Operating In Saint John – 2009

A week ago we had our 3rd annual operating day in Saint John.  Not wanting a repeat of the last few late starts I created a healthy competition to make sure the guys were on time.  Brian and Derwin were actually early!   We were on the road pretty much on time!

We stopped at the local Tim’s/Esso to fuel up.  I did the gas pumping duties while Brian and Derwin went inside.  I got my coffe and we were on our way. We had one stop in Moncton to pick up Jean and Ryan.

The conversation in the car was pretty normal until I mentioned something about Brian paying for the gas (we were using his car).  He said he thought I was paying for the gas (from our group travel fund).  Nope, I didn’t pay for the gas.  It was the first time I ever did a “gas and dash”.  If I had known we were doing it I wouldn’t have been able to.  We had all kinds of thought of “APB’s” and roadblocks set up looking for us.  It didn’t happen and we did settle the bill after we got back.

Anyway, we picked up Jean and Ryan and made it to Doug’s place by 10:30.  Besides Doug we were joined by a couple of N-scalers that wanted to play trains with the big boys – Lawrence and Mark performed duties that required knowledge of the layout, like dispatching and yard work.  It was Jean’s first time there so he was happy to partner with me for the first couple of jobs.  We drew the daily container train from Dever Road Yard to McAdam for our first train.  It was a great way to see the whole layout at a leisurely pace.  Although, Doug did come around shortly after we left Dever Road and made an off-hand comment referring to our lack of speed and the profitability of the railroad – so we moved a little faster after that.

Our second train was a wayfreight so we had a little more work to do than with our first one.  There was something to do at just about every stop.

Derwin got lucky and drew a track maintenance job – just a loco and a rail cleaning car.  He didn’t get to do a lot of switching, but he did watch a lot of trains go by while he was thawing out frozen point rails and cleaning flanges.

At some point Derwin must have got tired of every one else doning something profitable and he finished up his maintenance job.  He and Ryan then took a train out of McAdam bound for Saint John.

I’m sure Brian ran something there, but I’ll be darned if I can remember now.

About 1:00 we decided it was time for lunch and a stop at the train store before heading to Steve’s.  We found the train store easy enough and spent only a little bit of money.  I picked up a CP 1/2 ton truck,  some Woodland Scenics people, and a couple other odds and ends that you’ll see photos of over time.

Then we unleashed ourselves on Steve’s “Carleton Railway”.  He had no idea what kind of havoc we would bring.  Jean and I ran the local switchjob in South Newbridge.  The task was to pull cars from the local indistries, sort them onto the departure tracks, put the on the approriate train through town.  It seemed easy enough so we got down to business.

Brian was running the first train into town.  Since he was heading west we gave him all the west bound cars in South Newbridge and gave him a push up the hill.  We thought it was really cool to have long main line runs to make long trains look good!  Next train through was Ryan heading east so we did the same with our waiting east bound cars.  We were done, except for a few cars to put away.

Eventually Steve figured out why we were done so quick and why Ryan’s and Brian’s trains were so long.  We weren’t supposed to give them everything we had – only certain cars (empties I think).  The other cars were supposed to go on trains that would come through town later.  I guess we should have read the instructions so conveniently posted on the fascia.  Oops!  It really was Derwin’s fault, but I haven’t figured out a good way to explain it yet.

We had supper at Steve’s and after supper we finished up the rest of the work and left for home about 7:00.

We always have a lot of fun when we visit Doug and Steve.  We really appreciate their hospitality and clamness when we screw up!  HA!

Thanks guys!

Steve’s

Steve’s

Doug’s

Doug’s

Steve’s

Doug’s

Scott

Golden Spike Bar & Grill

After a long break this project is back off the shelf.  I spent some time the other evening putting some signs on the sides of the building.  Visit Scratchbuilder’s Guild to see the process I used to make and apply the signs.

The next step will be to install the “glass” and figure out some way to make a decent looking interior without actually modeling an interior.  I think that computer graphics software will play a key role once again.

This building will be a nice addition to the city scene I imagine being in Chappellton.  Only about 2-1/2 months before it has to be ready for the MFMR Convention open house I’m hosting.  There’s a lot of work to do!

Must get back to work…

Scott

MRC 1663 Decoder For Atlas S2/4′s

Ok, so we’ve had some problems with our sound decoders since we installed them a few weeks ago.  If you missed that post – here it is.

Anyway, Derwin’s loco lost all engine noise, but other sounds like horn and bell worked.  Both of mine were fine until Derwin ran one of them during an operating session.  The result was no engine noise, but bell and horn would work.  The commone denominator – Derwin – as usual!   HA!

I reprogrammed my loco (thank God for DecoderPro) and it worked fine.  The same fix didn’t work for Derwin unfortunately.  Then I got an email from Daniel Watkins thanking me for my post on installing these decoders.  After an exchange of a few emails we discovered his loco had a very similar problem.

So, the power of the public press came to the rescue.  I sent an email to MRC on Saturday.  I did not expect a reply until Monday or Tuesday.  However, when I turned on my computer Monday morning there was an email from Frank waiting for me.  Wow – I was impressed.  Here is Frank’s response…

Scott,

if you have horn and bell sounds but nothing else it is possible you inadvertently shut off the prime mover sounds

did you try double clicking the headlight button, [F0] as we use this as a mute, and also F12 is the sound on/off mute or try playing with CV # 49 to see if you can get the sounds back onif all eles fails send me the decoder, [no money] and i’ll check it out for you.

Frank

I asked Frank what value to set for CV49.  His next email suggested setting it to “1″.

Since I had Derwin’s loco here I tried Franks suggestions and a double-click of F0 did trick. Daniel had a similar response on one of the groups and it solved his problem.  Unfortunately there is no mention of this F0 feature in the documentation that comes with the decoder and no mention of what CV49 does.

This problem is resolved, I think.  I’m still not completely happy with the decoder – the lowest volume level is still too loud and the speed adjustment is coarse,  but I don’t think you can beat its price when you get it on sale.

Scott

An Operating Day With the Moncton Guys

I know I said a couple weeks ago that my next post would be about operating at Clayton’s, but I’m going to do things a bit out of order.  My next post will be about Clayton’s (yeah, right).  This evening I want to tell you about our operating day with the guys from Moncton.

Jim spoke to the weatherman and threatened him with great harm if he didn’t make it a nice day.  It seemed to work because Milne, Jim, John, Murray, and Dave made the trek from Moncton to Summerside this morning.  We arrived at Derwin’s a little after 10:00 this morning and ran a set of orders before lunch and one set after lunch.  The session went fairly smoothly, even though the yard guy was a little slow and had the yard so congested that, well let’s just say it wasn’t a pretty sight.  Then again, Dave’s yard didn’t look to pretty when I was running it either. Demerits all ’round except Derwin and I, of course.  I can’t remember who but someone got 100,000,000 demerits there.

The next stop was to Clayton’s layout.  Jim and John had visited there a few years ago, but the layout was new to Murray, Dave, and Milne.  I think the guys found most of the humorous scenes on the layout, like the murder in the town and the outhouse built out over the cliff (for easy cleaning).  This layout really has a lot of train action for moderately small space.  Even though there was a lot of traffic John and I were able to keep up with the work in the yard and even had time to relax and do some railfanning.  I’m not sure if that was because we were so efficient or if it was because the other guys were slow.  I doesn’t really matter since everyone had fun

The last stop was at the BS&T for supper and then more operating.  Things went quite smoothly.  Derwin didn’t even mess up my new MRC sound equipped Alcos! Since I did the local switching in Kenville I didn’t get a chance to take photos until later in the session. So I don’t have evidence to support the demerits handed out.  But the layout owners in Moncton can rest assured that sufficient demerits were given to the right people (person?).  A little bit of glue will fix that highly detailed old-time passenger car that hit the floor.

Anyway, here are some photos from the BS&T part of the day…

A big meet in Stevenville.

The Transfer leaves Stevenville.

The Chappellton Switch Job.

The West Bound Wayfreight in Kenville.

The meet in Derwin’s Drop.

The West Bound Wayfreight in Chappellton.

I knew Milne had been chomping at the bit  to run a passenger train all day.  So after the regular work was done I gave him his chance.  Unfortunately the RDC developed a shotgun start so while I reprogrammed it I let Milne take the C-Liner and coaches from Wholinthall to Tidewater.  Derwin got to run a rarely seen 0-8-0 powered excursion train, with the aforementioned old-time coaches (sans one – ha!).  The RDC was back in operation by the time Milne made it to Tidewater and he jumped (literally) at the chance to run it from Bayside to Tidewater.  Meanwhile, Jim made the return run to Wholinthall with the C-Liner.

All in all I think the Moncton crew had a great day.  I know we certainly did.  we’re looking forward to doing it again in another few months (after time to recuperate – ha!)

Later!

Scott

Operating at Clayton’s

After an almost 2 year vacation from model railroading Clayton decided it was time to come back.  We spent last Sunday evening there repairing some of the damage that mysteriously appeared since we last operated there.  The list of repairs included the “lift out” bridges, cleaning the track, and replacing the rolling stock on the layout.

We’ll be operating there this evening.  But first we have to put all the freight cars back to where they were, or at lest where the computer expects them to be.  It should be a fun evening – almost like operating on a new layout.

I’ll post some pictures later in the week.

Scott