Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Starting to dismantle the old layout

It's strange to take apart something you spent months and years to build, and help to build, many, very many years ago. Last night I dismantled the catenary of the family layout. Next up are a few left-over catenary masts, and the semaphor-style signals. Then we'll move on to vacuuming the dust from the layout and brush off dirt from all tracks, followed by removing all the track. In parallel I'm surveying locos and will pick a few first victims to get a decoder.

In the ideal case this will all be done before I'm packing my suitcase again and I'll take enough material back home to start experimenting with running locos and trains using digital controls. I'm particularly interested in ways to control digital trains using analog signals, since I'm planning to only digitize operating trains, but leave controlling switches and signals manually. I might add computerized control later (particularly in my hidden staging area), but we'll see about that when it's time.

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