Rainbows in the Lehigh Valley Gorge

[TMo]

I've had Intermountain on my mind. Well, I can actually thank Charlie for that. His difficulty with his unit has gotten me thinking about the Intermountain chassis that I adapted an Athearn blue box SD40-2 into. I haven't run that particular locomotive for quite some time, so I decided to do a little consist shuffling and put it at the front end of my mixed freight which generally runs clockwise around my viewing level. I have only two switches on this main level, one of which is quite dependable (fortunately, since it's inside a tunnel), the other.... occassionally drives me to drink.

Every time that SD40-2 wandered through that switch (with or without the rest of the consist).... derailment. Looked at the running gear, the height of the snowplow, coupler issues... no AHA! Turned everything off and slowly pushed that locomotive through the switch. There were two areas that I felt some additional resistance. Donned the magnifying headgear and on the inside of the track I felt a two little bumps of silicone. Apparently, they've been there since I replaced that switch at least 5 years ago. A little surgery with an X-acto knife and we're now cooking with gas.

I'm running the big blue with a couple of Alcos including my C424 and noticed that the rear coupler was too high on the C424, it kept dissembling itself from the consist. After inspection I found it had an underset coupler on the rear. Swapped that out. Then one of my Reading box cars decided it didn't want to play. Haven't figured that out yet, but put it on the desk for later.

Got the camera out to take some pictures.... dead batteries. Been that kind of evening down here, but sometimes nights like this are a good reminder to take the time to run trains.