Have returned ... finally

Sorry I haven’t been around for a few days. As life and the computer had different thoughts of what I should be doing. I think I am back in a forward direction now and am looking forward to some good work on the layout this week. I have started to work on the GP40 that I will be painting in the Tacoma Rail Paint scheme. I am trying to decide which red should be used for it. We were able to run some trains over the weekend which felt ... well very good. Upon doing so we have found we need to do some work on tunnels as they will not allow a double stack well car to pass. That will be some major construction items we work on this week. I am still continuing to work on securing the wiring under the bench and will be sealing them soon with liquid tape. Also I will be starting from the back wall and adding some ground cover to the ballast already added and test that application. Hmmmm ... and we will be also using the Weathering System from Bragdon Enterprises and the Rusty Rail System from Joe's Model Trains. Reviews to be posted within the next week on both items.

Found the short and packages arrive ..

I did find the short last night. The issue was with an Atlas Snap Switch in which the rails on the frog ended up touching. Maybe because of soldering joints? I am not sure. We have replaced the switch and all is well except for now putting every thing all back together. Thanks to everyone for their ideas and help to resolve this problem.

We also received two packages in the mail today. One was from Walthers, which included two new projects, a GP40 that is painted Western Maryland and my goal is to create a Tacoma Rail GP40. The package also included the Rusty Rails kit for painting rails that we will be reviewing, so stay tuned for that. We are also excited that we received a package from Bragdon Enterprises including their Weathering system. This, as with many things, is the first try at weathering so we will be sharing our trials and reviews of this product as well.

To find a short ...

So I started to clean the Freight yard leg of the layout. I will be working on a drawing of the layout so that you will know the areas that I am talking about. But this is the area that we have been laying ballast in and painting. This section is disconnected from the rest of the layout and I wanted to supply power to it so that I could test the track and begin to run some trains. Well that is where I am stuck at now. My DCS100 keeps shorting out whenever I apply power to the section. It worked at one time and now doesn’t. The only things really that has changed is that we have added ballast, painted, and soldered joints but there is a short somewhere so I will be researching today to find it. So lesson learned. Ensure all track is functional before moving to any other phase. Also if we would have been running trains to this point we would have noticed when the short happened and maybe have a better chance of finding it.

Running trains?

So over the weekend I unfortunately did not get a lot of time to work on the layout. But I did spend some wonderful time with the family on Sunday and a day out on the water on Saturday fishing. Though no fish were brought home it was a fun filled weekend. Now we are back to focusing back on the layout. I have read different approaches on laying the ballast within the freight yard and can now see that I need a little more glue into the ballast that is there. Then the clean up of the rails and ties can begin. One of the things that have bothered me is that we have not run trains. In almost 2 years we have not run trains. What I would like for us to begin is a process to get the tracks clean so that we are able to run trains as well build. I think we would gather even more enjoyment from the layout with that happening. Agreed we have much cleaning to do, I think we are going to focus on this so that we are able to get some freight moving over the rails. So my question is how many are running and building? or building and waiting to run trains?

DCC Short Protector ...

One of the things that have bothered me is that when I am running trains and something shorts to stop all trains. Though this is a good feature to protect the system I think it may be a little to much. As I researched this I have found that I am not in the minority on this. There are a couple options but there is one that peaked my interest and that is the use of an automotive brake light bulb. Breaking the layout down into power districts and then installing a bulb in each of the districts seem to work very well from what I have seen. Here is a link to John Fugate's excellent demonstration and explanation of the use of the brake light for this purpose.

http://mymemoirs.net/model-trains/images/previews/TSL3/shortMgmt1_bbhi.swf

Tacoma Rail?

I have begun thinking of a new rail line to add to the two that I already have. I really wanted to add a west coast railroad but David is running BNSF and UP. So that caused me to think smaller and more local. The two choices that I ended up with are Tacoma Rail and Port of Tillamok. As the Tacoma Rail engines rumble not but 100 feet outside of my office that was my choice. I think I am going to start with a GP40. I see that Bachmann has one on sale right now through Walthers so I will look at it a little more. It will be some work as it is painted in a different scheme and I will need to strip it clean and repaint but I am pretty excited about that thought. We continued to add sand for the service road to cover some of the bare spots. I will be working more on completing the interlocking tower and adding some ground cover over the mainline. Look for some new pics coming soon.

Tacoma Northwestern Railroad Club

Both David and I made our second visit to the club as they have a meeting each Tuesday. They are also open to the public the 1st and 3rd Saturday of each month. We have gotten some ideas for our layout by taking a close look at the things that they have done. The most interesting for me is the diesel fueling area. They had used a Walthers Cornerstone kit but both we are both in agreement that we are going to scratch build our own. Looking at theirs did give us a sense of direction on that project though. We have now added a link to their site (www.tnwrr.org) under our Tried and True. We had spent some time talking with Al, the president and Herb, the treasurer of the club. It was a very enjoyable visit and am looking forward in returning to see their progress and to gather a bit more words of wisdom.