Trouble On The Rails

Last week I was at an operating session and the owner of the layout suggested I could bring some of my equipment for the next session. My DM&IR locomotives and EMD Leasing locomotive are all in operating state (and speed matched to boot). However the Hustle Muscle was still a work in progress as it was not a DCC ready model. I was trying to repurpose a DH165A0 from my DM&IR SD18 (not sure what’s wrong with it, crazy pickup problems).

While I could program the decoder and read CV values on the programming track it was shorting out on the track. I even went to the trouble of completely disconnecting everything and using alligator clips from the power leads but that didn’t resolve it. I eventually released the “magic smoke” before I figured out what was causing it. I’ve had this problem before with a DH163 but for that one I had a receipt and qualified for the warranty replacement. I really don’t know how long I’ve had it and certainly don’t know where the receipt is so I didn’t even try the warranty route.

I decided to try something different this time around and ended up picking up a NCE D13SRJ. It appears to fit all my requirements for supported features and appears to have a pretty small footprint (a big plus).

County Road 23 Module Update

I managed to get some time to in the garage to work on my free-mo module, I’m nearly finished with the legs and managed to get it rewired (the wiring I had was too small gauge for the standard).

For legs I went with an L shaped leg made from 3/4″ birch. For mounting I cut a the rough shape of the legs out of some scrap two by four and used a T-nut and bolt to tighten the legs:

I kind of did some playing around with this and modified it as I went (which is why the brackets pictured are different and there are extra holes).

The wiring is pretty simple, the track power (red and black) runs down the center and off to the side is accessory power. For wiring I just need to find the correct cinch plugs (track) and two pin trailer plugs (accessory). I also need to pick up some wiring for the Loconet but fortunately I spotted what I need at the local Ace Hardware (too bad they don’t have tw0-pin trailer and cinch jones plugs).

Back from vacation

I got back from vacation today, it was primarily to go to my nephew Sam’s first birthday party but we did a little sight-seeing as well. I was driving so I didn’t get to take many pictures of the trains I saw on the way, additionally I wasn’t in charge of the camera so we got more pictures of things like Mount Rushmore and the cave we visited.

On the trip out we saw a line currently used for storage with a long line of green lumber cars (almost blended in with the scenery). I also spotted a convoy of RJ Corman trucks and equipment going eastbound on I-90.

While in Rapid City and the Black Hills in general we saw a number of trains in various locations, they were mostly blue and yellow DME and ICE (now subsidiaries of Canadian Pacific). I did spot a Soo Line MP15 in pretty repair (most of the Soo locos I see around my area show plenty of wear in the paint department). We also stopped by the 1880 Train in Hill City (but didn’t ride it) and visited the South Dakota State Railroad Museum (next door to the 1880 train). It’s a smaller museum but had a lot of very interesting pieces, for example we found a time-table for the Winona & St Peter Railroad which was interesting for us as up until November 2010 we lived in St Peter. We stopped in Lead, SD and ate lunch at a very nice restaurant that in an old narrow gauge round house (Website here).

We also found license plates from more than 40 states (lost the list and exact count) and two Canadian provinces! I managed to also get a bit done on my module this afternoon but nothing much to write about, more on that in a later post.

Car Shops Flat Update

I’ve had a couple short opportunities to work on this project but until today haven’t had much progress worth reporting. Today I managed to get it rolling. In fact I’ve only got a couple things to finish before paint. But before that pictures:

I need to make some foot grab irons, rivets, and the end pieces on either side of the coupler box for one end (I ran out of the right sized styrene with just a little left to go).

I think I may put off painting for a while, after all the prototype is white, and focus on getting my module functional enough to take it to a free-mo event.

In Memoriam