We are back, fresh from another weekend. How did you do? Were you busy? My weekend went about as planned, nothing really railroad related on Saturday except that I was able to snowmobile on the former Northern Line of the B&M. The former line is now a recreational trail from Boscawen to Lebanon NH. A group has restored many of the Granite mile markers and many artifacts such as the tell tales are still on the trail. Sunday I did play on the Galesburg City Job a bit. I miss the Santa Fe connection which makes op sessions a bit more challenging. Hopefully after the Amherst show, I’ll have everything I need to repair that section of track. So how about you? What did you accomplish this weekend? Let us know. We’ll be back on Friday the 25th to start the process all over again. Until then, have a great week, stay safe and as always... High Greens!
Saturday -- the ops session on my friends NYO&W went great. We had one heck of a good time. Sunday -- no honey do's -- so, I got to work on the first control panel - installed turnout indicators. Wiring the LED's was a breeze. Now -- 4 more panels. Hope Y'all had a great and productive weekend, Wolf
Friday I assembled the sound modules. Sunday after a late train and a bumpy ride on the Green River sub my back hurt more than normal (I slipped on the ice two weeks ago) so climbing under the layout to start wiring the modules was out of the question. So I did stuff where bending over didn’t happen. I first removed the two winter scenes and placed them on my staging yard cart for storage. Then lowered the swing bridge. Now I can move freely in am out of the train room pain free for a while. I then added some more plaster cloth to the mountain in the aisle to shore up the edge then decided to work on the big pile of rock castings I had made. I still need a few more rocks made up but the main mountain looks pretty darn good. Then while the joint compound dries I found that I couldn’t wait until next week to make the tunnel portal for my HOn30 line so I did that really quick. Actually forget the tunnel, I’m thinking snow shed now. Now I can work on the rock structure on that section as well. I was also able to draw the outline for the last section of back drop. It’s now ready for painting.
Didn't accomplish what I'd hoped for on my (N Scale) control panel because of fitment issues, but I think all is well now. I mounted my turnout control toggles and with the lid closed, the backside of the toggle switches were close to the tops of the terminal strips below. I don't think I'd have had a problem, but to be 100% sure, I rearranged the layout of the terminal strips so that nothing could possibly touch. Now to work the wiring layout so that it's neat and organized. The other side of my panel will be for block control.
This weekend I finished wiring, setting addresses, and programming 3 of the 4 Digitrax DS64's that will drive the turnouts in my staging/fiddle yard. I got 12 turnouts working correctly, addressed and then set 12 routes for trains entering/leaving the yard. I was dreading this, my first time dealing w/ these things. I had one issue and emailed the Digitrax help desk. They responded back and "showed me the light" as it were. So I was able to successfully get this done. This yard is "back of house" and not something that I will model as a yard. Just a yard to stage trains in and out of the layout. The pictures are the DS64's, a shot of some of the routes, and then the small engine yard which will be 5 more routes. There will be 17 routes in all. This is also my first time using CAT6, 23AWG for the Tortoise wiring harness. On my first 2 layouts, I just wired the motor leads and lasted connected random wires for the aux switches as needed. The CAT6 is great because it forces me to wire all 8 of the poles on the Tortoise header and they are ready to go. Don't know why I didn't do this before.
