When, Bam!...............followed by the sound of water splashing!
I live in a condo, one of four units in the building, one of which is completely above the four garages, through which (mine) run that unit's water lines.......................my garage is an "Ice Castle". I'll be busy for the next several days, thawing, cleaning, and trying to save things like all the power tools, and other things stored in the "Path Of The Flood". Nothing Railroad, got touched! There is that bright spot, at least.
The Property Manager, now knows what my dark side looks like.
I will be happy when spring arrives! :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

When I want to quote previous post, the forum automatically quotes everything in the post including any other quotes that were in that post, then when I try to submit it, it won't let me until I delete all of the extraneous quotes that I didn't want to quote anyway. If I wanted to quote a previous post that the person quoted to reply to, I would have quoted that post directly. I think it would be easier if the forum was set to quote only the reply in the post being quoted without quoting any quotes that are in that reply.

For anybody on dial up, the home page for the Model Railroad Hobbyist Magazine now has a lite edition that will download 19 MB instead of 78MB. It has lower quality graphics and less embedded rich media, but still uses the Adobe pdf format. The videos and extra rich media are now embedded in the web browser on the site rather than being downloaded in the magazine. All of the content is still there, just in a smaller MB package to make downloading easier and quicker.

Hi fellas,
Thought I would give an insight how my layout came into being, as well as maybe introduce myself to those of you who may not have been able to avoid me in the past.
Some of this has been posted on another forum awhile back in a slightly different way.....But....
If you can bear with me over the next little while, I will endeavour to chronicle all the fun and mistakes P[: from beginning to the present of the making of "The Pistonbroke RR"

OK. From the beginning............A few years back...

O.B. Jack was a complete novice at this techno internet stuff, and had no idea about making train stuff.
and I still am, ..but .. having a fat time of it now.

So back to the beginning......... Many moons ago , I had a triang train set as a kid and loved it. so when the little anklebiters (grandchildren) came along "The War Office" and I decided to get a train set for them to play with when visiting.

That was the beginning of the end.

We first tried to see how much space would be needed for this train set. Check out the 1 ft squares drawn in chalk on the floor, Ahhh we were going to be soooo professional about all this!!!

We did set it up once but it was never going to work . Hard concrete floor.
People tripping over it :'(
Having to pull it up all the time then relay it :

"So lets make a little table to put it on dear " whispered The War Office
"Cool" said Jack. "I can probably manage that"
"But first " says She " We need to polish the floor if we are going to put something permanent in here"
"Dang" says I "But OK lets do it"

Big Mistake

Here is the Real Estate


Here is the machine The orange thing ...not the driver


Here is the aftermath


and here is more. Note, even The Dog checked out the damage


And more


So the cleanup started ........ and 3 days later we had


Then this is it. Reclaimed for the right of way


and looking the other way


So there we were, some 3yrs ago setting out into the unknown world of model RR
Initially we were going to put the settrack onto a table, plug it in and away we go. But that would be to simple would'nt it?
So with great trepidation and a fear of the unknown we looked on the internet to find a trackplan.

Big mistake # 2
Because we found a whole new world of little trees and engines and houses and cars and flex track and scenery and on and on we could go, but mainly wonderful helpful people (who are probably not so little)
Now we had to make some hard decisions. ??? How big? How high? How Much? How to do it? Will we? Wont we?
What the heck. So like a Bull in a china shop we charged in boots and all.

So ends chapter one.
If you can be bothered to tune in sometime in the near future, you can follow the trials and tribulations of this never ending saga

Cheers Jack

Okay scratchbuilders, I need to pick our brains. How do I drill holes in thin brass? A normal drill bit seems to be like twisting a fork through spaghetti. I have tried sandwiching the brass between two pieces of wood, and still little luck. Any hints here?

In 2005, I was rushed when I first designed and laid the track for my first layout, which is 4x6. Ever since, I've been solving (fairly successfully) the errors in my track work -- mostly uneven roadbed (especially around switches) or poorly joined flex-track. My layout board is also hopelessly warped and that, of course, causes problems. I'm not sure what can be done now to correct it (I've thought about using clamps to try to straighten it!) and I don't have much space for elaborate, heavy-duty benchwork. Its current benchwork (if you can call it that) is basically a sheet of plywood with a very weak/light frame under it.

I just recently started building a very small 3x4 HO layout using 15"R curves. I can still run most of my stock on it. I have one 4-6-0 and one long Pacific that can't cope with the tight curves -- everything else seems to run OK, even my CNR Hudson and my other (shorter) Pacifics.

At any rate, the 3x4 layout is upstaging the larger one because its trackwork in laid on a very flat surface. I hardly ever have derailments on it and my trains run very smoothly. Also, the scenery is looking really good as well. IMHO, I think my trackwork and scenery skills are much better now than they were in 2005 when I started on the larger layout.

So my question is: Do I scrap the first layout and expand the newer one? It's a tough decision as I've spent a fair bit of time and money on the first one.

Cheers,
Rob

I don't know if anyone else mentioned it. But GE did a little writeup about the train Obama and Biden rode the other day from Philly to DC.

http://www.gereports.com/inauguration-sp...l-express/

I didn't know this, but apparently the Genesis series are pretty old and most of them have been through their third lifetime. Apparently a lot of the metro lines get a lot more funding than Amtrak (I didn't know that). Those locomotives run about 165,000/year average. NJT signed a big deal to purchase 26 locomotives from a German company, and some of the locomotives they are replacing are forty years old. While, the GE Genesis locomotives Amtrak uses were build in the mid to late 90s.

Deluxe Innovations ATSF Twinstack 150701.
This is the red Econostack version.
Could work trade from the shop.
Please PM Me.
Thanks , Mike

...minding my own business, and then- Wham!

Well, I decided to follow up with a certain EZDays (who shall remain nameless) and found myself here! Thanks for the hand up. I look forward to not looking back.

Oh, by the way- let me introduce myself. My name is Mark and I've been known to check into various N Gauge forums that are interesting and active. Others knew me as MCL_RDG there.

Regards for now.

Mark

There seems to be a lot of modelers that haven’t gone over to DCC. We took a poll a while back and the split was about 50/50. I can see the advantages and the features of using DCC since I spent a good 40 years building digital control systems. I’ve chosen to stay with DC since my N scale layout is relatively small (about 60 sq. ft.) and there won’t be more than one or two consists operating at any one time. It’s economics as well, and I know I’m not alone in that regard.

Anyway, I’ve seen many questions on several forums regarding DC power packs, so I’ve put together a few diagrams that might be helpful in explaining some basic concepts of DC. I also have a tutorial on the use of a VOM and it includes a primer on basic electricity, voltage, current and resistance so it might be helpful in reading that as well. The diagram below shows what different voltage sources do over time. If you had an oscilloscope connected to these power sources, this is what you would see; the technical term for that is called a “waveform”, some prefer, “waveshape”. It represents what the voltage measurement is at any point in time. Up and down is some value from zero volts, left to right is time. For example, waveform “A” is pure AC, just like what is at a wall outlet. The voltage starts at 0 and grapdually increases to some value before it goes back to zero and reverses itself and goes negative and equal amount. The frequency it does this at is called Hertz (Hz). The basic frequency in North America is 60 Hz, while across the pond and in OZ it becomes 50 Hz. At 60 Hz, one full cycle takes 16.6 milliseconds. We can thank George Westinghouse for successfully pushing this concept that was conceived by Nicolas Tesla. Edison would have had us all running on DC if he got his way. Now, in order to get this voltage to be reduced, one must use a transformer. This will lower the wall outlet voltage from say, 120 volts, to something more usable, like 12 or 18 volts. There are times when this is enough, like running some Lionel O gauge, or operating lamps or other accessories and for switching turnouts. There are times when AC won’t work and DC is required, for instance, running most other scale engines and all electronics. Waveform “B” shows what happens when you add a diode to the circuit. A diode, or rectifier, will only allow current to flow in one direction. By placing this in series with the load, the result is that the negative half of the cycle is blocked. You will find this on most cheap power packs that come with your basic train set.

An improvement on that is shown in waveform “C”, where, by using four diodes, it is possible to flip the negative half-cycle and not have the blank space, or 0 volts for that portion of the cycle. I’ve got an early model MRC that does it this way. Both these methods are OK for running trains, but are unreliable since the voltage will vary with the load. If you add a capacitor to “C”, then you get what you see in “D”, filtering and a little more stability. The little squiggles are called ripple. What is happening is that the capacitor charges up like a small battery and slowly discharges. The next part of the cycle causes it to charge up again. The amount of ripple is dependent on the size of the capacitor and the amount of the load. The load still has some affect on the voltage output here as well.

Waveform “E” shows what pure regulated DC looks like. It’s accomplished by adding some electronics and some more filtering to “D” so that the voltage remains constant regardless of the load, the same as you get from a battery. Most engines don’t need that kind of regulation, but most electronics do.
   
Now there are power packs that are digital in nature, but are still considered to be DC. The ones I have are the MRC Tech 4’s. What they do is produce a DC regulated voltage that is constant, but is pulsed, or turned on and off quickly, so that the average voltage is equivalent to some DC value. For example, if the pulses are 18 volts, and they are there for 30% of the time, than the average DC would be 6 volts. If you look at waveform “F”, you can see that the pulses are short resulting in a low average value and the engine will run slow. In “G” the pulses are wider and the engine runs faster, and “H” shows it running almost full speed. What’s really cool about this is that it’s possible to do things like “momentum” and “braking”. What happens here is that the electronics in the Tech 4 power pack will start up the train with short pulses, then slowly increases the pulse width until it reaches the maximum voltage the unit is set for. The same for breaking, it will stop the train slowly by decreasing the pulse width until it reaches zero.
   
I hope these explanations are not too technical, but I think they might answer some basic electrical questions I’ve seen come up from time to time.