Business car just imported by BLI.

Interesting: 'finger touch' to activate different lights.

Not sure how that works?

Non operational 'window wipers'!

Interiors plus lighted.

Top views.

Other side.

Much better than my brass passenger cars which I have to paint and add interiors.

Interior kits.

UP Business car lights operated by 'touch'.

Usually, a decoder or a magnetic wand is needed to perform this operation.

Now we can just touch a part of the roof to enable/disable lights; very cool.

I believe this is the first HO model that has incorporated this technique.

video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmzUFYLJgcI

I 'googled' this method:

Touch-sensitive lamps use your body's capacitance to detect touch and toggle the light on or off, by effectively adding to the lamp's electrical storage capacity and triggering a circuit that detects this change.

Touch-sensitive lamps replace the traditional on/off switch with an electronic circuit that detects sudden changes in voltage or capacitance

I certainly would never have thought of using that technology for car lights.  Even without that feature, it is a superb looking model car.

Mark, BLI does excellent work.

===================

GN W-1 B-D-D-B electrics.

Imported by Custom Brass models in 1976.

These were equivalent to the Big Boy only the lead and trailing trucks were powered.

These were the largest single engines electrics ever made.

They were 15.5' high and I read where the crew, initially, ducked when they entered their first tunnel.

The GNRY had 2 of these; 5018 and 5019.

The 5018 has a non sound decoder.

I installed a Tsunami electric decoder in the 5019.

Video: yard test

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgtGGuCVqu8

I painted this engine back in 2016.

Tsunami decoder with a PFM speaker from the 1970's.

A 4 wire connector made to go to the frame.

Programming track.

I need to relabel the engine to 5019.

The address is 5018 to operate with the other engine.

I left the incandescent bulbs that I installed 9 years ago (too hard to access that area).

There are 2 at each end and in series so they didn't need a resistor.

Before:

Incandescent lights look nice.

I painted the 5019.

I acquired the 5018 that the previous owner painted and he did a nice job.

Top views.

No decals for the striping was used on either engine; just very thin tape for the 'masking'.

I remember it being 'fun' masking for that yellow line!

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Went to Bob's house so he could upload the turbine sounds in my UP GE #2 diesel turbine engine.

He also has a 3D printer.....

and he's 'printing' all the sides to my 12' ore dock that I started back in the 80's and never finished!

Printed from original GN plans.

Need 64 of these 'sides'!

Need a bunch of these chutes also!

Finally, I'll have sides on my ore dock!

That’s great that Bob can print all those sides for you!