Brass Update - More Viewliners

 Back in 2017, I was able to get my hands on a single Viewliner sleeper, which was a brass model imported by Overland from South Korea.

Blog Post about it.

I am pleased to announce that I was able to source 3 additional cars, with unique road numbers, off eBay in 2020.

They will grace the Silver service trains as operating sessions restart sometime in late 2021 or early 2022.

Interestingly, on eBay right now, there is a Walthers run Viewliner with a buy it now price of $199.99 on it; it is a BIN listing. Auction Link Crazy stuff. I note that I only paid another hundred bucks for a brass car on all of them that I purchased.

No new releases of Viewliners seems to be in the offing and I haven't see any movement about a Viewliner II model either being mass produced.

There is, again on eBay, 2 listings of interest.

First is a custom produced Viewliner II baggage car. Viewliner II Auction As I write this, current bid is $100, on a car that has a detail level right out of the 1990's Athearn blue box kits.

Even better, another 3D printed car, for a baggage dorm Viewliner (which I didn't know was a thing), with a $289 BIN price on it. Viewliner II Dorm? Detail level is better than this first car I linked, but not by much. You can see the layers from the 3D printing process when you examine the car end shot.

Fascia Turnout Control

Operators of version 1 remember that there was not any on layout control of mainline turnouts. You had to either call the dispatcher or have a DT400 throttle to move turnouts.

As the new layout uses LCC for the accessory bus, there isn't a direct link where you can use the throttle to control turnouts. There is now a LCC-Loconet gateway, but as I do not want folks to use their throttles for turnout control, an alternative solution was needed until the full Dispatcher CTC panel is built.

Enter my solution - a small PCB with LEDs and pushbuttons. The bare boards are small enough to be "prototyping" size from the various Far East board houses and cost $.50 each.

I have made a couple of different versions so I could figure out what I liked the best in practice.

Green LED means turnout is "normal"; while a red LED being lit means "reversed" or "thrown", depending on what sort of term you like.

Here's the panel at Milford on duty.

Subroadbed Complete to North Acca

 Benchwork and subroad have been completed into North Acca. On the RF&P, this was control point NA.

I've gone back to 3/4" ply on the lower level. This plywood is a really nice 6 ply option that I sourced at Home Depot in 2020 before the great wood debacle of 2021.

More shots are in the gallery at richmond-terminal.org

Updates coming

 Summer is flying by rapidly and while I have made progress on the layout, the web presence has suffered.

I am working to get pictures together so I can put some updates on the blog.