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 Greetings friends of Coastal Titans Railroad. I am Bartolome Thorvaldsen, Chief Engineer for the line and I wanted to share with you some of the grand happenings on the railroad this past year. The turning of year is a great time to see how far we have come and dream of where we want to go.  

The best part of my year was adding four new cars to our stock. We were able to acquire a pair of log transport cars from a railroad in the States that was closing down and they were received in the fall. They are nice looking and run smoothly. They will be a good addition as we move forward. We also had a second passenger car offered to the line. It just arrived in the shops and hasn't been out on the rails yet but looks good. Our visitors will enjoy the ride in comfort. And speaking of the shop, the team constructed a bulb dumping car for use when we move these ginormous plants for export. 

One of the new log cars

The Bulb Dumping car built in-house

The shop was busy as earlier in the year our main engine was having difficulties. After pulling it apart multiple times we decided the problem was in the engine control system and did a complete overhaul of that. Now it's working beautifully. [1:1 boss speaking here, the DCC card was acting up. After a lot of troubleshooting, I sent the card back and it was replaced. Everything is working good now but the engine was out of commission for a couple of months as I did the troubleshooting.]

We also added an odometer and speedometer to the tender to help track the engine's performance. That was a lot of fun for the shop crew to install and tune and everyone loves seeing the stats at the end of the day.

Readout from the Odometer/Speedometer
And the inner workings

In between the work in the shop, we were able to get the engine and most of the stock out and running. And the famed beasts were seen aplenty. Here are some images from throughout the year.

Early on we had a freak snow storm. Shut down operations for a few days.

Spring is always a beautiful time in Baja Fibiger

Even T. Rex takes a moment to enjoy the beauty

Summer brings a lot of tourists and more wonderful colors

Looking forward we have a full schedule of work for the shop. We have several feelers out to add a new engine to the yard. Our current one is great but as we add more industrial work like moving plants and supporting the research teams we need a heavy duty mover. And with two engines, there won't be a need to pick between running tours and moving supplies. 

The expanding industrial work will mean that we need to expand the tracks into new areas. That will be a lot of work but the added access will pay off. As we do that, I hope to power the switches so the crew doesn't need to stop and throw the switch manually. It will also allow us to add a central control station that will help if we have multiple trains out at once.  [1:1 boss here again. This will be done with some powered switches and an Arduino-based DCC decoder to control the switches. The log cars also have an automated dumper powered by a third rail and that will be included as well.]

And finally, we expect to start converting our rolling stock to a common livery. All of our equipment has been picked up from other lines and we've focused on getting it running and the tracks operational. We are finally at a point where we can start sticking our Pterodactyl logo on cars. I'm super excited to see that. 

All-in-all, it's been a good year and we have an exciting one to look forward to. Hope you'll make a trip to Baja Fibiger to see us or at least continue following us here and here. 









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