Slate Creek Industrial.

[Brakie]

Here is a rough draft of SCI.




The darker lines is service roads while the thinner lines is the track.

The solid black square is a planned truck parking lot for a small mom & pop type truck stop across the service road.

The smaller gray square is a trailer drop lot for drop and hook service-trailers will be delivered to their final destination by a spotting service.

The design is loosely based on several prototype areas gleamed from Bing maps.

I included a small holding track for spotting outbound cars out of the way.
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Operations.

As of now not all industries will be switch every operation session.I will rotate the work load.
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Thoughts.

I am planing a 1978-79 short line that utilizes 2 RS1s for power.

However..

I have had this idea floating around for several years.

I thought about a industry complex that has their own locomotive such as a GE 44 Tonner or A GE 70Tonner-Bachmann makes the 44 Tonner and will be releasing a 70 Tonner in N Scale.
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Any thoughts or concerns I may have overlooked?

[Russ Bellinis]

Brakie, do they make sound modules for n-scale locomotives or are they just too small? I LOVE the sound of the Rs1. Our modular club was set up and operating at the Orange Empire Railway Museum the weekend before Veteran's Day, Veteran's Day, and the weekend after. It is the Museum's annual "Day Out With Thomas" fund raiser. We took one grandson on the first Saturday they were open and in addition to Thomas and three trolleys, he rode the caboose train which is a switcher and three cabooses. He really like sitting up in the cupola looking out over the train. They were pulling it with the Rs1 instead of the usual Sw7. I mentioned to the conductor how much I liked the sound of the Rs1 at idle, but I couldn't describe the sound. He said, "Yeah, it says 'bucket of bolts, bucket of bolts, bucket of bolts."

[Brakie]

Russ,Sound is making its way into N Scale as plug and play and after using sound in HO and hearing it for hours at a time during the week of the county fair I prefer stealth operation.

However..

IF a sound system could mimic a RS1 (including coasting*) then I would be interested.

*Coasting is when the throttle is closed and all you hear is the unit going over rail joints.

Like this-the coasting begins at 2:38:

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL6ij87TUA8">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL6ij87TUA8</a><!-- m -->

One of the major holdups on SCI has been 2nd and 3rd thoughts about going HO and using one of my RS1s or CF7s and using the N Scale at the N Scale club or perhaps selling it off...

But,1'x8' isn't much space for HO so N it is.

I'm not getting any younger and my prescription for my eyeglasses has changed as far as my near sight and I'm concern about that since I will be 63 in February.

[rrinker]

They DO coast - there's two ways to do it with most sound decoders. First, put in some momentum, both acel and decel but in this case it's the decel that matters. So you can close the throttle to take the motor to idle but the loco keeps rolling. Second way,most diesel decoders have a manual notching option, instea dof automatically throttling up as you speed the loco up. Using manual notchign you can have the prime mover idling while the loco and a cut of cars drifts downhill at 40mph, or have it lugging away in run 8 while struggling upgrade at 10mph. There's even a dynamic brake option on some where you can engage the dynamics and it will gradually slow the train down. It's there for steam locos too, where you cna throttle back going downgrade adn the chufs will cut out and all you'll get is the rod clank.


--Randy

[Brakie]

Randy,That's far better then my old Soundtraxx system I had 7 years ago.I am yet to hear "coasting".

However,that calls for DCC or a MRC Tech 6 in order to set the CVs.

I'm not sure I want to go that route with a 8' ISL.

[rrinker]

And running it - while you cna get sounds out of them on DC power, you can;t access the stuff you need to get the drifting and coasting effects, you need DCC control as well, not just for programming. Seems a bit of overkill for a small switchign module, although I would not hesitate to use DCC on any size layout at this point. A bigger problem with the size is the ability to have time to actually DO any coasting and stuff - 8 feet doesn;t give a lot of space to have the loco coast until you press the brake button.
The new Tsunami and QSI decoders are light years beyond those old Soundtraxx DSD and DSX decoders. I have an old DSD100LC in a dummy Stewart F7 B unit, which I actually sort of forgot I had. The new low-end Digitrax Soundbug, which is cheaper new than that DSD was on clearance, sounds better.

--Randy

[ocalicreek]

I like a good Alco burble also, even though I'm a steam fan. My one loco run experience (so far) was an ex-DOT RSD-4 at Perris, CA. I know exactly what you mean about the coasting.

Anyway, I think an 8 foot ISL is the perfect place for sound. My timesaver switching layout was going to have an MRC sound system beneath the layout (not the sound-effects box, but the stationary decoder that came with a little handheld controller and a speaker minus enclosure...just 'consist' it with the loco and it synchronizes the sound functions for either the handheld or your throttle function buttons). At only 5' long, I figured I could get by with a single point source for the sound with a larger speaker since the loco wouldn't be traveling very far away from the speaker. The engine I was going to use could probably take a little speaker and sound decoder, but the MRC system was far cheaper and I think it sounds decent. By no means is it a tsunami or equivalent, but it adds a huge dimension to operating and can be turned off, of course. I'd think the situation would be even more ideal for N scale, to have a sound source beneath the layout, that is. A speaker placed at either end of the layout and your brain would put the sound at the moving locomotive.

Recently I operated on a layout with a very noisy sound equipped diesel. It wasn't so bad when it was out on the main, but most of the time it just sat in a yard and idled, noisily. The volume was really loud and I was actually relieved at the end of the op session when the layout power was shut down and I could hear myself think. So I know what you mean about silent running. Sometimes the quiet is nice.

Galen

[Brakie]

Randy,A 8' ISL is a lot of real estate in N Scale.

Galen,The thought has cross my mind about using 40' cars with a Spectrum 0-6-0T with sound.

As far as DCC I think that would be best for sound as well.A Digitraxx Zephyr should get the job done.

But,is sound really worth the costs of the Zephyr,DCC/Sound decoder and installation(I won't try it one handed unless it is a P&P decoder) on a 1x8 footer?

Of course the Tech 6 would suffice for simple sound operations with limited CV settings.

Still you see what I can have in N over HO in the same space.

We've gotten way off topic but,no biggie since I needed to discuss several things anyway..

[rrinker]

Oops, somewhere I nissed the N scale

Well that changes things a lot - sound isn't as good, you just can;t do much from a super tiny speaker. Plus if there are drop in sound decoders for various N scale locos, they will be MRC and those don't have all the nifty features. For many newer N scale locos there are drop in NON-sound decoders, and I do find the less restricted movement on a small layout make DCC worthwhile, even more so that a large layout where no two trains really come close to one another except at a siding. Unless of course there will never be more than one moving loco at at a time.

--Randy

[Brakie]

Randy,Actually DCC could be worth while on a small ISL.

One could add facing point industries and use a second locomotive to switch these industries-Progressive Rail uses such a setup for their Airlake Industrial Park operation.

[Russ Bellinis]

Actually on a small ISL, it isn't necessary to put the sound in a locomotive. I have seen many small, stand alone layouts at train shows where the individual put the sound through a stereo system driving speakers mounted somewhere under the layout, and you could not tell where the sound was coming from or that it wasn't coming from the train. There was one layout where the only mistake the guy made was failure to scale the sound. He cranked up the volume so it sounded like a full size train was running right through the hall, and you could hear his sound from the other side of the convention center! The added advantage to an external sound source, is it is easy to turn it off, if you get tired of the noise.