Modeling topic
Ashland Maine
Here's a few photos of Ashland, a small shelf switching layout built to show off my Brownville and Ashland Railway custom painted locos and stock. All of the locos and most of the freight cars are by Southern Tier Modelworks and the crane was made by Smokebox Graphics. The layout itself is 6ft long by 14" wide with a 4ft fiddleyard and a small run off at the other end to help with switching.
A tour of the Willamette Western RR
I've spent the last couple of months doing some reconfiguring here. I've swapped out several decoders for LokSound Select Direct's, done a fair amount of re-decaling of most of my locomotive fleet into WW logos, built a staging yard for the south end of the layout (eliminating a duckunder on the main aisle and creating a liftout across a doorway that may never be opened again), and then over the past 3 days, painted all of my fascia black with "Blackboard Paint" and redid the labels on all of my locations.
The best way or solvent to use for stripping paint from passenger cars for repainting
I am getting back into model railroading since I was a kid. I am in the process of modeling the Chessie Steam Special and the American Freedom Train. What is the best solvent to use, to strip the paint from old passenger cars to prepare them for repainting.
Staging
Okay, so... and hear me out... as this may be more controversial than religion, and politics combined... but...
What if...
... I don't build any staging?
At what point would the universe unravel, and implode upon itself in a great big heat death?
Like... what if, I just have a small fiddle yard, that is also used for switching or something? Or not even that?
Oh... man... now I feel like a REBEL!
4 Prong Couplers...
Called the local Train Shop and they had one package of these couplers left! I had them set them aside & drove over that afternoon to get them. You may be able to see the cracks in the two couplers on the worm gear shafts. They come off their shaft's with very little effort (since they are cracked). Easy fix now since I have the new parts. Emailed Athearn asking if they by chance had the sideframes I need for the SW7.
Yosemite Valley Railroad layout video on YouTube...
Last month, a two-person crew from TSG Media videoed my layout in High-def. It was a long process…first spending a day shooting with three cameras under the room lights (which seem bright to us but not video cameras which results in much less depth of field) and then coming back a week later to reshoot most of the scenes with LED lights. They then came back after finishing most of the post-production for some additional voice-overs. But the results were worth all of the effort since they produced a real railfan view of my layout.
It has now been uploaded to YouTube at
Staging (train storage) Graduation?
When having staging on one layout can you have a graduation say of about 1.2%
James newbie
EZ Track, so crazy, it might...
So, this idea is so crazy, that it just might work.
I'm kinda just posting this as a blog, so I can keep track for myself on this, though, comments are always welcome...
QSI Decoder Issues
I bought a used Walthers SW8 that had a QSI sound decoder in it. Unfortunately it seems to have the problem that it won't stop unless the emergency stop is pressed. And when pressed it only stops the engine, it doesn't actually shut it off. Pressing momentum does not seem to do anything. The unit will decrease in speed to a slow pace, but won't actually stop when the power is zero. Have tried resetting the decoder on my NCE PowerCab on the test track and the results always seem to be the same. Wondering if any DCC gurus have some ideas.
Adding keep Alives to your fleet of engines
Is anyone interested in a Blog on installing Keep Alives. This can be home grown or bought from one of the decoder manufacturers. This is sort of an off shoot of the I.T. Class A steeple cab Blog by Doug. Hence the pictures I will try and load !!!
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