After some steady work on the HO layout, I took a break to make some progress on a triple-wide T-Trak module. The idea is something on or close to the Northeast Corridor, to use Amtrak, New Jersey Transit, or Virginia Rail Express equipment. Here's the current state:
The catenary bridges are the Kato 4-track version with the bases cut down. They're still removable for work on the module or moving it.
One lesson I'm learning with T-Trak is that it's generally a better idea on longer modules to use Unitrack sections only at the ends, to keep the ability to connect modules with Unijoiners, but to use other track like Atlas or Peco in the middle, especially if you're adding switches. Unitrack N switches just aren't reliable or robust. When I did N scale 40 years ago, I found Peco switches were pretty much bulletproof, and I've gone back to them now, with the attached twin-coil switch machines operated by Digitrax DS-52 decoders.
I've finally been able to assemble a train of the Atlas N New Jersey Transit double-deckers. I had this in mind when they came out with the N ALP-45DP, but the first run of these had only one speed, very slow, so I returned the loco and vowed to wait for the second run, which everyone hoped would be an improvement. The bottom line seems to be that the speed in the second run varies, but it's better than the first, so things are at least accptable.
The lettering, as well as the body detailing, is very good. The lettering looks good even in photos blown up several times the size of the model. Car 7006 below is a cab car. You can see the loco-style number board on the left end. NJT has 61 cab cars numbered 7000-7061.
Car 7009 is also a cab car. All the cars are lighted, which is a big plus, but unfortunately the cab car doesn't alternate head and tail lights. Kato cab cars are set up for a decoder that will do this on DCC, but again, this isn't an option on these cars. You'd have to find a way to light the cab car head and tail lights separately, install LEDs, and find a decoder to control the function on the Atlas cars.
Car 7207 is a car with toilet. NJT has 99 of these numbered 7200-7298.
Car 7545 is a car without toilet. NJT has 168 of these numbered 7545-7677.
I've seen complaints about how these cars track. With that in mind, I backed off each truck screw a quarter turn to give them a little more play, and I had no problem running them in either push or pull.
I've been following a French railfan and modeler's channel called MiniTrak by Simply Railway. Here he's running an NJT train:
My upgrade amd Just Plug lighting project has reached Hill St in Zenith. As part of the project, I realized I had some space to add another building between an SLM Public Library and an old metal Woodland Scenics corner bar kit. This had been just a parking lot that contained some blah vehicles that were there because they were mostly out of view.
I measured the space and compared it to the footprints of several available kits, but the one building that came closest was the Woodland Scenics Built-&-Ready J W Cobbler. I decided I've paid my dues building enough kits that I can get away with a ready-to-run, especially as this one has a lot of little added details -- so many that I had to remove a few to fit it in place. I think it looks pretty good where I've got it.
The Built & Ready building includes a Juat Plug LED that basically illuminates just the store window on the ground floor, which you can more or less see in the photo.
I've also added a Just Plug LED to the corner bar next door.
The photos suggest I still need to level the buildings here better. I need to take a level to both the public library and the J W Cobbler, as well as to give the cobbler a final dirting in.
I did several decoder installs over the past week. The most straightforwad was a Digitrax DH165A0 in an Atlas Classic Katy RS-3, which is a PC board that matches the various older Atlas light boards and fits in the same mounts above the motor. The process is complicated, first, because Atlas uses the red wire for negative on the motor leads but positive on the LED leads; and second, because the Atlas wire at least on this run is pretty brittle and doesn't seem well suited even to being resoldered on the new Digitrax contacts. But I got it done.
Next was a Bachmann Northern Pacific S-4. This is one of my favorite locos, and I'd installed a Digitrax DH126PS some years ago, but at some point it just stopped running. I took out the decoder and tested it in another loco; the decoder worked fine, so I figured it had to be a problem with the PC board. However, the PC board part on the Bachmann site was about as expensive as a whole new loco, so I dropped the idea for a while. Then I find a board that was much more reasonably priced on eBay and ordered it.
However, I decided that before I went to the trouble of replacing the old board and re-soldering all the leads to the new one, I'd give the new DH126PS a try in the old board, and just like that, the loco ran again. So now I have an extra Bachmann S-4 PC board, which you can see to the right of the loco in the photo.
It occurred to me that I have several old Walthers Train Line locos from the 1990s that I haven't converted to DCC, and they don't have any PC boards or 8-pin sockets, so I'll use this extra board to convert one of those. It has resistors for LEDs as well as an 8-pin socket.
Next is an Atlas Classic Cotton Belt RSD-5 that had zinc pest in its frame. This swelled so badly that it actually broke the running board-steps in several places, so I had to glue this back together when I replaced the frame with a new Atlas part. The photos show the loco on the road to recovery.
I was making a stab at cleaning off my workspace and got througbh a backlog of rolling stock projects. The first is a brand new Accurail Canadian Pacific boxcar with a newsprinit service shield. I was delighted to see this, as when I spent time along the Connecticut River in the 1960s, I would see CP trains headed to White River Junction with dozens of these cars.
The second is a ScaleTrains Havelock gon kit. Unlike its ready-to-run products, the ScaleTrains site has very little information on the prototypes for these cars. It looks like only the Burlington and BN roadnames are correct, but N&W did have some cars more of less like these. This one will still need a COTS stencil and ACI label. I actually don't recommend this kit; the fit of the parts is difficult, and the paint isn't great.
A Walthers Mainline NS hopper with Smokebox Graphics conspicuity stripes. I checked the web, and these cars are still around with these stripes, but no two have them applied the same way.
A Walthers Mainline Railgon restenciled for the Seaboard System. Again, after 40 years, these cars still have the original paint and SBD patch, now with conspicuity stripes.
I began my layout about 1990, in pre-DCC block contol days. On top of that, I was mostly using twin-coil switch machines recycled from earlier layouts. After relocating to our current home in 1993, I at least stopped buying new twin coil switch machines, eventually replacing all of the existing ones with Tortoises. In 2012, I coonverted to DCC, but it was still fed from an NCE PowerCab via the existing block wiring. Several years after that, I bit the bullet, added an SB5 booster, and replaced the block wiring with a 14 AWG power bus.
The result has been old local switch panels still in place, often with the old push buttons and toggles also still in place but no longer connected to anything. I've begun a project to bring these up to date, removing the old analog hardware, adding labels corresponding to the current DCC accessory addresses for the switches to the track schematic, and making some kind of use for the remaining holes where the old block toggles used to be:
This is the West Zenith local panel. Part of its adaptive reuse is as a place to mount JustPlug hubs for structure lighting. While the track schematic is still useful as a way to locate the new switch addresses for DCC accessory control, vthe only remaining control hardware on the board is two push buttons for Kadee 309 electric uncouplers. However, since I removed the 16 volt AC wiring that used to control the Tortoises, I've had to start a new project to restore it to the Kadee 309s.
Things are thus still a mess, and I never got around to painting the fascia. Someday. . .
I've been on a roll installing Just Plug LEDs and light diffusing window film in my decades-old building kits. The one below is the back of a Magnuson urethane Bank of Victoria Falls from the 1970s.
This one was easy, because the building as I assembled it is basically a three-sided shell that fits around a column that supports the upstairs in my basement layout room. Thus I could install the window film behind existing windows without the need to disassemble anything to get access. The slight downside is that the only windows that can be lit are the ones you see in the photo, since the column takes up the rest of the space inside.
