No tape, no ground cover

The platform for track 2 is in and debris cleaned up. It looks pretty bad right now, but I hope it will be much better once I add the platform edge (made from a Heki cut stone sheet), and build up the sanded top of the platform. I still need to build the platform for the house track. That platform will run roughly from the end of the switch on the left to where the cardboard sign for Emsingen is located. Due to that switch, obviously long passenger trains need to stop at track 2.

Adding ballast to the track as well as ground cover (dirt, sand, and gras) on the areas between tracks will substantially help with how this area will look.

However, my first experiments with ballasting and ground cover in Talheim were actually not that satisfying, both in color, texture and general appearance.  The photo below gives an idea of the look I'm after for the tracks.

I think the best way forward will be to build a small diorama with a short section of track, maybe two track lengths long (i.e. 36cm), and scenic that from beginning to end. One half of the diorama will be station track (ballasted with an assumed drainage pipe, like in the photo above), the other half will be the regular high ballast with water draining to the sides of the track.

Live flight tracking for SFO

This is cool. Live flight tracking around SF Bay Area.

Gorre & Daphetid in Z Scale

Just in case you have not seen this yet...

David K. Smith is chronicling his endeavor to build John Allen's Gorre & Daphetid in Z Scale for a couple months now. Following this blog's almost daily updates is  truly fascinating reading on the wonders and pains of model railroad modeling.

Update 9/28/2014:
David has removed all his personal blogs due to trolls and other idiots that can't appreciate people showing off their work. What a pity.
The G&D in Z scale went into the trash some time last year after all turnouts stopped working, and the layout was damaged. I removed the link to the G&D blog. 

American Politics is just frustrating

The California High Speed Rail blog has an interesting article commenting on a Michael Byrne article basically arguing that major infrastructure improvements -- actually any major public works project -- that can't be completed while one federal administration is in power, is doomed to failure. That is due to partisan politicking and fundamentally different opinions on how tax payer money should be spent, as policies and priorities can change substantially from one administration to the next.

Both articles look at this through the eyes of infrastructure advocates. However, the same pattern is pervasive throughout all levels of government, federal, state, and even local.
In the end I strongly feel that the existing two-party and winner-take-all system is to blame for this, because it leads to a mentality of not wanting, nor needing to compromise. Even the media (TV, newspapers, Web sites) can be fairly easily classified into "right-wing" and "left-wing", catering to their respective constituencies for entertainment, and ad-dollars.

Balanced opinions and thoughtful commentary are hard to find in this climate of pervasive hyperbole. This just makes me sad.

On the positive side I do like the no-nonsense approach Governor Jerry Brown is taking in California. Granted, he has nothing to prove on the political front anymore, which is why he can comfortably play this role, and even propose raising taxes without committing political suicide. I'm very curious how this will play out over the next few months.

Read the instructions!

A couple weeks ago I complained that I can't get the Uhlenbrock 63350 to send sensor messages to LocoNet. After reviewing the drawings in the instructions yet another time, I noticed that I was just missing a Ground connection between the Ground pin of the 63350, and DCC Ground. I expected that the 63350 would use LocoNet Ground (or RailSync), but apparently it doesn't. I also misread part of the instruction text talking about Ground between boosters in the instructions.
Now I'm somewhat baffled that at power-up the unit would actualy report anything given the setup I had.

A platform in Emsingen

I didn't feel like running trains tonight. Nor was I in the mood to build the control panel for Emsingen (the electronics don't like me this week. Why the heck can I not get the sensors of the Uhlenbrock 63350 to report that there is something to report when I connect Ground to an input? gah! But I disgress...)

So I started mucking around with a piece of styrofoam to build the platform for Emsingen's track 2. Working with styrofoam is messy. A very sharp knife is helpful. That turned out better than I expected, and after a few more experiments  I glued down the styrofoam. The idea was to build the platform core from styrofoam and then cover it with the usual plaster-vermiculite mix.

I imagine the platform is built from gravel and dirt with a sanded top. The side towards track 2 is raised slightly above the the rails, while the side facing track 1 is sloping down. There will be two crossings over track 1 for passengers to get to the platform for track 2. One can see the styrofoam core on the photo below.

Since I had the tracks masked off already, I also filled in the area between track 2 and track 3, as well as a small section between track 3 and track 4. While I tried to make the surface of the platform really smooth, the fills are a bit more rough. Of course, the debris will be cleaned up once the plaster is dry. I should have just used a cork sheet when building the station area, instead of individual cork strips for the tracks. Oh well ...

Emsingen Underground

True, I didn't put up photos with my last two trains posts. I figured nobody is reading this stuff anyways. I was wrong. So, by popular demand this post goes into a few more details, and has photos of the ugly underbelly.

Emsingen Underground
South Switches from below

For orientation around Emsingen, take a look at the photos in this post from last year. The small yard in the upper photo is at the south end of Emsingen, while the north side sports a loading ramp, and a tail track.

Most people don't show the underside of their layouts because unless you have a large layout, or are really anal about cabling, it's usually a mess. Exceptions confirm the norm. Modular, or portable layouts tend to have cleaner cabling than stationary layouts. Anyways, the photo on the right gives a pretty good idea what my cabling looks like... Hey, at least I color code everything. Black/red is the main DCC bus (usually AWG14 cable). I have three independent power districts, this is in the "blue" district as signified by the blue tape wrapped around the bus cable.
Those red plastic thingies are 3M insulation displacement connectors (IDCs) to connect rail feeders to the main bus. The round grey cables are various local cable runs (e.g. the one at the top is connected to train detection sections, the one at the bottom runs to a servo in a somewhat remote corner of the layout). Blue/yellow is the 16V AC bus, and blue/red is the DCC accessory bus.
The printed circuit board in the back is a Tam Valley Depot QuadP servo controller.

The photo below shows my technique for installing and  connecting Tortoise switch machines. First off, at the workbench, I solder a short cable to the contacts and run it to a terminal block. The Tortoise has two built-in contacts for powering frogs or switch feedback. I don't really have a need for either of them, but since I have a 5 wire cable, I connected one of them.

Emsingen Underground Yard Switches

The Tortoise is screwed to a block of 3/4" plywood. After I prepared the hole for the throw bar at the switch, I add some wood glue to the top of the block, thread the actuator throw the hole in the switch throwbar, position the Tortoise, and test the throw, repositioning the motor until I found a position that evenly throws the switch without going too far in either direction. Then I hold the motor in that position until the glue starts to set and becomes tacky.
Depending on the amount of glue I added, this takes anywhere from 5-10 minutes, which is usually enough working time to find a good working position for the motor, and not so long that my arm falls off before the glue has become tacky enough to hold the motor in place.

Using terminal blocks between the track and the main bus, or between switches and decoders, makes it easy to disconnect wires for debugging.

Tortoise vs. UP5

Sometimes things don't quite work out, because you don't think about what happens behind the scenes. A few weeks ago I installed a Digitrax UP5 panel in the fascia at Emsingen. This is used to plug in Loconet throttles. The panel is connected to a printed circuit board that extends a couple inches behind the fascia. No problem. ... Until I tried to install the Tortoise for one of the yard switches, which happens to collide with one of the Loconet plugs at the back of the UP5. Had I installed the UP5 half an inch to the left, or a couple inches to the right, this would not have been a problem at all. Now it just barely fits when I let the UP5 stick out from the fascia a fraction of an inch.

Emsingen North Switches from below

The photo on the left gives an idea about how cramped the area underneath Emsingen is (and how big those Tortoise motors are...) Not only is there plenty of cabling in the way, but also a track running through the middle of it. Those white "guard rails" are extra slats from window blinds.

Emsingen South Switches

To wrap up, here are the south switches in Emsingen from the top. The big rectangular holes will hold the twin-coil semaphor machines ... Unless I'm crazy enough to either buy new semaphors with servo drives, or outfit the semaphores I have with servos...

All switches installed and motorized in Emsingen

Over the last couple days I installed switch machines and programmed decoders for all switches in Emsingen. I used mostly Tortoise motors I bought quite a while ago, as well as a servo in one somewhat tight spot. The switch leading to the Lokstation is not yet motorized, but it also doesn't actually go anywhere.
The next project is completing the JMRI panel and routes for Emsingen, so that I can actually use all those switches without having to remember individual switch addresses.

While messing with cables I shorted out part of one of my Tam Valley Depot Servo Decoders. Very, very annoying, since I now can no longer fine tune the individual servo positions. I also managed to make a Team Digital SRC16 decoder completely non-responsive to switch commands. Only a hard-reset (hold the Smart button for ~30 seconds) brought it back to life. I love the very slow switch throw of this unit in combination with the Tortoise switch machines.

Breakfast View

Meet Snappy

Everglades Airboat Tour

Here we go again

I'm at the airport again.

A trip to Miami for a bunch of meetings. I didn't feel like driving all the way to SFO for a non-stop flight, so today I fly from SJC via LAX, not exactly one of my most favorite airports. In fact most of the larger airports suck for their hustle and bustle, the unfriendly TSA folks, congestion, and delays. The small airports (like SJC) don't get you anywhere interesting non-stop. Though I like the usually relaxed atmosphere at the SJC security check points. The TSA folks were even joking today. Granted, it's a Sunday morning, and there were no lines...

Train detection woes

I spent Friday evening hooking up power feeders in Emsingen, as well as  connecting the drops from the train detection sections to a Uhlenbrock 63350 detector. The 63350 sounds great: Loconet, 16 inputs, flexible programming. But, ... it just won't send a sensor signal to Loconet when cars or a locomotive enter the monitored section. However, when I send a Loconet interrogate command, the unit happily reports all occupied sections correctly. So it seems I have everything connected correctly on the electrical side. Since Maerklin is a 3-rail system, I can just insulate one rail, and whenever the axles of a car bridge the two rails track voltage can be detected against ground on the sensor input. Ground gets to the unit via Loconet, so this should work. Looks like it's time asking on the appropriate mailing lists, and contacting Uhlenbrock Support.

Programming Loconet Configuration Variables (LNCVs) via the Intellibox menu is a tad cumbersome. I need to figure out how to do this for a unit that is not directly supported by JMRI.

What's more annoying though, is that I found out while researching the detection problem, that the 63350 doesn't have opto-insulated inputs, so shorts can show up on LocoNet and possible cause havoc (in fact, I had one nearby switch, which is controlled by a LocoNet connected decoder, throw itself when I created a short voltage spike while fiddling with cables. Not good). Not being opto-insulated can cause issues with Digitrax equipment later on, too.

For now the plan of attack is to remove the 63350 from track detection, finish up wiring in Talheim which is using a Viessmann 5217 (S88 straight into the Intellibox), to verify the general approach, and use the 63350 for the control panel in Emsingen complementing a 63400 unit. That way the control panel will have only one power plug for the 16V accessory bus,  as well as the Loconet plug(s).

Sunset today

Emsingen mainline operational

The main tracks through Emsingen are glued down and operational again. I added all the rail isolations and cuts I need for detection as well. The north-half of the station has all switch machines installed.

As a little side-project I tried to fix the issues I had with BR86, and it ran great with the shell off. I couldn't get it to get stuck in various configurations over 30 minutes, when it stopped within a minute before I took the shell off. In the end I think it was a screw that was just a tad too tight and pressed the locomotive shell on a cog wheel off the motor.

Next up: wire and connect the remaining switch machines in Emsingen, both the freight area, and the south switches. Then build a quick-and-dirty control panel for the switches, since I don't really want to do this from the computer, and I don't want to spend weeks on building a proper panel (like in Talheim) before I can operate trains again. Then I'll move on to connect the detection sections, and after that probably do signals.

The locomotive service area is blocked pending proper seating of the turntable, and arrival of parts and the engine shed. It's not like I'm running out of work...

There's a prototype for everything

(image from: http://www.heye-kalender.de/ProductImages/21957/21957_11_S1_002.jpg. The calendar hangs on the wall near my desk at work.)

I have a bunch of steam and diesel passenger equipment. I also have several electric locomotives, and my working theory is that the Welztalbahn is electrified. My explanation for running Diesel equipment was that there's an unmodeled, non-electrified branch line to Prechtal north of Emsingen. Local commuter service to Prechtal is done with a Schienenbus, just like the one in the photo above. Also, since I'm modeling the early-mid 1970's the Welztalbahn has been electrified only recently, so not all scheduled runs have switched to electric locomotives, providing the excuse for running heavy freight steamers like my BR50.

Reading the description on the calendar entry this morning, it says this is taken on the Schwarzwaldbahn in 1989 showing E3642, and Schienenbus VT798 units were used well into to the 1990's on the Schwarzwaldbahn.
If DB can run Diesel passenger units for regional service between Gutach and Offenburg on the electrified Schwarzwaldbahn, I can do the same just fine between Freiburg and Prechtal on my Welztalbahn.

There's a prototype for everything.

Good weekend.

The water tower is only 1/3 full, but my enthusiasm is at 100%. The weekend started off with Friday evening at SVL. I originally planned to only take some photos and video footage, but when I was asked whether I wanted to run a train, of course I couldn't say No. I left SVL shortly after midnight ...

The meet on Saturday had some very interesting talks, and a few not so interesting ones. I particularly liked the talks about how others developed operations schemes for their layouts, especially when the layout wasn't really designed for operations from the beginning. The talk about about Operations at Train Mountain was also great. On balance it was a very good day, chatting with people in the breaks, over lunch, and well worth the time spent.

The layout tours in the evening were fascinating, inspiring, and sometimes intimidating all at the same time. We went to several private layouts in the Newark area, as well as the California Central Model Railroad in a former SP depot in Santa Clara. Four different layouts in just over 3 hours. By the end of the day my head was full, and I was tired and exhausted.

Sunday was the absolute highlight of the weekend when I got to operate on a private layout in South San Jose (not that far from where I live). It's hard to believe that I had this much fun switching cars on a local freight turn. This was a two person job, and took a whopping 2.5 hours in elapsed real time. Afterwards I did get to run a way freight by myself, and railfan the entire length of the layout. They say going slowly on a model railroad increases the fun, ... and it's true.
This layout feels extremely realistic, working with the dispatcher, communications between the road crews, the jobs of spotting and picking up cars, ... It was a pleasure to spend the day.

Boeing 737s on a train

Steve Eshom has some nice articles recently about Boeing 737s fuselages built in Kansas being transported by rail to final assembly at Boeing's plant in Renton, WA.

I very much enjoyed reading Al Krug's account of dealing with those extra high, extra wide loads from a railroader's perspective: Boeing bridge at Big Hook and More Boeings. Other articles on his site are also quite fun to read...

Looking forward to a weekend of fun ...

Last fall I signed up for the LD/Ops SIG weekend ("Layout Design / Operations Special Interest Group) that's coming up this weekend. Tonight is a dinner and the option to stop by at Silicon Valley Lines again.

The day tomorrow is packed with talks and sessions about various layout design and operations topics, followed by layout visits in the evening.

Sunday I'm signed up for an eight hour operations session on a private layout in San Jose.

I've never been to a model railroad convention before. I'm very curious about how this all will work out, the people, the talks and sessions, and of course the layout tours.

Emsingen track layout finalized

After operating for a while with the rearranged trackplan in Emsingen I have decided that, while not perfect, it is as workable as it's going to get in the space I have available, and I want to move on. So after soldering feeders on Monday, tonight I started glueing down the station tracks.

The stub roadbed in the rear will be serving the Emsingen freight house.

Once the major track work is in, I can start installing switch motors, and finally use some components I bought almost two years ago, as well as turn up block detection in the upper levels of the layout.

Block detection is already up and running in staging and properly reporting block occupancy in JMRI. One use case for this is to track a train over the layout and have the computer take over as it enters staging and drop it to an open staging yard, prepare the next train to appear, so I don't have to wait for the train to make it up the ramp, etc. We'll see how that works out ...

Note to self

The cat tree in the living room needs 300ft of 1/4" sisal rope. When replacing more than half of the rope, don't assume a 100' roll is enough.

Stresstest

Today I ran my usual routine operating on the Welztalbahn: One Nahgueterzug each from the North and the South dropping off and picking up cars in Emsingen, as well as the transfer run to Talheim. However, this time I wanted continuous traffic on the main line (instead of just pretending), so I kept two freight trains running, roughly with the same speed  spaced out on the main loop. As those trains ran continously around the layout, I ran the Ng's between them, and made the necessary switching moves. Digital train control is flat out fantastic for this.

When I needed to run an opposing train to either of the two trains I only had to slow one of them down or stop at a (still imaginary) signal, when one of the other trains needed to run from North to South. This also works well with a passenger train looping in the opposite direction between Prechtal Staging, Emsingen, and Talheim.

I did similar things on my father's analog layout many years ago. One loco got it's current from the rails, while the other used catenary. If I wanted to run a train "in-between" it was sharing power, and therefore control, with one of the other trains. It's possible, and one had to time it right cutting in and out of the loop, but that is no match to digital control where each locomotive is controlled individually.

A nice side-effect of this was that my BR50 and BR194 got a good work-out ... a stress test if you will. The tender of BR50 managed to derail several times at a somewhat finicky location with curved turnouts at the exit of staging. Adding some weight to the tender and balance it out evenly helped, replacing the pickup shoe seemed to really make a difference. After I converted this locomotive to digital, the tender was a bit lighter since the I removed the mechanical direction relay, and a decoder is not that heavy.

BR194 needs some tuning, its motor is quite temperamental. I think I'll take it completely apart again and make sure it's mechanically sound.

Finally, my switcher BR86 needs a thorough cleaning. It has a problem were sometimes the gears bind, and the locomotive doesn't move after coasting to a stop. Let's see if I can figure out what's wrong with it.

Time lapse of SVL September Operations Night

Back in September I was at Silicon Valley Lines and I did notice the camera for the time lapse recording. Turns out there is a video of this evening, and I'm in it, clearly visible in the first few seconds while I got my introduction to the layout, and then later running a really long freight train.



The time lapse gives a good idea about the size of the layout. Definitely worth a visit. Check them out at www.siliconvalleylines.com.

Dell Latitude C810, ESS Maestro 3s, and Debian Lenny = no sound

I installed Debian Lenny on my old Dell Latitude C810 in the train room. With Debian Sarge, sound worked just fine, but Lenny just doesn't do it. Kernel modules are all loaded, and look right. Logs have

Jan  8 17:02:53 doc kernel: [ 2579.448816] firmware: requesting ess/maestro3_assp_kernel.fw

and nothing else interesting.

After some googling I learned that I'm missing the firmware, but it no longer comes with the Debian ALSA packages due to license violations of the binary-only firmware.

http://wiki.debian.org/snd-maestro3 has instructions on what to do to get sound anyways. Basically one needs to download the firmware tar.gz from the ALSA project's FTP server, and build it manually, then copy to e.g. /usr/local/lib/firmware/ess, reload the maestro3 kernel module, and voila, we have sound.

Like ice in the sunshine

It's been cold lately and I had to scrape ice off my windshield this week. Today the whole car was covered in a thin layer of ice.

Unfortunately, the photo doesn't do the ice crystals sparkling in the morning sun justice.

Two and a half years do make a difference

In August 2008 I attempted my first conversion of a Maerklin locomotive to digitial. I read some stuff online, but I wasn't really quite sure what I was doing, so I opted to using an Uhlenbrock 75200 decoder that doesn't require disassemby of the motor. I tried to do the minimum amount of modifications to that locomotive to make it work with Maerklin's digitial system. The image on the right shows the inside of this Maerklin 3075 locomotive, a BR216 of the German Bundesbahn, after the conversion. This locomotive has a large flat collector AC motor typical for older Maerklin locomotives.


I was never really happy with that conversion. The motor ran very rough and loud. So after having done a few more conversions and increasingly getting more adventurous, last week I decided to re-do BR216. This time I used an ESU Lokpilot 3.0 decoder. Since that decoder only supports DC motors I needed to install a permanent magnet and disassemble the motor, which was a good opportunity to give it a thorough cleaning, too. As is standard in my recent conversions, I installed a NEM 562 plug for the decoder, so that I can easily replace the decoder if I feel the need at some time in the future. The 16V bulbs got replaced with yellow LEDs that were painted black all around except the front to prevent light leakage into the cab. This was the first time I tried using LEDs in a conversion, and it worked reasonably well, though next time I'll try extra-bright warm-white LEDs instead of standard issue yellow, if I can find them. I'm also tempted to use SMD LEDs and glue them in place.


When I did the first conversion, I didn't have that many supplies, but now it's hard to see the tablet under all the stuff.

Christmas Eve with the other side

Even though it looks just like a really bad Skype commercial, we had a very enjoyable Christmas Eve chat with the other side, and later found lots of presents under the lighted christmas tree.

Speaking of dinosaurs

The photo might not be 100% sharp, and is a tad grainy, but I very much like how the light and colors play with the dinosaur and the children.

Taken in summer 2009 at "Giganten Argentiniens" in Lokschuppen Rosenheim.

Merry Christmas

2010 is about to wrap up. It was a good year, and I'm looking forward to the holidays and what 2011 is going to bring.

Merry Christmas from all the Becks.

Coyote Valley in the Morning

When I dropped off the kids at school today there was a very nice layer of fog in Coyote Valley. I'm not a big fan of that gas-fired power plant in my backyard...

This is the Coyote Valley I like. Rural, and some like out of this world.

It's hard to believe I'm still within San Jose city limits

Background

I've been fascinated by the backgrounds seen on other layouts. Here is my feeble attempt at recreating the view over the black forest.

Obviously, I'm not done yet, but this corner of the room is starting to come together nicely.

More progress

The are around Steinle now has earth ground cover and rock walls as planned. The Steinle wall in the foreground became a bit more dominant than I planned for, but I'll tone this down once I had landscaping, grass, bushes, and a small stand of trees on top. In the background I placed some bottle brush trees with my wall painting, and the result effect is better than I expected. Some fine-tuning and this will look nice. The rock walls in the back will get a generous amount of landscaping.

 On the right is Pascal's locomotive. A present he got from his great-grandma. BR 24 affectionably known as "Steppenpferd" (prairie horse) for the somewhat rough ride the engineer and stoker got to experience with those locomotives. It's a nice model, runs quiet and stable, doesn't have too many tiny detail parts that can broken by small hands.

The model has a somewhat unfortunate balance and doesn't put enough weight on the rear axle with the traction tires, so it tends to loose tractions with a moderately long train. I'll try to add more weight to improve traction.

The double-slip switch for Emsingen arrived, too, and got installed. The two main yard tracks now have more capacity, and flow much better. I'm waiting for some spare time to actually run through a full session schedule on the Welztalbahn.

Until then I need to convert the Schienenbus to digital operation, as well as add more weight to the tender of BR50, so that a heavy train doesn't pull the tender off the rails in some edge situations.

  

Dirt and Rock at Steinle

I'm making progress at Steinle adding dirt (actually a mix of powdered tempera and plaster), as well as coloring the rockwalls. 

The rockwalls are hand-carved, painted with flat grey, and then got treated to a wash of dirty grey and brown to bring out the structure. I also dry-brushed some highlights on the rockwalls to emphasize raised areas of the rock, vs. the niches and crevices.

The dirt on the right is a mix of powered Tempera paint and plaster. In the photo it's still somewhat damp, so I'll know only tomorrow morning whether the color comes out the way I planned. Either way it's an improvement over the brown latex paint I used at Hochwald in the corner.

The backdrop will consist of painted and real trees. I hope to evoke the feeling of a dark forest stradling the edges of the layout, particularly around Hochwald. The painted trees on the left are my very first attempt at painting a forest. I'm quite happy with how they came out, though I will likely end up redoing them, since I'm still missing some distant painted mountains on the backdrop.

I'm using several photos I took on a trip to the Schwarzwaldbahn last year as guidance for scenery, and the backdrop.

Once the dirt is down I can finally rip off the masking take from the track and run trains across the whole layout again. Hopefully some time next week.

The next projects on the horizon are finishing the basic scenery around Steinle, particularly the area on the left side in the picture. Next up is building Hochwaldtunnel to close up the hole barely visible on the right hand side of the picture. In parallel I'll build the access road to Talheim station and close the hole at the bottom of the picture. Then I move on to planting grass, bushes, and trees. 

Other work includes fixing up the trackwork in Emsingen, installing switch machines, and the engine service area including turntable. That'll keep me busy well into next year.

Where is everyone?

It's Black Friday. The malls and stores are supposed to be overflowing with shoppers.

Home Depot and Trader Joe's in Morgan Hill were empty. It was *very* quiet, the cashiers were bored. Actively avoiding the Black Friday madness is a good thing.

Fall is here

Finally, the trees in our street are decked in nice fall colors. They will stay this way for a week or so, and then loose their leaves.

Also, tonight we're having a nice thunderstorm ... WITH HAIL! Yay. Tatjana and I went out on the patio to watch it and pick up some hail corns. Some of them were up to 1/8 inch in diameter. Nice!

Update 11/21/2010:

The local weather radar was knocked out of commission by this storm. "KMUX RADAR HAS EXPERIENCED A WIDEBAND FAILURE. LIKELY DUE TO HEAVY RAINS IN THE SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS". I think what they meant to say was "The phone lines are down".

A small fix

Since I'm revising the track plan in Emsingen, Track 5 needs a bit more space. With the card board strip method of terraforming, that is easy to do.

1) Make a rough cut-out for the space you need

2) Fit a cardboard template. It's much easier to fit cardboard to an irregular shape than doing it to plywood directly.

3) Cut the plywood using the cardboard template as a guide.

4) Clean up the plywood for a reasonably tight fit.

5) Mount a scrap piece of plywood under the benchwork, make sure to leave space for switch motors, and glue the new piece in place.

Done. That wasn't so bad.

That G1 on the left is my wireless throttle (using EngineDriver, WiThrottle/jmri, and a LocoBufferUSB). It works well, but the UI is a little bit fidgety, especially for kids, so I'm going to get a Digitrax UT4 which has a big knob for those that prefer physical knobs instead of virtual sliders.

More base scenery

I'm building up more and more of the scenery base around Steinle. The name-giving rock wall in the foreground has been done for a couple weeks now. The brown area in the background is this weekend's addition. I'm now using powdered tempera to tint the plaster/vermiculite mix and it works a lot better than regular paint.

There will be a little waterfall and creek coming through the hanging bridge, which is currently represented only by a card board stand-in. I will need to build the bridge from scratch. The original idea of building a valley spanning viaduct was abandoned when I realized how puny the "valley" is. There is another bridge I will need to build at the end of the painted tape section in the foreground.

The water from the waterfall will pass under the other bridge in front of the Steinle rockwall (cardboard stand-in just visible on the right hand side of the second photo). Currently that section is missing a "floor" because I somewhat screwed up here. The track is already glued down, and additionally, there is a double cut in the rails just a few inches up from the bridge. Originally, I planned to lay the track here, adjust the ramp for optimum grade, then build a support structure underneath to lock the grade in place, and replace the plywood track section with the actual bridge span. I'm not sure this is going to work as planned, but maybe I have some glorious idea soon.

The left hand side of the second photo shows the reworked loading ramp area of Emsingen station (and a couple of my primitive car cards). I already removed the roadbed of the former yard lead and ramp tracks. The access road to the freight area will cross the tracks between the curved switch and the semaphores protecting track 1 and 2. There is (yet another) cardboard stand-in for the road in the back between the tracks and the wall. I'm planning to hide the seam between road and wall by placing a truck on the road as view block.

Vegetation-wise I'm thinking of bushes and trees along the edge and wall, as well as dense trees overhanging the creek bed above the hanging bridge. To the right the trees and bushes will become denser as they join the forest of Hochwald in the far right corner of the room.

The whole arrangement is a little bit tight clearance-wise because there is a track running in tunnel along the wall under the hills. There is yet another pantograph catcher hidden in the hills to ensure pantographs of electric locomotives don't catch on the scenery from below.

Despicable Me

Yes, this is not exactly a new movie (it was released in July), but Tatjana and I had a great time.

Villain Gru fights for being the biggest villain of all, and 3 orphaned kids are key to accomplishing his master plan.

I loved the characters. Gru is a grumpy with a soft streak. Very nicely done. The minions supporting Gru in his underground shop are hilarious. And the kids, ... well, they are just too cute :-) I won't tell the story, go watch the movie yourself. This is great movie for kids, not too scary, quite some action, and very funny. The DVD will be out by the end of the month.

We saw it at BlueLight Cinemas 5 in Cupertino, which appears to be the only theatre in the South Bay still playing this delightful movie. BlueLight is in a somewhat run-down shopping area right next to DeAnza College on Stevens Creek. It's a really small complex, simple, and friendly. I like that a lot better than the big megaplex at e.g. Oakridge. The seats were comfy, the theatre clean, the floor not (!) sticky, and the sound volume was reasonable. I guess, no crowds also means that this theatre is probably just barely getting by. Too bad.

Now that's some seriously crooked track

http://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2010/11/02/the-canterbury-earthquake-images-of-the-distorted-railway-line/

Here's a blog entry that shows what effect earthquake surface waves can have on rail infrastructure. Fascinating.

Caltrain at Night

Caltrain is the busiest passenger service in San Jose. I think all others (Amtrak Capitol Corridor, ACE, and Amtrak Coast Starlight) together don't even have a quarter as many runs daily as Caltrain. Nevertheless, as popular as Caltrain is, the railroad is on the brink of bankruptcy, so we'll see how much longer it stays in operation in its current form.

Train #266 has just arrived in San Jose Track 4. In the distance is the signal bridge at the Alameda. Interestingly, the northbound signal is already showing green for train #383, even though #372 is still arriving on Track 3. Do those signals just show that the block ahead is not occupied? I think the dwarf signal for #383 at Track 2 was still showing red when I took this photo.

South-bound Train #266 becomes north-bound #189 in an hour. The engineer checked the controls and made sure everything is in working order, ... and then he took off and got dinner.

Train #383 on Track 2 is still showing the red tail lights from its earlier arrival, even though it will depart in 10 minutes. #372 just arrived on Track 3 and will become #287 soon, while #189 on the right will be here for another half hour. Amusingly, it's the only one already set and ready to go.

I hate hard drives

This time the drive in the layout computer died. And the last backup has been a while ago. *sigh*

On the positive front, I build the fascia in the somewhat unusual place smack in the middle of the layout. Adding edges to the scenery nicely frames the three-dimensional picture we're building.

A primitive car routing system

Now that I placed the Welztalbahn into context, I can move on to send freight cars around. For the basic job of testing the track arrangements in Emsingen, and most of the layout inaccessible from Emsingen, a simple routing system is more than sufficient.

For each freight car in this rotation, I defined a spot on the layout (e.g. loading ramp Emsingen), and an off-layout destination. I wrote these on a small scrap of paper and placed it either next to the car, or in a stack of such papers representing yard tracks in Emsingen. Then I went to work with a switcher and collected cars in Emsingen, going north to be picked up by the Ng from Freiburg. Once ready the Ng enters Emsingen, the switcher pulls cars off from the end, and replaces them with cars going north. The Ng pulls out of the station, and the switcher prepares for the Ueb to Talheim, and goes on its way.

Now it's time to fiddle cars. Replace the cars on the Ueb with cars from Talheim, and on the Ng with cars coming from Hausach to Emsingen.

The Ueb returns from Talheim, the cars get sorted, and the switcher prepares for the Ng going south, replaces the respective cars, and then it's time for fiddling the Ng again.

The end-result of this exercise:

• Once again, I'm amazed by how much more one is drawn into the game when what you are doing has a (pretended) purpose.
• I had a lot of fun, and time was flying by quickly.
• Oh yeah, the modified track arrangement works nicely, too.

I can't wait to get done with plaster in the Steinle area, and be able to run trains across the whole layout again. Once the kinks are worked out, I'd love to try this with a second operator. Since space is very limited in the train room, my operating scheme doesn't need to support more than two (or at absolute maximum, three) operators.

Introducing the Welztalbahn

So, I need to test the yard and freight arrangements in Emsingen.

And I still have the tracks around Steinle covered with tape. Just moving cars around in Emsingen didn't sound too interesting, or useful, so I came up with a schedule of trains I could run on my layout, which also happens to more firmly place locations on the map.

To recap, Emsingen and Talheim are located along the fictional Welztalbahn in the south-west Black Forest. The Welztalbahn provides the shortest link from Freiburg to Hausach on the Schwarztalbahn and on to Stuttgart, via Kinzigtal and Gaeubahn. North of Emsingen, an unelectrified branch line serves the Prechtal.

Even though the Welztalbahn is electrified and built out as a single track mainline, due to its tight curves and steep grades it has lost considerable interregional traffic to other routes in the region.

If you take a look at a map of the south-western Black Forest region, you will notice the real-world Elztal, and its respective rail line. My Welztalbahn is located in the same area, but does include the planned but never built track to connect Elztal with Hausach on the Schwarzwaldbahn. Hence providing an excuse to run heavy freights, and regional passenger traffic. Only Emsingen and Talheim are actually modeled, the remaining destinations mentioned below are represented by staging.

Nevertheless, there are several regularly scheduled regional trains on the line, plus local traffic.

There is at least one daily Eilzug Stuttgart-Freiburg and back.
Commuter service runs between Emsingen and Freiburg. There is local service from Prechtal to Emsingen using a Schienenbus and, during commute hours, on to Freiburg.

Two pairs of heavy freight trains are regularly seen on the Welztalbahn. An oil tanker train running from Basel to Freudenstadt and returning empty, as well as a gravel and rock train from Schramberg to Freiburg, returning empty.

A local freight (Nahgueterzug, Ng) services Emsingen once daily. It arrives from Freiburg in the morning, and returns from Hausach late in the afternoon. The industries in Talheim are serviced with a transfer run (Uebergabe) from Emsingen, i.e. the Ng drops cars for Talheim in Emsingen.

Of course, aside from providing visual interest, the purpose of the passenger and freight trains is to make the job of switching the Ng and Ueb a bit more challenging, since the through track, and sometimes even the house track in Talheim and Emsingen need to be kept open for passing trains. This is particularly challenging in Talheim, due to limited trackage, where I usually end up using Track 2 to temporarily hold cars while switching. 

Happy Halloween

Revisiting the Emsingen freight area

When switching trains in Emsingen a few problems became apparent over time, that I didn't really think of when designing the freight tracks:

• Most of the industries face the yard tracks, so the run-around gets a lot more use than I envisioned when planning the station tracks.
• The run-around was designed for one or two car operation. This is too short. Yes, I kinda knew that going in, though didn't expect that it would be this annoying.
• After moving one yard track to Track 3 when building Emsingen, I realized that Track 3 is used much more often for switching moves, than Track 4 and its dedicated pull-out extension, which turns out to be too short. 
• Due to the way the track arrangement worked out, I had to plan the loading ramp of Track 3a into the triangle between 3a and the pull-out extension. This one always bothered me since there isn't really that much space to model anything interesting around the loading ramp.
• There's a wicked S-curve when switching cars to Track 4 and 5 (the "yard"), that caused some trouble with a few short-coupled freight cars.

In other words, enough reasons to revisit the track arrangement in Emsingen once more. While I did build out the cork roadbed already, and parts of the approach are already glued down, most of the track is not. 

Here's my latest experiment. First the left hand side, then the right hand side.

Track 1, the house track, is at the top of the picture (with the slim platform), and will be used mainly for passenger operations, and as passing siding. The "switch to nowhere" will eventually connect to the engine service facility.

Track 2 is the mainline track. All through trains and most freight trains will use Track 2.

Track 3 is the arrival/departure track for local freights that begin and end in Emsingen. Freights that pick up or drop cars might stop on Track 2 and block the main while cars are switched out, and dropped on Track 3 (either by the road engine or a switcher. The right hand half of Track 3, including the extension on the right is used as yard lead.

Track 4 at the bottom of the picture serves as round-around in the middle, yard track on the left, and will have the loading ramp on the right (near the green tank car).

Track 5 is the yard track on the bottom left of the lower picture.

The changes compared to the previous arrangement can be seen by looking for empty cork roadbed, and temporarily placed track.

• On the left-hand side, I will extend the yard track length of  Track 4 and 5 by replacing the two left-hand switches with a double-slip switch. This increases capacity by 30% on those two tracks to about 33 inches total track length (or 7+ cars each), and gets rid of the double S-curve when switching Track 5 from Track 3.
• A side-effect of that change is that I need to build up a little bit more plywood to support Track 5's curve at the switch. Otherwise, the track hangs in the air...
• On the right hand side, the changes are even more severe. I dropped the dedicated yard lead completely (empty cork roadbed at the bottom of the picture), flipped the direction of the run-around switch, and installed a double-slip switch replacing the switch on Track 3 towards Track 2.
• The loading ramp track now runs parallel to the other tracks and becomes an extension of Track 4. The loading ramp itself will now sit at the bottom of the picture (right where the little cardboard sign "Rampe" is located), and I can make use of the freed up space to model some loading scenes (whatever that's going to be...)

I think the revised track arrangement flows a lot better, looks more prototypical, and is even more practical. I will find out if the latter is true by switching a bunch of trains on these new tracks.

Building basic scenery at Steinle

That big hole in the lower right corner of the layout was always meant to be covered by a "mountain". I considered various alternatives, some corny (mountain with castle), some more or less practical (put a street with an off-line industry there), but I finally settled on a Black Forest farm house with a few outbuildings, and a large cow pasture by the tracks. This area is now called "Steinle" for the distinctive rock formation behind the farm house. A small service road crosses the tracks behind the farm house on a bridge and disappears into the forest at the back drop.

To build up the area, I formed a web of cardboard strips glued together with hot glue. In terms of scenic features from left to right, there will be an overgrown rock face, some trees and bushes on top of the hump, then the farm house and the cow pasture in the lower section towards the tracks.

The area in the back corner is now know as Hochwald ("high forest"). The backdrop will be painted to represent forest, and I'll try to build up a forest edge along the ridge. In my infinite wisdom I built the cardboard web over the access hole, so reaching into the far corner for scenery work is now somewhat challenging ... Getting to the track to deal with derailments is unproblematic, though.

The cardboard lattice gets covered with masking tape (Kreppband). I painted the tape with acrylics wall paint so that the plaster in the next step holds better to the underlayment. The depression in the brown hill formation at the backdrop is where the service road bridge will span the track and lead into the forest.

The Hochwaldtunnel on the right will be surrounded by rock face above the tunnel portal and on the right along the wall. I will make a cardboard template and build the wall, tunnel portal and tunnel lining off-layout, so that I can slip the finished piece in place and hopefully just need to touch up and plant the edges where it connects to the surrounding scenery.

To cover the cardboard strips and further build up the scenery I'm using a mixture of 3 parts water, 4 parts Plaster of Paris, and 4 parts Vermiculite, as well as a little bit brown paint. The vermiculite adds volume and a nice texture to the plaster, and the paint tones down the stark white of the plaster.

Of course, working in the train room with plaster is always a bit messy, so I covered the tracks with blue painter's tape. Given the rain and somewhat cold temperatures lately it took almost a week for the plaster to completely cure and dry out.

Five Little Pumpkins

ALEKS on Linux - It works.

ALEKS is a math homework and exercises web site, that is used at colleges, high schools, and some middle schools. And Tatjana's teacher is using it, too.

ALEKS uses a Java "plugin", i.e. a jar file that gets loaded into the jre lib/ext directory, in the browser to speed up various pieces of their functionality. And, as is not uncommon for commercial entities, they only support Macintosh and Windows with their software. For Linux they at least provide short instructions on their Web site, "for experts only". Unfortunately, the instructions are plain outdated.

Furthermore, ALEKS only works with the Sun/Oracle Java Environment. Using OpenJDK leads to endless frustration while trying to use the software. Controls don't show up. It's dog slow. Javascript-Java integration doesn't work, etc. etc. etc.
Here's what I ended up doing on an Ubuntu 10.04 LucidLynx system:

- Uninstall OpenJDK:

$ sudo apt-get delete openjdk-6-jre

- Add the Ubuntu partner repository to the configuration (see Lucid release notes):

$ sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://archive.canonical.com/ lucid partner"

$ sudo apt-get update

- Install the Sun Jave Runtime environment

$ sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin sun-java6-fonts

- Find the location of the extensions directory

$ find / -path '*lib/ext'

This yielded /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.20/jre/lib/ext for me.

- Copy the downloaded Aleks jar file to the right extensions directory:

$ sudo cp aleksPack10.jar /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.20/jre/lib/ext

- Restart Firefox, go to http://www.aleks.com, login, and voila ... it works.

Another one of these

For those of you who don't enjoy watching track out the front of a railcar, don't even bother clicking on the video above. Go, read some other blog, or check out the latest updates on Facebook.

For the single reader still with me:
Die Aufnahme entstand im Sommer 2009, nach Besuch in der Wilhelma und dem Stop an der Rosensteinbruecke. Wenn ich solche Aufnahmen mache, schauen mich andere Fahrgaeste oft an wie einen bunten Hund, ... oder vielleicht ein armer Spinner. Die Fahrzeugfuehrer scheint es nicht weiter zu stoeren, wenn ich ueber ihre Schulter filme. ... Oder sie halten mich auch fuer einen armen Spinner. ... Damit kann ich leben.

Mir gefaellt es wie die Strecke von Wilhelma bis nach Neckargroeningen aus dem Grau der Stadt, ins Gruen des Umlands fuehrt.

Erst durch die Stadt am Neckar entlang, dann das Kraftwerk Muenster, und Hofen. Am Max-Eyth-See wird es gruener, und auf regulaerem Bahnkoerper geht es zwischen Baeumen entlang. Nach Muehlhausen geht es auf dem neuen begruenten Bahnkoerper am Hornbach und Betriebshof vorbei wieder durch viel Gruen, bis zur Endhaltestelle in Neckargroeningen.

JFK Airtrain

The JFK airtrain is a fully automated, driverless people mover. No driver means passengers can watch out the front window and film the track with their crappy cell phone cameras. This seems to be a fairly popular thing to do given how many variants of this can be found on Youtube. My version is below.



I used Youtube's video editor to compile the video from 5 segments, added transitions and a soundtrack.

Model train stores in Manhattan

When traveling I like to visit hobby shops that carry Maerklin simply because there are no decent such shops around where I live. Yes, the sticker prices tend to be a bit higher than for the same item on the Internet, but nothing beats looking at the actual thing before buying it.

Case in point: The Red Caboose and Gotham Model Trains. The stores are located between Rockefeller Center and Penn Station, so easy to stop by while playing tourist.

The Red Caboose is a New York institution, and quite an experience. The store is located in a basement. The shelves and display cabinets are stuffed to the brim with material. Locomotives, cars, landscaping, accessories, track, books, ... At first glance there doesn't appear to be any logic in how items are organized, but after spending a little time it becomes apparent that "like" items are located near each other. E.g. all Maerklin inventory (and there's quite a selection), is within a 5 feet section of shelves, and displays. I use the term "Display" loosely here, since some of the shelves hold models stacked on top of models -- no boxes! Some fell down from a higher level in the display, and stayed where they landed.

Did I mention dusty and cramped? The fascination of this store comes from the fact that this is a collectors dream. Lots of old (sometimes very old) items, very narrow aisles (in some areas I wasn't able to turn around with a backpack on my back), lots of stuff to sift through, ... but boy, this store is dusty and messy. There was dust on boxes, wood shavings on shelves (probably from installing additional shelves), landscaping material stacked on the floor, boxes hanging from hooks in drywall, or wood frames. Obviously, this is not about presenting model trains, but to have a *huge* inventory of vaguely hobby-related stuff.

I did find a model of BR212 (a locomotive I coveted for a while now, since it nicely fits in with the theme of my layout). It's a good looking model, though unfortunately, it was from Maerklin's Hobby series, analog, and had the old style 3 rotor LCF motor. That kind of motor already gave me lots of trouble when digitizing other locomotives. The amount of dust on the box indicated that this locomotive had been in the store for a while. There was no price on the box, so I low-balled an offer (given the amount of trouble I will need to go through to make this run on my layout). The otherwise very nice owner, was almost offended, and after looking up the dealer price in a price list from 2002 (!), suggested that this model wouldn't be right for me. Actually, he was right.

In contrast, Gotham Model Trains is a very nice, small, and clean store on the 13th floor of an office building. There's a small operating layout in the store, display cases, that show the models. Shelves with neatly stacked boxes of cars, organized by manufacturer, car type, system type, and scale. While they didn't keep nearly as much inventory, most of it consisted of recent models at a fair price, where I knew they hadn't been sitting on a shelf somewhere for 10+ years. They don't seem to have a lot of foot business (no wonder, given the lack of advertisements on the side-walk), so the store was mostly empty when I visited. Had I not googled for [model trains] on maps.google.com I would have missed it.

The staff and the owner were super-friendly, and when I left, my backpack was full. I got a set of 6 tank cars, that looks very good behind my BR50, as well as 2 "Schuerzenwagen" passenger cars. No BR212, but I'll keep looking...

Update 2015/12/01:

Looks like The Red Caboose is still around, but Gotham Model Trains is no more. 

Return from Top of the Rock

Looking up into the elevator shaft while returning from the top of the Rockefeller Center.