Gibbon, Cozad & Western - "The 100th Meridian Line"

[SAH]

I have trains stacked up everywhere . . . .

At times, just like the real UP.  Call yourself a prototype modeler and be done with it.   

[C855B]

Ain't that the truth.

Good news overall after this evening's debug session is everything is patched up and the railroad is running just fine under both versions of JMRI. Score one for Mikey!

[CRL]

Glad you got it fixed.

[C855B]

Minor items to report, but progress nonetheless. First is getting good 3D prints of old style UP signal heads. The hoods and targets are larger than current practice. Here's the first one, representing an intermediate signal using a Showcase Miniatures box. It needs some light touch-up and a ladder, and then it can go on the connector base. LED module is the new 3-color Showcase Miniatures offering.



Second, I now have two Raspberry Pi400s that will boot-up JMRI and run the railroad at power-on. One is on Raspberry Pi OS, the other on Ubuntu. I am doing this for performance comparison since I am concerned that the slicker UI of Ubuntu comes with baggage.

Third, track is going down for real in the yard at Yermo. Fingers are crossed to have the tracks wired-in tomorrow, but there are going to be a couple of days or more of tedious effort building electronics for each end of the yard to control turnouts.

[Wolf N Works]

Signal looks nice Mike.

[C855B]

Speaking of "belated updates" (dog thread in Crew Lounge), I have finally been feeling well enough to tinker with the layout and its trappings, and now try to work on it for 2-3 hours every day. Yard tracks at Yermo are complete but waiting for switch machine electronics, something where the complexity is slightly daunting having been away from it for too long.

I have been attempting to JFRTM, but that's not working out so well at the moment because the fancy powered track cleaning cars are both down and there is just too much layout to go without them. Problem is too-fragile wheel-back whiskers for power pickup that I have now figured-out were an issue all along. Waiting for parts at the moment to build a power pickup sled out of a motorless F-unit and I will power the cleaners from that.

The big push at the moment is decoders. I have lots of power around (and under) the layout collecting dust because they are unconverted. I rifled through boxes last night to discover I have seven Life-Like GP20s, only one of which has DCC. I found to my complete surprise two compatible decoders in the stash, and three of the 20s are DCC-ready. Another decoder project is sound-ectomies on three of four BLI RSD-15s, the conversion of the first one documented here on TRW.

I also dug out two unopened Arnold/Hornby U28Cs and managed to fry a six-pin plug-in decoder; the Arnold design has power pickup strips too close to the decoder socket, and the too-long pins on the decoder touched the strips. The magic smoke stunk-up the room for a couple of days. One is finished and running, the other one is first in line on the bench, the only complication there being that these U-boats do not have MTL 1015-compatible boxes. The pilots and frames have to be carefully milled to accommodate the True Scale Couplers I prefer. There's also a U25C on the side which needs the same treatment.

And what is an update about the GC&W without mention of room lighting? No installation changes since the last report on this, but the Raspberry Pi-enabled control system now has a convenient touch panel to control lighting effects, actually mounted on the wall. It's kinda cool, and once I dress-up the wire runs to/from, I'll post a pic.

[C855B]

JFRTM. Three just-decodered locos in a mongrel lashup, Life-Like, Arnold, BLI/LokPilot. Not even speed-matched, ran smooth as silk anyway! Incredibly gratifying.

Not a valid vimeo URL

https://vimeo.com/796526731 (Bug in TRW software doesn't embed the video. You'll need to click the link. Background music was total coincidence! Just something I had on. Didn't plan it at all. Very weird the way it sync'ed.)

[Lemosteam]

Video is not public- requires a login to view.

[C855B]

Odd. It came right up on a system where I wasn't logged-in. I changed one setting ("rating") and corrected the caption, so let's see if that'll work for you.

[Philip H]

it opened just fine for me in Chrome.

[Lemosteam]

Worked this time.  Thanks!

[GaryHinshaw]

Cool lash-up; but I especially enjoyed your era- and region-appropriate collection of freight cars.

[basementcalling]

JFRTM. Three just-decodered locos in a mongrel lashup, Life-Like, Arnold, BLI/LokPilot. Not even speed-matched, ran smooth as silk anyway! Incredibly gratifying.

Not a valid vimeo URL

https://vimeo.com/796526731 (Bug in TRW software doesn't embed the video. You'll need to click the link. Background music was total coincidence! Just something I had on. Didn't plan it at all. Very weird the way it sync'ed.)

It redirected me to a pay to join Vimeo site. No thanks.

[Chris333]

Video works for me.

[davefoxx]

Enjoyed the video.  Feel free to post more filth like that anytime. 

DFF