Nice pictures, Tom. While I kinda bristle at tagged cars, I have to admire the effort and art talent involved.
Great job with the tagged car truly great modeling. I don't do graffiti in my modeling as I hate taggers and their tags so much that I refuse to allow them into my world. Robert
Luckily most FRISCO modelers don't have to worry about tagged cars. Yours does look great though Tom Tom your stellar layout always impresses. All those QA&P units look great together. Impressive as always and a great tribute to the route. I can not imagine a model RR with trains long enough to worry about wheel slip and stalling. Great stuff as always.
If I remember correctly from the wonderful time I spent operating on your layout, I think you said the staging area held 250 cars? Am I remembering that correctly? I remember looking in there and thinking "Wow!" that is a huge number of cars. I can see how a car could be lost!
Hi Mike, good to hear from you. Between the 2 staging yards they hold around 300 cars combined. 400 cars in the main yard and the Hindsight Industrial RR, with another 100 cars scattered around Quanah, Lazar, Dougherty and a few other spots. Prolly underestimating it but fairly close, so yea it can be months before a car moves sometimes. That's not counting the other about 400 cars that are in big boxes and cases not even on the MRR right now. I really need to get rid of 4-500 cars just too much stuff, but I customized most of these a little and get too attached to them. I am a hoarder of MRR stuff really, and should get help LOL. Sure glad I bought this stuff when they were 4-5-9 dollars per kit, spread out over 35 years, but now when I think about it, wow that is a lot of $$. Don't tell Vicki, she may not like it LOL. Used to tell her I didn't get paid for pulling empty cars on trains, that didn't last long LOL.
Hope everyone had a great Turkey Day! We did get a little MRRing done this weekend though. Attached are some images of different locations around the main Yard. First we see an old soldier, ATSF SD45 # 5404 in pit track #1 looks like it may have problems. Machinists taking a look at it. Here we have the QA&P local ready to head to Quanah, 3 Geeps in charge today. Thanks for stopping by
HA Tom I am not sure if I should laugh at you or with you, being a fellow hoarder. I am pretty sure when you told her you putting up a building for your model trains she knew you had a problem. I always enjoy your layout photos and videos. They are motivational whether you know it or not. Keep it up. I regret not bidding more on the blue caboose that hit ebay but when the next 400 sell I may have a shot.
That's good TOM! I used to say that I did not get paid for "deadheading" (actually only got 1/2 pay). Worked for a while, buy I paid handsomely afterwards!
Sherrell that reminds me of a carpenter I worked with years ago that had soaked the bright pink sawdust from fire resistant wood in beer for days and days. All to convince his wife that was why he smelled like beer when he came home from work every night.
Nice work, as always, Tom. I'm sure all of the 1:87 casualty underwriters, when doing their safety inspection, are pleased to see all of the handrails and potential trip-and-fall hazards painted a nice bright shade of yellow. Best Regards.
Steve so sorry for the too long reply, I like a couple others around here like to use real railroad sound recordings. As great as DCC is, it still does not capture the sounds of the real thing. I am looking at about a dozen locos for Keith to install DCC for me, but still am resisting for a bunch of my friends, that operate on this outfit, that refuse to go DCC. I am really torn between the two right now. All the sounds are so "tiney" and anemic, for me. And the throttle as to speed and load regulator is just well weird for me. I have been at 10mph at run8 for hours and I havent seen that done in DCC yet, unless you control the noise separate and apart from the speed. So, I just as well do it with real recordings for now.
Guess what, the SoundTraxx Tsunami 2 decoders have a Straight to Eight function that will hold the prime mover in notch 8. Otherwise, they have Dynamic Digital Exhaust that automatically increase volume and notch on throttle increase, but if the load remains constant after that initial increase the engine will notch back. Also the prime mover will automatically notch up on increasing load and drop on decreasing load. You don't have to push a separate function button to use your throttle know to play with prime mover notching while losing the ability to change speed with it (like some highly marketed "Fool" Throttle decoder). Tom, that means it will respond automatically to your grades with no increase in speed but changes to the prime mover notches. Dynamic brakes will also slow the train down at a programmed rate but will not bring the train to a stop. There is also the capability of separate independent brake and train brake rates as well. No other decoders have those capabilities.
No need to apologize Tom, takes a lot more than that to offend me.. HA Keith thanks for the info. Have you tried one of the not released yet Proto throttles that looks like a mini control stand? Thoughts? What controller do you use on yours?
I have not yet held a ProtoThrottle in hand to use, but know an operator in Council Bluffs (Joe Atkinson) that says he will have them. In talking with local operators that have seen them, I have confirmed my take on them; they are not practical for operations as individual operators - one person has to be the engineer and another has to be the conductor/brakeman. AND they are quite large; more than a handful. Also, to get the true effect of the use of them, one must subscribe to use of the braking function. Although I am totally committed to and very much enjoy the realism afforded by using the braking function(s), there are those who can't seem to wrap their head around running trains on a layout using it. They can't seem relate to the model despite in their daily lives they operate equipment (cars, trucks, real locomotives) that use a throttle to get moving and a brake to stop. Nonetheless, I think they are pretty cool, but the alleged price will be quite high $499.00 plus $99.00 for the needed wireless interface to the DCC system. At present, only NCE and Lenz are supported, but supposedly ESU Cab Control and Digitrax will be supported soon. I have a plug-in Digitrax UT-4 throttle that I intend to modify into a control stand of my own design. One local modeler, Larry Keeler, had two control stands of his own design connected to CTC-80 (a variant of CMRI that he designed and sold) that was used at his large, working hump yard. When his layout was removed a couple of local guys got one each of the control stands. For one, I took the guts of a Digitrax UT-4 and adapted it to the Keeler Control Stand. It is operational at one end of his GN Great Falls yard, controlling an Atlas GN S2 (similar to the one in the November RMC article) with a Tsunami sound decoder employing the braking function. It is a lot of fun to work that job.
Thanks Keith, we got to try one at the St Louis RPM. I thought it was pretty neat myself. BUT I am not a railroader or even have my own layout so my opinion isn't much value. If I did a layout at some point I could see this being an addition when all DCC systems are supported. Thanks
I need to turn in a time slip for that throttle pack... Has everything but the pucker factor, and oh yea the hazmat and lives to consider. Was that the Right Honorable Rick McClellan's layout?
WOW - Unbelievable stuff for me! Have to ask a "dummy" question? What is the purpose of the "auxiliary button"?