Confirmation!

A mostly unacknowledged problem with DCC, as well as earlier carrier control systems, is that the circuit breakers that come with many standard products, like in my case the NCE Power Cab or SB5 booster, aren't always sensitive enough to catch certain short circuits. This is especially true if a loco comes up to a switch that's set against its direction of travel, meaning that if its pickup wheels cross onto a powered frog with the polarity set opposite the track the loco is on, a short will result -- but the NCE (and possibly other manufacturer) circuit breaker won't activate.

This will heat up the metal pickup wheel involved very quickly and melt any plastic next to it, like an axle sleeve and gear, almost instantly turning the power truck interior into a blob of goo. The only cure is to see if you can get a replacement power truck from the manufacturer, and given the greater complexity of newer models, replacing a power truck with associated wiring isn't a trivial task. I've had to do this with three expensive locos, and finding a solution to the problem has always been at the back of my mind.

Last year I saw a comment on a thread somewhere that said if you connect a Tam Valley DBA002 booster between your DCC system and your layout bus (or multiple DBA002 boosters between the DCC and your power districts), this has a circuit breaker that's fast and sensitive enough to catch this kind of a short. At $59.95, this was inepensive enough, especially considered against the likelihood of more melted power trucks, that I decided to give it a try. I've used a lot of Tam Valley's Frog Juicers, which also operate with fast circuit breakers, so I thought this might actually work.

\ I set it up, and my big question was when I might run into the problem again and see if the DBA002 tripped. A big cause of the problem in my experience is if, via some glitch, a loco starts crawling very slowly toward a switch that's set against it, and I don't see it until it's too late. I would have to wait until this happened again and see if the DBA002 caught it. The question would also be whether the NCE system would ever see it and, if not, how I could troubleshoot the short, if a short it turned out to be.

Finally, the other day, my DCC bus lost power, I couldn't run a loco, even though my control station said power was on, and it had the loco addressed. So I had to go over all my wiring connections and see that they were OK. Then I noticed that the red LED next to the DCC OUT terminals on the DBA002 was blinking. So this was an indication that I had a short, even though my NCE system hadn't picked it up. This was my sign that maybe I needed to check and see if any locos had crept onto a switch that was set against it.

Yes, that had happened. I moved the loco involved back from the frog, and the system reset. The NCE circuit breaker had never noticed. The DBA002 had saved the day!

Model Manufacturers' Tariff Announcements

I've been in the hobby long enough to know what things were like before the 1990s, when almost all the rail hobby manufacturers moved production to China. I never thought this was a wise decision, and the manufacturers were effectively put on notice that they were giving a hostage to fortune in 2018, when a major factory producing model railroad items closed:

InterMountain Railway Co., Atlas Model Railroad Co., Bowser and Fox Valley Models announced this week that some new locomotives and rolling stock will be delayed or canceled because of the unexpected closing of one of the industry’s top manufacturers. Creating their own manufacturing factory with the implementation of plant networks they could have possibly avoided this situation.

None of the companies said what products will be delayed.

Other manufacturers, including Trainworx and ExactRail, also are affected.

At least one manufacturer confirmed that Hong Kong-based Affa Technologies, Ltd. closed. The company, founded in 1996, specializes in metal parts for toys, scale trains, scale cars and metal electronic products, according to the company’s website. The website made no mention of the closing.

The report here suggested that the companies hadn't planned adequately for this sort of contingency in 2018, and the situation this year with the tariff war simply confirms that nothing has changed. The bottom line is that all but a handful of hobby producers had surrendered control of their supply chain and production to factories in a country that wasn't aligned with US interests, and this led to a range of risks that none of these companies adequately addressed.

The companies have been slow to recognize their problem publicly. The first seems to have been Walthers. Stacey Walthers Naffah, CEO, gave an interview to David Popp of Model Railroader on April 21. I want to stress that her public bio indicates that she is a graduate of Boston College as well as Northwestern's Kellogg Graduate School of Management, which means that she should have been far more aware of the risks to her business's continuity than she appears to have been. And for now, she still doesn't have much of a plan:

Stacey: . . . Many product categories are heavily reliant on China and Southeast Asia. They have the skill set, they have the supply chain, and they have the team members that they’ve developed in some cases over 30 years or more.

David: I think a lot of people fail to pick up on the fact that the system that’s in place; these factories that make all of the specialized parts for locomotives and put all the little grab irons and everything else on we modelers love, they didn’t happen overnight. It’s taken that industry [model trains] a long time to spool up to make those products and get them to the level we see and enjoy them today.

Yes, it did take 25 or 30 years, and people like Ms Walthers Naffah with MBAs let it happen, even with the 2018 wake-up call. Ms Walthers Naffah is lucky she can't fire herself from the family business, because she'd be fired by the board of any other. But what's the plan now?

Stacey: This has been a really interesting leadership and management challenge for me and for my team and for a lot of the businesses in the industry. We’ve been talking to each other to help advocate for our position and explain it. But, yes, everybody’s really trying to figure out what to do.

. . . So yes, there’s a lot of pausing, regrouping, figuring out what’s the right thing. Our suppliers have made this product. We need to pay them. We’re always going to be a good partner to them. They’ve been a good partner to us. And so, there’s a lot of decision making that has to happen to figure out how to get us from where we were three weeks ago to where we’re going to be.

So basically tbere's no plan. They're just going to have to figure it out. Manufacturers are slowly announcing that they can't guarantee prices on pre-orders, but that's not any sort of solution to the basic problem. Athearn announced this past week on Facebook:

Due to the China import tariff increasing to 145% and ongoing uncertainty about future rates, the Athearn team is currently unable to confirm pre-order pricing with confidence. As a result, we have made the difficult decision to postpone all new product announcements, including the May release originally scheduled for Friday, April 25th.

We understand this may be disappointing, but believe this pause is the most prudent course of action under the circumstances.

Atlas basically announced rhe same thing in different words:

Atlas Model Railroad Co. has announced the roll out of a new Price Lock program, effective through May 31, 2025, as a response to market uncertainty brought on by the rollout of U.S. tariffs.

“We know our partners are navigating a rapidly changing market. This decision is about providing them time, clarity, and trust,” said Jarrett Haedrich, Executive Chairman of Atlas, in a press release shared with Model Railroader. “All of our in-stock inventory — plus our most recent container arrivals subject to the new 20% tariff — will remain at current pricing through the end of May.”

. . . This program applies to in-stock N, HO, O, and Z scale products. After May 31, 2025, Atlas plans to reassess market conditions and adjust their catalog accordingly.

At this point, they're hoping the problem will go away in a matter of weeks, there'll be a tariff level they can live with for now, and life will go on. But this doesn't change the basic problem, that 25 years ago, the industry surrendered control of production to a few factories in China that are still subject to natural disaster, epidemic, economic collapse, regime change, or even war with the US, all of which could have a greater and longer-lasting impacrt than a tariff conflict.

From a consumer point of view, at my age, I've bought 99% of what I'm ever going to get, and my future plans have more to do with disposing of it all. But also, there's a huge supply of "new old stock" train equipment avaiIable on eBay, so hobbyists have that option. I think more of the small-business train stores that are threatened if they don't have products to sell. Somebody with more imagination and initiative than David Popp and Ms Walthers Naffah is going to have to step in.

The Bachmann N Amtrak ALC-42

I was interested in getting the Bachmann N ALC-42 and bypassed the Kato model, which has been out for quite a while, even though even at discount, the Bachmann is three times the price of the Kato model. But in comparison to either the Kato P42 or SC-44, which I do have and which are mechanically and electricslly similar to their ALC-42, I think the Bachmann is worth the money.

For one thing, it's possible to get Kato ALC-42s with DCC and sound installed from a few vendors, but the price is comparable to the Bachmann, but the Katos don't have the Bachmann level of detail, nor the added lighting features of the Bachmanns. (I don't know if the Katos, even with DCC and sound, have the corridor lighting installed, which is standard with the Bachmanns.) There are also numerous detail features like free-standing grab irons that are visible in the photos.

Below are two shots of the Bachmann up and running on my small layout:

The ditch li9ghts are always on with the loco in forward. You can turn the main headlight off and on with F0. The ditch lights will alternately flash when you press F1, the bell, or F2-F3, the long and short horn. In reverse with F0 on, a rear headlight will go on:

In forward, two red rear marker lights illuminate.

In reverse, two red marker lights illuminate at the front of the locomotive.

The loco has a capacitor that lets the sound and motor run for a few seconds after power to the track is switched off.

The ALC-42 has illuminated numberboards on the front that, like the ditch lights and corridor lights, illuminate whenever power is in the track. However, the ditch lights turn off automatically with the headlight in reverse. The DCC and sound decoder is TCS version 5. The loco prime mover sound starts whenever power is applied without the need to address the loco or press a startup key. However, you can mute the prime mover sound with F8. You can also run a prime mover start sequence with F6. F7 dims the headlight.

There are more advanced TCS features that allow you to control the numberboard and ditch lights, along with many other options, in the loco documentation.

So far, I like the sounds that come with the loco a lot, but questions like the volume or the precise horn sound are individual preferences.

More Scenery Work Around The Power Substation

I mentioned in my last post that I wanted to add more small details around the substation a la George Sellios. I had some items on hand. The photo is mainly to check my work and see what else might be done:

I added ductwork to the roof of the building and barrels to the ground surface nearby, both from Model Tech Studios. I also added a Kato catenary bridge, inserted in preinstalled bases.

The roof needs more details like maybe a rooftop water tank and stairway entry. The plywood base holding the background buildings needs to be disguised with either vegetation or a retaining wall.

Woodland Scenics N Power Substation

I installed a Woodland Scenics N power substation, with their N chain link fence kit, on my triple-wide urban-industrial T-TRAK module.

As I get older and my fingers don't work as well, I'm finding Woodland Scenics built-up models an acceptable substitute for kits and scratchbuilding. The other structures in the scene are N scale building flats, some of which have been made more 3-dimensional with foamcore additions.

The building to the left is an abandoned factory from PTF Designs, a low-relief model installed as is. The one to the right is from Trackside Flats with a foamcore additon to make it 3-dimensional. I added fine ground foam "ivy" to the sidewalls to make up for the fact that they don't have detail. The buildings to the rear are plain flats from Trackside Flats.

The photo details on Trackside Flats N scale flats come out with a really good 3D effect for fire escapes, drain pipes, and so forth in photos. I have more N roof details like ducts to add to the 3D building roofs, and it looks like the ground areas can use more barrels, pallets, vehcles, and so forth a la George Sellios.

Start Of Scenery On Module 15

A little over a mopnth ago, I posted on a new half-depth, single-wide T-TRAK module that would mainly feature contemporary-era low relief photo backdrop buildings. I didn't have anything quite finished for that post, but in January, I posted on one experiment. I finally got the first experimental building mated with another that would fill out the width of the module and got them squared up and attached to the base.

As I described in the January post, the building on the right is from a screen shot off a YouTube video showing the Morrow Hotal just north of Union Station in Washington, DC. The building on the left is a texture I found on the web representing a multilevel parking garage. Both turned out to be close enough to N scale off my printer without the need for any other tweaking.

I follow George Sellios's work on the Franklin & South Manchester Facebook group, and I've been surprised at how often he includes printed buildings and components, some probably off his computer and others commercial products, on his layout. For instance, I think most of the buildings except the water tank in this photo are printed out and braced on cardboard or foamcore, with just a few of his characteristic details added:

The cost of my buildings was negligible, the backing was made from cereal box cardboard stiffened with used fireplace matches, plus the cost of a couple sheets of printer paper and ink.

I'll add ballast and other trackside details to the baseboard.

Surfliner Variations And California-Style Scenery

The Kato Surfliner sets provide only a couple of variations on Surfliner trains. Among other things, there's currently at least one Capitol-San Joaquin Califormia car running in consists down south in the northern California paint. I hope Kato makes this -- or in fact, other cars in that scheme -- available. Also, while Kato provides both a Superliner coach in Amtrak Phase Vi paint and one in Surfliner paint in its complete 8-item set, which are both prototypical, in recent years there have also been two Superliner Sightseer Lounges in Phase VI paint running as substitute cafe cars in Surfliner consists. Generally, the prototype Surfliner sets do not have both a Phase VI Superliner coach and a Superliner coach in Surfliner paint in the same set.

So far, I have just the Kato 4-item set, and while I've installed corridor lights in the SC-44, I have yet to install the 11-211 lighting kits in the coach, cab car, and business class car in that set. However, I have put together a Surfliner consist with both a Superliner Sightseer Lounge and Superliner coach in Phase VI. This gives 5 cars total, which is just 1 car short of the 6-car consist that sometimes runs on the prototype. This is probably perfectly adequate for a small layout like mine.

The Surfliner SC-44s that replaced the F59PHIs that went to Chicago Metra have been less than reliable, and Amtrak P42s and 8-32BWHs often substitute, sometimes with a loco on each end to replace the cab car.

You can also see that I'm starting to play around with more California style scenery on the inside corner Module 10. The new ground cover so far is JTT 0595603 Golden Grassland sheets, which I find at least acceptable for semi-arid California areas. I'm also starting to play around with some oil field details. I got these as 3D prints from eBay, but I also have an N Walthers pumpjack. Here is an example of California oil field scenery: