Model Railway
a. Layout
b. Locomotives
c. Cars
d. Operating
e. Summaries
Photos
Daley Train Log
Page 89
The weather was cold and wet today - a good time to review my Model Train activities.
I have spent about 3 hours reading sections of the Ship It! manual for a software package that will give me the operating orders for my trains after I get it all set up properly. I have verified that the software still is working with my current version of Parallels and Snow Leopard. Good.
I have reviewed the operation of 12 switches that are under cab control and have verified that they are all operational with a setting of "1" indicating a "straight through" setting and a setting of "0" indicating an "open" or branching setting. All 12 switches are appropriately marked on the layout (#'s 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 50).
As near as I can tell, the last time I tried using Ship It! was December 20, 2008! Both 2009 and the first 6 months of 2010 were devoted to getting the revised layout operational. I now have (I think) a working layout with 8 locomotives DCC ready, a working cab throttle, and the scenery barriers in place. My duck-under double-track bridge is working as best I can build it (I would still like to play with the idea of mounting it on a strong hinge so I could simply lift it up when I want to pass under it.).
The following consist was sitting in the Coaldale Yard: CN 7847 (an Alco RS-3 diesel locomotive) pulling CN 526254 (boxcar), CN 539027 (boxcar), GTW 516134 (boxcar), CN 123411 (gondola), CN 524270 (boxcar), CN 599000 (boxcar). This was a train of 6 freight cars.
The train pulled out of the Coaldale Yard going west and passed through Queenston on the way to Jasper. At Jasper it headed east and passed through Queenston on its way back to Coaldale. This route is what I have been calling the Inner Mainline. There were numerous shorts due to dirty track but otherwise everything appeared to work. Once the switches were lined for the route only switch #6 needed to be changed after the train had passed it going west so that it would complete the reversing loop and thus be heading east when it encountered this switch again, this time entering it from the branch line.
The next step is to clean all of the mainline track, both the inner as well as the outer mainline routes. But this is a very encouraging beginning.