Ideas

Ken,

(1)  You mentioned somewhere about accurate loco controls connected to your computer games.  Have you checked out piengineering.com?

(2)  I read that article some time back in a paper publication (ugh) about Rod Stewart's pastime when holed up in a hotel room on the road.  He carries a case with model railroading projects to do.

Just thinkin' out loud!!    Thanks for the borrow of your space.

Borrow as much space as you like!

Yes, and they have some interesting (if a little pricey) products!  I wonder whether one of those X-keys controllers could be used as a throttle with JMRI?  As for the RailDriver, it doesn't appeal to me.  For one thing, it's diesel and I'm more of a steam guy.  For another, it's desktop, and I dislike desktop control stands.  I'm partial to the good old AAR control stand.  And finally, it still doesn't give you that posterior feedback that I get when I'm on the train.  I've only run one simulator which I found to be realistic and enjoyable.  Unfortunately, that was the full motion simulator at the NS training facility (a complete locomotive cab on hydraulics) , which they have since sold or scrapped.  I doubt I would ever be able to afford something that complex!

If I were traveling by car, or otherwise had some reasonable space and accommodation for luggage, I would probably do that as well.  As an engineer, I'm limited by two factors.  One is that I have to carry a surprising collection of stuff (rule books, timetables, safety gear, etc.) just to do my job.  The other is that everything I carry takes up space and weight.  As I'm already carrying a dangerously overstuffed pilot's care (having downsized from a worn-out duffel bag which was too big to go through the locomotive doors and was always under foot) and a small cooler, I'm at my limit already.  Also, stuff on the railroad tends to get treated less than gingerly, beibng accidentally kicked, stepped on, crushed, or saturated.  I'm not sure I want to submit my models to that kind of abuse!

Limited Space

Ken wrote:

You should have lots of room. Your trailing at least one or two other locomotives, aren't you? Seems like you could store your stuff in the second or third unit back. And then there's the cars behind you. There's got to be an empty box car back there somewhere. To bad their are no cabooses any more lots of room there. Hey maybe if you could talk management out of an unused boxcar that you could hook up right behind your engines. You could then have quite a large portable layout. I'm just saying, there is a way to get more room.

Kidding aside. Since you like building models, have you ever considered out fitting a brief case with the minimum tooling required to build a kit. You could semi assemble a kit. Then paint at home. I've been considering taking a minimal tooling to the cottage to do such things as removing cast on ladders and stirrup steps. A set of drills to drill grab iron holes. A bunch of grab irons to glue on. There's more, but I'm sure you get the idea.

Bernd

(PS. In Riches post on submitting articles I said my spell checker and return key didn't work. Well, it was operator error. Somebody switched the "return" key and "shift" key while I wasn't looking. All is well now. Spell checker fixed itself, I ain't asking any questions.)

The case for cases

I've gone a step further, and considered building a case for all my gear, including some space for modeling tools and projects.  I'm just not sure that a large hard wooden case is what I want to carry.  Speaking of carrying, the problem is not so much that there's not enough room on the train (though many locomotive cabs are a lot more cramped than you might think), but in getting to or from the train.  I have to carry all my gear to the train, so it pretty much has to fit in a package that I can carry in a single trip (two hands).  It also has to fit in the luggage space of a typical minivan, along with the gear of up to 4 coworkers.  At two bags per person, plus 6 fairly hefty persons (including the driver) those can make for some really long and uncomfortable deadheads.

While you may not be able to take full kits along

maybe you can take partials.  Once upon a  time, I was starting to work on building my layout, but I knew I had a couple of days in the hospital ahead of me.  My wife brought me the cardboard base roofs, the  campbell roof tiles rolls, a paint brush, and a pair of scissors.  I installed the tiles on all 4 roof pieces over the next 2 days.  (They install by painting the roof tiles with water to activate the glue after cutting to length.)  Then you do the next row up and repeat until you are done.  The nurses wondered what I was working on, but it kept me busy.  Water was available with no problem right there in the room in a small paper cup.  When I was done, I took those parts home and applied paint to the top and then installed them onto the tops of the two covered bridges I was building.  There may be parts you can take along that do not take up that much room.  Water based paints would only require a paper cup for carrying thinner and a paper towel for cleaning your brush.

Ken, when I sometimes travel

This is where being an NMRA member might be useful...

Jack Hamilton has an article in the current NMRA Magazine detailing his "travel" tool kit contents and why they are there.