What is the latest you have ever stayed up running or working on your trains, and why? Since I asked the oddball question, I’ll go first: I stayed up until 3:00am Friday night, resolving a sick consist, having gone into the train room about midnight. The roster of patients in the consist: Scaletrains ET44 AH, CSX #3251, looks great, sounds great. I want it to be the head of the train, with the red “nerf bar” (I don’t know the right name, but any of you that have done or understand Modified racing (short track race cars) know what I’m talking about. This loco has it all, the brawn, the brains, the looks, the vocal talent -everything. Except it has never delivered consistent leader-quality performance at the head of the team. The rear bogey likes to derail when it has another engine coupled behind, unless I run it slow. Same end also likes to derail if I have it running reversed. All wheels are within the NMRA gauge limit, but on the rear bogey, all three wheel pairs are at the gauge max, and I have one track joint that challenges this wheel set and this wheelset only. I’ve not had the confidence to take it apart and try to narrow up the wheel spacing myself yet. I can pull cars well enough, but another loco is a problem. BLI ET44 series, #977, Paragon 3. Good detail (not as good as the Scaletrains, but better than its photos), solid performer on the rails. Sound is ok, not as impressive as the Scaletrains -horn is not as clear or authoritative, engine sound is kind of “tinny.” It looks GREAT RIGHT NOW, because I’ve begun light weathering on it (my first loco to be weathered), so it’s a but of a standout. Scaletrains ET44AH, CSX 3440. Looks great, doesn’t have the derailing issue of #3251, but it’s horn isn't as smooth sounding as #3251, either. Been reluctant to try it in front as a result. Several months ago, I painstakingly speed-matched these three engines. Would have been easy if they were all one brand, but I wanted some brand variety before a large inventory hog-tied me to a particular brand loyalty. I also toned down the top-end speed, to get it to where speed step 28 is about 90 mph. And it was a pain in the posterior to do it all, but I finally got it done. One thing I found out during that process is that BLI and Scaletrains have different startup sequence lengths, and different period of time for how long it takes for the engine to spool up and move the locos when they are standing still. So, I set the speed table up so that all engines spool up at speed step 1, but nothing moves until speed step 2. So, when I go to run that consist, I hit speed step 1, wait until I hear things spool up, then hit speed step 2, and I’m off and running. Then a couple of months ago, rather than run all three at the head of the train, I decided to run them in a distributed power mode, two at the head, and one 2/3 of the way toward the tail of the train. This brought a different constraint into play: when splitting them up, I had to keep the BLI with one of the Scaletrains at the head of the train - if the BLI were running solo at mid-train, the startup/spoolup delay could cause derailments. Keeping it paired with a Scaletrains up front ensured that engine pair stayed acceptably synchronized with the solo Scaletrains at midtrain. Without poring through all the combinations of order and directionality, in recent days, a reliable combination I hit on was the BLI in front, #3251 in tandem with it (facing forward) and 3440 mid-train, facing rearward. But Thursday, I hit a fly in the ountment: Flange squeal. I turned it on quite by accident, and it brought about a quantum leap forward in the realism of the sound, and I HAD to have it on. It comes from both Scaletrains. BUT, the F7 key turns it on, and the F7 key also turns OFF the ditchlights in the BLI. And the way it works is the two are ALWAYS out of sequence no matter what I do; when in a consist, I can’t have both the BLI ditch lights on and the Scaletrains flange squeal on at the same time. So, along came Friday night -my marathon figure-it-out session: I started with #3251 back in front, and in watching closely, it looked like it was being pushed by #977. So I trimmed the speed up a tad by changing CV66 to 130, up nearly 2% from the default of 128. It didn’t help. So, I decided to uncouple it from the train and run it behind , but still as a consist, and monitor the gap. So, I ran it solo behind the other two locos pulling a 31-car train, and I was astounded to see #3251 fall a good 2 feet behind over the course of one lap (19 to 20 feet). So I scaled the forward trim up further, to 140. I ran it again. This time the gap varied by two inches at most. I declared it good. But, it didn’t help with it derailing that rear bogey when #3251 was leading another engine. So, I figured the time had come to consider #3440 for pack leader. So, I redefined the consist and put it in front. And it paired with the BLI behind, fixed at the head of the train. The speaker horn #3440, though still a bit raspy/hissy, was not as bad as I had recalled. I did take the speaker cover off, but everything was ship-shape in there, with the speaker seated tightly (but not forced). But mid-train, #3251 was being a problem (having faced it rearward), derailing often. So i turned it around to its more consistent forward-facing orientation. It didn’t derail, but the car coupled to it kept coming uncoupled. I recalled two years ago when doing these engines’ shakedown, that on the 11.25 radius test oval I had then, that the engine (body-mounted coupler with a fair amount of swingout to the outside rail) would throw a car with a truck-mounted coupler off the track behind it, but a car with a body-mounted coupler would track nicely behind those engines. So, noticing that I had put it mid-train ahead of a car with a truck-mounted coupler, I grabbed a car with a body-mounted coupler (the same car I grabbed two years ago). And it stayed coupled, and #3251 stayed on the rails. And I called it a night. Epilogue: last night I gave the same setup my endurance test: 30 minutes at track speed (70mph). No derailments.
Your 3AM beats my 2:30AM from a few nights ago. Was tinkering with something out in the layout room but had no idea how late it was until I came back in the house. Time just flew by!
I generally work on and run trains earlier in the day but sometimes do some running at night. I’d guess that the latest I’ve run trains would be around midnight, maybe a little later.
Not on a locomotive, but working on a friend's AR15 for a 3-gun match the next [turned out to be the same] day. Was up til around 3AM on that one.
Woke up Sunday morning at 2AM wide awake, so I headed down to the shop and tinkered on my brass tender until 6am. Then I took a nap. There have been numerous times where I find myself in the shop working past midnight on a project.
When I was on second shift and owned the house it was until sun up. 5-6 am. Now in an apartment it's usually about 7 pm. Then quite.
Hard to say. Been up very late, many nights, chasing some goofy little glitch, etc. But it is the hobby I love, so the hours never mattered.
Time spent on trains/layouts is never painful*, no matter what time of day/night. But the next day surely can be! *Frustrating? Sure! But not painful.
Actually that’s the best thing about retirement, my hours are really flexible. Only if I have some place that I have to be that next morning is it a problem if I’m up too late, but then I still act normal because I’m always nodding off anyway. Ralph
There was a time when I was at work until 3 AM (since 8 AM the previous day) to get a design package ready for engineering & fabrication review on schedule. But I enjoyed engineering, and was paid handsomely for it; unlike my hobbies, which are cash-flow-negative but quality-of-life-positive! Whether firearms, woodworking, trains, or anything else I like tinkering with, and doesn't make too much noise, time spent with these, even occasionally into the wee hours, is a net positive in my life. "Do what you enjoy for a living, and you'll never have to work a day in your life!" Or so they say.
Did a little under 72 hrs straight when deployed onetime 20 years ago. Managed to catch a couple of 30 min naps at some point during the stretch. That was the first and last time I did that to myself. Sleep is good, just ask any dog or cat.
Thank you for your service, on that and every other occasion! Most pet dogs/cats don't have to hunt for food, or defend their pack/litter/territory. That's what their human caretakers are for. In exchange, we get their devotion and love. Well, at least most dog owners do. Cats merely tolerate us as their loyal subjects. Thank goodness my wife is allergic to cats.
