Over the past three weeks, I have converted my layout DCC system from Digitrax to NCE.  What follows is my personal experience on the conversion for a small or medium size layout.

We operate the K&EFR regularly on the first Monday evening of the month. For this months session we had the following operators  a Hostler to operate the staging yard, a Yard Master at Kanunda, the main station on the K&EFR one road crew with two operators and another road crew which had a single operators and finally the Controller (dispatcher). The video embedded will I hope give an idea of how a K&EFR operating session looks.

So, as noted by the pictures I posted yesterday, I have a Magic Trains Krauss I'm working on. Well, early this morning I discovered that the Magic Trains locomotives were designed with code 100 rail in mind. The flanges are WAY too deep for the code 83 rail I'm using, so I'll have to disassemble the locomotive and grind the flanges down. This is NOT a project for the near future.

Thanks to the video by ken Patterson about Soundtraxx F11 brake and momentum feature, I had to try it out.

I had my DCC guru in my circle fire up the JMRI and DecoderPro program and get one of my switchers to have this feature activated. I did want to switch it to a lower Function setting, such as F1-F4, so it would only take one hand to still run throttle, but only got it moved to F7, so I still have to use the shift button.

It's potato harvesting time in Central Wisconsin and carloads of this commodity are being shipped to the cities.  Here we see CY&P 79, a Fairbanks-Morse H10-44 spotting a couple of Soo Line potato cars in Chicago at the City Fruit Exchange.

So, having been delayed and sidetracked by a great many other projects, I have finally managed to get my first scratchbuilt passenger car mostly completed!

It's a German themed layout again!

This past weekend I had opportunity to operate some trains on the Kettle Valley Railway http://kettlevalleymodelrailway.blogspot.ca/ .  It is a really well done model railway with handlaid track, beautifully rendered scenery, smooth operating steam, passenger and freight equipment appropriate for the era and locale, all using time table and train orders to keep the traffic flowing.  

After a couple years of work, I'm glad to announce the track work for my N&W Pocahontas District layout is finally complete! I still have to add ground throws for the turnouts, and wire the new track work (my favorite aspect of the hobby - NOT!) but it sure feels good to get to this point. 

Final section of mainline being laid...

The Golden spike is driven! Let the celebration begin!