NC Railrun 2001 Session 1.

We survived the first round of the NC Railrun 2011.
I had an issue with a panel dying in the middle of the last regular session . I made a few changes before this session and the problem did not return. I had a sensor go bad in Rockland, so one of the mainlines is giving a false occupancy. I'll see if it can be fixed before Round 2, if not the dispatcher will have to work around it.
There were a few other minor details some fixed on the spot and some we'll have to live with this weekend.
All in all things went well. We went 12 hrs. into a 24 hr. schedule at a 4:1 ratio. The trains were slightly behind schedule. SK-1 will need to get its schedule adjusted. It always seemed to run way behind, which then causes a pile up at Searsport when it returns.
Finally the first Wood Job got its chance to run. It made it as far as Searsport when time ran out.

Major construction is on hold for now

I have completed as much as I'm going to try and complete before the upcoming NC Railrun. I have a regular op session and a vacation coming up, so I will stick to smaller items until after the Railrun.
The last few days have been spent building a few cars for use as extras and to fill the Canadian train up. This will be a through train so I can put my duplicate train numbers and spare cars on temporarily. To make the train available I also put decoders into two more engines (with two more on the bench). We'll start seeing some double headed units soon.
This means I'll also need detectable cabooses. I went out and bought two more cabooses and rounded up a bunch of wheels to put into my new wheel jig to make resistor wheels. So now I have all of my cabooses detectable and I'm up to about 14 wheels with resistors. Good for about 7 cars. I'll soon find the matching wheelsets on the cars and we'll be seeing better detection as the number of cars with resistor wheels grows. This will take time though, I have about 250 cars to go.

Scenery - We Can Call It Started

I put down a little styrofoam today. The first part is coming out of the helix and up to the bridge at Acadia.

The second is the inside curve going up the hill into Searsport. I won't get to the actual scenery for awhile, but it covers up a few places where rolling stock could hit the ground.

Backdrops

I wanted to cut up all of the hardboard I had, just to clear up space in the storage room. I was able to hang about 100' of backdrop and 50' of fascia.

I was able to get just about all of the backdrop ready for painting. The backdrop in some areas gave me trouble, so I'll have to work a little more to get it right. As soon as I can get some way to get more hardboard, this will have to do.
Rough guess says about 75% of the backrop is in and 90% of that is painted.

Some of the hardboard was prepainted blue. I used it as it got too narrow for backdrops. It looks kind of funny now since it matches the background color. The fascia will be painted green as time permits.

Wheel Jig

If I'm going to be making a lot of resistor wheels, I better find some help. I decided to make a jig to hold the wheels while I was working on them.
I found some scrap pieces of wood a glued them together. I cut small slits in the boards to hold the axle's about 3/4" apart. I probably could have narrowed it down to 1/2", but this gives me plenty of room.
I cut the board into two 12" sections and then whatever was left over was the length of the last one. The longer one will hold 14 wheels. This is probably enough for me at any given time. The smaller one will hold eight wheels. I figure that it needs to be an even number because you will want 2 wheels per car.

Success at resistor wheels

I finally had to get around to making some resistor wheels for my cabooses, since I added more trains to the layout. I had ordered the stuff months ago because I knew I would have to make about 600 before it was all over.
I opened up the resistor wheel and I couldn't believe how small the resistors were. All of the pictures I had seen made them look bigger than these. Look at the top picture on the left. See the small square dot in the middle of the upper axle, that is the resistor glued to the axle.
The lower axle is where I smeared on some conductive paint (and I mean smeared).

Here you can see two with paint and two more waiting. The paint becomes conductive in about 5 minutes.
It is a little difficult to use a paint pen on a small round object and keep the lines straight. Most of these didn't work right away, but it was usually just one leg from the resistor to the wheel needed a little more paint. It is easy to check which side needs more paint by measuring through the far side of the resistor to the opposite wheel. Then put more paint where it is needed.
I put them in the cabooses and then on the track to test and everything worked good. They ain't pretty, but they work. Hopefully I'll get better as I make 600 more.

Full Layout System in Place

It has been a while since my last post. I have been busy on the layout in between beach trips and visitors.
The upper return loop has been connected and powered up. I'm just missing detection on the upper return loop. This should be fixed soon, but if I don't get it right away, the dispatcher has that section above his head so he should be able to see it.
I have been printing and verifying all of the paperwork for the last few days. What a chore that has been. All of the 75% of Car Cards were reprinted due to Home Yard changes or notes that the operators hand wrote in. All of the waybills had to be changed out with all positions verified and colors verified so that all will be cool.
6 more trains and about 15 cars were added. Only 2 left to go, but I'll have to get some more cabooses first. I had to restage a lot of the layout to match the new waybills and car cards. I wouldn't want someone to wonder why a car was on a certain train when its from location didn't look right.
I made changes to the time table, engine cards and positional duties that all had to be printed for the next session. The train instruction card had the schedule placed into it to help the engineer.
Needless to say I have been busy making sure all remnants of the out of date paperwork was gone and all of the new was in place.