SJC - SEA

Another week in the beautiful Seattle metro area. The plane is here -- in unusual paint scheme --, boarding will start soon.

Shortly after take-off we take the usual right-hand turn over south San Jose, which allows me to capture the setting sun over the wing.

After a 2 hour flight we approach Sea-Tac from the North, and I get to take a somewhat blurry shot of the Space Needle (It's the vertical, skinny blob, next to the bright round set of lights in the center of the picture).

Arrival at Sea-Tac. Touchdown 10 minutes before schedule, but we got stuck for 10 minutes in a traffic jam behind the North Terminal, so arrived at our parking position at Terminal C right on time.

Santa Cruz Fun Run

The end of the university school year is approaching fast, so Tatjana and I drove over the hill to drop her off for the last 10 days of school and to start moving back a portion of her things.

Morning Coffee and LDJ

Layout Design Journal 64 arrived yesterday. What better place to start reading it than out on the patio in the morning with some freshly brewed coffee?

Wildlife on the Commute: Gopher Snake Season

After yesterday's gopher snake, today I almost ran over this rather small one. It was appropriately annoyed about my intrusion into its personal space.

Wildlife on the Commute: Gopher Snake

I regularly see reptiles on my commute. The small lizards are usually too fast to take photos. Sometimes there are salamanders. Every now and then I see gopher snakes. They like to hang out on the trail and tank energy.

This one is about 2 feet long and disappeared very quickly into the nearby grass when I was done taking photos.

Flixbus

A common sight in Germany, now in California, too.

Untergroeningen: Back to Wiring

Now that a good chunk of tracks is in, it's time for more wiring. This time on segments 2 and 3.

Rainy Day BBQ

It's May (not even April), and there's yet another Pineapple Express coming through. The grill works just fine in the rain, and while the result is delicious, we preferred to eat inside tonight.

Untergroeningen: More Track

Over the course of the week there was slow but steady progress on the Untergroeningen segments to add more track. Using Peco track converted to Maerklin 3-rail I go through all the motions of installing 2-rail track, plus beforehand install the pukos and go through extra wiring chores to power them. I always want to go faster no matter what kind of track I lay, but this is really testing my patience.

I also converted the 3 missing turnouts to 3-rail. It's vastly preferable to convert several turnouts at once. If they are connected in the track plan, it's easiest to solder them together and install pukos and wiring as a unit.

Tonight I finished making tracks 1 and 2 and the track to the end of the module. Wiring and Tortoises are next ...

Switching in Emsingen

As substitute for a canceled operations session today, Franziska and I spent some time running a partial ops session. She was working the switcher in Emsingen.

After a while, Franziska suggested that the session has been going on a really long time, it's evening, and hence it needs to get dark. I'm always game to turn off the room lights, and let the layout lights take over.

However, at night it's quite a bit harder to uncouple cars or read the paperwork.

Bleachers Life

Prepping more Track

Morning Rain

Der Rangierdienst

A Bundesbahn training movie from 1956 (first part) and 1965 (second part) explaining the various actions and paperwork used to classify freight trains in a hump yard, and a freight yard.

Untergroeningen: Third Segment

Today I built the third segment for the Untergroeningen station. To make room for it, I moved the whole arrangement towards the rear of the garage. Module One is cantilevered off the first Untergroeningen segment held in place only by the three bolts at the Fremo module end plate.

The third segment box is different than the other two Untergroeningen segments. Due to space constraints it needs to be built in a triangular shape. I cut the plywood for this back in December. The short end of the segment needs to be angled to roughly match the turnout angle coming out of the station tracks, so I extended track 1 and arranged the turnouts to get an idea where to cut at what angle.

A while later I had cut the plywood to length and angle, made some gussets and glued it all together.

Tonight I built the south turnout ladder. Next up is building up the roadbed and transition into the station planum around the first turnout.

Untergroeningen: First Train!

I reached another milestone tonight: The first time a locomotive successfully ran on my converted Peco turnouts. Wiring the module to get to this point took much longer than I had anticipated, mostly because I couldn't take substantial shortcuts. The turnouts need polarized frog rails. The outer rails need to be powered between turnouts. Separately. The bus wires need to be run and connected, too. etc etc etc

Now that I confirmed that this works in principle, I want to test the tracks and track geometry with several newer and older Maerklin locomotives before I install more turnouts, since there is a good possibility for gremlins lurking in some corners. However, getting to this state gives me more confidence not only that the approach is feasible, but also that I can execute it.

Here's a video of the inaugural train traversing the turnout ladder.

Untergroeningen: Wiring

The module frame is completed and primed. The north turnout ladder is installed. I'm now wiring the module, so that the turnouts can be powered properly and I can test drive a few locomotives. If that works I will continue laying track to the other end of the station and so that I can get the proper angles for the third segment.

Dave Parks' Cumberland West: Keyser

Tonight I'm running one of the two switcher engines at Keyser Yard. Keyser is the coal marshalling yard on the B&O and can get quite busy, though it was quite manageable tonight. The double-track main line runs through the center of the photo. The west-bound yard tracks on the right handle mostly empties going to the coal mines, while the east-bound tracks on the left handle loaded coal cars.

Extra 7604 pulled by a class EM-1 Yellowstone 2-8-8-4 locomotive has pulled into Keyser Yard and terminates here. On Dave's layout many of these coal trains run with up to 35 cars, and are quite a sight.

Towards the end of the session I switched jobs and ran the Keyser Local from West Virginia Junction Yard on the Western Maryland to Luke, switched the WestVaco Paper Mill and then a couple more industries in Piedmont on the way home to Keyser.

Untergroeningen: Progress on Segments

Untergroeningen is starting to come together. This weekend I worked on the north and center segments. In a departure from strictly adhering to the prototype, the north segment will host a Raiffeisen warehouse serviced of course by rail. The track will run right up to about where that box car is located to the left of the wye turnout, and will come off the turnout on the far left. The Raiffeisen warehouse will be a large customer in Untergroeningen.

The north turnout ladder is soldered. I have cut baseboards for the tracks and cut the homasote underlayment, too. I marked the locations of the homasote, and then went to town with the jigsaw.

A little while later I had broken the carefully installed baseboard mounts, and spent the next hour fixing that... sigh.

By the end of day Sunday, both segments had their baseboards cut to shape ...

... and the homasote glued down. The baseboard is 7-ply 3/4" plywood that is a left-over from another project.

In parallel I spent some time building parts of the south segment which will connect to the Welztalbahn for now, but ultimately will be the end of the line in Untergroeningen once installed with the Murrbahn track plan. Here the rear half of the module box is being glued together.

Rolling forward

The north turnout ladder for Untergroeningen is complete.