Seaboard Central 2.0

[160pennsy]

Any updates on the pine trees Paul is making for you?  I'm anxious to see them on your layout.  The last pic he posted of them really looked amazing.

@davidgray1974,

No news, but I'm not placing any pressure on him.

DFF

Hello davidgray/davefoxx,

Sorry for not sending out Railwire updates but the holiday's, travel to see family & busy year end work schedule have kept me away from the work bench and finishing DFF's pine trees. Those pine trees still need flocking (pine needles) applied before they are ready to ship. I'm still looking for appropriate colored 2-4mm static grass flocking that I want to try applying to the branch ends using my Grassinator (built per ZTrack article) . Since the armatures are metal florist wire, then the process should work in theory.

[davefoxx]

Seriously, no pressure, Paul.  I appreciate your offer, but since you're doing this out of the kindness of your own heart, take your time.  Life does come first.

That said, the Grassinator idea with a metal wire armature makes total sense to me.  This might even allow the pine needles to be applied only at the tips of the branches and not all over the trunk.  I hope your experiment works!

DFF

[davefoxx]

I haven't given any time to the layout for a few weeks.  I haven't even run a train.  So, I don't know why when I entered the layout room this afternoon, I felt like just fooling around to see how many cars I could put on a train.  If I remember correctly, I once ran four locomotives and fifty cars.  Since I had two Atlas SD35s on the mainline, I started with them.  I got up to fifty-two cars running reliably behind those two locomotives before I had to stop for supper.

I have to say that I'm really impressed that those two SD35s can pull that much.  Granted my mainline is flat, but it's got some sharp curves (minimum radius 12-3/8") that really add to the rolling resistance of the train.  You might be surprised to see just how much effort it takes to pull those fifty-two cars by hand.  Perhaps I'll go for sixty cars tonight. 

DFF

[Wardie]

Dave I have one SD-35 for when I felt like running a Guilford era train on my old Maine Central layout and I was/am impressed with that GP sized SD. The prototype was a unit that I believe CSX provided to Guilford for wrecking a Santa Fe SD-26 in transit to the property in New England and was the sole SD-35 on the roster. I mix it with SD-26s just like Guilford did back in the day when these units ran.

[davefoxx]

As I stated upthread, the two SBD SD35s really impressed me with their ability to pull fifty-two cars on my layout without slipping.  By the time I got to sixty-two cars, they were starting to fall down on the job.  But, adding a GP38-2 was sufficient to move the train with no loss of traction.  I then decided to pool together all of the cars that I had on the layout, excluding intermodal and passenger cars, and hit the seventy-five car mark.

I was also curious to see what my two SBD SD50s could do.  Sixty-two cars was no problem.  By seventy-five cars, though, there was some slipping, but a bigger problem arose: consistent stringlining at the head of the train.  A shuffle of some light cars to the rear of the train didn't help much, so the SCL SD45-2 that I was going to add to the front was placed on the rear of the train.  These three locomotives run well together, and the SD45-2 is pushing approximately one-third of the train, which took a lot of weight off of the head-end of the train.  So, problem solved, and this train has run many laps with minimal problems.

In the interest of "pictures or it didn't happen," here you go:

Thanks for watching,
DFF

[mcjaco]

Full screen unavailable?  Ugh!

[C855B]

Full screen unavailable?  Ugh!

It's something new and annoying with YouTube vs. embedded videos. I just right-click to get the direct URL and open a new tab with it.

[Bendtracker1]

Just click on the YouTube Logo and it'll take you right to YouTube, then just click full screen.

[davefoxx]

Yeah, I'm not happy with YouTube.  Somewhere in the last five months, it became impossible to upload videos from my phone to YouTube.  When I tried unsuccessfully again last night, it occurred to me that maybe I should delete the YouTube app from my phone and re-download it.  Unfortunately, YouTube is apparently one of those apps that is permanently loaded to the phone and cannot be deleted (at least I don't know how).  So, I did the next best thing and deleted the updates, reverting it to likely 2012 software (I still have a Samsung Galaxy 3G), which, much to my chagrin, fixed the problem.

However, editing the video online was a real pain in the you-know-what.  I'm not pleased for the complexity that it now takes to create a video on YouTube.  maybe I should have just done some actual modeling this weekend.   

DFF

P.S. Unfortunately, I just noticed that my phone has done an automatic update since I uploaded that video.  While I was screwing around with the phone last night, I inadvertently hit the auto-update option.  I'll need to fix that, if the uploads don't work again.

[C855B]

[Insert usual rant about Google's Alphabet's intrusion juggernaut.]

Yeah, I shut down my YouTube account back when Google started bundling everything. I don't know Droid devices, but is there a Vimeo app that does the same thing? Granted, Vimeo (Yahoo) is only slightly less intrusive, but that's what I've been using for personal videos like this. Seems OK. :shouldershrug:

[davefoxx]

Thanks, Mike.  The next time I consider making a video, I'll look into Vimeo.

DFF

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Dude. Dooooooooood.

That's awfully damned impressive!! I dig it.

It also demonstrates that you've put together a great mid-80s roster too. That was some good stuff.

[davefoxx]

Thanks, Ed!

[mcjaco]

Embedded or full screen, it was hawt. 

And I'm not an East Coast guy.

[davefoxx]

Embedded or full screen, it was hawt. 

And I'm not an East Coast guy.

Haha!  Thanks, Matt!

DFF