Weekend Update 5/10/15

[up1950s]

Nothing makes a mother more happy than seeing her offspring happy , so buy yourself a train .

[eric220]

A little preview of progress in the wrong direction.



Yes, I actually got down into the basement and worked on the layout. I decided to replace several inches of flex at the top of the helix with sectional track. Here, you can see the replacement track lying at the edge of the ROW. Removing track that's been properly caulked down is not an inconsequential task...

More in the build thread later in the weekend.

[davefoxx]

Psst, Eric.  A little yellow carpenter's glue instead of caulk, and you can reuse the cork with no damage (other than a little sanding might be needed to smooth the old yellow glue residue when relaying the track).  Just sayin'.   

DFF

[eric220]

Psst, Eric.  A little yellow carpenter's glue instead of caulk, and you can reuse the cork with no damage (other than a little sanding might be needed to smooth the old yellow glue residue when relaying the track).  Just sayin'.   

Yeeeeeah... I've tried that. I have several feet of mainline on the original Altoona section that need to be replaced because the wood glue dried out and released from the plastic ties. I've sworn it off. And as bad as that one gaping hole looks, the ties can span it, and I should be able to reuse the existing cork.

[mark dance]

Last night was the first "all sound" C&W operating session.  It was judged a success by all.  The realistic EMD, Alco and FM prime mover sounds add a significant dimension to the ops and the ESU quality is very very good.  One pair of operators tried pushing a train up to the summit coordinated by whistle blasts!

Some photos:

Scott and Marc putting the new Atlas S2s through their paces in Nelson yard.


Al is up at Naksup starting his run back along the quiet Kaslo and Slocan branches to Nelson.  An ESU decoder is broadcasting very realistic and synchronized FM sounds into that headset.  Al was very positive about the sound quality and it aids in further isolating the engineer who is operating up these physically isolated branches in the middle of the layout room.


Gary with a pusher set at Shields awaiting a west bound to help to Farron


...and an eastbound nearly at the summit


Happy first time Dispatcher John.  His Trainsheet is in front of him and the computer allows him to control the Train order signals.  John did a great job keeping the traffic out of each other's way although the Cascade turn still died out on the line.


Anthony and Len at Castlegar


..and a close up of Anthony's #89 about to exit the Rossland sub and enter the Boundary sub with MTs for the Phoenix copper fields to the West of Grand Forks


Colin piloting #81 across the Kettle River, nerves steadied by a Russel Cream Ale.


...and #81 close(r) up


Have a great weekend.

md

[jagged ben]

...One pair of operators tried pushing a train up to the summit coordinated by whistle blasts!
...

Now that is cool.

[GaryHinshaw]

Sound quality has come a long way in recent years.  I can see it in my future.

[milw156]

How do you channel the sound coming out of the loco into the headphones??? Neat idea,GORGEOUS layout!
Rick

[sirenwerks]

How do you channel the sound coming out of the loco into the headphones??? Neat idea,GORGEOUS layout!
Rick

Indeed, how?

Now if you can patch loco sound AND telecomm into the same headphones, that sounds like a wife-pleasing winner.  A dozen guys in a basement playing with their toys in perfect silence, at least to the rest of the household.

[C855B]

Two MTL SP SW1500s arrived in our mail this morning. They look great, though as others have noted they're a bit naked without the white handrail accents. (I'll let others here with better model photo skills post "live" pics when they get theirs.)

I lived in SoCal during "the day"... so talk about a nostalgia rush. "Cruds", as we called them, were everywhere you wanted to be. For that matter, IIRC, the 2471 plied one of my regular railfanning haunts.

[davefoxx]

I was going to suggest that the sound through earphones would miss out on the Doppler effect, but then I started thinking about it.  If you were the engineer or conductor, you would be onboard the locomotive and wouldn't hear the sounds from trackside.  But, if this technology became available, would you have to listen to all of the fleet's sounds during ops sessions or just your train?  The idea is interesting.

Food for thought,
DFF

[coosvalley]

This week I finished up this MEC GP-7...factory painted, I added details and weathering, while trying to preserve the factory paint.....The colors are way off in the first 2 pics, so I shot it again on a white background..

[wm3798]

I'm holding out for Odorama scratch and sniff cards.

[C855B]

I'm holding out for Odorama scratch and sniff cards.

I'm sure that's the next feature on the BLI stock cars.

[mark dance]

How do you channel the sound coming out of the loco into the headphones???
Rick

Not my idea...I just copied a Lance Mindheim experiment on his Miami Spur blog (the URL link is down unfortunately but the set up is straight forward).  You hook up a stand-alone DCC sound decoder to track power at the input end and to an audio transformer and a wireless FM radio transmitter like this one at the output:  http://www.dx.com/p/5-in-1-wireless-fm-radio-headset-with-transmitter-base-station-remote-monitoring-48500#.VU4x5_lVhBc

You then program the stationary decoder with the same address as the loco you wish to run...both decoders get the speed and sound commands but only the mobile decoder can respond to the speed/direction/light commands, and thus control the loco on the layout, and only the stationary decoder can respond to the sound commands and thus drive the FM transmitter which feeds the sound signal to the headset. 

I reported on an earlier experiment in a TRW Weekend Update about a year or so ago but I was using a Tsunami decoder at the time as it was the only decoder which had the right FM prime mover sound.  The results with the Tsunami were really poor and we abandoned the experiment.  When we did the first ESU Loksound  installs into locomotives about a month ago the sound quality was soooo much better I decided to repeat the experiment with a Loksound unit.  And as luck would have it ESU released the correct FM prime mover sound about a month ago. 

I was going to suggest that the sound through earphones would miss out on the Doppler effect, but then I started thinking about it.  If you were the engineer or conductor, you would be onboard the locomotive and wouldn't hear the sounds from trackside.  But, if this technology became available, would you have to listen to all of the fleet's sounds during ops sessions or just your train?  The idea is interesting.

Food for thought,
DFF

Yes the sound is a if you are in the cab.  In the C&W application this sound approach is used *only* in the isolated Slocan/Kaslo job which has a single dedicated loco and where the engineer is physically isolated from the rest of the session for 95% of it.  So the approach seems to make sense and of the three operators who have tried it, 2.5 loved it.  (One person loved the sound but doesn't like wearing head phones of any sort.)

We are thinking of experimenting with this same approach for the Kraft switcher job, the last remaining job which has no sound units.  This job *does* interact with other operators frequently but the headphones don't prevent you from hearing people talking around you.  They just provide a very realistic set of locomotive sounds over top of other room noise.

md