Weekend Update 2/8/15

[Coxy]

Did this last week

Sweet model Bill. I lived a mile from the richmond pacific from 1995 to 2011. Email me if you need any info. I have tons of photos and vids including a few cab rides on the RPRC.

Cheers,
Coxy

[ChrisKLAS]

Spent the last week tackling fascia and (obviously unfinished) backdrops in the layout's 22x13ft annex room.

[peteski]

Thanks for the input. Did you mean 38awg?  I will try and source smaller wire for future projects. I though I had the smallest available. It's not tough to work with but smaller is always better.

I tried series but couldn't make it work. The ditch light castings are so small that the piece of wire joining the leds was to small for me.  I couldn't solder the LEDs with out losing the wire on the end of the iron or unsold wrong a previous connection.  I plan to consolidate all of the wires at each end and use one resister for each cluster of 4. The resister will be larger than normally needed to keep the power down. I'm not after room lighting. Just the subtle effect.

If you see me planning to make a mistake, please advise!

Craig.

Yes, 38 AWG.     I'll PM you not to clutter the Weekend update thread.

38 AWG wire (in red and green insulation) is available from N-gineering.  I also have a spool in blue.

[mu26aeh]

Been working on my CSX ballast train today.  Here is all ten cars with decals finished. Of course the day I want to do this,  railroad picture archives is down at last check, so I worked from the handful of photos I did have for number range references. They are close enough for me and thats all that matters.    they will look good behind a set of CSX MOW GP38's from Atlas

[mark dance]

It has been several weeks since I posted any update so my apologies in advance for all the pics and clearing out this "omnibus" update...

Over Christmas I started painting a number of GHQ (and other) metal vehicles but I didn't finish them until this week.  First up, a GHQ logging truck at Farron in front of a mocked up section house and another on the Coykendahl forestry access road.





1 of 3 GHQ lift trucks completed, this one at Celgar



Modified GHQ front end loader at the now complete Celgar chip grizzly (the glare in this photo is because it was taken through a protective plexiglass shield at front of layout)



GHQ Snow plow and log loader at Farron







1 of  2 Railway Express side boom crawlers, this one in the field grass at Cascade (the other is on the MOW spur at Shields siding).  These are *not* "highly detailed" castings!



And two of three weathered key chain ornaments!  An excavator at the rip rap pit at Fife and a front end loader at the Slocan Forest Products Mill …with a bit of highlighting and weathering they are ok by me as background models.





A trip to Al Frasch’s BN Pilchuk Division in January prompted me to  get WiFi up and running to connect to the layout so I spent a few days connecting an isolated wifi router through JMRI to the layout.  Some testing with WiThrottle and EngineDriver are very very promising in terms of the quality and robustness of the radio signal.  A BIG thank you to the JMRI Yahoo forum and my local IT support for the help overcoming some router configuration issues.

I have also started a low trestle across a marshy backwater in the Slocan Valley.  Here are few shots showing the build progress.











And finally I began filling out the loco fleet with a few sound units. Just a few to start as I wish to test the overall noise level at an up-coming op session before deciding one way or another on augmenting the fleet.  One C Liner was equipped by local decoder guru David Yip with an ESU LokSound unit (running a GMD prime mover for now while I await the appropriate FM prime mover to download).  This C Liner is the lead unit on a 4 unit consist for one of the Boundary freights.  The single sound equipped loco seems to be more than enough for me to simulate sound from the consist and, even then, I have the sound turned way down…the effect is awesome however.  This loco was previously equipped by David with a Tsunami decoder (same speaker) and the quality difference with the ESU unit is remarkable.  Further, I took delivery last week of two ESU sound-equipped GMD-1s and here they are parked just beyond the newly installed fence around Celgar mill.  After struggling briefly with the control parameters they both run beautifully and sound awesome…again with the sound turned waaaayyyyy down.  The gauge appears to be off on both units wheel sets however and the short out on several Peco code 55 switch points.  I am not looking forward to regauging these wheel sets…Mike: any help here?



Again sorry for the rambling update…have a great rest of your weekend (and a great Family Day holiday tomorrow for BC residents!)

md

[Santa Fe Guy]

Great work Mark. Once completed and worked on a bit the GHQ kits come out looking very nice.
Looks like you have done a heap of stuff.
Rod.

[Scottl]

Omnibus, indeed!  .

[nkalanaga]

Mark:  I think that's the first chip car model I've seen with a working end door.  Is it hinged, so the car can be used in a train, or a fixed "scenic" model, and the running cars are switched onto the track with it?

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Another PC caboose repainted and decaled


Bob.

That looks great#

[Rich_S]

GHQ Snow plow and log loader at Farron

Mark, The trucks look great. As a former truck driver I have one suggestion, the loads in dump trucks should be in a pile centered in the body. If you were to fill up the entire body the truck would be grossly over loaded.

[mark dance]

Mark, The trucks look great. As a former truck driver I have one suggestion, the loads in dump trucks should be in a pile centered in the body. If you were to fill up the entire body the truck would be grossly over loaded.

thx Rich...Will do. The load is just a piece of foam right now so easily removed.

Md

[mark dance]

Mark:  I think that's the first chip car model I've seen with a working end door.  Is it hinged, so the car can be used in a train, or a fixed "scenic" model, and the running cars are switched onto the track with it?

The turnout to the grizzly track is functional and the track is powered but the car is a static model. The mill gets 12-15 loads per ops session and moves out the same number of empties. The Kraft switcher which works the mill is the busiest job on the layout so it can't take the time to individually spot and lift all those cars. I do have a 44 tonner dedicated to switch the track but the monotony of the job never appealed to me. As well this location tends to be the most conjested people spot on the layout as the pusher crews meet the eastbounds at Cascade right above it.

Md

[lock4244]

I started work on an ex CR SD38 (NS 3804).

So we now know where one of the many Kato Algoma Central SD40's has wound up 

[VonRyan]

It's in the basement. Stays about 60-65 degrees in the summer and maybe 55 degrees in winter if it's really cold out.

No other turnouts were affected, just both curves. Maybe next time I'll epoxy the turnout to a sheet of steel plate 

I have a stack of 1:1 scale tie-plates. Let me know how many you want. I'll even mill off the rust on the flat side.   

[chessie system fan]

This looks interesting Aaron. What did you start with and what changes are you making?

Hey Ryan!  It's a GP40-2 shell with GP40 grills on a GP38-2 walkway.