It's hard to believe that it's been a month since the last blog entry. Let me see if I can catch everyone up on what's been going on. If I miss something, feel free to add to this or let me know and I'll let everyone know.
First (and foremost), Lubbock Model Railroad Association hosted the NMRA's Lone Star Region annual conference here in Lubbock at the Holiday Inn. All of us SouthWest Trakers were heavily involved. Darrell manned the "Company Store", selling decals, calendars, books, and other LSR conference memorabilia
Jay kept close eye on the registration check-in table and ran errands as needed. Frankie helped out where ever she was needed at the time, usually the check-in table or the raffle table. Bob spent the entire four days manning the contest room. BJ was registrar and main check-in guy. By Friday, we had turned into a help desk and general information table.
We all had a great time hanging out and visiting and getting to know each other even better than we did before. Lunches were a good time of fellowship.
Joe? Well, he had duties in Dallas during the days of the conference, but he spent plenty of time prior to the conference scheduling clinics. His wide corners are coming together in a very impressive fashion. they've been in progress for a while, but will be available for display soon. I guess these will bring our inventory of showable modules up close to 60. He has also been busy reorganizing his shop space lately.
Speaking of clinics, I manage to break away from the registration desk to take in a couple of clinics. We all got to attend a few clinics.
Beyond the LSR clinic we have all been busy. I have spend several weeks building storage and transport Payne Boxes for the 12 modules I currently have under construction. Whew, that was a chore. The shop is a mess, but now I can get on with actual modeling. Darrell has developed a method to create stucco walls as part of his "Scratch Building on a Budget" series. Speaking of scratch building, did I mention that our very own Darrell won a first place blue ribbon in the LSR contest for his Alamo module.
Frankie has completed her first T-Trak module. It looks great and we'll try to get some photos soon.
Jay, well, Jay need over 100 turnouts for his planned home layout, so he's been busy learning how to scratch build his own. He gets better with each one he builds. They are really looking good.
Our next show will be at the Wolfforth Library the third week of August. More details will be posted here as they become known.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Good baby steps
The DCC system and I are becoming better acquainted. Over the past two days,
I have re-addressed five locos, and they are now show-ready. There is soooo
much to learn!
These locos are:
1) N&W #165 - F-M Train Master - Atlas 49639
2) NH #598 - F-M H16-44 - Atlas 52106
3) NMRR #108 - F59PHI - Athearn 23709
4) ATSF #3515 - GP-38 w/blue cab - Atlas 53454
5) ATSF #3520 - GP-38 w/yellow cab - Atlas 49873
In addition, there are numerous others, some "decoder ready," some not but
potentially convertable, and some (mainly steam) that will never see a decoder.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Starting up in DCC
It's been an interesting day in DCC-land. Some of it was good, some not so good, but
a lot of discovery.
I spent a good bit of the morning trying to connect a Digitrax PR3 interface to my
computer. It never happened. Apparently, the PR3 and Windows 7 do not like each
other. I needed to program the addresses on some locos, but that isn't going to
happen through the PR3.
So, I ventured to the shop and began to try to learn how to do address detection and
programming on the DCS200 command station (also Digitrax, as is the whole system.)
I had four locos to work with/on. The first came from the dealer pre-programmed to
the road number on the side, 108. No problem, it runs fine, like a champ. I used it to
figure out how to read an address already in a loco. And, no, I didn't mess it up, which
is a small victory in and of itself.
The next loco I bought last year, new and figured it would have the factory address of
03 in it. Wrong. It took me a while, but I finally remembered that it was re-addresses
(with my permission) at the OKC show last December. Wouldn't you know, the
dummy of an owner didn't write it down. What an empty head, he is. Anyway, I
found the address (3199,) then reprogrammed it to its road number, 3520, with a
short address of 20. Runs fine, now that I've quit messing with it.
The third loco was an eBay acquisition. A similar story here, as it had been changed
at some point before I bought it. Again, the number (I forget what it was) bore no
resemblance to the road number, 165. A quick reprogram to 0165 and a short address
of 65, and all is well.
Lastly, there's the little Kato pocket motor chassis to which I had added a decoder. I
programmed it to 1303, and 03.
At this point, I started to test run the beasties, starting with the last one. Nothing,
and I mean nothing, went right.
A thorough track cleaning helped a little, but the Kato just wouldn't go, or it would go
200 mph. And, it finally seemed that it didn't really care what address was being told
to speed up or slow done. I spent a long time messing with it, and finally got it to run
under control, sort-of.
Getting rather frustrated, I set it aside and tried the first three locos.
Aw, sweet. Each responded to the throttle, ran fast, ran slow, and crawled beautifully.
My faith in DCC and Digitrax is being restored. As for me, well, there is still a steeeeep
learning curve ahead.
I have a couple more factory-equipped locos to run through, and a "drop-in" that didn't
to debug. By the time I finish with these, I may want to withdraw and lick my wounds
for a while.
a lot of discovery.
I spent a good bit of the morning trying to connect a Digitrax PR3 interface to my
computer. It never happened. Apparently, the PR3 and Windows 7 do not like each
other. I needed to program the addresses on some locos, but that isn't going to
happen through the PR3.
So, I ventured to the shop and began to try to learn how to do address detection and
programming on the DCS200 command station (also Digitrax, as is the whole system.)
I had four locos to work with/on. The first came from the dealer pre-programmed to
the road number on the side, 108. No problem, it runs fine, like a champ. I used it to
figure out how to read an address already in a loco. And, no, I didn't mess it up, which
is a small victory in and of itself.
The next loco I bought last year, new and figured it would have the factory address of
03 in it. Wrong. It took me a while, but I finally remembered that it was re-addresses
(with my permission) at the OKC show last December. Wouldn't you know, the
dummy of an owner didn't write it down. What an empty head, he is. Anyway, I
found the address (3199,) then reprogrammed it to its road number, 3520, with a
short address of 20. Runs fine, now that I've quit messing with it.
The third loco was an eBay acquisition. A similar story here, as it had been changed
at some point before I bought it. Again, the number (I forget what it was) bore no
resemblance to the road number, 165. A quick reprogram to 0165 and a short address
of 65, and all is well.
Lastly, there's the little Kato pocket motor chassis to which I had added a decoder. I
programmed it to 1303, and 03.
At this point, I started to test run the beasties, starting with the last one. Nothing,
and I mean nothing, went right.
A thorough track cleaning helped a little, but the Kato just wouldn't go, or it would go
200 mph. And, it finally seemed that it didn't really care what address was being told
to speed up or slow done. I spent a long time messing with it, and finally got it to run
under control, sort-of.
Getting rather frustrated, I set it aside and tried the first three locos.
Aw, sweet. Each responded to the throttle, ran fast, ran slow, and crawled beautifully.
My faith in DCC and Digitrax is being restored. As for me, well, there is still a steeeeep
learning curve ahead.
I have a couple more factory-equipped locos to run through, and a "drop-in" that didn't
to debug. By the time I finish with these, I may want to withdraw and lick my wounds
for a while.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
National Train Day
May 7, 2011 is National Train Day in America.
The North Texas T-Trak is creating an astonishing 30 MILE T-Trak layout in the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex. Hear about how they're doing it and the reaction by the rest of the world at the t-trak Yahoo group, starting with message #5356:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/t-trak/message/5356
http://www.nationaltrainday.com
bj
The North Texas T-Trak is creating an astonishing 30 MILE T-Trak layout in the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex. Hear about how they're doing it and the reaction by the rest of the world at the t-trak Yahoo group, starting with message #5356:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/t-trak/message/5356
http://www.nationaltrainday.com
bj
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Arts Festival 2011 Show Setup
Here's the diagram and module list of the recent layout at the Lubbock Arts Festival. No attempt is made to show any sidings, etc.
We had to reduce the size of the layout "on-the-fly" since the room was smaller than the one used in years past. As it turned out, the "Colt-45" modules bought us quite a bit of space by folding the upper and lower 'wings' allowing the layout to move against a wall. The top and left corners were against walls.
The layout was open and receptive to visitors, allowing a large number of people to file through rather smoothly. Now, for a goos way to allow close looking by visitors, but minimize the earthquakes that occur, level 5 on the 'finger' scale.
There are videos on You Tube under my posting name, wasunka. Search for the southWestTrakers, TTrak, or N Scale tags.
This makes three shows in 2011, four going back to October 2010 in which we have added at least one new module and used a different layout arrangement, yielding a very different look each time.
I think we are learning just a little out here in West Texas,
S/W Joe
We had to reduce the size of the layout "on-the-fly" since the room was smaller than the one used in years past. As it turned out, the "Colt-45" modules bought us quite a bit of space by folding the upper and lower 'wings' allowing the layout to move against a wall. The top and left corners were against walls.
The layout was open and receptive to visitors, allowing a large number of people to file through rather smoothly. Now, for a goos way to allow close looking by visitors, but minimize the earthquakes that occur, level 5 on the 'finger' scale.
There are videos on You Tube under my posting name, wasunka. Search for the southWestTrakers, TTrak, or N Scale tags.
This makes three shows in 2011, four going back to October 2010 in which we have added at least one new module and used a different layout arrangement, yielding a very different look each time.
I think we are learning just a little out here in West Texas,
S/W Joe
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Day 2 of the Lubbock Arts Festival
We had another great day of running trains. The visitors today were nearly all families with children. Although we didn't count visitors, I would estimate we had nearly a thousand folks come through. It was busy all day but never crowded to the point of being uncontrollable. I spent most of the day at the entrance of the room greeting everyone with, "Welcome to our little empire! Please don't touch anything!"
Mostly it worked. We had a couple of major 5-finger earthquakes, and 10 or so minor ones. I also got to see my very first Coca-Cola tsunami when Joe tried to open his coke and it spewed all over his industrial module. It shut down the mainline for about 10 minutes as the cleanup crew moved in to contain and remove the caustic spill.
We also got to show off our work to lots of family, friends, and co-workers who came to see what at times consumes our energy and attention. And we got to visit with several prospective new modelers and a couple of old-time modelers who need to get back into the hobby (you know who you are!)
Joe took some video of Rattlesnake Junction, the series of modules between the yard and the passenger terminal, through many curves in a short space. When viewed down the length of the track, a train really does look just like a snake.
I'll get the video or a link to it as soon as Joe gets it ready.
Sunday is a short day for us. We'll just be running for a couple of hours after lunch before we begin to tear down and head home.
That's all for now. We're not done having fun!
Mostly it worked. We had a couple of major 5-finger earthquakes, and 10 or so minor ones. I also got to see my very first Coca-Cola tsunami when Joe tried to open his coke and it spewed all over his industrial module. It shut down the mainline for about 10 minutes as the cleanup crew moved in to contain and remove the caustic spill.
We also got to show off our work to lots of family, friends, and co-workers who came to see what at times consumes our energy and attention. And we got to visit with several prospective new modelers and a couple of old-time modelers who need to get back into the hobby (you know who you are!)
Joe took some video of Rattlesnake Junction, the series of modules between the yard and the passenger terminal, through many curves in a short space. When viewed down the length of the track, a train really does look just like a snake.
I'll get the video or a link to it as soon as Joe gets it ready.
Sunday is a short day for us. We'll just be running for a couple of hours after lunch before we begin to tear down and head home.
That's all for now. We're not done having fun!
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Lubbock Arts Festival Day 1 Report
The big news: we all survived Friday. I say survived because that's the day the school brings classes to the Arts Festival by the bus load. This year it was 2nd graders I think. A conservative estimate is that probably 500 kiddos came through the train room during about a three hour period. It was quite hectic, very crowded, and the children were surprisingly well behaved. We only had three known "five finger earthquakes" and resulting derails. Considering that we do not use ropes to keep the crowds at bay, and the instability of many of the tables, we felt fortunate.
We didn't quite achieve our layout design goal. The room just wasn't large enough. So we added 45-degree modules on two sides of the wye, which turned it into more of a tee shape. The resulting layout was almost the shape of a big ''M". It worked out perfectly for crowd flow.
Our newest member, Jay, spent the entire day with us. He brought his trains and ran for a bit early in the day. We have a probably new member, Ron, as a result of the show. He is a member of a singing group performing at the Arts Festival, so he could not spend much time with us, but he came through two or three times, got to know all of us briefly, and seems like he will probably join us.
I never got my camera out yesterday, so no photos of day one. Today, we will have more families coming to view the layout, so it will be more peaceful and less busy. So I will get some photos taken, and will post them here and on our yahoo group, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SouthWestTrakers/
bj
We didn't quite achieve our layout design goal. The room just wasn't large enough. So we added 45-degree modules on two sides of the wye, which turned it into more of a tee shape. The resulting layout was almost the shape of a big ''M". It worked out perfectly for crowd flow.
Our newest member, Jay, spent the entire day with us. He brought his trains and ran for a bit early in the day. We have a probably new member, Ron, as a result of the show. He is a member of a singing group performing at the Arts Festival, so he could not spend much time with us, but he came through two or three times, got to know all of us briefly, and seems like he will probably join us.
I never got my camera out yesterday, so no photos of day one. Today, we will have more families coming to view the layout, so it will be more peaceful and less busy. So I will get some photos taken, and will post them here and on our yahoo group, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SouthWestTrakers/
bj
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