Paper Mill Sidings

The track arrangement for White Mountain Paper. I was able to add two sidings more than the old layout had. I have separate sidings for tank cars and covered hoppers. This used to be a single siding before. I also added a siding for the power plant so for the first time coal will be delivered to the paper mill.
The coal track is in the foreground and could support 4 hoppers. Next up and going into and next to the building will be the warehouse tracks. Each track can hold 3 cars.

Behind the Warehouse will be the Kraft Mill. It can hold 2 covered hoppers. Right next to the tanks will be the tank dock unloading. 2 cars can be spotted there. In the middle is the pulp tracks and 2 cars can unload there. Finally going around to the right behind the main line is the wood chip track. This track can hold three to four cars.

You'll notice some space in the foreground. This may be a small holding yard for the papper mill. We'll have to see how this goes, before I decide to put it in.

Mainline track in Orrington

I finally got back to the layout after a nice vacation, but it is now time for the push to Bangor.

The sub roadbed has been completely connected throughout the whole empire. The mailine roadbed and track has been installed just past Orrington. The mainline turnouts are also installed. I'll need to work on the paper mill sidings next.

If you are familiar with the layout, that means the upper level track is now above Freeport. There is only one town left to go and it is just a single siding off of the mainline

The second picture shows the end of the installed mainline in the lower right corner. Just to the left of the box in the background is where the last siding needs to go.and to the left of this is where staging is located. The staging tracks are already installed.

Radio and Network updates

I had to get ready for an Op session today, so I had to limit some of my improvements to things that wouldn't upset getting ready for the session. I spent time putting in the last of the I/O boards, occupancy boards and detectors.
Right now I only have 1 electrical block without occupancy detection. I am talking about the whole layout. I am 1 motherboard short. I am a little short on detector cards, but I have tested all of the blocks with good boards so I know the computer sees it all.
I put all of the I/O boards in the other day and today we got them all wired up and the programs changed to recognize them all. They are working with no errors. Thanks to Dil Huey and Gordon Miner for that. They came before the session and helped to finish it up.
I have been wiring up tortoise machines for installation in the paper mill and upper staging. They'll be installed in the near future.
I think I finally got the radio working correctly. It took a lot of time an effort, but I didn't hear a complaint from anyone today. Things are looking up.

This is no April Fool

I went down the the train room to do a little file updating on the dispatch server. The C drive went belly up and wouldn't boot. I'm no network guru so things weren't looking up. Not only was updating files not going to happen, but now fixing the server was high priority.
I emailed my computer genius (no not me)and he gave me things to think about. I have a couple of old computer boxes that were supposed to work, but I never had a chance to test them. The worst part was digging into the deep recesses of my brain. Way back to DOS.
I decided to change out the hard drive first and I was able to get the computer to boot up, although it needed the right files. I then decided that possibly the first drive had a stuck arm and decided that I would whack it a couple of times and maybe it would come up as the D drive.
Sure enough the hard drive came back to life. I quickly figured out all of the files I needed (I hope) on the backup drive and copied them over. Now I'm back in business and with another hard drive if needed.
I then went and updated the files to include some new additions.