Hedley Junction

[sailormatlac]

Looking good! Lovely Geeps there too! Keep it up!

With the sound, they are really fun to operate.

No picture this week... I forgot my camera!

BUT, there was significant progress. Now, the mainline is fully functional from staging to Clermont. Only Ciment St-Laurent trackage needs to be completed, but the unloading pit for coal and gypsum is built and in place. About 20% of this industry track is laid. Our goal to complete laying track by early December is more than realistic. After this is done, we will have a fun time working on scenery, backdrop, structure, signals, ballast, etc... well, everything we almost never did during the last 7 years and 9 months.



By the way, I had quite a laugh when Jérôme tried to pull a 22-cars long train with only one GMD1. I added weight to many freight cars recently and even made an equate tonnage rating chart that fits the scale locomotives. I think he thought it was just pure theory and fluff until is train just stalled. A second GMD1 was needed to pull the train up to Clermont. The nice thing now is that a train can run fine in the "Quebec City" part of the layout where curves are very broad and gentle, but will struggle when reaching the tortuous path over Murray Bay area, just like the prototype. "Straight to 8" DCC function was extremely nice to give us the right feeling of working iron horses.

Here's the mock up Equated Tonnage Rating chart I build using a 1975 CN timetable. It will probably need tweaking according to real operation session, but it is clear a 10-car per engine is going to be standard operation over Murray Bay.



The GE 45-tonner had a little bit problem pulling its mandatory 6 loaded cement hopper, but a little bit more weight over the hood should be enough. I was thinking about adding sound to it, but I'll try to figure out a way to keep it heavier before doing this.

Also, a club member decided to buy a Budd RDC-2. By pure luck, the roadnumber is the same unit that last ran over Murray Bay around 1976.

Matt