With such little space you have to have a big imagination... Aw yes my love/hate relationship with the dispatchers...I have to watch what I say because BNSF does monitor this website so I'll save it for after I retire. ...Frisco had some good dispatchers, but it's a different culture with different priorities now. Some of them became company officials (chief DS/Corridor Sups) after the merger, I worked with a lot of them as a labor representative. One of them was a dispatcher in Frisco's last days, he worked every board on the system from train orders to CTC, he's been retired for some years now. Once I asked him about the QLA & he offered a couple of stories, one was every morning when Grayson came to work he wanted to know the status of the QLA & CTB. The other was the QLA was a one-county train which meant you better put any traffic in the hole when the QLA was at least a county away. He also dispatched the Hi-line, taught me how to pronounce Weableau, it's Wee-blow not Wee-ba-low...Roger
"...it's Wee-blow..." Played a few gigs in my time in which that could have been the name of the band I was playing for.
Great story, Roger. And, for operating,ain't nothing like the real thing. Keep the photos and descriptions of the layout coming, as time allows and camera situation allows. Best Regards,
Got some updates, I didn't want to post anything till the soybean field was done...here goes...1st I installed a call board to keep track of what active consists I had... Almost everything north of Lesterville was replaced so we'll start there...To the right is the soybean field, never again...To the left north of depot you can see Brand's shack with his buggy out ready to inspect the track after the Turn leaves town...Crews learned long ago not to block his buggy crossing as he'll start issuing 5mph slow orders if he can't inspect so it's best to stay on his good side...
Northward towards the Black River Bridge...Two things I tried for the 1st time were static grass & super elevated curves, both worked out better than expected...My grandfather raised Polled Hereford cattle so I spent many summers helping him take care of them, unfortunately all the decent models of cattle were Dairy so they will have to do....Also in the 2nd photo you can see the distant signals to the A blocks at Lesterville...
Pocahontas...Just about done here, thinking about filling in the gap between the stacks of lumber & loading dock but otherwise pretty happy with how it turned out...Roger
Great images Roger. Your scenes look really convincing, that signaling sets this apart. What kind of signaling is it? Thanks for posting.
Bean field looks pretty good, Roger. Your scenes are exceedingly realistic for my eyes. Highly detailed but not overcrowded. And the operations summary with pictures: a lot of fun to read. Keep em coming.
Tom, those are Tomar Signals...They are controlled by a toggle switch hooked up to a power reducer...Up is green, center is off, down is red...They say you can make a yellow indication but I haven't figured out how... https://www.ebay.com/itm/Tomar-Indu...632988?hash=item44542739dc:g:xToAAOSwmeNeQYDC BTW, #1738 on the call board is not a typo, it's making a test run...I like the new stuff to make at least one trip before putting it back in the box....If anyone is planning on making something like this here's a heads up...The roof on the Athearn bay window cabooses are shorter than the frame, didn't notice this until I started installing the new handrails...Roger
Tamm Valley Servo Decoder. I just recognized that you weren't talking about semaphores but searchlights, so the Tamm Valley Servo Decoders don't apply.