joef's blog

MRH attended the RPM meet in Salem, OR this last weekend - and we had a great time.

I love RPM meets because of the fantastic modeling that's present, and an RPM meet in Oregon is especially fun for me because there's generally lots of Southern Pacific equipment present. The SP, of course, is the prototype I'm modeling on my HO Siskiyou Line.

Well, I was not disappointed!

Dale Kathrein, a young vet who spent time in Iraq, had a fabulous display of SP power.

Attending Jeff Hanke's clinic on selectively compressing a prototype scene ... Here's the steps he recommends:

- Acquire prototype track plans and photos
- Define modeling space, dimensions and operational desires
- Collect prototype details - track names, old photos, old railroaders' knowledge/memories
- Determine the essence of the scene, the signature elements
- Determine haves and wants for the scene - haves are MUSTS
- Eliminate everything else
- Draw the plan - rework until essence is captured
- Build it and compare to model photos

My friend got an iPad this last weekend, and he let me borrow it for an hour. My first impression is - dang, this sucker is fast! Typing on the software-based popup keyboard was easier than I thought it was going to be, and in a short time I was able to type at a pretty good clip with it.

Here's some recent news story summaries that show MRH is riding a coming technology wave ...

In my last blog entry, I posted a cancellation of my September Op session because of a mystery short.

So now that Issue 4 is out the door, I'm back to working on the layout again - and I've solved the mystery short.

I first had to 0-5-0 remove all the trains from staging so I could look for things on the track, make sure I could find all the feeders, etc. Did that - and found several lose parts from railcars laying around (ladders and brakewheels) but nothing that would cause a short since they were all plastic.

If any of my regular OPS crew happens to peruse the MRH web site, the Siskiyou Line op session for September is cancelled.

I'll explain more later ... but please pass this on to the rest of the crew.

Sorry for the late notice - it's a long story ...

I've been building "poor man's jig" turnouts all summer and now I'm going to replace all the commercial turnouts on the "Eugene end" of staging tomorrow.

My poor man's jig turnouts use Central Valley turnout (CVT) ties and some Fast Track filing jigs to make quick work out of building a turnout. I like the CVT ties because they're inexpensive ($6 each) and they have slots for the rails - so you just drop the rails in place and you get a properly gauged turnout.

One of my summer project while the layout is down is to replace all the Eugene staging ladder turnouts with jig-built turnouts. The current staging ladder is all commercial turnouts and we get more derailments on that ladder than I would like to see. The solution is to replace the commercial turnouts with jig-built turnouts ala Fast Tracks or Proto:87 Stores turnout kits using Central Valley ties.

I ended up with my laptop connected to our big screen TV for the National Train Show and we need to leave it connected to the big screen TV since it took some fiddling to get it all to work seamlessly.

I'm posting this note on a borrowed computer, and it doesn't have all my software I use to prepare the images, etc - so I will be making brief posts (without photos) for now and come back in after the fact once the Train Show is over and I get my computer back to add more details and to add the photos!

July 8, 2009 - Today is the Layout Design SIG layout tours! I love going on the SIG tours because they tend to pick the "cream of the crop" layouts in a region. While the LD SIG tour is a self-guided car tour, it's a real hoot because the layouts generally exhibit great design characteristics.