Early Spring 2021

-
On Easter weekend old 814 went out for a run with the first tourists of the season. The plants were blooming and the dinos well behaved. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Learning to take a dump

-
Image
I bet that caught your attention. Back in the fall, someone in my local train club sold off a bunch of equipment from a guy who was closing down his railroad. Among the items available were a couple of log cars, something I had been thinking about adding to my collection. I usually wait-and-think with the result that everything good is gone before I'm ready.  Not this time! I made a quick offer for one of the log cars. The price was good so when I was offered both for about 50% more, I went for it. When I picked them up, I found out they came with a piece of track with a middle rail to trigger the car to dump to the side. The cars are in fabulous shape and in their original boxes. They are MTH Operating Log Cars . The instructions talk about hooking up the middle rail to a separately-purchased switch box to activate the dumping. That system was more than the cost of the cars and I figured I should be able to figure it out without much trouble. To start working it out, I thought I...
Read more

My own DCC control station and a new engine

-
Image
 As discussed in my recent Santa Transport post, I received a new LGB engine for Christmas. The Christmas point-to-point set up runs on DC power so  I can control it directly with an Arduino. It is nice that the engine plays sounds during DC operations but the real glory is all the capabilities available via DCC. This weekend I finally had the chance to set up a DCC test track for the engine.  Arduino Mega, Motor Driver Shield, wifi Shield,  and power supply for DCC EX Last year I started experimenting with building  DCC EX , a DCC control station running on an Arduino board. Not only is it small and homemade, it would give me a chance to play with some automation without taking the computer into the backyard. I purchased the boards needed for the DCC EX and  built the station up but ran into some challenges and then I got distracted with other activities. Testing the new engine is good motivation to get DCC EX fully working. I found I had not made good no...
Read more

Making the cars my own

-
Image
 The Coastal Titans Railroad operates deep in the jungle of Baja Fibiger and barely gets by as we explore what resources can be harvested from the local area and trying to build a tourist destination at Fibiger Park. So we generally buy second-, and more often, third- or fourth-, hand equipment. This leads to an eclectic rail yard with cars of all sorts of liveries and paint schemes. Of recent, we have started transitioning to our own livery for a much more uniform experience on the rails. However, our staff is inexperienced and is having to learn and experiment as we go. Here are some of the early results. I'll note that we are yet to get a satisfactory results out of paint barn. One small box car was found at auction quite cheaply and we figured that would be a good starting point to working on painting techniques. We have also recently converted an old refrigerator car into a Maintenance of Way car that helps keep the tracks clean [aside: Need to make a post of that sometime]. T...
Read more