New Acquisitions

 I have upped my NS Heritage Unit count by two. 

 Sort of. 

Let me explain.

The first is a Monongahela ES44AC. I wanted this one because the Monongahela ran through Waynesburg PA where it had a connection to the narrow gauge Washington and Waynesburg. All of the narrow gauge is gone now, with no sign of remains, but the Monongahela main is still used by the Norfolk Southern (and occasionally CSX) to access coal mines in the area.

The second is a fantasy paint PRR ES44AC in Brunswick Green. The actual PRR Heritage unit, number 8102, is Tuscan Red. This foobie unit carries the number 1846, which is actually carried by an SD70ACC on the Norfolk Southern. The number 1846 on this unit is likely - almost certainly - due to the establishment of the Pennsylvania Rail Road on April 13 of that year. As such, it really isn't an NS heritage unit at all.

At any rate, the first thing I did when I unboxed them was drop the Monongahela unit on the floor and bend a wheel. Unfortunately, since they are Fox Valley Models locomotives, there is no manufacturer support. Fortunately (but not really surprisingly) the Kato 6 axle diesel wheel sets are a drop-in replacement. In fact, the entire truck is a drop-in replacement, but I only have gray ones on hand and the ones on the locomotive are black.

At any rate the damage was quickly repaired using my stash of Kato spare parts and both locomotives were put through their paces. The PRR unit programmed with no issues, but the Monongahela unit is slow at the top speed, only able to achieve 118 SMPH. It is still faster than the Southern unit, which tops out at 105. I have programmed CV5 on both locomotives to achieve the same speeds at 5% increments up to their top speeds, so they will run with the other locomotives on my roster. If it bothered me overly much I would replace the motors with Kato units and make rocket ships out of them all. 

This brings my total number of NS Heritage units up to four (six if you count the Kato Erie and the foobie PRR): Erie, PRR, Monongahela and Southern. I want to find a Norfolk Southern (the original NS, not the current one) and a Norfolk and Western and then I think I may be done.

Progress

 We have had  winter storms for the past two consecutive weekends. The weekend of January 23rd we had an ice storm that dumped freezing rain and sleet on us, followed by a week of sub-freezing temperatures overnights that kept the ice around for a while.

All told it wasn't as bad as it could have been. We got about a quarter inch or less of ice, we never lost power, and I was able to clear the driveway and sidewalks during the daytime before it could re-freeze, so all the ice that was left was on the grass.

This past weekend we got powder snow. We were forecast to get between 5 and 7 inches, but all through the day we were in a snow-free corridor that stretched from South Hill VA south to the coast between Wilmington NC and Myrtle Beach SC. When the corridor finally closed, like a zipper from north to south, we ended up getting about 3 inches or so. Since it was powdery snow I was able to clear it from the driveway and sidewalks very easily.

What that means is I had a lot of time to spend on the railroad. The benchwork has been completed for a while now, but it was covered with construction materials and tools. Last weekend I got it cleaned off, so this past weekend I was able to get some track planning done and put some cork down.

My new layout is going to have four distinct sections. The yard will be along the north wall to the left as you walk in the door. The Nodaway Valley section is along the east wall and the track plan is basically what I have on my 2x8 layout right now. The coal washing plant will be on the south wall and will have standard, narrow, and dual gauge. Finally, the narrow gauge Path Valley section will be on a peninsula jutting out from the west wall. In its entirety the layout will be in a reversed G shape. 

I have almost all the track planning done.. The only thing left on the standard gauge is the yard which I still haven't decided what to do with. I got the cork entirely laid down on the Nodaway Valley section this weekend, including the turnouts to the yard at the north end and the coal washing plant on the south end. 

The lead to the coal washing plant will be dual gauged so that it can be used as one of the legs of the narrow gauge turning wye. This will require the building of five dual gauge turnouts, including a curved one that will have to be built on site. I'm thinking of building them all on-site so they can be code 55 rail instead of the code 40 that is used in the Fast Tracks dual gauge jig. I also have a handful of narrow gauge turnouts to build, but I can use the Fast Tracks jig for those since it is for code 55 rail. The rest of the track work will be Peco Code 55 for both standard and narrow gauge sections.

I have the narrow gauge Path Valley track plan almost all figured out as well. It is being built as a heavily modified Woodland Scenics Scenic Ridge layout. I have single-tracked the hill section between the loops and as such I have created two turnaround loops, which will require some special wiring. The only question left is where I am going to put the turntable and round house.

I have a Peco 6" turntable that I am going to modify to narrow gauge, and I have an old wooden kit for the Nevada Northern roundhouse. I have the kit for the two added on stalls as well, but I don't think I will have the room for them. I have just about decided that it will go in the lower right corner as you look at the plan on paper. There should be just enough room for the turntable and the four stall roundhouse.

I am going to automate some of it using an Arduino to control the loop turnouts. To further complicate things, I am also going to automate the turnout leading into the turning Y at the coal washing plant. There will be a sensor on each loop and one on the wye that will cause all three turnouts to change as the polarity on the main is switched. I will be able to run it as a point-to-point from the coal mine on the upper loop to the coal washing station wye and back, or as a continuous run around the upper and lower loops.

I am waiting on insulated rail joiners for the Electrofrog turnouts, and then I will be able to lay some track. That might be a while though because I have the show in New Bern coming up this month on the 21st and I have a couple of modules that need attention before then.

I don't know how much I will be able to get done during the month of February, but my workplace will have a shut-down in March, so (depending on whatever plans The Management has) I should be able to get some more done then. I would like to get some track laid this month, and maybe build some turnouts as well.

If it all works the way I have imagined it, it should be awesome.

Watch Your Speed

 I have been busy speed-matching locomotives.

First, I speed matched everything on my NCE system and found that they didn't perform the same on the club Digitrax setups. This is because the two systems put different voltages on the tracks, which is irritating but not unrecoverable.

Second I noticed that locos I thought were speed matched were, in fact, not. Generally speaking I try to match them at 50% and 99% (Digitrax doesn't go to 100%) at 65 SMPH and 120 SMPH* respectively, and set CV2 to zero and live with the results. This works well with most of my locomotives, but I found that some locos I thought were programmed to these speeds at these throttle settings were way off. Locos that I thought were set to 65/120 ended up being set at 40/75 instead.

The only thing I can figure is I had the speedometer set to K PH instead of M PH, which would throw the readings off to the degree I am experiencing (roughly 1.6 kilometers per mile). So I have a bit of Unitrack set up on the new layout (I have the benchwork complete and am working on track plans) and I have verified the speedometer is set to MPH instead of KPH, and I have started from the beginning.

So far everything is going pretty well. Kato and Atlas locos were very easy to verify and program where needed. The Fox Valley Models locos are somewhat slow, and one of them tops out at 105, so I just programmed it to keep up through the speed ranges until its top speed was met. Much to my surprise, though, the LifeLike GP18 and GP20 locos were difficult. 

The Life Like GP20 is one of my favorite locomotives, and I have eight of them. I have three GP18's, only one that I run regularly in consist with a triple set of N&W GP20s. They were all set to 40/75 when I put them on the track, and at first I couldn't get them to reset when I changed CV's 5 and 6. 

I finally had to program CV6 to about where I wanted it and then step CV5 up by increments in order to get any effect. I finally did get the GP20's all done (with the exception of two holiday locomotives that will be done later) and the one Southern GP18, but it was more trouble than I expected.

TCS decoders continue to have hesitation issues on my Digitrax system, something that no one has been able to explain, and the GP18's and 20's are all TCS equipped, which may have been a contributing factor. I love the slow speed control of the TCS decoders, but the hesitation to respond to throttle changes and the occasional refusal to play nice with Digitrax DCC systems is an irritant..

I have a couple of Life Like GP18's and 20's left, a quartet of FA and FBs that I will likely not bother with (they run really slow but they are a set), a bunch of old Atlas/Kato RS locos, one each Atlas SD7 and 9, an Atlas/Kato SW1500 cow/calf set that I may not bother with, and a pair of Bachmann sound equipped SD9 locos left to go. 

The Bachmanns run slow so I will only program them to keep up with the others to the top of their speed range. This is somewhat surprising as well since their non-sound equipped locos are rocket ships, and since CVs 5 and 6 are non-programmable on the non-sound Bachmanns there is nothing short of changing out decoders (that would have to be wired in because there are no drop-in decoders for Bachmann GP7's that I know of) that you can do about it.

And after that... we will start in on the steam. 

*Yes, I know prototypical top speeds for diesels are generally in the 65-70 MPH range, and yes I could program everything to 35/70, but running scale speeds on show layouts for the public seems really slow, so the public loses interest in watching them run. I have been considering setting them to 50/99 to match the Digitrax throttle percentages.