ScaleTrains BNSF ES44C4

I got one of the new ScxaleTrains ES44s. I was especially interested in the new lighting feature that incorporates both ground lights and walkway lights. These turn out to be a bit of a gimmick, especially since they're normally visible only at night or in low light, while most model railroad operations take place with the room lights on. Here's the full loco:

ScaleTrains didn't update its user documentation to cover the new lightong feature. It turns out that, with the numberboards, the walkway and ground lights turn on automatically with the engine startup function, F8, and you can't turn them off unless you mute the engine, also with F8. Having the numberboards always on is less than optimal, as by at least some railroads' rules, the numberboards should be lit only on the control loco in the consist. To turn off the numberboards in this loco, you need to mute the sound.

I got into a discussion on a Facebook group, and one professional railroader said he'd been trained to leave the walkway lights on permanently, since crews change any time of day or night, and if you're boarding the loco at 10 PM, it's good to have the walkway lights on. But the walkway lights aren't normally visible in daylight anyhow. Here are shots of the walkway lights on the model:

There is also a walkway light above the step on the ngineer's side walkway, which is visible lit in the top photo in this post.

As far as I can tell, the ground lights don't work on my model. Frankly, this is mostly a gimmick, and it's not worth risking shipping damage by returning the loco to ScaleTrains.

ScaleTrains implements by default an annoying ESU feature, "delay on start". This keeps the loco from moving on speed step 1 until the engine revs up. No other sound decoders do this, and it makes consissting and speed matching difficult. You can disable this feature by setting CV 124 to 16.

I had to get this from a Facebook group. ScaleTrains support still hasn't answered my question about it. So there are some minor glitches with these locos, but the basic model looks like a BNSF ES44, which are common as dirt around here.

Progress At Malabar

Last fall I ordered a Yorke Industrial Engine House kit from Dr Ben. This is definitely one of the more elaborate craftsman kits I've done, but I completed it this month and installed it in Malabar:

I'm now thinking about moving the Rusty Rail Shay junk pile casting from behind the Manhattan Transfer roundouse to a position in front of the Yorke engine house in Malabar:

It's more visible and more consistent with the surrounding scenery here. I'll need to update some of the paint and weathering to bring out more of the details. I also added another Rusty Rail junk pile beside the road into town, this one a derelict truck:

Here are a couple other current shots of the area:

More Scenery Progress

I was able to make more progress addingWoodland Scenics Clump Foliage to the rock castings on the cliff face at CP Drains. Again looking at train videos from the eastern US, there are a fair number of scenesd like this. Here's one at the tunnel on CSX at Harpers Ferry:

This is one of the scenes that loosely inspired me. Here's the current progress:

CP Drains is named for the lowest point on John Allen's Gorre & Daphetid. CP Drains is also the lowest point on my layout. You can see the drains in the photo above for which this area is also named.

It suddenly occurred to me last week -- I don't know why it took me so long -- that the way to attach the clump foliage to the near-vertical surfaces is spray adhesive. Gorilla Spray Adhesive works extremely well.

Back To The San Joaquin Valley

Last week I made it back to the Ssn Joaquin Valley after nearly a year. Poking around, I found a few quirky things. A new sign at the San Joaquin Valley Railroad's headquarters in Exeter:

I took a quick trip to the SJVRR's Oil City branch just north of Bakersfield. Not much to see. This is the Tricor Refinery at the end of the line:

I also had alook at the SJVR's line from Exeter to Fresno via Reedley. I found this very traditional industry at Ivanhoe:

The SJVR serves a good many prosperous industries, but very few are single trackside facilities like this one. More often, they're very large, highly secure, fenced off, and hard to photograph.

The prize for quirky this trip goes to a strange facility made from old shipping containers along the UP main line at Famoso.

This seems to load material into trucks that's delivered in old wood chip cars:

Nearby was a new-looking Shuttlewagon at Western Milling in Famoso:

Back To Some Scenery Work

Over the past week, I worked on several wiring and DCC projects, and it was starting to stress me out. So I realized I had a fair amount of scenery materials on hand and several projects I hadn't worked on for several months, so I turned to some lower-stress scenery work. The photo above is a key area I need to finish, where I've built out some rock and hillside formations that hide a sewer pipe.

I have a lot of Norfolk Southern, Clinchfield, Norfolk and Western, and CSX videos showing Appalachian scenery, and I've been watching them to get inspiration for how to scenic this area. The tunnel portal, which I think is from Pre Size, actually looks more like Norfolk and Western/NS portals than I'd thought.

I've always liked John Allen's advice that taking photos of your work helps you improve.

The ballast here is pretty beat up. It's s 25 year old Woodland Scenics, made from crushed walnut shells. This deteriorates and fades over time. It's also been through various disasters ranging from major rewiring to leaking pipes, and I need to redo it with Arizona Rock & Mineral. I also need to add dirt, vegetation, rocks, and so forth below the track in the foreground, and farther to the rear, I need to keep inserting foliage clusters in the rock faces and actual trees higher up and farther into the background.

Depending on how things go, I'll post progress photos.

A Little More Progress On The Richmond Main Street Station

I installed terminal strips and an NCE Illuminator under the baseboard of the T-Trak module and laid a fuil-length strip of Unitrack temporarily along the plaform. I connected this to the main T-Trak modules and made a first test run of a train under power onto the Main St module:

I was delighted that all the Just Plug LEDs worked when I hooked them and the Illuminator up, as their wiring is buried deep in the foamcore shell of the train shed, and they'd have been very difficult to replace.

I was a little surprised that the train shed roof looks so high above the track now that it's been put in place. However, I checked some of my photos, and it does seem to be roughly correct, at least:

I did work directly in N scale from published plans for the train shed on the web, so this may just be a feature of the camera angle. I'm encouraged enough to resume scaling and printing out photos of individual parts of the station structure to glue to the foamcore base.

There's Something Definitely Off About Modeltrainstuff.com

When I first posted about Modeltrainstuff in February, a visitor disagreed in the comments, saying among other things that they offer free shipping for orders over $100. Well, that went away with my last order; apparently they no longer offer this.

If that were the only sign that things have changed, I'd simply grant it and move on, but of course that's another reason they're nothing special now. But in fact, other things are changing, too, and not for the better. One reason I sent them a new order (against my better judgment) was that they were offering Bachmann N DM&IR SD9s for a litlte over $100. Trainworld had a similar special, and I was planning in fact to send for my SD9 from them, but all of a sudden, all the Bachmann SD9s disappeared from Trainworld at once, almost overnight, so Modeltrainstuff was Plan B.

I got my Bachmann SD9, but when I took it out of the box to test it, I found that although the loco would work, and the sounds would function, on DCC using address 3, I couldn't reprogram it with a new address. I tried all kinds of things, short address, long address, program on main, or program track. On the program track I got all kinds of wild messages, but the bottom line was it wouldn't program.

So I reported this to Modeltrainstuff's support portal. I got an immediate reply with an RMA number and a prepaid shipping label to return it. They said they pulled a replacement to send me when they got the first loco back. I packed it up and returned it a day later. I was a little troubled when, a week later, I got an e-mail from the support people saying they hadn't heard from me. I replied saying in fact I'd sent it back, and if they hadn't received it, we needed to get on the problem, but I never got a reply. In fact, a few days later, I got the replacement.

When i tested the replacement (if in fact that's what it was), it had the same problem, worked on DCC using address 3, but I couldn't reprogram the address. My surmise is that all the Bachmann N DM&IR SD9s have the same defect, which is probably why both Modeltrainstuff and Trainworld had them on special, and possibly why Trainworld suddenly took all the Bachmann N SD9s off their site.

I notified Modeltraintuff's support portal of the problem, requested a return label and an RMA, and told them I didn't want a replacemnt, I wanted a credit, since my guess was that all those locos have the same problem.

Then things got flaky. The first support guy, John Weigel, who'd been handling the problem, simply stopped replying. I sent one or two e-mails politely trying to follow up, but several days later, realizing Modeltrainstuff was at best very slow in resolving the problem, and I was stressing out about it, I decided to just dispute the charge with American Express. Why stress over the thing when all I wanted was a credit, and AmEx could give me one just as easily?

Bang, AmEx credited my card by return e-mail -- they didn't just say they'd investigate, which was what they usually do, and credit my account a few weeks later. Nope, they immeidately closed the dispute and gave me the credit. Odd.

A day or so after that, I had an e-mail from another member of the Modeltrainstuff support portal, Cheryl Koblinski, discussing the problem again. I told her about disputing the charge with AmEx and their resolving the issue, but that I wanted to return the loco if she'd send me a prepaid label. I got a day or so of runaround, but no label, so I've still got the SD9, but no shipping label to return it. I told Ms Koblinski that I would interpret this to AmEx, if they asked, that Modeltrainstuff was refusing to send a prepaid return label. She didn't reply.

I sent a hard-copy letter to Modeltrainstuff's director of operations, Frank Wrabel, outlining the problem with names and dates and saying I wanted simply to resolve the problem quickly and courteously, if they'd just send me a prepaid return label. I never got a reply.

At this point, I'm not even sure these people still work at Modeltrainstuff. My experience with the support people in the past had been that they're prompt and respond quickly to messages. This time they didn't. In addition, I'm wondering if they're in such dire financial distress that they don't want to issue credits. Are they stiffing vendors now as well?

I realize that the COVID lockdowns last year hit the model railroad industry hard in general, since even mail order suppliers like Walthers and Trainworld were shut as well as Modeltrainstuff. But Walthers and Trainworld are back to normal -- orders I've sent to Trainworld since reopening last year have ben shipped same or next day. But Modeltrainstuff still has "Please be patient with us due to COVID" messages in its e-mails.

So right now, I have a defective Bachmann SD9 that I've received a credit on, but Modeltrainstuff doesn't seem to care if it comes back. I suppose I'll hang on to it for some period of time, and if I hear nothing more, I'll get around to installing a different decoder in it.

I think back on Carstens Publications's 2014 bankruptcy. They'd apparently been stiffing vendors for some time, and in 2002 I had a tough time getting payment for an article they solicited from me (I finally did get paid). They began to miss issue months, and I heard their printer had put them on a cash-only basis. But when Superstorm Sandy cut their power, that was the end. It sounds like there wasn't a single cause for them to go under, it was a series of things over time.

I'm wondering if COVID hit Modeltrainstuff the same way.