So, I’ll see you all at Hickory! And, for those who can’t make it, I’ll try to post updates on the goings on at the convention each evening.

The realization that it’s only now a couple of weeks until Hickory hit hard, and I am way behind schedule. I promise to post an update on the turntable and engine house very soon.

In real terms, the pounding winds and rains today caused the wood basement door to physically warp, allowing gallons of water to run in, flooding a good portion of the back basement, including part of the workshop area. Amazingly, all that was lost were three empty cardboard boxes, an HO boxcar kit, some scrap wood and an already damaged HO “pay car.” With Donna’s help, I got the worst of it cleaned up, and, except for the carpet in the shop (which I had just put down last week!), it should all be dry sometime tomorrow. Of course, if the basement floor had been properly leveled when the house was built, all of the water would have run harmlessly into the sump pump …

More on the Bragg Hill quarry area another time. I need a shower …

Before I commit to another manufacturing run of the wiper sets, I’d like to get a gauge of interest, based on what I believe the new selling price would be.

Please complete the survey by supplying the information below, and clicking next.

[wpsqt_survey name="Shay Pickup Wipers"]

I’d seen in the past where people had successfully used Christmas lights for lighting in “shadow box” style layouts. With the advent of bright, warm-white LEDs, I thought that using them for layout lighting could be a “good thing,” given that we have some really neat LED lighting gear at work. Unfortunately, it was a pretty monumental failure — at least my first attempt.

I figure that in order to get the kind of lighting I’m looking for, I’d need to cluster approximately 60 LEDs in a 2′ x 2′ area. At seven bucks for each 60-light strand, Corinna alone would need $42 in lights, plus I’d need to build something to hold the LEDs and reflect any spill towards the layout.

Or, for a whole lot less money, I could use warm-white 14W CFLs in a strip box or some sort of reflector fixture. I tried that on a really small scale (I had one CFL bulb and one small reflector light handy) and that worked really well. At this point, I’m really inclined to go that route, and give all those nifty LED Christmas lights to Donna to decorate with…

Tonight, visits to The Moose Caboose and Lowes are on tap for cork roadbed and a couple other goodies, as well as more lighting “research.” I’ll also see if I can get the Homasote attached to the benchwork.

I had to steal a bunch of ceiling tiles from the train room to finish out the shop, and initially, I was planning to replace all the ceiling tiles in the train room with Celotex (they’re currently fiberglass). However, there’s so little clearance between the top of the ceiling grid and the bottoms of the joists that I don’t think I’ll be able to angle the stuff Celotex tiles into place, so it looks as if I’ll have to use more fiberglass tiles. Time for another Home Depot run…

The next steps in the shop are paneling the side wall and putting in storage, putting down the flooring and installing the new bench top. At some point, I’ll add the back wall.

The shop flooring might go in tonight. I was just going to lay down a couple of rugs (which I’ve already picked up), but I’m thinking I might splurge and put some dense foam padding underneath to cushion and insulate a little bit. That concrete floor is cold and hard, and the benches are all going to be stand-up height to save my back a bit.

Meanwhile, it looks as if actual benchwork construction for Corinna will begin in Kevin’s shop on Friday after work. Corinna’s public debut will be at the Great Scale Model Train Show in Timonium this coming February.

Although this video is labeled as being from 1965, it is actually from 1953. The railroad had run as a slate-hauler from 1865 until about 1950, at which point, the quarry stopped producing. A group of volunteer enthusiasts managed to take over the line, and it’s been operating, it seems, ever since. The official site is here: http://www.talyllyn.co.uk/

More videos, including footage from earlier this year, may be found on YouTube if you click here.

The “Y” cables can serve two functions — either one channel output of the Octopus can drive two servos (for situations like crossovers where two turnouts will always be thrown together) or, they can be used to allow control of a turnout channel from two locations (handy for throwing a switch from two sides of a module, or making “local” and “remote” controls).

As I mentioned in an earlier post, there’s a significant cost savings in using the servos and these control electronics over more traditional Tortoise switch motors, or Bluepoint throws and the associated pushrods. About the only thing not a part of the package I ordered were some method of switching frog polarity. I have a whole slew of micro-switches I plan to use, however, TAM sell nifty little relay boards that plug in to the Octopus board that can also do the job for about $5 each. As much of a pain as micro-switches can be to align and keep aligned, I may end up with relays in the long run.

The supplier links are all cleaned up and descriptions have been added — I even removed two or three non-working links. More to follow…

John, our agent and long-time friend of mine is great, helping us with a million stupid questions and putting us in touch with contractors to get the work done that we need to get the house salable. I don’t think we’ll make the December 1st target for listing the house, but we’ll see. Maybe we’ll go ahead and listed even before some of the work is done. We have our next meeting with John on Sunday, and we’ll discuss that possibility. We’ve seen pictures of lots of places on the MLS that are being made ready after the house is on the market.

We’ve also learned, I think, what we want in a house and where we’d like it to be. That will help John greatly in helping it find our new home over the next few months. We’ve certainly started to learn what we don’t want.

Anyway, off now to lunch!

A SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT ON30GUY PICKUP WIPERS

Pickup wipers for the Bachmann On30 Shay are no longer available.
They have been out of production and I have no plans to produce them again.

Pickup wipers for the Bachmann On30 Mogul Tender are no longer available.
They have been out of production and I have no plans to produce them again.

These items were discontinued due to a marked increase
in the cost of manufacturing.

Please do not ask for copies of the designs for these items.
They are not readily available and I am not at this time
inclined to do the work necessary to provide them.

PLEASE DO NOT ASK ABOUT THESE ITEMS

I am learning about the differences in coupler height on the different Bachmann issue freight trucks.  It seems like I can easily buy the center height shank coupler, but how about the shank even with the top of the coupler?  Does Bachmann sell these too?  What is the number of this coupler?  Are the EZ-Mate HO Couplers really the same size as the On30 couplers?  Thanks much!

The short answer to your first question is that Kadee, Bachmann and McHenry all make “drop-in” couplers with center-shank, over-shank (shank even with the top) and under-shank (shank even with the bottom).

For your second question, Bachmann uses the same couplers for On30 as they do for HO. So, the Kadee, Bachmann and McHenry HO couplers will work fine.

Now, it gets knotty. Bachmann has made On30 trucks and underframes in two heights — the original “high” riding cars, and the newer “low” riding cars. Bachmann supplies the appropriate couplers with the cars so that the height will be consistent across their product line. This coupler height coincides with the  NMRA-standard HO standard gauge coupler height. This, traditionally, has been the height that most On30 modelers have used, even before the Bachmann products came on the market.

Some modelers feel that this coupler height is too low, especially if they’re trying to represent 3-foot prototypes using On30. Other modelers feel that they would prefer to use On3 couplers, as they are supposedly more appropriately sized, and mount them at the correct On3 coupler height.

So, Tom, I hope that I’ve answered your questions!

New Bachmann Modern Outside-frame 4-4-0

As some of you may know, I’ve never been terribly find of the “American” 4-4-0. However, Bachmann have released this new model, a “modern” outside-frame version that has a great, funky, low-slung look to it that I actually find really appealing.

I just may have to have one of these things, if I ever have any money again…

Right now, there’s a fireplace situated in a corner of the basement. It’s angled, and so it eats up a huge amount of space. I also believe that the area surrounding the fireplace is where the wasps are hiding and that it’s also hiding the water shut-off for the hose-bib on the back of the house. So, that’s where I’ll start demolition.

Our plan is to replace the fireplace with a pellet/wood stove, which will be free-standing, and will allow me to make a smaller chimney chase. That means that the corner will be more useable for layout space (not ideal, but at least useable).

So, now I have to get up the inclination to box everything up and get it stored somewhere, figure out where the money for the renovations will come from, and get to work.

Fooling around on a scooter....

I’m fooling around with a new version of the web site CMS, a system called WordPress. They’ve recently released a major version enhancement, version 2.6, which incorporates a lot of functionality that’s really pretty cool, that used to require a zillion add-on plug-ins and hacks.

The picture at left was taken on our last trip up to Maine, at one of the entrances to Acadia National Park. It’s where we spent a lot of our time the last trip, instead of going to the National Narrow Gauge Convention, a few hours away in Portland.