PRR Eastern Region - Timonium Show

[John]

So, what is happening with the frogs over time?

They lay eggs, then die .. and new ones are born from the eggs as tadpoles. Eventually the tail falls off, the tadpole turns into a frog, and the cycle starts all over


On the turnouts, one of the problems in the past is that the embedded contacts are separating from the frog, thereby loosing electrical contact ..its an easy fix with some wire and a soldering iron .. I have never seen the "guage" change that Jerry speaks of ..

[Mark5]

#5s Tight against NMRA standards is what I heard. I heard this was on early production only though.

FROGGER!!!!

Anyway, every one of my #5s purchased last year were too tight against the standards gauge. I checked all of my locos, and they were all good, but most had a noticeable hop when crossing the frog. The question is, what is easier...narrowing your wheelsets or grinding out the frogs? I used a cut off wheel in the dremel to ease them out some, and they worked fine. I was a little disappointed that I had to do this, but Atlas C55 has looks + value + availability -dremel time = Good deal. 

Bringing the frog into NMRA standards is the way to go. When all your wheelsets and track conform this translates to good performance.

[John]

Supposedly the #5 issue was related to too much NI platting on the metal, making the frogs tight ..

The most important thing though, your wheels must be correct, and 9 out of 10 times, that is the problem

[Mark5]

To put it another way - the wheels and the track must all conform to standards.

For instance, if the guard rail clearance is too sloppy (ie too wide) on a turnout, then wheelsets that meet NMRA standards will be likely to "pick" the frog.

[Chris333]

I would just work on the turnout till the NMRA gauge would slide through.


Hey did we ever get an answer from Jerry? 

[keystonecrossings]

I still need to remain mum on the cause of my ceasation of construction until that issue is properly rectified by the parties that are promising to rectify it.

In regards to frogs expanding, contacts breaking and requiring resoldering (from the underside), and other potential turnout issues... would you please consider the quantity of turnouts that I have installed, their accessibility on a four-level layout, how to handle that once they are ballasted, etc.?

My layout is not on a door. It is slightly larger.

[Mark5]

I still need to remain mum on the cause of my ceasation of construction until that issue is properly rectified by the parties that are promising to rectify it.

Can anyone point me to an online gobbledegook translator?

[CVSNE]

I still need to remain mum on the cause of my ceasation of construction until that issue is properly rectified by the parties that are promising to rectify it.

Can anyone point me to an online gobbledegook translator?

www.WTFO???.com

Makes everything as clear as mud . . .

[Erik W]

I still need to remain mum on the cause of my ceasation of construction until that issue is properly rectified by the parties that are promising to rectify it.

With a statement like that, you should run for office. ;D

[Dave V]

I still need to remain mum on the cause of my ceasation of construction until that issue is properly rectified by the parties that are promising to rectify it.

Hmmm.... Legalspeak.  I wonder if perhaps Jerry's PRR was approached by an N scale New York Central with a merger proposal!

Well, I'm about as bad as an old lady at the hairdresser's when it comes to gossip and speculation.  Certainly Jerry's jerrymandering (hey, I want my 5 a$$hat points for the pun!) around the reason implies either some sort of business transaction, some sort of legal issue, or some sort of health-related issue.

Certainly Jerry owes us nothing in the way of an answer.  He doesn't work for us.  But for those of us who watched with awe as he tackled this project (even those like myself who never had the pleasure of visiting the layout), we are left to wonder what could possibly drive such a profound change of course other than the reasons already postulated and denied?

[Bob Bufkin]

Whatever his reasons are is his business.  It's sad that such a great PRR layout will disappear. 
Bob

[John]

In regards to frogs expanding, contacts breaking and requiring resoldering (from the underside), and other potential turnout issues... would you please consider the quantity of turnouts that I have installed, their accessibility on a four-level layout, how to handle that once they are ballasted, etc.?

My layout is not on a door. It is slightly larger.

Jerry .. I did consider it .. I am in much the same size room, double deck, with lots of turnouts, also ballasted .. I have not experienced frogs expanding .. at least not that I can tell .. maybe its an environmental issue ..

[inkaneer]

Well PRR layouts come and PRR layouts go.  I know of a couple of each.  However we have a bit of a change here from Jerry's initial post in which he said:

"As has been noticed by a few forum members... the PRR Eastern Region is coming down, for reasons to be revealed in a future issue of The   Keystone Modeler (emag of the PRRT&HS)."

to his last post here in which he said:

"I still need to remain mum on the cause of my ceasation of construction until that issue is properly rectified by the parties that are promising to rectify it.
In regards to frogs expanding, contacts breaking and requiring resoldering (from the underside), and other potential turnout issues... would you please consider the quantity of turnouts that I have installed, their accessibility on a four-level layout, how to handle that once they are ballasted, etc.?"

So is the layout "coming down" or is there only a "cessation of construction"?  I am not going to speculate nor am I going to lose sleep over it. Eventually we will find out one way or another.  Certainly Jerry is perfectly free to do as Jerry pleases but why the hype, the big build up, the suspense?   What is the purpose of all that?  Nothing derogatory intended, I would just like to know.

[tom mann]

They were talking about this on Springer today...

[wm3798]

John's layout might have a similar volume of track, but it's in a room 2 to 2.5 times larger than Jerry's.  I've gotten to see both, and both are impressive in their own ways.  Jerry's is multi level, two enormous helixes occupy about a third or more of the entire space, and of course, there's the whole 4 track Broad Way.

John's is two level, (some times) but sprawling in a little more than half of a large basement.  Jerry's is a classic case of 10 pounds of you know what in a five pound bag.  It offers many opportunities for excellent rail fanning opportunities, good potential photo locations that would be unmistakable as PRR scenes, but as a model railroad, it's pretty crowded in there.

But Jerry was striving to simulate train movements more than topography, so it's a forgivable sin.  The Harrisburg Terminal never took shape beyond the track plan, but the process that went into developing the track plan was nothing short of ingenious.  Relying on actual PRR track charts, the track plan for that part of the project was foot for foot the same as the prototype.

John's layout is more, shall we say, organic.  First of all, it's a free-lance take on CSX.  It's main ingredients are contemporary railroading in the Appalachians, coal, steel, paper.  The seasonings are B&O flavored.  But rather than trying to represent a specific place and time, he has created a layout that's all about railfanning.  It'll be set up to allow for a certain level of operations, but probably more along the lines of train sheet and switch list rather than time table and car cards.

One similarity between the two, is that they require a lot of attention.  When I visited Jerry's, it hadn't been operated in a while, so there was a lot of dirty track.  We were able to run back and forth a bit, but in the classic PRR style, it was definitely suffering from "deferred maintenance". 

I've been to John's on several occasions now, and for the most part it runs very well.  But as has been well documented here, he's been changing and re-arranging a lot (again, a very organic layout...) so trains hadn't been running recently.  When I stopped by this past weekend, there were frogs that weren't wired, and one of the two main tracks was barely passable (in fairness, the wheels on my locomotives weren't terribly clean, either. :-[)

At one point, we tried running an excessively long train.  I said I wished I had room for a layout like John's, and almost simultaneously he said he'd like to have a layout like mine (which is pretty compact, but well-enough proportioned to handle some operations as well as some fun railfanning spots.)

Anyway, before fall asleep in your soup bowl, I guess the point of this discussion is that the idea of having a large, action packed layout may be appealing to a lot of us, the practical reality of it may be less so.  I think that regardless of the mysterious purpose he's dancing around, the underlying reason may be simply that he realized that he bit off way more than he could chew.

Lee