Sutter Creek

Sutter Creek has maintained that gold rush downtown flair with many buildings dating back to the 1800's.  We very much enjoyed our time here. The atmosphere is relaxed and quaint.
Main St maybe has an over-abundance of wine tasting rooms ...

Daffodil Hill

On the way back to Sutter Creek we stopped at Daffodil Hill, a ranch that normally is open for a couple weeks in the spring for visitors to enjoy the view of hundreds of thousands of daffodils on a hill behind the ranch buildings. Unfortunately, on the first weekend of the season this year they got overrun by thousands of visitors, overwhelming the ranch facilities as well as leading to traffic collapse on the roads in the vicinity. The crowds didn't stay on the path and walked into the flower beds, a pattern that's an all too common refrain heard from other locations, too. As a consequence, the family owning the ranch aborted this year's season and is considering alternative approaches for crowd management.

We took a couple photos from the gate and the street, and got a glimpse of the hill. It's a beautiful setup, and I can't imagine that a visit with the crowds would be nearly as enchanting as our view from the fence line.

Several peacocks are hanging out on the grounds and we got to see some really nice wheels.

Mercer Cavern

Mercer Cavern in Murphys, CA is one of the oldest publicly accessible caves on the West Coast. The calcium formations are very impressive, as are the stairs built into the cave.

In the early years cave visitors used candles and kerosine lamps like this one. Thankfully the cave is equipped with electrical lights.

A fun one-hour tour with lots of climbing down and up steep stairs, and through narrow passages.

Creekside Dining

A weekend trip to Sutter Creek starts off with a walk through town and dinner a Gold Dust Pizza. The beer was served in a frozen jug, and the pizza was delicious.

Murrbahn: Staging Level Doodles

[ Murrbahn posts ]

Murrbahn project - Staging level

I wrote about my plans for the Murrbahn layout project last year. All Murrbahn-related posts are linked here.

This morning I had a realization: Would it be possible to remove the two double-slip turnouts where staging is connected to the mainlines to the rest of the layout, if I ran a track around the outside of the helix?

The plan above shows the staging level of my Murrbahn project. The brown double-track represents the main line south of Backnang towards Stuttgart as it descends from the lower level of the layout. The outer track in the three-track helix represents the Kleine Murrbahn from Backnang to Marbach. The inner two tracks of the helix represent trackage north of Gaildorf/West on the upper level towards Schwaebisch-Hall/Hessental and Crailsheim. Since this is a rather long run in the helix it's double-tracked to allow for opposing movements in and out of staging to the north-end of the visible layout.

All the off-layout destinations are represented by a common staging level. I.e. a train from any of the staging tracks (teal, purple, or green) needs to be able to be routed to any of the outbound tracks and vice versa. In my plans so far,  I tried to limit the size of the helix to the Grosskreis II K-track radius of 61.8cm. I connected the staging return loop inside the helix and resorted to using two double-slip turnouts as part of the arrangement to get trains in and out of staging. This is not bad per-se, but I was not happy about this. Double-slips are mechanically complicated and more prone for derailments. This critical junction is located against the wall, in a tunnel, halfway behind some helix tracks. Not a great place for handling a derailment.

My solution runs the staging access track around the helix track instead of inside. At the cost of 10cm wider helix footprint I gain multiple benefits:

• No more hidden double-slip turnouts
• Traversal of at most one thrown turnout pair to get from staging to either portal track and vice versa
• More gentle curves for staging access, in particular no sharp S-curves

Since I can start the ramp a bit earlier than with the old plan, the helix tracks raise high enough that the yellow track can duck under the helix for about 30  centimeters to avoid additional intrusion into the aisle at that tight spot. 

The first turn of the helix extends into an oval to allow inclusion of a regular turnout to branch the inside track of the helix for simultaneous up and down movements on these 15-20 meters of track. I expect to need about 5-6 turns to climb from staging to the upper level. On the second turn the helix tracks move as far into the corner as possible to minimize intrusion on the lower level.

Nevertheless, that leaves a minimum 3 ft of open space -- more at staging level and below -- enough to put an operator position inside the helix. This position will control traffic in and out of staging, and act as station operator ("Fahrdienstleiter") for Waiblingen, Hessental, and Marbach. This position will probably need a couple cameras to watch what's happening in the staging yards.

Dave Parks' Cumberland West: MY Tower

Tonight my job was being the MY tower operator, writing clearances, transcribing orders from dispatch, and navigating trains through the maze of tracks between Knobmount Yard, Hagerstown Staging, Ridgeley Yard and Cumberland station on the Western Maryland.

A slightly stressful, but very enjoyable way to spend the evening. Now that I operated with TT&TO at La Mesa, I felt much more confident doing this job and knowing what is expected. Keeping up with the dispatcher dictating their orders over the phone was a challenge, but I mostly managed.

More Rain

This has been a good year for the water supply.

Swiss Narrow Gauge Operations at Hiller Aviation

Once again, I'm helping to run trains for a day on the Swiss narrow gauge modules during the traditional pre-Easter Trains & Planes event at Hiller Aviation. I spent quite some time running the Chamby station module today. Here's my view during a moment of no visitors watching trains.

The viaduct module was back in the arrangement this time. The Rhaetische Krokodil looks quite excellent on the bridge.

Silicon Valley Lines: March Ops

Tonight's ops session at Silicon Valley Lines was very well attended, with several guests visiting for the first time, which posed a little bit of a challenge to pair them up with a club member for their first couple runs. I ran with a guest, too, and we drew the Paso switcher, which had a bit of work to do.

Later in the session I drew the Hallelujah Paper Mill switcher which was a good match, since it allowed me to help others with technical problems without leaving a train unattended in a siding or on the main line. This was also the first time that I ran this job during an official ops session.

We start with some cars in the mill yard, and various cars spotted around the paper mill.

After I pulled all cars from their spots and dropped them in the mill yard on tracks 1 and 2, train 380 arrives with 16 cars for the mill.

The road power of train 380 switches the incoming cars into tracks 3 and 4 of the yard, and picks up the outgoing cars from tracks 1 and 2. Conveniently, this happened pretty late in the session, so there was no traffic on the main line and 380 could leave the tail end of the train with cars not going to the mill on the main line.

After 380 had left Hallelujah, I got back to work, moved the incoming cars from track 4 (the runaround track) to track 1, and started switching cars to their respective destination spots.

This session ran very late with lots of good energy in the layout room,

Friday Sunshine

A nice ending to a very busy work week.

Dinner: Pulled Pork

Pulled Pork from the Slow Cooker , with home made cole slaw.Yes, this is a messy affair, but, oh, so good. One of the few dinner foods that I didn't find stressful to make.

Cake: Yumm!

Cake: Almost Done

... a few more minutes.

Papermill: Test fitting the conveyor

I brought the conveyor installation down to the club for another test fitting to ensure the scratch-built base actually clears the highest cars we have on the layout. Mission accomplished. I'll leave this on the layout for now, while other projects take precedence.

Spring Ride

Papermill: Conveyor Transition Housing Supports

[ Hallelujah Paper Posts ]

After measuring the conveyor supports yesterday, it's time to build the supports for the conveyor transition housing. I started with four H-beams from my styrene stash.

I slightly angled the H-beams outside to match the angle of the conveyor supports. I'm hoping to get the same clearance for trains passing underneath on the continuous running track, without building an awkwardly complicated structure behind the recycled paper warehouse. I was a bit concerned when I started. The beams looked rather odd.

However, the structure started to look reasonable (especially for a background structure) as I added more cross beams and straightened out the arrangement. I might have angled the vertical beams a little bit too much, but that's ok, they are barely visible behind the warehouse anyways, so I'm not going to worry about it.

Papermill: Conveyor Supports

[ Hallelujah Paper Posts ]

Tonight I test fit the supports for the conveyor to the digester. While I rebuilt the conveyor transition housing in styrene, it still sits on it's paper support. I need to plan for clearances and figure out how to arrange the conveyor supports. The photo below shows the general look and feel I'm after.

Test fit the support towers with an auto rack car ...

...  and a double stack container car. This should work

Poppies

Daylight Savings Time - check.
Blue skies - check.
California Poppies - check.
Trees in bloom - check.
Walking the dog in T-shirt - check.

Looks like we started our one week of spring. In no time it will be summer and hot.

Yesterday's Hail today

When I got to the bus stop today, there was this white stuff on the ground, and quite a bit off it. However, it was very concentrated in an area maybe 100 meters across. Remnants from yesterday's hail storm.

On the few occasions when we had hail so far, the crystals melted fairly quickly. Not this time. The ice crystal structure from the 6pm storm hail shower yesterday is still visible this morning, even though some hail melted and froze again over night.