Additions

Yesterday the much anticipated C-57 arrived.

After a quick clean and lube it was running quietly and smoothly about the layout, as expected from a Kato.

Turning it into the Erie K5A should be interesting. The drivers are about right, they mike out to 75.6" at the tread which is only a tad bit short of the prototype's 79" drivers. At the flange they mike out to 84.4" but comparing it to the pictures of the K5A it shouldn't throw things off too much.

I have not yet been able to disconnect the tender but it appears to have the same attaching arrangements as the Kato Mikado. I will have to figure out a way to get this to cross over to the larger 6 axle tender I have to put on it. Also, the shells are going to be difficult. The Arnold shell will require quite a bit of hollowing out, which will take a while since it is a cast metal shell. The Atlas carved out nicely and ended up being a few millimeters short. Since the Arnold shell has piping cast on that is not present on the prototype it might be easier to lengthen the Atlas shell. Either way, the project moves forward.

I had a medical procedure today (I don't want to talk about it, suffice it to say it was age related and requires a day of prep previous; if you don't get it you will when you reach the half century mark) so I was out of the house when the mail came. My wife, being the sweet thing she is, drove me to the procedure and afterwards, since we were near the train shop took me over there to see about getting a couple of decoders. They didn't have the decoders, but they did have this PB1.

Once it is painted in blue and striped in yellow it should match right up to its PA1 mate.

 It was a disappointment not to be able to get the decoders I was after though, because I was anticipating the arrival of this Burlington SD7 (and it is an SD7, marked on the sill plate as such, even though under the shell it is identical to the SD9), and when I got home it had indeed arrived.

Hopefully it won't be as onerous to chip as the SD9 was, and as soon as it does have DCC installed it can take its place in the consist helping the Redbird out.

I think they will make a really nice pair.

K5A Build Update

I just scored a Kato JNR C57 that has the boxpox drivers needed for the Erie K5A project.

When it arrives, probably some time next week, I'll have to figure out how to turn this:

into this.

I have the tender and I have one or two old Atlas Pacific shells. I also have a complete Arnold 4-6-2 that I wouldn't hesitate using the shell off of if it is a better match. I also have a collection of leading and trailing trucks and a few steam cylinder sets that can be donated to the cause as well, but it might be easier to use the Kato steam cylinders and form them with brass and plastic into what I need.

It should be fun!

Grand Reopening

Monday, May 29th marked an auspicious occasion as trains ran for the first time since the suspension of operations on the Path Valley Railroad. To commemorate the event a passenger train carrying VIPs from the railroad and greater Path Valley community ran the route several times to great acclaim.

Later that day the local freight delivered cars to the factory, scrap yard, grain elevator and meat packing plant, with a flatcar carrying containerized LCL loads getting parked at the freight station. The stockyard is gone now, cut to provide room for the railroad's new connecting turnouts and eventually a connection to a bigger modular system as it is built. The stockyard should eventually return on one of those modules, and indeed the stock car was a part of the consist.

All materials of a railroad nature have been put into the new train room, the pictures that had languished in storage have once again been placed in their spots and the trains are out on display. Unfortunately some of the lumber used in the previous standard gauge display was used in other applications, so the standard gauge display yard has shrunk accordingly.

The Unitrack has been removed from the temporary track table in the office, and the office table has also been relocated to the train room. The narrow gauge/Z scale trackage is still on the temporary board and it may actually become permanent at some point with an eye towards making it a show display.

And speaking of Unitrack, since I now have a dedicated place to work (be it ever so cluttered) I have once again started work on the T-TRAK modules. I mocked one up today to see how it was going to look and I think it's going to be good.

A little sanding and fitting and I think the first of my outside corner modules should be ready to assemble. It will be followed by another outside corner module and then either a pair of junctions or a pair of inside corners, I haven't decided which. I have the inside corner foam base pieces already cut but I may go with junctions at first because they do offer a bit more flexibility. After the first four are done I'll make some straight modules to fill them out.

In other news, the GP7 has arrived from Bachmann with the correct chassis but missing a forward hand rail. I haven't decided if I am going to try to get one from Bachmann or find one photo etched, I have another option to pull it off of one of the unused GP7 shells that were removed from the original units and replaced with Pennsy shells, that might be the easiest way to go.

Grandson and I had a good time running trains last Sunday when he was here.

Updates

The GP7 that hit the floor and wouldn't run came back from Bachmann a few weeks ago. The fix from Bachmann was to replace the entire chassis. It was put on the track and ran perfectly, but when it was compared to its two sisters a glaring error was discovered. First, it had silver trucks under it instead of the black ones that are correct for the Pennsylvania units. The fuel and air tank detail was also much different, glaringly obvious when in a lash up with her two sisters. Upon closer inspection it was revealed that the new chassis was from an RS3 (part number 64257), not a GP7 (part number 62457). It has been sent back for repairs and, according to the USPS, is in transit back to the PVRR and should be returning shortly.

The train room re-construction proceeds nicely, today the new linoleum floor went in and the baseboards were reinstalled. I should have painted the baseboards while they were out, but I didn't and now will have to paint them in place. I also missed two staples from the previous carpet install and didn't catch them until I was putting the baseboards down, they poked through the linoleum and had to be removed after the fact. Fortunately the holes are small and should be covered by the train tables. Next will be to paint and install the door trim and then the trains can once again be brought in. I'm looking forward to that.

I also attempted to double-head the J class locomotives and discovered that 601 is a touch faster than her sister. I am attributing that to the fact I removed the radio suppression caps from 601's tender during the DCC install and will be doing the same to 611 to see if that is the case.

I am still anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Norfolk and Western cars to go behind the J class locos but I do have a few I can run...and what the hell, since it's my railroad they can pull some Pennsy varnish for a while (they are both part of the Norfolk Southern system now anyway).

On a related note, the streamlined shells I had gotten for my Hudson are at the painters to be painted in a purely fantasy scheme to match the Erie cars, and the semi-streamlined Pacific will get somewhat the same treatment. I told the painter to just let his imagination run wild, I'm curious to see what he will come up with.

Erie Varnish

As promised, here are the pics of the Erie passenger cars that just came back from paint:

 Baggage and combine

 Two coaches

Sleeper and diner, the sleeper is in factory paint and was the inspiration for the repaints

Heavyweight observation car, also in factory paint.

Unfortunately as soon as I got them assembled and put on the track I realized that they were not going to work with my locomotive, because it is in the wrong paint scheme.

I had some cars left over, so I thought I'd try my hand at repainting some myself in (as far as I know) a completely fantasy paint scheme:

 Blue and gold coach

 Blue and gold observation

Blue and gold assembled

The pictures didn't come out so well but the cars did OK. I have to find some thinner stripes for the top to better match the locomotive.

I particularly liked the eagle on the observation car:

I'm going to have to do some trimming to make it look better, but I didn't think they turned out so bad for a quickie decal job.

At any rate, the green and cream cars were fantastic, I can't wait to see what the Norfolk and Western cars will look like.

Geeps

Last Sunday one of my GP7's hit the floor. No cosmetic damage, but now it's not running right. Initially when power is applied the lights come on nice and bright, but when the loco starts moving the lights dim and it slows down to a stop. Reversing directions creates the same problem. This happens in DC or DCC.

I've had the issue before and reseating the decoder board fixed it. This time, no joy. So I ordered a decoder board from Bachmann, and while I was looking the decoder board up I found one on sale through Newegg for about the same amount as the decoder. So of course I ordered them both.

The decoder came in yesterday and I installed it this morning, but I am still having the same problem with it. I disassembled it and checked the gears, there was a bit of fuzz in the worms so I cleaned everything up and reassembled it. No joy, still the same problem.

So today the new unit is supposed to be here and the old one will go out to Bachmann for repairs.

Developments

When last we spoke of J class locomotives and DCC I had failed in my attempts to chip N&W 601, a locomotive that you may recall I had purchased in a non-running condition with wiring issues. As you may also recall I attempted to repair those wiring issues with a complete point to point rewire (using the color coded wiring from a used decoder), which I now actually believe was successful but did not work out the way I had planned.

I did order the Bachmann wiring harness, and it came in last month. I took the locomotive, the new harness, and the decoder that had been installed, uninstalled, reinstalled and once again uninstalled with me to a friends house yesterday. He has a Digitrax system connected to a laptop with JMRI software installed, which I hoped would be useful in diagnosing the problems with the install.

Using his work bench (since mine is currently in the living room until its new home can be prepared) the new wiring harness was prepared and installed. Once installed and tested the decoder installation was started once more on the PCB in the tender.

Right away I ran into the issue of finding one of the pads burned off of the PCB. Not to worry, there was still plenty of copper left on the underside of the board, which was actually better because the trace was connected on the underside anyway. To access this I pulled the board off the tender...and discovered the copper contacting strips, which were supposed to be contacting the trucks...weren't.

Not to worry once more, I tinned the truck contacts and prepped them to have the PCB wiring connected to them directly in the same manner that the PRR K4 wiring is done (which I believe to be a better arrangement even though it makes the trucks, for all intents and purposes, non-removable; in itself once again not an issue since I don't plan on having to remove the trucks for any reason, and if they do have to be removed they can be desoldered). I then installed the decoder, connected the trucks, connected the loco harness and reassembled the tender.

When the loco was placed on the programming track the Digitrax/JMRI computer was able to find the decoder right away and determine its programming parameters. The small hand held controller I had used in troubleshooting had programmed the loco with number 531, not 601, and even though I attempted to change that address with the MRC controller it obviously was not effective (which explains why the loco would not work with the MRC but would with the small handheld). Once that was fixed the loco was put on the layout...and it runs beautifully.

I ran a couple of laps on his layout but since he uses Atlas C55 track and apparently all of my cars have pizza cutter wheels I was not able to run it with a consist. It does however start and stop smoothly, it responds well to the throttle and the lights work as they are supposed to. He was amazed that such performance could be had from a Bachmann (he is one of those who judge the B-mann by their hideously inferior white box models and not by their vastly improved Spectrum line).

Since my own layout is in disarray at the moment I am unable to run it with my MRC system, but I have no reason to believe it won't perform just as well at home as it did away. And now I have two N&W J class locomotives to play with (and I can double-head them if I want to!), with a slew of cars in the paint shop to split between them.

And speaking of cars in the paint shop, the Erie cars came back yesterday as well, and they are beautiful. I need to get trucks and couplers for them, and a handful of weights as well, and then they will be ready to go on the layout. Pictures, as promised, when available. I might, however, need to get a set of the ConCor PA1/PB1 locomotives in the matching Erie paint to go with them now since the PA1 I have right now is in the blue and yellow livery instead of the green and cream (and I don't have a B unit for it).

The only sad part of the day was discovering that one of my B-mann GP7's is once again acting up,  same issue as before with the dimming lights and slowing to a stop. This time the tab bending trick didn't work, so it may be time to replace that decoder board.

And that's the news from the Path Valley Railroad.