Great issue, Patty and Joe!

After browsing through this issue, I actually read Reverse Running first. It was a good read.

Just a comment on David Barrow. I like his approach perhaps to much as my own layout is nothing more than some 4 feet sections (not excately dominos) which are painted a light earthcolor, and yes there is some tracks there too. The wiring is just lots of alligatorclips connected to the other sections. But this works, we have had some opsessions already.

In my opinion David Barrows approach can give you some comfort and guts to start a layout without getting lost looking at what people like Jack Burgess do (his layout is awsome).

In the september 1999 issues of ModelRailroader (page 63) he wrote:

While I built the Cat Mountain & Santa Fe for the enjoyment of my friends and myself, I hope the story of its evolution and my simplified construction methods offer some encouragement to beginners and those of us with less modeling skills.

I found that encouraging.

Well, I find that encouraging.

It will be interesting to see -- I have heard that Barrow's newest work (replacing portions of the layout shown in MR 's August 2009 issue)  is moving to yet another (perhaps more traditional) approach with finer scale track and scenery.

RC? Makes sense to me! In fact, when I returned to the hobby, decades after the years of my festering early teens, I fully expected and hoped that HO (and other scales) WOULD be run by RC, with power drawn from an onboard battery -no more wiring hassles - great! But no, there was DCC instead. And DCC is pretty darn good, operationally. And of course the tracks will always be handy as conductors to carry power to accessories, switch motors, etc. even IF the choo-choo is battery operated. What the heck, the track can even be used to re-charge the battery! And using existing decoders to control the locomotives? Brilliant! The investment is still good. I do hope that RC catches on if for no other reason than it is conceptually so much easier to understand than DCC. If you understand your garage door opener, you understand RC. It would be a great benefit to the hobby and attract so many more people to it. Simple. -JS Geare

David Barrow "introduced' dominoes back in the 1980's.  They were an open grid benchwork system that was supported by an underlying open grid benchwork system and were not tabletop designs (plywood on frame).  They were conventional cookie cutter roadbed with risers from the open grid. The system that reverse Running refers to was the second or third itteration of the concept, but not the initial one.

Open grid benchwork has been around for decades before the dominoes came along, it is probably older than L-girder (I've been using it since the late 1970's).

Radio controlled models have been around for years.  Don Finneman (sp?) had a set of SP Funits featured in an  article in RMC (cover story) several decades ago (late 1970's ?).  Garden modelers have been using them for years.  The limitation for HO has been the size of the "throttle " package and enough space for the battery power required.

If you are going to "dare to be different" don't repeat 20 or 30 year old ideas.  Wanna be different?  Use Bragdon's molds to cast a resin terrain surface and build a layout on that.  Design the layout in CADRail (or whatever) and have it milled from blocks of rigid foam.  Find a way to merge a video display headset with a loco simulator with layout design software with and infrared position sensing glove and you will be able to operate your own trains on your own railroad, and actually sit in the "cab".  Print a layout design (complete with track, roads, grass, etc) on a piece of mylar with thick conductive ink for rails, then roll it out on table to run trains, when you are done, roll it up and stick it in a closet.

Dave H.

I selected my RR club based on the track type -  code 100.

This lets me run all my trains on the club layout, MoPac and T&P, and DB IC express and OBB Zugs. I also have a Kreigsbahn consist I am painting tanks for.

I saw recently a post from someone who speed matches all his Locos to speed 28MPH. My IC train has been clocked on the layout at 150mph (in reverse), which is still below prototype speeds. I usually am the fastest train on the layout. :)

'Different' is not always 'better', but it sure can be fun!

Thomas

Thomas you really need to read the article called Reverce running it has nothing to do with running a train backwards at high or low speeds.

Dan

 The standard: train stations interspersed with feet of scenery

The different: Why not just have stations? They are the interesting part

The standard: Exclusive freight operations

The diff: Exclusive passenger operations (subway, LRV, trolley, mass transit).

Standard: fixed track plan

the Diff: track plan that you reconfigure when you want

Standard: Hidden staging.

Diff: Open staging

I'm working on it! The Clementine line will be all transit, all station or yard, all staging will be viewable, reconfigurable.

Joe,

I am taking a combimation of ideas, and, as far as I know, creating my own, though I bet someone has already beat me too doing benchwork this way.  It takes wall mounted shelf brackets to mount 4' sections/modules along the wall.  This design will allow benchwork to be removed to the workbench for maintainence and repair work when needed.  Electrical/Electronics will be connected via connectors that are used by NTrak and other modular groups.  I've seen shelf brackets used for permament set ups (like Tony Koesters NKP 3rd Sub-Division) and the "domino"/modular/sectional concpet that David Barrow has shown us and will use the best of both ideas! 

Some other operational/design ideas that I am still developing is the total control by computer of locomotives/trains to remove the need for someone to do "unprototypical" tasks, such as trains going to and from Staging Yards. 

One idea that I would have loved to develop, but after several attempts at coming up with a design, have failed, is a MOVING and hidden electromagnetic uncoupler that could be tied into the DCC Throttle Cab, with a "walking" brakeman along the track to show where the magnet, so when one presses the function button to engage the "uncoupling sound" (after using other function buttons to cause the brakeman to walk forward or backward to the correct spot) the uncoupler would engage, uncoupling the kadee (or similar type) coupler.  For the moment, that idea is being shelved, but as technology improves, and new techniques are developed, i'm hoping some day to make it work. 

So I hope with you Joe, that others might start thinking outside the box! 

Ken L.

Joe,

First, I'll say that it was good to see you and the crew at CSS09.   I'll be looking for the report in the next issue.

As for your comments this month, Those modelers who work outside the norm or mainstream seem to come up with an abundance of new ideas.   All of the adaptations they try or use brings out something new for all of us.

The latest being Harold Minkwitz's 55n3 scale ventures for his Pacific Coast Air Line Railway.   Harold offered many great ideas to the On30 world and now is venturing into a new realm.   Will it catch on?  Who knows, but there are sure to be some good ideas from his work.

Keep up the prodding Joe, it makes this all the more interesting.

Dave Mason

mentioning the power source for locomotives...

this has been on my mind for some time....in considering the prices for DCC and the associated wiring that still goes with it i have a plan that would out do DCC again...use DC.

backwards you say? with all the advancement in technology.

take a decoder for example. how many functions does it have.?

forward.reverse with variable speed, lights, sound...say four to six channels.

how many channels does a RC car have.

forward, reverse with variable speed, head lights brake lights,  indicators, sound, left and right, you can even get Rc cars now that have a selectable transmission. 2wd/4wd etc.

who needs batterys' ...okay, you need a small 9 volt for the remote. but you need those for wirless DCC controllers too.

bulky batteries to power the locomotives i think not.

you can have a striaght constant 12 volt dc feed like you normally do on a dc layout, this is your battery...leave the pick up for the locomotive axles  in place and feed them to the reciever in the locomotive.

at 19.00 dollars for a cheap one to 32 scale(thinking HO scale here) rc car of ebay with a 28 megaherts or 42, 36 take your pick you could buy 10 maybe 15 of these and still spend less then dcc.

, a four unit consist could run 28 megaherts, yard switcher 36, passenger train 42 etc etc etc.

imagine that full size 6 loco consist with 4 swing helpers and two at the rear all working off one controller without having to program.

and thats only using two channels of the 6 or 8 channel controller, without having to program anything. 

use the other availble channels for block or turnout control.

for me i work in N scale. and at the current time there is not a RC reciever on the market the would fit inside the shell of a N scale SD45. however there are ones small enough to fit in the cab of a HO athearn for example.

worth investigating..i think it is.

Joe , Fellows.

Good editorial, Good format for reading articles on line. I had a fellow over who asked when I was going to go to "that " batteries system "they " are using ?. I asked what batteries system , Um you know the one "they" are using in Texas ?.No ..does it work ? . Is somebody really doing it?.I asked further if it was like DCC in the mid 1990's when a fellow needed to do hexidecimal calq's to use / program the stuff. In other words , it ain't ready yet. I am not able or willing to make this stuff . I waited till DCC was ready for somebody without computer programmer  skills to make it work .This may happen, probably is and will  . The point I am making is . Alot of fellows chatter long and loud , trying to out scientific fantasy each other and act smug as if they had mastered something brilliant . This hobby is really about building models , running them and the camaraderie that can go along with that . In sum , that statement means ."Do something instead of talking " . I have seen enough of fellows who talk alot , collect alot of brass and have substantial vertical layouts .I have witnessed the return to the market of un built hard to find kits after the old duffer finally goes to the great layout room in the sky.On board batteries and R/ C control is  a great idea , The biggest point I want to comment upon is the fellow who acted as if this was all old hat , Years gone by. The dawn of DCC is somewhere along  1995 ......as an actual thing average people could use.......{note that comment !}. 1995 is not that long ago. DCC itself is new enough that hobby shops spend alot of time helping people to learn to use it.

15 years is a whole generation from where I sit.  At this point the next round of improvements are due, and they are coming swiftly!

The biggest problem with DCC that I have personally seen has been clean track.  it has to be cleaner than a whistle now, and you would have thought this would be nonissue with the higher voltage int eh rails.  but no, now the problem is the communications is also in the rails.

You'll find a nice ling thread of mine on the Atlas forum discussing bluetooth [eg., bluetooth is just ONE protocol/method] communicaitons.  Basically, the point of the matter is, how do we remove the communicataion from the rails and put it directly in the locomotive.  Naturally, I took a rather large amount of flak in that thread and I do believe it ended up locked.  You'd be shocked at how the DCC crowd is not just against the past but also the future!  As it boils down, they have spent their money and any new kid on the block will mean they have to spend a whole bunch more money on this new system to maintain themselves in the status quo...which is a huge verticle MR, of all the latest and greatest when it came out components, in the closet of old trusty cardboard boxes!

My interest piqued up at the introduction of newer capacitor designs, they're getting up to the 1 F/5.5 V range or so.  Now my thought was, since dirty track is only an intermittent issue, then it should be short order to put a second backup system in the unit to keep it running for short times [1-10 seconds, maximum] to get through those patches.  But to do that one would need somehow to maintain contact withthe unit...hence bluetooth.  I'm quite humored that our hears "wireless communication" and automatically reacts "oh!  Radio control!!"  Aye yie yie...I get a similar feeling every time I look at the phonejack plug on the end of the digitrax controller as I plug it in every ten feet on the club layout.  We're wearing out things that nobody wears, to put it short.

I also saw something really exciting somewhere along the line that involves the tricolor LEDs.  Turns out with just a change in the circuit you can make them red, green or white - the three most common colors used in classification lights.  Then I looked a little bit longer at the locomotive and I say, hmm, you see the classificaiton boards?  Now is there a way we could make those into a digital pixel display, that we could manipulate electronically to be any train number we want at the push of a button?  White is true, black is false, the rest is just a pixel matrix controlled by the fontbank contained within the decoder?  I bet there is - we're just too stuck in our mainstream way of thinking electronically that we simply don't know what else is out there.  And we don't want it because that would mean we have a whole new round of upgrading and trading and herd thinning we'd have to do to our verticle layouts in the hallway closet to again maintain our status in the main stream!!!

There is one part that remains firm; my love is for the steam locomotive.  Now if only I had the shop time to develop those 10,000 hours I need to become a master craftsman in that shop!