Moving

Operations on the Path Valley Railroad have been suspended indefinitely as the corporate offices move into their new spaces.

On Friday, in the most blatant land grab in model railroading history, upper level management evicted the Path Valley Railroad from its former operating area in the closet and all railroad related items were removed in preparation for sorting and transport to their new operating area.

The new train room is 13' x 9' 8 1/2" but a 3' strip running the width of the room has to remain open for passage to the closet. All is not lost because the closet will be used to store unused materials. Work has begun to renovate the space and it is proceeding apace. Barring any unforeseen circumstances the new operating area should be completely renovated by the middle of next month and operations can once again resume.

When the bookshelves move out of the office part of that room will become a work area, so no space will be lost for that essential function, either. So, the net space will be 10' x 9' 8 1/2", which is a net gain since the space lost was half of a 13' x 10' room.

The 2' x 8' Clarinda layout will be the central operations area, but turnouts will be installed so that the track can be extended to the rest of the room. I'm thinking that T-TRAK modules will make up the bulk of the remainder, which will give me some flexibility in operations. To that end the trackwork has been taken up on the modules, which resulted in one unfortunate consequence; the extension turnouts will not fit comfortably into their assigned spaces.

One of the turnouts in question has to go in front of the passenger station (which is itself on an unprototypical curve) which means the crossing next to the station no longer fits. Since the street must exist (because I say so) that means everything has to shift down...which puts turnouts on the split between the two 2x4 modules, and this will never do. So, a redesign is in effect.

Everything gets moved down about a foot. This puts the passenger station on a straight, where it should be, and puts the module split underneath the three grade crossings beside the scrapyard. This also means that the longer turnouts that were used in front of the freight station because of where the split had to go before can go back in, which to me is a better setup anyway.

This means that, once again unfortunately, the stockyard has to go. On the one hand that's bad because now I have no reason to have a stock car and no siding to switch it into when I do have it. On the other hand, there was not a stockyard on that particular piece of track anyway. Perhaps the stock car can be put on a module somewhere instead, maybe paired up with a slaughterhouse, and the spur that is left can become the meat packing plant that actually did exist on that particular piece of track.

Now the only thing that is lacking is time.

Once Again

Today I attempted once again to chip N&W 601.

First I disconnected the tender from the locomotive. Then I carefully installed a new in the package DZ126 decoder, paying close attention to which wire went where.

Then I took the extra wiring I had clipped from the decoder during the installation and used it to repair the loco to tender wiring harness, paying careful attention to what wire went where on each end. I carefully ohmed every wire out at both of the above steps, both to ensure continuity end to end in the loco wiring harness and to ensure that neither the loco wiring harness nor the tender decoder installation had any shorts from wire to wire.

Finally I reconnected the loco and tested it in DC. It worked perfectly, the correct LEDs lit up when the loco moved in both directions and the motor stopped and started smoothly in both directions.

However, when I attempted to program the locomotive the NCE PowerCab could not find the decoder.

I tried a new in the package DZ146 decoder. No joy. I reinstalled the old suspect DZ126 decoder. Nothing. I even connected all three of the decoders (one at a time) to alligator clips and clipped them first to the programming track rails and then directly to the output wiring of the NCE, and still the system did not see any of the decoders.

I then placed a good DCC loco on the tracks and attempted to reprogram it. I had no problems at all doing so.

I have several older locomotives using Bachmann Spectrum tenders, so I installed the decoder in one of those tenders. Still no luck. Finally I uninstalled the decoder and put the DC shorting clips back in, and once again the loco runs perfectly on DC. I reinstalled the decoder and verified that yes, it still does run fine in DC.

I then attempted to run it on my little snail speed DCC controller (which used to be sold through Z Scale Track but seems to have, unfortunately, been discontinued) and was able to program the loco to run in DCC mode with that controller. However, when the loco is programmed to run with this controller it will no longer work in DC. And since the NCE couldn't find the decoder I couldn't tell what the address was on it so I was not able to run it on the NCE.

I finally disconnected the loco from the tender and was able to get the NCE to recognize the decoder about half the attempts as I rolled the tender back and forth on the programming track. I was able to put it back in dual mode and program in the address, both long and short. I reconnected the tender and once again I was able to get it to run in DC, but not in DCC.

I have no idea what's up with this locomotive. I'm hoping that installing the stock Bachmann wiring harness will fix the issues and I'll be able to chip it and get it to work. But until that happens I have removed the decoder and reinstalled the shorting clips, the loco runs fine in DC, and it will stay that way for now.

And maybe I'll just leave it that way.

Distressingly Familiar

I attempted to chip N&W J class 601 today.

The tender to loco wiring is just as bad on 601 as it was on 611.

Looks like I'll be placing an order for a new wiring harness tomorrow.

Varnish

In a previous post I mentioned an auction that I was bidding on for a set of heavyweight Norfolk and Western passenger cars to go behind the J class locos that I own. Unfortunately I was sniped at the last second so I lost out on them.

Instead I obtained a set of Con Cor unlettered heavyweight cars in green paint from a source on the N scale Yahoo group. I also purchased a set of four Model Power heavyweight coaches in Army livery (to me they look just like Lima cars but according to the N Scale Encyclopedia they have differences in some of the detailing. I have a set of the Lima cars in PRR paint but haven't closely compared them) from MB Klein. These will be stripped and painted in N&W livery instead.

I also have a full set of Con Cor smoothside passenger cars, some are already painted for the N&W and some need to be done. This will give me two full consists of cars for the two locomotives. The N&W had both types that were pulled behind the J class, mostly in mixed consists along with a handful of Pullman cars, so I'll have to get a few of them as well.

I have fifteen cars in all to deliver to the paint shop with the decals next month, hopefully I'll be getting them back before the train show season begins in earnest.

Yay Me!

For the first time since...well, for all practical purposes since I moved into my new house, the one I got because I would have a train room...I have a train room!

Let me digress.

I bought the house in 2005 after retiring from the Navy. At the time there was me, my wife and our adopted 5 year old son. The house has four, count 'em, four! bedrooms, which means one would be a guest room and the other would be my train room.

It stayed the train room for a couple of months until my middle daughter moved "home" to occupy the "guest room" and my oldest son moved "home" to occupy my "train room". The 4'x8' layout I had at the time moved into the bonus room, a 13'x10' room off of the master bedroom that also housed my wife's crafts, and there it languished before finally being disassembled in August 2015. More on that later.

In June of 2010 tragedy struck. I lost my wife of 16 1/2 years to lung cancer. Trains understandably took a back seat for a while (as can be evidenced by the lack of posting in 2011), and then there was a new convertible Mustang to play with, but after a while I returned to trains.

In 2013 Middle daughter, who had moved out, gotten married, had a baby and moved back in, went with her new husband to Florida, and the room that she and her small family had occupied was suddenly empty. I could have moved the trains in there I guess, but at the time I still had the large table and the room arrangement wasn't right for trains. So it became my office instead.

This started a trend; since I only had the two boys left at the house, and since one was in his 30's and the other was rapidly approaching 18 and thus adulthood, I made it well known that in May of 2017 (Youngest Son's birthday is in late April) I would be done raising children. They would all have to find someplace else to be (except the 18 year old providing he stayed in school); the First National Bank of Dad would be permanently closing its doors and Occupy Dad's House would come to an end.

In July of 2014 I won a Life-Like CB&Q train set with an SD9 locomotive, so I started on a new smaller 8'x2' made up of two 2'x4' tables, based on my little hometown of Clarinda IA (although the way it is evolving it won't have much more than the basic track layout in common  with its prototype). I also acquired some Z scale with the intentions of converting it to Nn3 but it is just too damn cute to do that (plus the size and spacing is all wrong). I had also begun a 2'x4' rock quarry layout (an idea that I might yet revisit later on) using a Bachmann 4-4-0 set.

So, at the end of 2014 I had the 8'x2' N scale Clarinda layout and a smaller 2'x4' N scale rock quarry layout residing along the long wall in the 13'x10' bonus room. The 4'x8' that was never really done was in the center of the room, mostly in the way, and there was also a 3'x5' Nn3 layout (mostly just track and FastTracks turnouts on a board) on top of it that I worked on from time to time.

Then, in February of 2015 something wonderful happened. She is an elementary school teacher who's name was hard to say so her kids mispronounced it as Mrs Hades. We were married in October of 2015. It was a very good year.

During the course of that year Mrs Hades decided that since she was now in an administrative position on the PVRR, and since the railroad had been running (or not running, as the case may be) at a loss as evidenced by the sad and sorry state of the 4'x8' layout, it was time for some downsizing so she could "re-purpose" half of my "train room" for closet space.

So, as previously mentioned, the 4'x8' was disassembled in August of 2015. The Nn3 layout that had previously resided atop the big table was banished to the office closet, and, due to the dismal running qualities of the Bachmann locomotive the rock quarry layout was abandoned. It was disassembled and a smaller Z scale "layout" was begun, consisting mostly of MicroTrains Z scale roadbed track on top of the foam. This became a dual-purpose Nn3/Z scale "layout" since the Nn3 was removed. The Clarinda layout became the main focus and the space formerly occupied by the large table became closet and Mrs Hades knitting space.

Eldest Son had been busy since 2013, taking to heart the admonishment that Occupy Dads House was no longer going to be an option. He got motivated and decided to make something happen with his life rather than waiting for someone else to do it. Now gainfully employed at a regular job, with a steady paycheck and benefits and everything, he made plans to find his own space and executed those plans this past weekend.

Which brings me back to the opening line of this post; since the room he had been occupying was formerly my train room it will once again become so. This should give me plenty of room for all my trains and train related materials and will also clean out the "bonus room" closet for Mrs Hades. At long last the PVRR will have its own undisputed space!

Since I have also finally become active in my local N scale club I am going to start building T-TRAK modules, with a twist: I'm going to put some elevated narrow gauge on it using Rokuhan roadbed track. Now that I have a train room I will finally have space for that to happen. Yep, the PVRR is going to go in a new direction...we're going mobile!

The carpet has been taken up, new flooring is planned, and the paint has been purchased.