Sharing a pandemic project that we should have done 12 years ago when we bought the house, but then again the kids were still in school, then there was college tuition for 2, then a wedding but now the last two have left the "nest" and funding became available.

After throwing out the 3rd set of mold making materials I vowed to find a way to increase the shelf life after opening.

Internet research indicated that it was the exposure to air that shortens the shelf life of the materials regardless of how tight you fasten the lids.  I decided to try a different approach:  remove the air.

While waiting for on-line church to begin I headed down to the layout to get some ops in.   This photo is the daily Security Local headed by B&O GP-9 6431 arriving in Security, a locale northeast of Hagerstown, MD to switch the scrap yard, lumber yard, and pick up cars from the WM.

The loco is a Bachman GP-9 with an Econami decoder, LED lighting, and a in house made 2200uf keep alive.

Hope all is well with you and your families.

The new TCS Withrottle UWT-100 Wifi/LCC enabled throttle arrived last week.   This throttle was advanced ordered during the NMRA-Mid East Region convention in October 2019.   The TCS blog entries on MRH regarding the trials and travails of bringing a new electronic device to market can be found here:  https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/37985 and https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/blog/20164. 

I was looking for something relatively not complex and an one evening type of project to keep the modeling juices flowing.   My work for a living job has resulted in some fairly long days and my energy level in the evenings has not been where  it normally is.   The winter blahs would be a good description.

Modeling the 1970's and 1980's era is probably not one of the most popular timelines to model in the hobby.    Given the number of layouts I have seen, many are steam/early-diesel or are as modern as today.    This post isn't about statistics but to share a cheat sheet on keeping track of certain detail items and which is proper for the timelines we model.

If you have corrections or additions, please share and I will consolidate and repost.

This is week three with the ProtoThrottle (PT) and I'm impressed.  This blog entry is to share my experiences and also reflect on some potential "bumps in the road" with the introduction of this technology.   These are my personal thoughts, I have no commercial, personal, or financial ties to Iowa Scale Engineering who produced this throttle.

I own eight Tam Valley Depot Hex-Frog juicers and have been very happy with their performance and it has really enhanced the operations on the layout especially with the sound decoder equipped locos.  I purchased these directly from the vendor.

The other day while working on the layout my Digitrax DB150 command station started acting erratically and it appeared as though a short was occurring on the layout but the power district circuit breakers from Tony's Train Exchange were not indicating a short.

I have been thinking about how to positively lock turnout points to the stock rail without resorting to powered turnout throws (i.e. Tortoise and others) or commercially available manual throws (i.e. Caboose Hobbies).     I especially wanted to “lock” the points in place in my yard and industrial tracks that are within 24” of the layout fascia.   I prefer to use a skewer or finger to move the points.

I spent 3 hours taking a out of the box RTR car for a road name that really doesn't fit on my Western Maryland layout.  I don't have a plausible reason for why a SP 100 Ton coal hopper made it to the east coast.   I got the car for a couple of bucks at a train show.   I did this project while watching the Steelers/Cincinnati game last night.   The premise for this car is that it is a block of hoppers that Conrail picked up from Espee in the early 80's to accelerate the retirement of the 70 ton fleet.   Sounds reasonable, no?