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Showing posts with the label model railroading

Switch Box Extension

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A fter using the new Alexa-enabled dimmer light switch for the train room for a few days, I still wasn't completely happy with the lingering potential for future train car disasters on these shelves.  As I mentioned in previous blog entries, when people would reach into the shelves to access the light switch that was mounted flush on the wall inside these shelves, they would sometimes snag or bump a locomotive and the locomotive would come crashing down to the hardwood floor resulting in significant damage to the locomotive(s).   I added an extra shelf immediately below the switch to help mitigate where the arm could swing as well as adding a voice controlled Alexa-enabled dimmer switch but I wasn't convinced this was enough.  After using this new configuration for a few days, I decided I should extend the switch box outward a bit to play it safe.  This would move the dimmer switch closer to the front of these display shelves so people wouldn't have to reach into the shelve

Lionel Trains

In the past few days, I had some hands-on experience with a new Lionel train set.  When I was a child, I used Lionel trains exclusively in my model railroading hobby.  I actually had a large model railroad in our attic.  By high school, I had progressed into more realistic trains in N scale (realistic track, realistic slow speeds, realistic direction control, realistic and detailed trains, etc) but I continued using my large Lionel model railroad on the other side of the attic space.   Sometime in the 1970s, Lionel started producing more toy-like plastic trains including their locomotives.  I'm sure they still had some of their higher end, highly detailed metal trains but I only had access to my friends' lower end new Lionel trains.  Unfortunately, my experience just the other day was with very low end, almost what I would consider junk, toy-like plastic Lionel trains.  This train set is very toy-like and, worse yet, likely to prove to be easily broken by a child.   This train

Lukey's Trains in the Backyard

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Back around Labor Day, Lukey came over and we brought his trains outside to the backyard.  Gee's new office is in what was the train room so we currently lack the space in the house for running trains.  Besides, bringing these trains outdoors also provides nicer backgrounds and lighting for photos. This particular day was overcast and dark clouds were moving in very quickly but we figured we had an hour or two before the rain would start.  I was not feeling all that great on this day...  I was feeling lousy enough that I vividly remember feeling lousy on this day.  I had significant breathing problems, I was nauseated and holding back vomit, and I generally felt lousy.  I also had significant spinal pain that was probably adding to the breathing problems and nausea.  We still managed to get the trains up and running in the backyard for a little while though... One of the great things about bringing the trains outdoors is that I can capture some nice photos.  The lighting is realist

Model Railroading Headway

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As I get older and as my health demands more sedentary hobbies, I've been squeezing in more and more model railroading to fill in for some more physically demanding activities that I've needed to drop from my life.  I've written before about plans for converting a room in the house to a "train room". This room already houses all my trains on shelves but I intend to someday start building a good sized O scale model railroad layout. When I've written about this in the past, I shared some preliminary plans for this layout.  This layout runs around the walls and will be designed around some custom shelving units. I purposely designed this layout so that I'll still have access to a walk-in closet and a workbench/desk. The plan is coming together. Since the weather has not been allowing me to work on the house, I've been doing more and more sketching of ideas as rest on the couch. The plan really is coming along and it seems to be a very realistic plan

Upgrade Completed

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From this angle, you can see the tender marker lights and the firebox glowing in the cab. As I wrote in a previous blog entry a couple of days ago, my O scale MTH Hudson steam locomotive arrived back from the shop. I had sent it in about a month ago to have some major upgrades installed so I was pretty excited to get it back... especially to have received it in the days right after our annual train show excursion! I had the ProtoSound electronics upgraded from version 1.0 to version 3.0. This upgrade is a significant sound upgrade as well as a very significant control upgrade. Slow speed control is outstanding now... slow and steady... chuffing smoke... the sound is great and it runs silky smooth.  This upgrade also included the ability to control the rear coupler with my controller. And, naturally, this useful feature includes an uncoupling sound as it uncouples.   While it was in the shop, I had marker lights added on the front of the locomotive and the rear of the tender.

Programming Model Locomotives

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Bachmann, O scale, narrow gauge, 4-6-0 steam locomotive. I've been trying to get up to speed with Digital Command Control (DCC) for model trains for the past few months. Well... I started trying to educate myself a couple of years ago but have had difficulty grasping how to fully utilize DCC without having a locomotive to program or even a DCC controller. Over the past year or so, I've collected some DCC locomotives and a couple of different control systems. I'm learning more but it is a bit frustrating for a few reasons. First off, if you want to take a fairly easy route, you can just buy a DCC locomotive and use it in its default configuration with just about any DCC controller. This is certainly the easiest and quickest way to get up and running in DCC. That is not me though. I like to perfect things to my own preferences. I'd like to write a blog post about all the difficulties in programming... all the different DCC systems available today... compatibili

Commencing Christmas Shopping

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NOTE:  Lukey and Kenzie are getting older and bigger but they still cannot read my blog, therefore, I have no problems writing about Christmas gifts for both Lukey and Kenzie. For those who can read this blog, please don't mention these gifts to Lukey and Kenzie until after their Christmas. Thanks. I'm slightly early this year... I usually begin my Christmas shopping in September but I decided to start a month early this year in the hope of easing the financial burden that far too many people feel at the end of the year. Grandchildren at Christmastime will do that! Lukey has been focused on and infatuated with Amtrak for years. Actually, we plan to do an Amtrak day trip soon so he can finally say he's traveled on an Amtrak train. He's seen Sheila and me do quite a few Amtrak trips over his four short years but he is still optimistic and excited about taking an Amtrak journey for himself. Whenever Lukey plays with his freight train, he always stops at the sta

Clean Bedroom

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While the new bedroom is clean, I thought I should probably shoot a few photos... This new double bed sure does cover a lot of that beautiful new wood floor! I converted the bedroom door to a Dutch door... first, I marked where I needed additional hinges... I removed it from its hinges... I cut the door in half... since this is a hollow core door, I had to fill the now open ends with solid wood... added a little shelf to the lower half... added some decorative trim to match the rest of the house... painted it Colonial Red (a primer plus three top coats)... routed out for the new hinges... installed the new hinges... hung the new door... added Dutch door hardware to lock the bottom half to the top half... and, it is beautiful... This bedroom is the future location of my hobby room which will be mostly model railroading stuff with a workbench/desk. The room has been designed in an old train station style with quite a few train station details.  One such detail is the door to

Post Train Show Purchases

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My New York Central passenger set, headed by a Dreyfuss Hudson streamlined locomotive. As I mentioned in previous blog posts, I came home from the annual Amherst Railway Society's train show empty-handed this year. During our drive back home, I decided to do some model railroad shopping online when we arrived home.  Before we headed to the train show, I put together a pretty good sized list of things I might buy at the show if the price was right. From my experiences at past shows, I knew that I would not find three quarters of the stuff on my list so I made sure I had a pretty lengthy list to improve my odds of coming across something I wanted.  I had products on this wishlist from a number of different scales... N scale, HO scale, O scale (narrow gauge, 2-rail and 3-rail stuff), and even one F scale locomotive. I even had some products on my list which are not scale specific (ie, various power controllers, scenery products, etc). Even with this many products on my wishli

Thoughts of Upcoming Train Show

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As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, my health has been a bit lousy since my medical appointment earlier in the week. As a result, not much has been accomplished around the house other than making meals and cleaning myself up. It is during these quiet times when I have a little time to take notice of things I normally don't have the energy nor time to notice. This afternoon I decided to check my blog statistics to see how many people are viewing my blog, where these people are located, which pages they visit, which blog entries they read and how they found my blog. This is something I try to do at least once a week. The results are often interesting. More often than not, most of the people reading my blog are those researching chronic illness and my illness, Systemic Mastocytosis. Sometimes, however, a different blog entry will capture some attention and the tide of visitors shifts. This time of year usually finds traffic from a different source when compared to the rest of

A Rainy Sunday and Working Locomotive Models

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Sheila and I had a nice weekend and actually managed to get out of the house again. We said goodbye to a friend on Saturday... had a few drinks and some food... but my health crashed quite quickly near the end of our socializing. I spent the following 24 hours sick as a dog begging for some relief. For the most part, I have a fairly good handle on balancing my health with a lot of medications. When my health gets really poor, however, there is nothing that can be done but to ride it out and hope it passes quickly. Even though I say I have a fairly good handle on balancing my health, this still happens weekly but which symptoms appear seems to be quite random and experiencing this weekly is far better than daily! So, Sunday was a down day for me. It was pouring rain outside, windy, with thunderstorms all day so I knew I would be staying indoors anyway. I decided to take advantage of being stuck indoors and worked on some of my model railroad locomotives.   I pulled out some tool

Testing a Lionel GP-7

Today is a rather lousy health day for me so I am stuck in the house trying to find something interesting to do which will not make my health any worse. Since I have some model railroading trains sitting out and about after our annual train show in Springfield, I decided I would see why one of our Lionel GP-7's will not move in forward or reverse. When I power it up, everything seems to work just fine including the sound. When I try to put it in forward or reverse, I can hear the twin motors whirring away so I know the motors run but the gears are not engaging. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the little gear that is supposed to be on the end of the motor driveshaft has broken off each motor. These gears were cheapo plastic gears that were somehow affixed to the smooth metal driveshaft (I have one of the broken gears in the bottom of the styrofoam box for the locomotive). It clearly was a poor design and I knew I would not be able to fix this problem without replacing a f

Small Morning Projects

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My new O scale, 2 rail, F-unit diesel locomotive on a short test track...  (that yellow locomotive in the background is a Lionel GP unit on 3 rail track). My health has been quite lousy for the past week so I have not gotten much of anything accomplished in this new year. I don't want to write about my health right now so this blog post is about something less painful to read. The first good thing that happened this morning is that my health was in the "fair" range.  The next good thing that happened this morning is my car started! It is frigid here... well below zero with wind chills approaching -50 degrees. I know I need a new battery so it was a small miracle that my car actually started this morning.  I ran some errands and arrived home to find our postal carrier leaving a package at my door. Just yesterday, I had found a few trains online in eBay at great prices. These are all O scale, 2 rail (same size as the 3 rail Lionel trains everyone knows except using