As I talked about in my thread on motorizing the Atheran crane thread that I had an idea of making a truck with less friction in the pick up wipers. I came up with the idea of using a tiny ball bearing race on the axle of the trucks. I'm using a set of Intermoutain 33" dia. wheels as an experiment. No electrical connection since both wheels are insulated. The axle is brass plated with a blackening. I just want to test this theory out to see if it will work. I'm going to use pieces of .006" thick phosphor bronze sheet cut into a narrow strip.

LOCO: 2 x FP7A plus 2 x F7B INTERMOUNTAIN , Decoder NCE

Has anyone come across this issue: Locos will run fine in a consist then one or more will not run at all. If all locos given same address then same situation occurs. I have tried resetting the decoder cv30, cures problem for a short time only. Reseating the decoder can unlock the loco, as can reseating the light plug. Tried different decoder as well as different circuit board. On program track the locos always read ok.

Was wondering if anyone knows how Charlie Comstock BC&SJ manual turnout controls that he has mounted to fascia work I have the Ops DVD that has his layout in it and interested in how he makes them and how they are mounted. I see the you have to pull the knob out first then twist it to switch the turnout and then push the knob back in.

A strange thing happened to me at the Edmonton Train Show last month - my dearly beloved who was with me that day bought a Zed Scale collection of track, trains & transformer.  Some poor chap had collected this stuff and had planned on playing with it in his retirement - well that never happened.  Somehow that is sad to me.  Anyway we now have his collection and my wife wants a coffee table layout.  She's always wanted a coffee table layout and now is the time.