A work-in-progress animation of an EMD GA8 narrow gauge export diesel locomotive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkRdgkHCgd4

I'm looking for feedback from those of you who are familiar with this type of locomotive.  Any feedback or information will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,​
Damin.

Op sessions on the Bear Creek & South Jackson are continuing. I'm working to get the railroad ready for the National Convention this August (here in Portland).

I had a "practice session" for a local round-robin group. Some of the members are regulars at the BC&SJ, but the big majority are not so it seemed like a time to check out how my layout works with lots of new guys. I did compromise a bit - the Monday guys are not, for the most part interested in TWC or TT&TO so we ran with a foot-board dispatcher and no fast-clock or radios.

I'm on a BCRY MOW car kick lately, as I'd like to have some models of rolling stock that the shortline actually owns.  It began with the cut down gons which I've just started, and now I'm tackling ballast hoppers.  As anyone familiar with N knows, there are basically two RTR ballast hoppers available; the beautifully done Atlas 70-ton Hart hopper and the generic Walthers hopper with crude 70s-era tooling.  This ended up being a rather tough decision...

After doing the podcast on A Modelers Life JMRI month I got a few questions on setting JMRI and speed matching my locomotive. So i did a video on setting up JMRI DecoderPro and Using the Bachrus MTS-DCC to speed match my locomotive. I use Excel for the grafting. I hope this is helpful for those of you trying to get this set up. 

I am setting the follow standers for my locomotive:

Yard switchers top speed 35 mph

Freight Loco top speed 55mph

Passenger Loco top speed 65mph

This is what I'm trying to achieve 

https://www.facebook.com/641156309317261/videos/679238538842371/

In a previous post, I mentioned using SMD LEDs to make my own traffic lights - I remembered taking step by step photos of the process, but I forgot where I put them and wrote it off as a lost cause. A few days ago I found the files in an unlabeled folder - looks like this post will happen after all!

This weekend was another whirlwind of construction on the H&C.  The second peninsula went in and subroadbed was graded up through the first switchback in Lubkin Canyon. 

On the plus side:

I was able to keep the grade down to 2-2.5% which seems to be about it for blackstone HoN3 locos with any decent size consist in tow.

Since moving into our house last fall, we have yet to open all of our boxes.  Some of these boxes have been moved at least twice without being opened.  Most of these are stored in our spare room but as it's being turned into a nursery, they need to be dealt with one way or another.   Being as this weekend was about 1,500 degrees (celcius), we took refuge in our air conditioned oasis to do productive indoor things.

I would title this blog post: The Roseburg Lumber complex in Dillard begins to take form ...

Lots more details in the thread below.

By the way, you can see this complex as it looks today in 2015 (actually 2012 per Google Maps) at this link:

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.084643,-123.40914,3a,75y,6.56h,95.18t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sUuA50fO-AgkrXTjjyTvl9w!2e0!7i13312!8i6656