Tehachapi, BC

[GaryHinshaw]

Nope - totally missed that yesterday!  Here is some coverage:

http://www.bakersfieldnow.com/news/local/Mudslides-Hwy-58-closed-for-days-I-5-could-reopen-today-333278361.html?tab=video&c=y

Looks like the worst stretch was closer to Cameron Rd., just down the hill from Sand Canyon.  Just heard some MOW crews requesting track & time around there to run some excavators around the tracks.

[GaryHinshaw]

Word is operations were resumed late Friday evening.

Closed again.  Last train through just experienced a soft spot.  They had been running 10 mph all the way from Tehachapi to Mojave.

[Hamaker]

If I had a nickel for every time I've driven Highway 58 from Bakersfield to Mojave.............   Moved from Bakersfield about eight years ago....to a "dryer Oregon". 

[C855B]

Closed again.  Last train through just experienced a soft spot.  They had been running 10 mph all the way from Tehachapi to Mojave.

No surprise there. There's a reason it's called "Sand Canyon". I have a hunch they're going to be fighting this for a while.

Hamaker, you'd have to look way back in this thread for the mention, but my interest in the area is as a Mojave native. Dubious distinction if there ever was one.

[Hamaker]

I do recall your mentioning that.  My first exposure to Caliente/Keene/Tehachapi/Mojave/Boron was back in the late 1940s when it was U.S. 466.  I'd ride with my mother over to Barstow to pick up my dad to bring him back home to Bakersfield each Friday evening.  Quite often he would work as the conductor on a work train operating out of Barstow.  I got where I had all the Burma Shave signs between Mojave and Barstow memorized.

[jagged ben]

...  I got where I had all the Burma Shave signs between Mojave and Barstow memorized.

Do you still remember them?  That could be a useful modelers reference!   

[GaryHinshaw]

Here are a few shots from the web showing the extent of the flood damage.  An aerial view looking east towards Mojave showing, from left to right: Hwy 58, the UP line, and the main drainage on the east slope.  The Cameron Road overpass is in the bottom of the shot:


The same basic view, but from the Cameron Road overpass.  The mud from the north side had to cross the highway and the tracks to get to the drainage:


Now looking west, the cleanup effort.  Trains are still running off and on:


The west side was not untouched.  Here is an aerial shot of Hwy 58 near the tunnel district just west of Tehachapi; the westbound lanes were inundated:

[GaryHinshaw]

Some incremental progress on the technology front.  In another thread, John pointed me to some work that Bob Bucklew is doing with tablets and signalling, so I thought I would give that a try on TBC.   I've got my jmri setup far enough along that I could set up virtual signals on the control panel, so once I figured out how to add custom images to the background, it was a piece of cake to superpose working signal aspects over them.  Here are two screen shots from the Walong-north panel:




Once I have the block detection actually wired in, these will be fully functional.  I'm not quite sure what direction I'm going to take this yet, but it is very nice to have options.  All of these panels are available to any device that can display jmri web pages.

[Hamaker]

Jagged ben.......Sorry I no longer have the Burma Shave signs between Mojave and Barstow stored in my memory.  These days it takes me about ten minutes after waking up to remember my name and where I live.......and why I moved here.  I do have one set of Burma Shave signs along the highway on my N scale layout.  Years ago I lived in a small mountain cabin which had 500' of frontage on the road.  I painted replicas of a set of Burma Shave signs and planted them along the road.  Five days later they had been stolen.   

[Scottl]

That is pretty cool Gary.  If you link it live to a website with some strategically-placed camera feeds, you could broadcast operations to the world.

[GaryHinshaw]

One goal is to enable remote dispatching in some way. The jmri web interface is one possibility, but I have not yet figured out how to serve the jmri pages beyond the local wifi network in the garage.  I'm sure it's possible, but my ISP may frown on it.  Other schemes that export the host computer's screen to a trusted client are also a possibility.  Anyone doing this already?

[C855B]

Yeah, that gets a little complicated. Your ISP may have issues with a video feed, and you may not have enough up bandwidth, anyway, if your residential service is the super-lopsided asymmetrical service we get down here. Low-bandwidth services on an odd port for JMRI shouldn't be an issue, but obviously you'll need a fixed IP or domain service that will handle tehachapibc.com or .ca to a dynamic address. (Domain is available, BTW. )

If I can ever get back to working on the GC&W [...damn apartments... ], layout cam and other interactive stuff is very likely in our future.

[Santa Fe Guy]

Gary, if I recall there was an article done in N Scale Railroading way back where guys where doing remote dispatching and very successfully. Sorry I cannot recall what month or year. Might be worth checking out with Kirk the Editor I am sure he could help or check his web site.
Rod.

[mark dance]

Hi Gary...very cool! Looking forward to the clinic (and see you in 2 hours for the op session! )

You might try posting to the OPSIG Yahoo forum at https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Ry-ops-industrialSIG/info .  There are far more people who operate in HO than N, on an absolute basis, and this is one of the places they hang out.  As well as  https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Proto-Layouts/info although this tends to cover proto modeling as much as proto ops. 

Hope they help

md

[jagged ben]

I can't give you a tutorial, but you can make your own icons to  superimpose over that photo, which is a very cool idea by the way.

Also those particular signals shouldn't have number plates.  I gather it was proof of concept in any case.