New delivery.
Picked up a Lambert 873 baggage car for the GN empire builder.
No trucks but I have spare CV trucks.
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"HONGZ" stands for HO scale, N scale, G scale, and Z scale.
Post your non-O scale stuff here!
New delivery.
A new book: brass model trains published 2009.
Very thoroughly covers brass including passenger and freight cars plus N, HO, O, ON3, S and LG.
I have a 1994 Brass Brown book that only cover motive power so this new book fills in the 'gaps'.
My main interest is mostly pre-1990's.
Several pages of pictures.
The bulk of the 704 pages (big book) is price and data guide.
Price and data guide.
Each section is color coded.
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Woodland plug and play vehicles.
I model 1938 and these vehicles are 50's but I figure it would be overlooked when they are lighted!
I also bought two trucks as I figure they would be 'less noticeable' as out of date.
One can buy their power source or use a DC power pack so I used one I got cheap at a train show.
No input plug for the 'light hub' assembly so I just soldered the wires to the two prongs.
I bought the 'light hub' that comes with two LED's. They are mounted on a large (for HO scale) 3/8" square board, which would be good for building interiors.
I used the 12 volts output into the 'light hub' assembly and checked the output voltage to make sure no 'screw ups' as LED's don't last long when over powered!
I'm guessing you could hook the vehicles directly to a power pack but I bought the 'light hub' since each output has a variable dial on it to control voltage.
What you get in the vehicle pack. Besides the vehicle, some very long thin wires connected to the vehicle and a 'linker' plug that connects the vehicle to the 'light hub'.
Final results.
The variable dials on the 'light hub' have a large range but the current adjustment from low to high is only about a 1/4 turn of the dial. Don't know but this range could be larger for a different power source.
Pretty cool.
They list for $30 but can be bought for around $23.
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Woodland lighted vehicle scene:
I was going to put the two vehicles around the yards but, with all the activity that would distract the 'eye', I put them along the mainline away from other activities. A little weathering of the vehicles would be 'good'!
Since both vehicles are next to each other, I only used one 'linker' plug for both of them thus, I'll be able to connect some home made LED's to structures, etc.
A 16 volt source was already at the location so the testing power pack wasn't needed.
About a #79 drill and wire was used to easily place the crew in the scene.
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That sure turned out nice! Very clean looking, Nice work!
BLI lightning and thunder kit:
Comes with speaker, 2 LED strips and starter button.
Crickets come out at the end.
Have to add some dark clouds in that area!
New GN sign by Miller added to the GN office building.
Installed lights in the engine house at Skykomish.
HMMM: With DCC, the GNRW , as did the prototype, would be able to start running electrics as helper service again for going through the 8 mile Cascade tunnel.
I've got six GN electrics and storage tracks at each end of the tunnel: Tye being on the west end.
That would keep at least one more engineer busy.
With summer over, started running trains again to get ready for the first operating session of the year, being Oct 20.
Already had 4 breaks in the connecting wires between rails after only going about a 100'.
Had to get my 'top creeper' to fix 3 of them.
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First test train run of the new season (one of many, yet, to be done).
First run from the staging track to Seattle Washington's freight yard.
Four jumper wires needed 'jumping'.
Got 2 weeks to test before Saturday, Oct 20 (first operating session).
Chumstick canyon trestle.
Hillyard.
Skykomish.
Seattle's freight yard.
Dropped off train and exiting the escape tracks to the roundhouse.
Yard crew takes over to ready the R-2 for her next run.
The switcher waits on the drill track ready to sort the incoming cars.
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wow that sure looks nice! Sounds like your going to have a great season! Keep us posted!
Berea train show pictures:
Walther's 130' turntable.
A few months back, I received the two new circuit boards from Walthers to fix the error code 0 that came up when 'first' powering up the turntable.
The install can be done with the turntable mounted on your layout.
I taped the line to the outside sensor so it wouldn't move.
Four screws removes the circuit board and cover from the bottom of the table.
Just had to cut the two wires and used the provided electrical connectors.
I viewed the connectors from the bottom to insure the wires were all the way in the holes before pressing the button on top that secures the wires.
After turning on the power, a D0 shows up for selecting which size turntable you have. D4 was inputted for the 130' per your original instruction sheet.
Obviously, all the new track locations, then, has to be inputted into the controller.
Very simple process and took only about 15 minutes.
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Sam, looks like a nice easy fix! I take it your up and running on the TT now?
Thanks, Mike,
Yup, all fixed and getting ready for the first operating session Oct 20.
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Took all day but worth it!
Previously, until I knew the new circuit board would work, I only put in 7 of the 24 track leads.
Today, I cut a lot of 1" pieces of rail and soldered/spiked them to the turntable area to bridge the gap between the old and newly installed Walther's turntable.
With a plywood base, I had to pre-drill holes for the spikes.
Rails installed.
Some black paint to cover the 'too large' of a cement 'lip' around the edge.
A piece of masonite was used to clean the tops of the rail.
After the paint dries, some ground cover will be added.
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Sam, that really turned out nice! I hope one day you will shoot a video of it in action!
Thanks Mike,
Here's Walther's video: about 5 minutes into the video shows the bridge turning.
https://www.walthers.com/products/turntable-video
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Turntable complete.
Last night, I added some carpenter's glue and 'yard dirt'.
This morning, the tops of the rails were cleaned and all debris was vacuumed out of the pit area.
One must insure no particles are around the bottom edge of the pit as there are fine grooves there which allows this turntable to be extremely accurate. So accurate that one can adjust the bridge by about 1/64 of an inch.
As I have mentioned, previously, this is, by far, the best turntable on the market for HO gauge for ease of setup and accuracy for aligning the bridge to the surrounding tracks. Once set up, one only needs to select which track number and hit the 'head'/'tail' button.
I used the bridge control building as the 'head' side and the other end as the 'tail' side. Last night, each track was 'set up' for the bridge.
All back to normal.
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Sam, turned out nice and thanks for the video! I must have missed somewhere that this was HO!
Mike,
My Lionel, MTH, williams, and 3rd rail stuff:
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Nice Sam!
NMRA Div 7, MRC. Fall train show (Oct 13/14).
I believe there were 367 tables for vendors in 5 different areas held in the local high school.
Main hall.
A couple N scale layouts.
HO
PRR guys.
1st main room.
Frank moves too fast for my camera!
2nd main hall: layout displays
Garden G gauge.
Live steam.
S gauge
HO
Joe's module.
3rd hall. More display layouts.
HO, about 6' curves.
3 railers.
N gauge
John's 2 modules.
Lego's
Nice trolley layout.
3 rail.
4th Hall.
Z gauge.
S gauge.
My booty:
I'm a 'sucker' for the very old wood/metal kits from the 50's-70's.
It's rare to find so many at one show.
Some, I've never (or don't remember) heard of!
About half were in boxes.
Picked up 40 of them. Will need to update trucks, couplers on, at least, some of them.
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Freight cars purchased, yesterday, with boxes.
Made of, either, all wood, or all metal with wood bases.
Ladders are metal and stirrups/hand rail are metal wires.
Usually, the wheel sets are not RP-25's, or rusted axles, so they need to be replaced.
Have installed intermountain brass wheel sets on most of them.
The bulk of these cars have metal truck frames with working springs.
I get shorts on the insulated side wheel when the side of the wheel rubs against the side with the metal truck frames so I have to install a couple kadee insulating washers on one side. On some I just replaced the metal truck frames with plastic frames.
Varney's are usually all metal with wood base.
All wood construction
All wood with cast metal detail parts. Sides are, usually, like thin ply or wood.
Ulrich are, usually, all metal. This one has a nice wood deck.
All wood.
Surprisingly, these old working couplers are compatible with kadee.
Don't remember these guys.
Silver streak are, usually, all wood, again, with metal castings.
Have never seen, or don't remember, silver streak in a black box.
Most box cars have functional doors with nice wood floor interiors.
Already fixed this one. A little CA fixed it up.
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Sam, it sure looks like you had a great time yesterday! Plus you got what 40 new used cars to take care of an make them your own! All in all sounds like a great day to me!
Done with installing new wheel sets or trucks or couplers on the vintage freight cars.
Next, test them over the mainline.
I don't think any are duplicates and a lot of railroads, etc that would, probably, be hard to find in today's contemporary market.
45 cars counting some I bought on ebay.
Before the ICC intervened!
reminds me of the Lionel cars.
A different paint pattern version instead of the 3 stripes of red, white and blue.
Definitely, have never seen one of these!
When I was a kid, I ate their hot cereal: not sure if they make it, anymore.
OK, we have to have a few 'common' ones!
Owned by Burlington, C&S.
Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis.
Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific Railway.
A lot of railroads had lofty ideas and added 'pacific' to their name. Most 'never made it'.
A contemporary Accurail but nice wood grain.
Another contemporary manufacturer but not your 'normal' content.
That's a lot of post-em's!
For those that didn't know what 3M stands for.
Talk about a major change of products produced when first founded.
Now, if it's not thin, they don't produce it.
Some ulrich flats. Usually, all metal and very heavy but, good, when most flat cars are, usually, too light.
Not your 'every day' car!
For those that remember when some kits came with red trucks.
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WOW Sam you have been busy! Things are looking good I sure hope they roll as good as they look! Keep us posted !
Thanks, Mike.
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Testing the 45 new freight cars just acquired at our local train show.
Lots of work putting in new wheel sets/trucks/couplers.
Testing over the mainline and it took a couple hours to get half way on the mainline. Had shorts, coupler pull out, drooping coupler, etc.
Some of the original all metal trucks and metal wheel sets looked good so I left them on the car: wrong, got shorts on several of them.
All seems 'good', now.
Cascade electrics set up.
To prevent asphyxiation, the GN used electrics to pull entire trains (including the steam engine) through the 8 mile tunnel.
I wish to duplicate this activity on my GNRW.
Presently, two electrics have decoders so they were dispatched to each side of the tunnel.
There are 4 more electrics yet to be converted to DCC.
DUH: Head lights wouldn't come on. I took the engine apart and tested the lights, which were OK, and, then, it dawned on me, try using the F0 light function!
Unusual short:
Started the Y-1 electric out of the Seattle yard and the engine kept throwing the CB for that district. This time, it only took a few minutes to notice that the air hose was hanging too low and touching the top of the rail when going through a turnout!
Y-1 electric at the West end (Skykomish) of the cascade tunnel.
Will hold 2 electrics in the engine shed. Maybe able to have a 3rd electric sitting outside the shed without interfering with the mainline.
Getting the West end to operate took a few hours.
The engine shed turnouts haven't been used for decades and, either, the track was shorting or no 'juice'.
All my turnouts are homemade and solid frogs so I needed to cut some gaps on the other side of the frog and run jumper wires to their respective locations.
I'm keeping one throttle dedicated to the electrics.
Running the huge W-1 (96' long) electric to the East side of the cascade tunnel (TYE) went much smoother. Everything worked great.
Plenty of storage on the East end. Can get two electrics on the West bound siding and several on the East bound siding.
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Sam, that sure is on very impressive train you have there in your video! Sure run smooth, nice work on that!
Your Cascade area looks great! I am going to have to model something like that as my future layout goes from Seattle to east. But that is way down the road!
Testing recently acquired vintage freight cars.
Still getting shorts. Think I got most of the truck shorts fixed. All metal wheels and axles don't 'play well' with an all metal truck. Even the original wheel sets in the metal trucks are shorting on curves. I'm assuming the previous owner had no problem since he, probably, only ran 8-15 car trains. I'm finding the drag on a 45 car train on curves, even 48" minimums, have the trucks pulling towards the center and touching the metal wheels.
Video: testing the mainline using my 'all plastic/resin' cars: no problems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...amp;feature=youtu.be
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New delivery.
Virginian Triplex 2-8-8-8-4 by Westside models .
Produced in 1979.
Got to get the 'unique' engines.
These are kind of hard to find and, usually, expensive
but I got it for about 57% of the 'going' price, which, also, was less than the suggested retail price in 1979..
It was marked non operating, for parts so that may have scared people 'off'.
First thing was to solder on parts that were loose.
Tender back step.
Steam cylinder saddle.
Tender front deck plate.
Not often one sees a motor inside a tender!
There were a lot of wires for the tender backup light. All cut away as new lights will be used when a decoder is installed.
Tender ran OK on the bench and, likewise, on the track.
As on 'regular' steam engine, one side of the drivers is hot and the opposite side of the back 4-wheel truck is the ground.
That wire above the steam cylinders is the ground to the front steam engine; same as a drawbar for a 'regular' steam engine.
I've never had an engine with 3 motors and two in the steam engine.
Again, all the excess wires were removed.
The tender wire goes into a metal tube sticking out the back of the steam engine.
This mechanical connection will be replaced with a wire harness.
All back together and running.
Steam stack sticking out the back of the tender.
The tender is pretty heavy so it will do 'its share' of the pulling.
Cab detail. Has a lot of large pipes.
Used an LED light for the picture, resulting in unusual color.
Will be stripped and re-painted before a decoder is installed.
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WOW Sam your skills never stop to amaze me! You do things I would never want to try in fear of making things worse! LOL Who knows maybe down the road I will get there, but not yet! I hope it turns out to be everything you vision it will be!
Mike, the 'doors' are always open.
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PM the logging railroad.
The Swan river logging railroad interfaces with the GN.
There is a 4 track yard at the interchange.
A small town is served with several industries located at the interchange.
Logs are brought up out of the valley via two 'switch backs'.
There are residential buildings and a LCL loading dock plus a 2 track yard plus a 'run around' siding.
The logging railroad can keep two operators busy: one bringing logs out of the valley and the other doing switching at the logging town.
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Load of logs ready to leave the valley.
Residential and small factory.
LCL dock and coal tower.
Leaving valley to the first 'switch back'.
First 'switch back'.
Ascending to the 2nd 'switch back'.
2nd 'switch back'
Final ascent to the interface yard.
Reminds me when I rode the 'Silverton and Durango'.
Can see that there is about a 10 degree climb.
Track leading to the interface logging yard.
Industries at the logging yard.
I need to build my keystone logging mill to replace the present building!
John Allen's time saver was incorporated into the logging yard.
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New deliveries.
Got two more non sound decoders for the electrics.
New Virginian decals (plus some PRR) for the triplex.
Another 100 sets of intermountain wheel sets, 10 pack #5 kadees and some insulation washers.
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That's a jaw-dropping model railroad. And it looks like you're going to be very busy putting kits together. Only hand built cars would do for that setup. Wow
Thanks, Phil.
The latest kits were already assembled. Working on a 33'X47' layout, one must 'cut corners' whenever possible. I'll take nicely done pre-built 'any day'. Having built the layout by myself, I've come to the conclusion 'good enough' on a lot of stuff or one will never finish (at least in my lifetime!).
The layout appears done but there's lots of stuff to do, yet; ie, finish the ore dock, paint about 20 engines and about 20 passenger cars, light buildings, signaling system, install more decoders, etc.
I really don't have that much in kit form. As seen in the picture, about 20 vintage cars, several buildings, etc.
The vintage cars are really nice. Either all wood or metal(picture). Most of them go together pretty quickly.
Got a lot of detail items, ie: FSM castings.
A large container of people and critters.
And 'fix it' parts.
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Sam, just wonderful! Just wondering if you ever take a break! LOL When I get to doing my Snoqualmie pass I will hit you up for ideas!
I wish I could make it to Ohio someday a few people in that area I would really like to meet!
Mike,
Lots to see in the Cincinnati area. Very strong in model railroading.
There are 67 registered layouts in the NMRA Div 7, MCR.
Our monthly meetings are 50-60 attending, always a presentation at the meeting and then see 2 layouts open to visit after the meeting.
Circuit Breaker (CB) remote reset button installed for St. Paul yard.
As with the Seattle yard, I installed a reset button in the St. Paul yard to save having to walk 25' to the main control panel where the PSX circuit breakers are located for the 8 districts.
The instructions for the CB's gives procedures for connecting the wires to the CB board.
The buttons are SPST normally closed momentary push buttons.
It appears the reset buttons are only needed for digitrax and may not be needed for NCE.
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Main control panel CB's.
The original reset button next to the CB.
The remote reset button has to be set up in 'series' with the original button.
Some old 24 gauge 2 wire used: about 40 years old and still haven't used up the 2100' of wire! When it has a cloth wrapping, you know it's old!
A 12 volt bulb below the new reset button to inform yard hogger when the 'juice' is off.
No more walking 25': this is, also, for me when I'm operating by 'myself'.
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lol switchboard wire, yep it's some old stock.
Very impressive layout. Love following your progress.
Cam
Video:
GN N-3 2-8-8-0 freight at Hillyard. Functional headlight (engine/tender), classification lights, running board lights, cab light and fire box glow.
1517 WOW 101 steam decoder.
Video:
GN N-3 2-8-8-0 freight crossing Chumstick canyon trestle.
Functional headlight (engine/tender), classification lights, running board lights, cab light and fire box glow. Caboose with LED marker lights.
1517 WOW 101 steam decoder.
