The Transcontinental PRR

[Specter3]

I love all these new cab type videos. I am just waiting for someone to either put the camera in the actual cab so as to get that over the nose view, or digitally put one in after. That would be cool.

[eric220]

It would have to be the latter.  The actual model cab would be way too close and nothing but a fuzzy haze at the edge of the shot.

[eric220]

For giggles, I did one of the whole upper level.  I managed to tweak the video settings so that the whole thing is visible with the existing room lighting.  There are some obvious distortion issues, but I'm hoping that I can improve the quality in the future.  If you can take eleven minutes of Gershwin, enjoy!

[eric220]

Not exactly engineering related, but I wanted to share a shot that I got today.  I was working in Pittsburg, and I happened to catch a Pennsy commuter train leaning into the curve to the bridge over the Sacramento River.

[Dave V]

Very, very sexy!

[Bsklarski]

I model Pennsy now!

[davefoxx]

I don't know what it is about superelevation, but it just conveys speed, even in a still shot.  Well played, Eric.

DFF

[dougnelson]

[/quote]

Eric:

That is an awesome rendition of the Lindbergh engine!  Can you provide some info on what you did to create this?  I see that the cab is open.  Is it tender drive?

[eric220]

I confess, what I did was package up a Minitrix K4 and ship it off to a guy that's done these conversions before. The mech is still the Minitrix, although it has been cut down and remotored. The tender is a Bachmann. The decoder is in the tender, and the motor is in the loco.

Edit: Now that I have a minute to hunt for threads, it was done by the same guy that did this one:

https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=28261.0

When I didn't win that auction, I contacted the seller, and he agreed to build another one for me. I just had to supply the donor K4.

[Lemosteam]

I was gonna say that looks like Jon's work!  Nice shot too!  The telltale whistle rope gives it away!

[eric220]

Too long has the scent of caulk been absent from my basement.  The Gandy Dancers came over last night, and we checked off a surprising number of little projects, given that there were only three of us. First off, we trimmed the coach yard benchwork so that it can lay flush.  That's been bugging me for over a year.  Next, we located a piece of scrap that turned out to be a 15" radius cookie-cutter section followed by a short straight and reverse curve.  I have no idea why we cut it in the first place, but it filled the bill nicely for the SP runaround behind the C&H refinery.  No sooner had we trimmed and installed it then the caulk and cork came out.  Before I knew it, the whole C&H complex was ready for track.



We spent the rest of the evening prepping the tortoises in the California section to power their respective frogs.

This afternoon I went back down to the basement with the intention of laying track.  I always underestimate the prep work that is involved in this task.  First, I had to sit down and make some terminal rail joiners.  Next, I had to lay out the location of the turnouts one by one in the ladder and drill holes for the feeders, frog wires, and tortoise throw rods.  Finally, I could commit caulk to cork. I managed to lay the entire ladder and the two stub tracks before the CFO came home from work.

[eric220]

Now that I'm home again and Photobucket is cooperating, an update on progress is in order.  Two weeks ago I managed to get the rest of the track down in the C&H refinery.



Unfortunately Photobucket wouldn't let me upload the photo before I left for  'ery.



From there I flew out to meet my parents, and we drove to Ely, NV and the Nevada Northern to check an item off the bucket list.



Oh yeah.  The 15-MPH thrill ride of a lifetime.

My parents then drove me home to California, where my dad and I got to work on the railroad.  We finished off powering all of the mainline frogs on the upper level, and oh boy what a difference they make.  We also got cork down for the beginning of the passenger terminal throat.



I'm a little hesitant to lay track, because just doing the crossovers where the throat joins the mains will consume 3 of my 4 righthand #10's.  I don't really have any other plans for them right now, and there's a lot of track to build (like the whole helix) before I come to another mainline crossover, so I'll probably bite the bullet and lay the track, because it will give me room to park two more trains.

This afternoon I dove in and wired up all of the feeders for the C&H refinery.  Here's a BS10 making the inaugural run.





With that done, I indulged in a little switching.



Except for a few tortoises in the industrial areas, I'm just about ready to give the upper level local a test run and see how it works out.

[eric220]

I've been contemplating a change to the main classification yard, and I've reached the point where I'd like some feedback.  I'm considering converting part or all of the classification yard to a hump yard.  Right off the bat, I'm experimenting with a method of mitigating the "warp speed" aspect of most scale hump yards, so I'd appreciate limiting the discussion to the merits of a hump yard versus a flat yard instead of poo-pooing scale hump yards.  Thoughts?

[CodyO]

Eric you kow I'm all for the hump!

[eric220]

Eric you kow I'm all for the hump!

Do hump? I'm not sure how to take that.