Tehachapi, BC

[LKOrailroad]

My concern about ballasting early centers mostly around sculptamold application (or whatever), painting the base terrain color, or zip texturing if that is your cup of tea.

[pastoolio]

Mike, welcome back!!  What have you been up to?  I hope you've been bitten by the bug and will be showing off a rebuilt pike and some newly detailed diesels here soon.  You have been missed.

Cheers,
Gary

Thanks Gar!  Been working on the layout here and there, but haven't done any loco detailing for over a year   Time hasn't been as abundant as in the past, so priorities take over, and a functioning layout has bumped the diesel detailing and freight car modifications down the list. Guess I could start a thread in the layout engineering reports section to keep you all updated, might give me some motivation as well.
Anyhow, don't wanna take up any more space in your layout thread, so... Keep up the excellent work, can't wait to see more!

Mike

[GaryHinshaw]

Finally time for a wordy update - and a question (near the end)...

Nothing very photogenic yet - it's all still infrastructure, but here is a rundown on recent progress:

1. DCC is now installed!  I went with Digitrax Super Chief duplex and it has been very easy to set up so far, though I'm still only exercising the basic features.   I only have 6 locos with decoders right now, and since I need at least 3 locos per train, that doesn't go very far.  However,  I have a bulk order for 20 more decoders in the works, so that will change soon.  One thing that has been great fun has been to run rear-end helpers independently with the dual-throttle 402D.  You've got to pay attention(!), but it is working quite smoothly.  I'm now trying to decide if I should get some more 402's so that guests can try the same thing (as opposed to having an independent helper engineer).

2. I laid the temporary track in the "shoo-fly" under T. Loop and I now have a closed loop for continuous running on the upper deck.  The full circuit is just under 3 scale miles and takes about 8-9 minutes to circumnavigate at track speeds.  At present there are two sidings and two stub spurs at either end of the shoo-fly for storage, so very skeletal ops sessions with helpers will soon be possible.   (It's actually very useful to have rear units for both the ascents and descents, the latter for slack control - just like the prototype.)

3. I am finding that it would be very convenient to have a storage yard sooner rather than later, and it occurred to me that I could get that by building the the stub-end "storage yard 2" (SY2 in this post) but mounting it temporarily along the bottom wall at an elevation where it could feed the transition from the lower deck to the upper deck (the lower left corner in the plan) before I start building the lower deck.   So I'm starting to build that benchwork now.

4.  To that end, I am getting the first pieces of SY2 in place in their permanent locations to see how things look, and this is where my question arises.  Here are two quick shots of the upper right corner (under Monolith and the east slope):





The lowest deck is SY2 (just resting on boxes for now) which has a stub end at the wall; the one above it is the Edison/Sandcut shelf which will continue around to the right (in the first picture), across the door, then loop back to the Tunnel 2 peninsula, crudely depicted by the plywood resting on the cabinet.

As currently conceived, there is ~7" of separation between SY2 and the deck above it.  This gives a bit over 4" of clear space with my default framing plan.  SY2 is 14" deep and consists of 10 14' stub tracks (each long enough to hold a typical train length).  So my question for the Railwire knowledge base:

Is this enough clearance?

I can reach to the back track and still have my arm clear a high-cube box on the front track, but just barely, and I'm not going to be able to do any tricky rescue maneuvers - just triage.  I think I can work another 1" of clearance, but if I want more than that, I either have to raise Edison, which means reducing the grade from Edison to Tehachapi -- not desirable, or add a 1-turn helix between SY2 and SY1 -- also not desirable (this would also eliminate one layer of box storage underneath).

The function of SY2 is "near-line" storage.  I only plan to store whole trains there and shuttle them to SY1 during an ops session.  Any shunting will be done in the more-accessible SY1 (during and between sessions).  So hopefully the only issues I need to deal with in SY2 are random uncouplings and derailments due to faulty equipment and/or operator inattention.  How frequent an occurrence is that in people's experience?  (I am not too worried about derailments due to poor track work, I will test the heck out of it before I put Edison over top.)

Thanks in advance, if you read this far,
-gfh

P.S. Now that I'm getting the full plan a bit more fleshed out, I'm thinking I have enough space for a small branch line - something like the prototype's Arvin branch - so that one of the crew can have a local job that's off the busy mainline.  More soon.

P.S.^2 If I get SY2 running temporarily along the lower wall first, I should get some experience with its reliability before I commit to the final clearance.

[3DTrains]

Hi Gary,

Great to see the thread once again underway.

For guest throttles, consider the UT4R handheld wireless, as it won't overwhelm friends with a bunch of unnecessary buttons, plus the units are 25% cheaper than their full-functioning counterparts.

As for clearance at Edison, 8" would be desirable, even at the loss of some or the climb out and into the canyon. FWIW, I've seen entire strings of cars go over like dominoes, and a friend posted a picture where he had "live loads" of sugar beets (caraway seeds), take a dump that had 18" overhead access. If it were me, a few instances of cars toppling over due to my fumble fingers would have me climbing the walls. Imagine entire trains of containers or autoracks...

Cheers!
Marc - Riverside

[jagged ben]

... Is this enough clearance?  ...

I'm going to offer you a simple answer.

No. 

And I have small hands.

[Philip H]

Gary,
One of the only real challenges to Lee's staging was vertical clearance. He solved that somewhat with strategically placed rerailers but it was a pain of a car or three went over. So I'd put myself in the more is more camp

[TrainCat2]

Wow!! I disappear from the face of the earth for awhile and this thread shoots to 49 pages of really neat sh-t!

I just stared at a couple of your pics Gary. Great work. BTW, you are not going to believe this, I finished the scale down of the Mojave signal to N-Scale today.

[peteski]

Wow!! I disappear from the face of the earth for awhile and this thread shoots to 49 pages of really neat sh-t!

I just stared at a couple of your pics Gary. Great work. BTW, you are not going to believe this, I finished the scale down of the Mojave signal to N-Scale today.

Bob, it appears that you are not only back, but that you're going full steam ahead!  Awesome! 

[bdennis]

Gary,
Can you reduce the thickness of the timber on SY1 that supports the deck in order to obtain more clearance.?

[mark dance]

Hi Gary...I will be home soon so looking forward to seeing THB in flesh!

I would concur with that Jagged Ben that the clearance is not likely enough.  Cars at the back and the middle *will* derail so plan for it. Is there anyway you could use a traversing table there and save on all those yard throat turnouts and the length they take up?

As to the throttle selection for pusher ops, I concur with Marc to use UT4Ds.  I have come to believe - at least for Vancouver operators - that these should be used for all operating positions and DT400-style throttles used more as tethered throttles for dedicated programming and consisting. And besides watching two people coordinating actions on a single job is much more fun (and less risky!).

Just my $0.02.

md

[GaryHinshaw]

Thanks for the feedback gents.  A few more thoughts:

* I'm pretty sure I'll make more clearance available one way or another (extra separation and/or thinner supports).  It has been on my radar since the plan first came to be and this is just the first look at it in 3d.  This mock-up is also giving me the impetus to clean up the room and deal with my under-layout storage plans more seriously (most of the white boxes house my wife's impressive overflow library).

* md, I thought about a traverser, but it would be 14' long and would need to be used a fair amount during a full session -- I can see that getting awkward.  I have enough linear space for a throat so I'm going to stick with that for now. 

(Give me a shout when you get home and come have a look.  I'm still hoping to squeeze in a first simple session towards the end of the month.)

* My plan has always been to have UT throttles as the default for guests, but I was surprised how fun it was to run two loco sets at the same time.   BTW, one thing I've noticed with the UT is that the speed control doesn't seem to be as smooth as with the 402.  It almost seems like the mapping of knob rotation to speed steps is nonlinear.  Do others see similar behaviour in a head-to-head comparison?  The locos run beautifully on the 402.

I just stared at a couple of your pics Gary. Great work. BTW, you are not going to believe this, I finished the scale down of the Mojave signal to N-Scale today.

Bob - it is music to my ears that you are getting back in the saddle (and I love music!).  Regarding the Mojave signal bridge: just yesterday I was bringing a train down the hill on the Mojave approach and thinking about how perfect that bridge would be for my needs since: 1) that approach is the location of the prototype bridge, and 2) it's the perfect spot for directing traffic into the south staging area, so it will also be very functional.  (In case you needed any further motivation.) 

Cheers,
Gary

[GaryHinshaw]

Hi Gary...I will be home soon so looking forward to seeing THB in flesh!

BTW, it's TBC.  I think you've been in Ontario for too long! 

[mark dance]

BTW, it's TBC.  I think you've been in Ontario for too long! 

You are definitely right!  Weather here is brutal and we are missing the best BC summer in living memory...

On the smoothness of the throttles, I wonder if it is  combined digital/analogue and radio effect?  I have noticed that reversing direction signals with the UTs are sometimes missed in radio mode not when the throttles are tethered...that is why I advise operators to reverse the UT toggles "slowly and deliberately" pausing in the center off if necessary.  I haven't noticed this with the DT's and have speculated it is because they may send a digital status signal to the receiver whereas the UTs only send their change in state which can be missed.  If my speculation has any basis, then a rheostat in the UTs (if that is what they use) may behave the same way and only send change in state whereas the digital encoders in the DTs send their speed setting status continually...just an idea.

md

md

[Scottl]

This is looking great Gary, and a major milestone of closing the loop to start some operations.  I have no insights into the DCC equipment you are using, but I am learning from the discussion.  In terms of clearance, I agree with the others.  My limited experience suggests all our thinking on paper is not nearly as functional as it could be.  Adding additional clearance will be important if you can, especially if you are going to be using the staging during operations as much as you suggest.

I'm flying south to Ontario today, not pleased to hear about bad weather...  It is perfect here in Nunavut- sunny and enough breeze to keep the bugs from landing  .

[GaryHinshaw]

Interesting thought about the UT's only sending a change state.  It does almost seem as if they are missing a few speed steps, which might happen if the change state is not getting through reliably.  This makes me worry a bit about running helpers with two UT's.

Are there any tools available to monitor loco-net traffic to see what instructions the booster is getting from the throttle?  Maybe in JMRI?

-gfh

P.S. It has been a glorious summer in BC.    I did have to break down a get a fan for the garage though.