Weekend Report

Raleigh has a new train station.

Raleigh's Union Station has been serving passengers since it's grand opening in April 2018 but the retail spaces are not yet complete.With Christmas coming up the station wanted to draw in some crowds, so they asked my model railroad club to set up a layout in the second floor.

Of course we were happy do do so. We take any chance we can to play trains after all. The layout was set up the weekend before Thanksgiving and we have been running it on the weekends since then. This weekend I got a chance to join in the fun.

Saturday started with disaster as I packed up my trains to take to the show. I stacked up some train boxes and picked them up to put them in the wagon and the bottom of the bottom box fell out, and J class 601 hit the floor.

The only apparent damage was where the drawbar attaches to the locomotive, it's on a plastic peg and the peg broke off. I was able to re-attach it to what was left of the stub, so I packed it in its box and away we went. Unfortunately when I put it on the layout I immediately got shorts.

I put it back in the box and ran 611 instead. Sunday morning I took it apart and found one of the power wires had frayed at the solder point, and it was touching one of the other wires. I wrapped it with tape and this took care of the problem. With the short taken care of I ran it around the layout a few times and had problems with the front tender truck derailing.

I found the drawbar, being higher on the loco than it was previously due to it being attached to just the stub of it's previous mounting peg, was lifting the front of the tender up enough to unload the front truck, causing it to derail occasionally. I bent the drawbar until it no longer lifted the tender and then attached a train to it and had it steaming happily around for a couple of hours.

Next I tried to run some Mikados together. I had speed matched a Model Power Mikado with a Kato Mikado on my home layout with my NCE PowerCab, but when I tried to run it on the Digitrax powered club layout they were no longer matched. I was told that the differences between the two systems track voltages will cause this issue. I will have to try matching them up again, I will have to either speed the Kato up or slow the Model Power down.

I then tried running them separately and found that along with it's pickup woes the Kato is also a poor puller, even with the traction tires installed. Loosening the tender truck screws seemed to help the tender wheels maintain contact so the locomotive now runs reliably, even over rough trackwork and plastic frogs, but it wouldn't pull a very long train. The Model Power pulls more, mostly due to its all metal boiler which makes it heavier and therefore gives it more tractive effort. I'll have to see what I can do with the Model Power's headlight since it comes on only when it wants to.

I also have another Kato Mikado that has a GHQ Pennsylvania L1 conversion kit on it. With the white metal boiler it is a real puller, so I'll have to see about getting another kit for the poorly performing one. I have to do something with the drawbar since the tender is a Bachmann not a Kato, it attaches to the rear truck instead of to the frame where it should. I have some 3D printed Kato drawbars that are badly warped, but I may be able to combine one with the Bachmann drawbar and make something that works. It will need a decoder to be able to run with the rest of them.

I also ran the Erie Hudson around Sunday morning with the track cleaning car, but for some reason it was jumping the rails so I didn't put it on the track to run it during the day. The chuff start was also off, no doubt due once more to the difference between the NCE and Digitrax DCC systems, so I'll have to reprogram the start voltage for it. I'm really not extremely happy with the MRC decoder in this locomotive so I'll probably get a SoundTraxx for it like I have in the J class locos.

The Bachmann K4 got quite a bit of track time, first pulling the freight that the Mikados wouldn't pull on Saturday and then pulling a passenger train on Sunday. The three Bachmann GP7's also saw quite a bit of freight duty on Saturday with a long train of boxcars and hoppers.

Outside of some exploding Micro Trains couplers it was a pretty good weekend. I'm going to have to order some more couplers before the next session.

I have to work next weekend, but I'm hoping to get in some train time the weekend after...providing I get the work that She Who Must Be Obeyed dictates done around the house.