South of the border, down Mexico way ...

Last week our Friday group visited Rob McM's Mexican themed 'Pacifico' layout.  This was my second visit to see this layout in its present incarnation. I've never been to Mexico, but the layout looks about 'right' to me.

The layout has three scenic areas, and cleverly uses two helices to separate them and to add running miles. Rob and his crew use a CC&WB system to switch the layout.

Here are a few photos that I took before my phone's battery died on me. (Sadly, that's becoming a familiar story.)

There are a few more photos showing the overall design of the layout here.

The Pacifico operates as nicely as it looks in the photos.

Thanks for the invite and your hospitality, Rob.

Thanks for looking in,
Ron

First GC&SF operating session in two years

Today the GC&SF hosted its first operating session since January 2014. The session was intended to test the layout's readiness to host a 'serious' session, and I expected it to disclose any problems that may have crept in during the two years the layout has been dormant. As several of the guest operators had never seen, much less operated on the GC, I set the fast-time clock to 4:1 ratio instead of the usual 6:1. We used the timetable that I presented here.

I'm pleased (and proud) to report that apart from a minor glitch with a couple of radio throttles, everything went very well.

Everything except my photography, that is. For some reason, I had depth-of-field problems with many of the photos that I took. I'll have to check my camera settings. The following photos are the best of those that I took.

John C. (left) offered to run the yard at Pauls Valley. Bill, on his second visit to the GC, watches as John switches some cars for the local freight:

John F was press-ganged into serving as the Ardmore yard operator. Thanks John.

Rod ran the local freight from Gainesville (south staging). Here he is switching empty gondolas for loads at Dougherty:

Peter, on his first visit to the GC&SF, is running north-bound through-freight Train 38 through Dougherty:

Graham, also a first time operator on the GC&SF, ran the Pauls Valley local. I'm not sure where the train is.

It's a busy time at Pauls Valley as a tank-car train driven by Bill holds on the main track for Peter's through-freight to arrive.

Meanwhile, over at Dougherty, Rod is almost ready to return to Ardmore and Gainesville.

Having switched some cars at the Kerr-McGee refinery in Wynnewood, Bill has been waiting on the main at Ardmore for the northbound Texas Chief (driven by Peter) to arrive.

The Pauls Valley local has returned to Davis, and Graham has just finished switching the cars he brought back.

Peter again, this time with the Livestock extra, which brings a bunch of stock cars up from Texas for loading at Davis and Pauls Valley.

Thanks for coming over guys. I had a great day, and I hope you did as well. I think it was one of the best sessions I've had on the layout.

Regards,
Ron

Canberra Railway Museum

Last Tuesday I got the opportunity to visit the Canberra Rail Museum. It was a quiet day, with a few guys working on some of the rolling stock, and I was fortunate enough to be given an escorted tour of their site. Here are some of the photos that I took.

The building on the platform is the visitors' centre, which is entered from the opposite side. There are normally a couple of coaches sitting at the platform, but they had been used for tourist rides over the Easter weekend and had not yet been returned to their usual resting place.

There were several locomotives and coaches sitting in a long shed opposite the platform, including "4403", a preserved NSW 44 class locomotive:

A couple of guys were working between two coaches sitting behind 4403, preparing to move one of them back to the platform.  One of them asked whether I'd like to ride in the cab while they performed the shunting. Would I??? Hell, yeah!!

Here's my driver at the controls:

Here's a short video I made:

Before leaving 4403 I took this photo of the engine.

It was actually very dark in there, and I could see almost nothing when I took the photo. I just pointed the camera and released the shutter.

Back on the ground again, I continued my tour. Sitting at the end of the shed, in a spot that made photographing it quite difficult, was Beyer-Garratt 6029 (billed as "the largest operating locomotive in the southern hemisphere.")

A little further down in the yard I found a couple of old steam engines. These photos are of 3016 (NSW C30T class), which has been beautifully restored to working condition:

There is more information about engine 3016 here.

This is engine 1210, a NSW Z12 class loco, which is being restored. It pulled the first train to arrive at Canberra:

More information on 1210 is available here.

Not far from the steam engines was a pair of (former VR) S class locos. The rear-most unit is S300 which entered service in 1957, and it's still struttin' its stuff.  S311 entered service in 1960.

These next photos are of engine 4807, a NSW 48 class diesel. The 48 class commenced service in 1959.

The museum has very recently received this NSW 86 class locomotive from Junee for restoration. It appears to have been left where vandals had easy access to it. The inside is just as messy as the outside.

The museum also has other locos (some in various stages of disrepair) as well as a large number of passenger cars of all ages (including cars from the Spirit of Progress.) But by now time was running short, so I had to end my visit without taking a closer look at those.

As usual, thanks for looking. 

Ron

Operating Session Timetable

I've added this page with the timetable that we use for operating sessions on the GC&SF. I actually started this page about two years ago, but never completed the write-up.

Regards,
Ron

Track and wheel cleaning

Over on his Little Rock Line blog, Allen H is experimenting with using graphite on his rails to improve electrical conductivity between the rails and loco wheels.  As graphite is used as a dry lubricant, it seems to me that graphite will cause wheel slipping problems, but I'm nevertheless interested to see what Allen finds.

Rod has chimed in with an explanation of how we (in our little group) clean our wheels and tracks. We've both mentioned this process several times in online forums, but it always seems to be new to someone, so I've created this page to illustrate the process.

To be honest though, after reading the articles that Allen has linked to I'm wondering whether there's such a thing as having your track 'too clean'. There seems to be a lot of opinion that using graphite is the way to go. I'll be interested to see what Allen thinks after he's been using graphite for a few weeks.

Regards,
Ron

I've been working on the railroad ....

Between my part-time job and working in the yard I've been pretty busy lately, but I've still managed to get some jobs done on the layout.

Added new freight cars:

Last week I prepared car-cards and waybills for a bunch of new freight cars that I acquired over the past 18 months or so, so we can use them for future operating sessions.

ATSF Bx-57 40' box-cars (Atlas PS1)

By 1960 (the year I model) the Santa Fe was no longer painting cars in the "map/slogan" scheme, but box cars in that scheme were still quite common. These PS1 "Bx-57" cars from Atlas are (in my opinion) even nicer than the various models of AAR "map/slogan" cars that I have from Intermountain. I bought all 4 road numbers recently released by Atlas:

George Hollwedel told me that Atlas is intending to do another Bx-57 run with 4 more car numbers. Bring them on, I say.

ATSF Ft-V 53'6" flat cars (Intermountain)

I think that Intermountain has released these flat cars under their own label, but the six road numbers that I bought came from George Hollwedel.

These cars are also very nice, and I'm now looking for suitable loads for them. They make me want to also buy a few of the BLMA 60' Ft-7 flat cars for a little variety.

ATSF Tk-L fuel service tank cars (Micro-Trains)

I've wanted some diesel-fuel tank cars to fuel my locos at Pauls Valley and Ardmore, for some time. I bought the decals to produce some myself, but when George Hollwedel commissioned a 3-pack set from MTL I grabbed a set from him instead:

Unlike the models of the Bx-57 and Ft-V cars, which are pretty accurate models of ATSF prototypes, these tank cars are just good stand-ins. But they capture the look very nicely, and will do until something better comes along.

Planning for a timetable revision

The current operating timetable uses a 6:1 fast-time clock, and represents an "18-hour day". A complete operating session requires 3 hours of train running, split into two ("morning" and "afternoon") 90 minute segments each representing 9 real hours. However, when we add in extra time for 'show-and-tell' at the start of the evening, and a break for beans, a session can take over 4 hours if we run the full schedule. Needless to say, we usually end the session before all the trains are run, leaving me to sort out the mess the next day.

I'm planning to slow down the clock a little to either a 5:1 or 4:1 ratio, and only run one "9-hour" segment per operating session. We'll alternate between the "morning" and "afternoon" segments from one session to the next. A 5:1 ratio fast-time clock will require 1hr 48m of train running, and a 4:1 fast-time clock will require 2hr 15m of train running. Either one will probably be fine, and we can decide on the evening which way to go.

In addition to slowing the clock, I also want to add in two more trains. I already have the rolling stock to allow that, and the staging yard tracks will be available. I just have to make some small changes to the timetable.

BLI PA/PB

As mentioned in my last post, my sound-equipped BLI PA/PB locos couldn't make it around my layout without stalling on some of the turnouts.  My main concern was with my Peco C80 points in my hidden staging yards, but I also found that they had problems with some of the (visible) turnouts at Wynnewood and Dougherty. I can't use these beautiful locos for an operating session until these problems are resolved.

Re-gauging the wheelsets (all of which were just a tad too tight) seems to have solved the problem with the Peco C80 points in hidden staging, but I will continue to conduct tests until I'm certain that I have 100% reliability.

At Dougherty I had yet another problem with my old friend arch nemesis, the southern-most ME turnout in the yard. It seems like every time I add a new loco, it has problems with that turnout. An hour or so of work has fixed the problem (but for how long, I wonder.)  I am so-o-o tempted to replace the turnout with one of the newer DCC-friendly turnouts from ME.

Over at Wynnewood I found a totally different problem with an Atlas C55 turnout - one of the built-in jumpers connecting the stock rail to the closure rail had failed. I've experienced this problem before, with a turnout at Davis, and this afternoon I corrected it the same way. In the process I replaced half a dozen insulated rail joiners (left over from when that part of the layout was originally wired for DC/cab-control) with metal ones.

Just two days ago, John C and I were discussing that very problem with Atlas C55 turnouts. I think he jinxed me.

During all this testing I observed that the back end of the rear truck on the PB unit bobs up and down ever so slightly when the loco is creeping along. My guess is that one or both of the traction tyres on that axle are not quite seated properly. When I bought the locos I also bought a couple of extra axles without traction tyres so I could get rid of the tyres. Unfortunately, I've forgotten where I put them "for safe keeping".

If you're still with me, then thanks for reading.

Regards,
Ron

Trains are back!!

I had arranged for a friend to come over today to help me seal the timber decks, but the forecast top temperature of 38C put an end to that idea.

Instead, after finishing my daily chores, I headed down to the train room and cleaned the layout.  It was actually a lot less dusty than I had expected, although the thousands of dead ants and spiders scattered about made the layout look like it was used to film both Them and Tarantula.

Once I'd done with the vacuum cleaner, I wiped down the mainline with lighter fluid using a cloth wrapped around a small block of wood.

Then I set up my track-cleaning train - four track cleaning cars (my own Huey, Dewey and Louie plus a borrowed Aztec car) sandwiched between a pair of SD24s, and set it to doing laps around the layout:

The two end cars are home-made sliders. The pads are rectangles of masonite held loosely in place by nails that run up through holes in the floor of the cars. At the top of each nail I fitted a fishing sinker by squeezing it to the nail with pliers.

The holes in the car floor are just wide enough for the nails to slide freely. The sinker glued to the car floor holds the car on the track, and the sinkers on the nails press the masonite pad onto the rails.

The red car is an Atlas promotional car body that I mounted on a Roco track-cleaning car mechanism:

The fourth car in the consist is made by Aztec, and I borrowed it from a friend (Graham) in case I needed extra grunt to clean the track.  It can be filled with fluid, and it has a magnet to pick up any metallic material that might be laying on the track. You can just make out small bits of metal clinging to the rectangular magnet in the photo below.

After every few laps around the layout I clean the pads and the loco wheels, which do much of the cleaning. When the loco wheels no longer get dirty, I know the track is good to go.

Here's a video I made of the track-cleaning train in operation:

 

Once I was satisfied that the mainline was safe to run trains around, I broke out my BLI PA/B locomotives.  I bought these locos about two years ago, just before we demolished the old house; but I barely had time to even test that they worked before the electrical power to my train room was disconnected.

Both my units are powered, and have sound.  A single powered A unit (plus a dummy B unit) would have been much cheaper, but is not able to pull one of my passenger trains up the inclines from the staging yards. This is only the second time I've run these locos and I still have to adjust the sound levels. Here's how they looked and sounded:

 

I tried to sound the horn at the grade crossings, but I couldn't do that and hold the camera (phone) steady at the same time.

Unfortunately, the PAs stall on one of the turnouts under the layout, so I have some work to do on that turnout before they can be used for an operating session.

Thanks for looking in.

Ron