Morning

It was a good weekend. Now back to work.

Sail boat

Last week, Pascal built this sail boat. Very nicely done.

Sixth Operations Session on the Welztalbahn

Today was the sixth operations session on the Welztalbahn. Since I had new equipment in service since the last time, I rewrote the schedule from scratch.

Printed schedule, train cards, and line schedule

I started out with a line-based diagram of where each train is at any point in time. You can see it in my notebook in the photo on the right. Since I created merely a sequence schedule, I didn't need to pay much attention to the speed of trains, and could instead focus on interesting meets. The diagram style format makes it very easy to see when a staging track is too full to hold the trains intended for it.

Then I combined this with the existing train cards from previous sessions, assigned train numbers, printed a couple new cards for the added runs, and created the actual schedule used by the operators. A printout is on the left in the photo.

Once I had the schedule, it was time to stage the trains accordingly. For the passenger trains this goes really fast. Select the locomotive, move the train into the right place. Done. The freight trains tend to need a little bit more attention, but get done pretty quickly, too.

All ready to go. Oh, wait, I do need to add a feeder to the Gregorius track in Talheim. It had no power since the turnout surgery last year. That got done quickly, too. Some track cleaning, and ... The PSX circuit breakers indicate a short? Oh man, did I really not pay attention? Disconnect the track. Short remains. Disassemble all of Kopper Sidings. Short remains. Disconnect track from the PSX. Short indicator remains on (!) ... Deeep breath. ... Power-cycle the layout. ... WTF? Now all THREE PSX circuit breakers indicate a short!!! Why now? I have two hours until my operators show up, and I have a short in the layout? But where? ... Deeeeep breath. ... This doesn't make any sense. I didn't change anything, and there's a short? Even with disconnected track? .... Hmmm, bad command station? Overvoltage? ... Replaced the Intellibox transformer (yes, I had a spare 16V AC transformer). Turned the layout back on, and ... no dice. No PSX delivers power to the layout. I connect track power of one block directly to the Intellibox. No problems running a train. I reset one of the PSXs to factory default. Didn't help... Some time later Balazs showed up, we look at the problem, and just as mysteriously as it showed up, the "short" disappeared. I still have no idea what this was. I have an email out to DCC Specialties, maybe they've seen this before.

Anyways, a little while later the operations sessions was in full swing.

Itamar works the Yard in Emsingen

Balazs shuffles cars in Talheim

As for the Kopper sidings, the new track at Gregorius worked as well.

Overall, the layout performed quite nicely today. A few dead spots on the industry tracks, and a short on the turntable, but otherwise no mechanical problems. The revised control panels seemed to make sense, too ... at least I got no complaints :-)

This session ran for 2.5 hours and all 17 scheduled trains ran with no problems. I think that's a first.


One good question I got today was, "do you operate your layout only twice a year?" -- No. I operate more often than that just by myself. However, I don't count my one-man shows as an operating session, since I usually run with a simplified schedule that includes only certain freight trains.

Birthday present

Pascal built me this awesome wooden steam locomotive from scratch as a birthday present. He did an excellent job. No power tools were used just saws, knives, files, a hand drill, hammer and nails.

I love the extra touch of modelling live steam from the chimney.

Digitrax DN143K2 in N Scale Kato RDC

The office layout is in N scale. Due to a spur of the moment purchase a Kato RDC found its way to me. I'll write more about the purpose of this guy some other time. Tonight I installed a DCC decoder in the RDC . What a giant pain for such a small model. The model is held together only by clips. Disassembly is impressively hard. Keeping the clips intact is even harder. Either way, after reviewing forum posts, the Kato disassembly instructions, and the Digitrax installation instructions, the decoder is ready for testing on the layout.

Following some forum advice I removed the underbody part to reach the clips for the seat panel more easily. That was a very good move.

The Digitrax product description did say this is a challenging install "due to the nature of the model". I guess I'll find out soon if I can manage to do challenging installs successfully. Update 1/29/2013: I tested the decoder on the layout in the meantime. One light board was slightly off the connectors (easily fixed), but otherwise the RDC ran just fine. The motor parameters do need some tuning. Though that can be easily accomplished when it's put together.

Jurassic Switching

The office layout got a few visitors while I was on vacation...

Thueringer Waldbahn

Happy New Year!

Fireworks rockets are so much fun.

Kidnapping in the park?

Half-timbered houses for Emsingen

A few more half-timbered houses that will grace the market square in Emsingen.

Merry Christmas

Office Switching

The Timesaver for now lives on top of my bookshelf at work. Hmmm, some kind of background would fit nicely here...

Wireless Emergency Alerts

This morning we were woken up at 8:17am (groan "It's Sunday morning!") by my cellphone reading out an emergency alert about flooding in my area. Yes, it's raining, but why is my cell phone talking and showing this really unfamiliar notification box with information that there's local flooding and I should listen to local media?

Before my brain really kicked into gear, I clicked OK ... and then realized I should have taken a photo of the alert for this blog...

Turns out this is a new federal warning system. Verizon's website has more information about the "Wireless Emergency Alert" system that was installed and enabled this year.

Emsingen town arrangement -- first experiments

I cut a base board for the town of Emsingen the other day, and have been playing with house arrangements. I clearly need more houses, but this is starting to go somewhere now..

It's quite interesting how things appear more complete at eye level. Compare to this overview shot...

There will be a street leading up to the town roughly where the blue clamps are, as well as more houses in the back and to the left. The area near the stub track will get a loading dock, access road, and the Emsingen freight house.

Conservatory of Flowers

Dumb ways to die ...

4 story houses in Emsingen ... or not.

I'm currently building more houses for the town of Emsingen. One of the kits I got for this a while ago is Faller's 130436 half-relief, background houses. I like the idea of half-relief houses since one doesn't need as much space as for the complete house, while still giving the impression of "there's more".

These two houses are the 4-story variant. The kit was an impulse buy, and I didn't really consider how high 4 stories is, nor the feel of Emsingen town. As time progressed and first houses were set on the layout, I took another look at that kit and mused that 4 stories is quite high. When I started building the kit I kind of spaced on this earlier insight. After the ground floor was built and I placed the house on the layout, it felt like a sky scraper, and completely out of place. Some kit-bashing was in order. Of course, by now I already had glued together the ground floor, so I couldn't go the easy route and do a nice straight cut along the bottom of the side-walls, instead I needed to cut at the roof line.

In the photo below I already shortened one of the two side-walls, and am test-fitting the facade, while the wall in the rear is still the original height.

Here's a view of the almost completed kit with other houses in Emsingen...

Yep, that works much better. Just imagine there were another floor in that house. It would be almost as high as the church steeple.

Our annual two weeks of fall

Gobble, gobble

Wild turkeys on my way to work...

Tabletop Switching