Mike Stoner's SPSF Owens Valley Sub and Phoenix, Trains in Flagstaff &Sedona, AZ

This past weekend and week I had to go to the Phoenix area for a conference.  But first I visited with my good friend Mike Stoner who lives in Sedona.  We didn't have much time for a lot of activities but made great time with that we did have.

The first thing we did was visit Verryl Fosnight's Union Pacific Railroad.  OMG this is a BIG railroad!  Still being built it is housed in a huge warehouse building.  Here are some photos and you can see more details at the Yahoo Group, Wyoming_Division.

From there we drove to Flagstaff to see a few BNSF trains and that we did.  4 trains in all.  It was getting dark by then so we headed back to Mike's house for an update on Mike's layout.  Mike is building his 2nd railroad (the first got flooded in a friggin' water leak) and the new one is going to be awesome too.  Here are a few photos.

More GP60's!

Mike Stoner and me at dinner waiting for Brandi, his GF.  Until she showed up, we were getting weird looks here on Valentine's Day!  LOL

Mike's layout under construction...again!

Mike hand lays his turnouts!

He's a details oriented guy.

This is N scale!

Mike uses McHenry couplers and body mounts them on all equipment.  He likes these over MT's because MT's tend to have too much slack and bounce, causing strange things with the cars.  I agree, however, I'm not spending time body mounting anything!

The next morning I drove down to Phoenix to my hotel for the next 4 night.  Luck me, my hotel was right next to the UP tracks and at a RR crossing too.  My colleagues didn't think it was very exciting because 2-4 trains came by each night!  There's something comforting about a train horn in the middle of the night...to me anyway!  LOL  Here are a few photos of Phoenix, although most of the trains I saw were in the dark from my hotel room in the comfort of my PJ's.

This and the photo below are of a gypsum board mfgr yard.  Seems like they waste lots of board.

Yet another UP train in the night.

Frank Kenny CPRX

Third day of Portland Crew Visit

Today is the third day of the Portland crew visit.

The morning started out fine, with Kent taking the van to take the guys to Starbucks and then back later to pick me up.  In the shuffle, I forgot to pick up lunch and didn't discover that until we were already arriving Joel's!  I had to go back to my house and pick up lunch and then back to Joel's.  Once back at Joel's, the crew was operating the layout and all was going well.  The op session was running fine...so far.

Here are a few pix.

Owner of the NYO&W, Joel Morse

We finished the op session and grabbed lunch and then off to Bob Grech's Western Pacific RR.  Bob has a very detailed layout, along the level of George Selios' layout.  Here are a few photos.

Bob Gretch, owner of the Western Pacific

After Bob's, we went to Mark Lestico's Cascade Line railroad and visited and ran a couple of trains.  I think I wore out most of the Portland guys so much that we mostly discussed Mark's railroad and various other aspects of operations, modeling, etc.  Here are a few photos.

Owner of the Cascade Line, Mark Lestico is on the far right

By the time we left Mark's house, I think everyone, including me was bushed.  We stopped at Applebee's for dinner (never again) and then off to the airport.  Oh, and Phil, Dave and Kent decided they would spring on yet another minor detail about the Loconet on my layout.  I don't quite have details, but I'm getting the idea that they want to re-build it!  They seem to be breaking it to me in little bits.  I'm open to any HUGE project they want to throw at me as long as they let me know when they are coming over to help!  ;-)

Frank Kenny, CPRX

Portland Arrives!

Yikes...today is the start of a BIG weekend.  I have 9 guys coming down from Portland to work on and then operate on the CPRX.  Work projects lined up...Check.  Op session ready...uh, Check.  Other layouts to see on Sunday...Check.  Prototype waiting for us to see...Check.  I'm ready!  I want nothing more for them to enjoy themselves!

Second Day of Portland Crew Visit

Today is the second day of the Portland crew visit.

The morning started off great, picking the guys up at the hotel for a quick trip to the Belmont Shore Club.  We weren't expecting trains to be running, however, David Sheehan got there early, cleaned track and set up a 104 car coal train complete with NS regular and Heritage locos.

We stayed at the club for about an hour and then picked up sandwiches for lunch and headed down to Watson Yard where we say a couple of Pacific Harbor Line (PHL) gensets and two BNSF GP60's complete with ATSF Superfleet paint jobs, even one with Santa Fe still on the front and sides!

Once the GP60's left, we went down the road to the Alameda Corridor where we say a number of other trains.  We ate lunch there while watching all the train activity.  After about an hour there we went by the Dolores locomotive facility.  Unfortunately trains were on both sides of the facilty so viewing locomotives was difficult but one bonus was the tank train was one of those trains.  Most have not seen the tank train before, including me.  I have only seen the old original tank trains of years past.

Notice the new deflector "shields" on the new tank cars.

From there we went back to my house to operate.  That's where the day's fun sort of disapated, at least for me.  The railroad wasn't going to cooperate.  The main issue was the wifi connection between the main RR computer and the remote computer decided to die and it took us about an hour to get it figured out.  I think someone simply knocked the wife extender and it may have dislodged from the outlet, killing power...still not sure on that one but it worked for the rest of the night.

The railroad ran fine, no DCC issues other than the Duplex would not work, but that wasn't a problem. I will probably sell the Duplex equipment as I can live without it.  There were no derailments, except for a few minor ones that were caused by a couple axels not being the correct length.

After several hours we went to dinner.  Once we were done with dinner we went back to the RR for a debriefing.  A number of items came up and I'll work on those as time permits.

I will be adding more cars to the layout so we can run more trains.  I've kept it thin so as not to clog things up while we have been in the testing mode.  I've got just over 300 cars on the railroad, however, probably about 100 of those are for unit trains.  I'll need to add 7-800 more cars to the railroad before it is "full."  The main obstacle to that is having enough wheel sets with resistors...another project moving forward.

I was so wrapped up with everything going on during the day, I forgot to take photos.  Here are a few photos.

Frank Kenny CPRX.

Wheels with resistors made - check; Locos speed matched - check; MT's installed - check...

This past Saturday I had Joel Morse, Mark Lestico, and Stan McCartney over for a work session.  Joel and Stan worked on lots of wheel sets installing resistors that will allow the cars to be detected on the railroad.  They got about 100 axels done so they will be installed on 100 more cars.

Mark worked on installing MT's to locomotives.  We're putting the short MT's on the rear and the longer MT's on the front for coupling to cars.  This ensures that the locos are not pushing the cars off the track in the helix.

While they were hard at work I worked on the JMRI panels some more and speed matched some of the locmotives too.  I use the Accutrack speedometer to speed match the locos which makes it a heck of a lot easier, eliminating the "eyeball" method of speedmatching.  There is no way on this earth that all locos will run the same speed but the speedometer helps.  I set them for a maximum of 40 mph.

One step further to ops next month!

Frank Kenny, CPRX model railroad

RECENT PROGRESS JMRI & CONTROL PANELS ON TABLETS!

I've been dreading building traditional control panels for the Bakersfield yard.  I would need two of them and that would entail more wiring (ARGH!), switches, LED's, etc.  I just hate doing that.  So, a couple months ago I discovered WiThrottle and my wifi worked well together and that was just by accident, as reported on 9/15/13.  Well, I thought why don't I make those panels on the JMRI and put them on tablets at the yard so the two throats could be operated easily.  Currently we are using old DT100 throttles to throw the turnouts, a bit challenging especially for those non-Digitrax types.

So I started playing with the JMRI Control Panel Editor and after a few hours had my first panel done.  This one for the south end of Bakersfield.  I tested it on my iPad and my iPhone and all worked great.  So I dove in and bought two HP 7" Slate tablets.  When they arrived I turned it on, logged into JMRI and to my surprise the Bakersfield panel was right there on the tablet!  If I had a prototype train horn or whistle, I'd be layin' on that thing right now celebrating!

I had some challenges with the north end panel but thanks to the help of Ken Cameron, we got it all worked out.  Now I can retire the DT100 & 300's!

There are a few differences between the panels.  Just testing to see what works best for operators before I make changes.  The question marks on the panels are simply because I the system was just on and the turnouts have not been recognized yet.  I'll change the photos later.

Below are a couple photos...

Bakersfield South End Tower Panel

Bakersfield North End Panel

The panels above will be displayed on 7" tablets, one on each end of Bakersfield.  They sit in a holder, which I made from a business card holder.

That's it for today...enjoy, Frank Kenny, CPRX.

Traffic Center Control Panel

If you know me you know I HATE wiring!  Welcome to model railroading!  LOL  And perhaps you have read some of my other posts about connecting JMRI and the wifi and building panels in JMRI.  Well, I am well on my way to creating the Traffic Center panel that will be displayed on my iPad at the Traffic Center area.  Now operators won't have to fiddle with their throttle and view a chart to select a route into the Traffic Center.  They just read their manifest to see which track they are to go into and push the icon and the route lines up for them.  Too easy!

The panel is not complete yet.  I'd like to change the icon to be a button that can be pushed, and the will light up green when the route is selected.  Still working on that.  Once I have that done, then I will adjust the placement of all the icons and clean up the panel a bit.  But for now, this works!

Posted by Frank Kenny, CPRX.