Santa Susanna Model Railroad Club in Pictures - NMRA 2024 Long Beach

 I attended the NMRA National Convention in Long Beach, CA, in August 2024.

As in some years past, I did the LDSig layout tour. One of the layouts on the tour this year was the Santa Susanna Model Railroad Club. The Club is housed in the former Southern Pacific Santa Susanna Station.

What follows is a sampling of photos that I found interesting. If you find yourself in the Los Angeles area, this is worth the ~60 minute drive up into the foothills.

We were able to get a nice depot tour and presentation from one of the historical society docents that was at the depot that day. His presentation was outstanding and engaging. He was able to take my group upstairs in the depot, which is the living space for the station agent. In Santa Susanna's case, the Agents were a husband and wife team.

Upstairs in the depot is the living area for the station agent - couldn't resist a cat on chair picture.

More shots on the gallery at richmond-terminal.org. If you are interested in more information about the club, you can check out the Club website for the depot. The Museum website here.

Please Handle and Couple Cars Carefully - An Example of Why

 During my pre-session briefing, I ask all operators to handle cars carefully, and couple with care.

HO scale frieght cars are beautifully detailed these days, but all those great looking details are fragile, and subject to damage.

I show you an example of what happens when cars aren't treated gently.

Op Session Follow Up - Engine #17 Performance

 One of the joys about operating sessions is having problems discovered by your crew.

During the previous session, an operator let me know about poor performance by one of the diesel switchers in Acca yard. This is a MP15 model by Atlas that I have had for many years. It has a standard TCS decoder installed, as it was a DC locomotive from the factory.

After taking it off the layout and putting a note on it, I also added it to my list of gripes.

This week, I took a look at it and noticed it was on the list from the February session.

Some troubleshooting during the session suggested that this loco had a low fuel tank, and I thought the plastic cover had just loosened, so should be an easy fix.

You can see where the tank has been rubbing on the trackwork:

After some additional investigation, I realized the frame on this engine has warped. I assume this has zinc pest, like many other engines from this time period. Very disappointing.

It will go into the case; maybe someday I will be about to source a replacement frame.

Doswell Changes, Part 1

After multiple operating sessions, I decided that the track layout inside of Doswell wasn't what I wanted.

So, I ripped up all the track and roadbed, to start afresh.

After a bunch of measuring and test fitting, I realized that I needed to revamp the benchwork as well.

Here's the benchwork re-completed:

And now I'm starting to layout some track options: 

More pictures are on the gallery on richmond-terminal.org

Customizing Resistor wheelsets

 As most readers know, the freight car fleet on the Richmond Terminal is equiped with resistor wheelsets to make sure that all cars are detected on the line, and that the signal system reflects that fact.

To do that, I've used Intermountain axles that I prepared and installed.

Some freight car truck designs do not support the IM axles and require a different approach.

These are Athearn coal cars - the bathtub style cars, BTW.

Glue a 10K 1206 size resistor, and then paint to the wheels with conductive paint or glue. Problem solved.

September Operating Session Recap

We had a full house for the operating session in September.

I tore up the trackage in Doswell in late February, and it wasn't put back together yet, so trains in and out of Bremo staging were annulled, and other trains modified.

Other than that, trains ran and the crew enjoyed themselves.

Crew Assignments

Dick M - Acca YM

Mike B - Acca AYM

John V- Acca AYM

Scott L - Traffic Manager

Road Crew:

Bryce L

Bob S

Bill W

Bob R

Jerry R

The crew identified a couple of issues for remediation during the session that I will be working on before the next session. I will do a separate blog post about the cars that ended up on the RIP track, as that is interesting in its own right.

Now, onto the pictures:

Bob has Amtrak well in hand as he approaches Acca yard.

Bill plans his next move in Doswell, as Jerry surveys the south side of Acca.

More photos!

Timonium Train Show, in a few pictures

I wanted to share a couple of shots with the audience from the train show in Timonium, MD, the first weekend of February.

I had to do a bit of shopping, and after I finished, I took my camera through a bunch of the layouts and took some photos of things that struck my fancy.

Enjoy!

This would have been better with a tripod and a different lens.. And yes, that bridge is VERY long.

PRR style signals and catenary. Looks great!

RF&P Car spotted!

An RF&P wide nose unit? Sign me up!

I just wish this wasn't under the coaling tower!

More photos can be found in the gallery at richmond-terminal.org

Adding an Interchange

 A suggestion from one of the usual suspects around Christmas time was to add an interchange track in Acca to add another "universal industry" to the railroad.

Long time readers and operators will remember that version 1 of the Richmond Terminal had a Norfolk Southern interchange south of Acca off the mainline.

Since the tail of the drill track wasn't being used much at all, I figured would could use that as a base and proceed from that point.

I dropped in a curved turnout recovered from the previous layout to give an additional industry track, or be used as a deconflict between the drill and new interchange track.

A couple pieces of flex carried me around the corner.

When I decide to complete the Acca Wye, this track will need to be removed, but with the fact that I do not have a timeframe on that currently, this makes a bunch of sense to add, operationally.

And done. I made a custom bumper out of some foam sheet I had laying around.

I didn't realize that I didn't complete the DCC wiring until this last op session, but I have already fixed that.

A few more pictures can be found in the gallery on richmond-terminal.org

Resistor Axles, Tank Cars and working around all the different truck designs

As my long term readers and any operators of the Richmond Terminal know, the layout is signaled.

How it works is based on the system being able to detect that something - a engine, a passenger car, a freight car, an entire train - is in a block of track. Since I am using DCC, the easiest way to figure out if something is there, is by measuring that there is some amount of current draw.

Engines are easy, as they draw power, even when they aren't moving since the decoder does need a bit of power no matter what (sound decoder or not). For passenger cars, if they are lighted, again easy.

For your standard freight car, they don't draw any power, so that's a problem.

As my rolling stock is standardized on metal wheelsets, I have made a bunch of resistor wheelsets, where I glue a small surface mount resistor and then use conductive ink or paint to make a circuit. You can take a look at a prior blog post where I talk about making a batch of resistor wheelsets here. I fixed the resistor size - they are actually 1206 size SMT resistors. 10K Ohm, 1/8 watt - on that post when I realized I erred.

My standard replacement axle is Intermountain. They sell the axles in bulk packs of 100. They fit in a wide variety of truck designs, but for some truck designs, they do not fit correctly.

As an alternative, especially for cars that the factor axles are plastic, while the wheels themselves are metal, I glue the resistor in the middle of the axle, and then connect each side to the wheel with conductive paint.

It seems that tank cars are a consistent issue with being incompatible with the Intermountain option.

I have been checking the tank cars and also spotting any without Kadee couplers installed, so I grab them for the coupler replacement, and take the opportunity to handle the resistor wheelset issue.

The paint does take a bit to try, so doing this can tie up the foam cradle for a day.

Cradle off the bench so I can do something else.

A Retrofit

Had to pull this LCC node out, and add a terminal block to feed it DC power, as this leg of the LCC network was having some power issues, causing the last node in the chain to brownout and stop responding.

Thankfully, I have a 12V DC bus already placed around the layout, so I just had to pull wire, solder some spades on, install a terminal strip, and then wire to the node. About an hour's worth of work.

Green and White 14AWG wire is the 12V DC bus; red and black 12AWG is my DCC bus. Cat5 is LCC bus, in this shot. The gray cable is Digitrax Loconet.

It's a bit tough to see, but I had to write down the colors of wire from the tortoises to the nucleo node.

Dwarfs in Glen Allen

 Built two dwarfs, using Atlas heads; used one Tomar head.

These signals are controlled by a Nucleo, so the signal head driver is a combo of a logical signal head inside JMRI, and a Nucleo DevKit under the layout.

A few words about switch machines..

 As I assume most readers know, my turnouts that aren't manually controlled by Caboose Industries ground throws (mostly in Acca, with a few others here and there), are thrown by Tortoise machines from Circuitron.

The Tortoise is probably one of, if not the most, well known "slow motion" switch machine in the hobby. The green case is instantly recognizable.

There hasn't been any competitors with similar footprints and motion that have had what I would call significant success in the market. There have been options, certainly, and one of those is the Cobalt machine.

I bought one to try some years ago. I installed it on a turnout in Brooke that goes to the E&P interchange, as at the time, I did not have any more Tortoises available to install, and it felt like a great time to try it, as the area where it needed to be installed has a bunch of DCC bus wire, LCC cables and other assorted stuff in the physical space.

After a couple of months and 4 or so sessions, I can report that you should save your money.

Yes, the cobalt is smaller. Yes, making the connection is super easy with the spring loaded connector.

But it isn't as powerful, and it is too slow to respond, causing your operators to hit the button multiple times, making it appear to be broken.

Maybe as a semaphore driver, it would be better. I don't know. This one is free to a good home.

Cobalt out, Tortoise in.

Lighting Follow Up

 This is a short follow up to my original underdeck lighting post here. As I was reworking the block detection, I had to move the LED lighting around a bit, and took the opportunity to take another picture.

This is a great example of how I used the aluminium L bracket, and stuck the LED strips to it, and then bridged from one strip to another.

The yellow tape  at the end closest to the camera is kapton tape. Very handy for stuff like this, as well as decoder installs, etc.

I buy the channel in 8' lengths, generally, and cut it to size with a hacksaw. You can see this has the factory barrel connector end at one side.

Tidying Up

 Got tired of looking at it, so out came the white glue and a acid brush.

Maybe there will be paint and grass and trees at some point..

Signal Reworking

One of the outcomes when you operate is learning what changes need to be made to the layout to make operations smoother, more realistic, etc.

The railroad is maturing, which is giving me a chance to go back and install signals in areas that haven't been a priority, or to rework an area where the original signal install isn't reflective of how that area should be setup.

One of these locations that needed a net new install is the industrial turnout in Greendale, between the GN control point, and the Glen Allen (GA) control point.

There is a fair amount of industrial spots in this area, and both main lines have turnouts in place. I needed dwarf signals to protect these turnouts. One of them is currently manually thrown with a ground throw, so that will need to be modified to be thrown via a switch machine first, before signals get installed.

For the turnout that is currently controlled by a button (and will be controlled by the dispatcher in the future), I built a coulple of dwarfs and installed them.

I also took this opportunity to cut away a bunch of cork roadbed, and make the area look more realistic from a lineside perspective.

I had planned for a set of intermediate (repeater) signals between North Doswell and South Milford. This is matched up with Rutherglen on the prototype.

These are NJ International signals, with snow hoods. I will need to put something on the fascia in this area, since it can be hard to see these from the aisleway.

A spot that needed to be reworked is inside Doswell towards the north end.

At the turnout that branches into track 4 from track 3, I originally had 2 high signals in this area. As I needed to only protect the turnout state, and not give advancement permission, I built and installed two dwarfs in their place.

The high signal in the background is for traffic that will be using the crossover, northbound, and getting clearance to enter the RF&P mainline

More pictures can be found in the gallery at richmond-terminal.org

January Operations - A Famous Photographer Visits

 During the January operating session, the Richmond Terminal hosted a (in)famous model railroad photographer, Wayland Moore.

Your layout host is always busy during a session and finds it difficult to take a bunch of quality photos, but having a visiting shutterbug was amazing.

Here are but a sampling of shots from Wayland.

Engineer Dan Moore inspects his train at North Acca prior to departure, looking to make sure his paperwork matches.

It would be impossible to show all the great shots he took without making this blog entry extremely long, so I will pick a couple that stood out to me.

Road freight goes by the new Intermediate signal installation at Rutherglen. Photo by Wayland Moore.

I appreciate that many of the shots showed trains going by signals. Management puts a significant amount of effort into the signalling system.

Traffic manager discusses the yard at the start of the session.

A shot that never occurred to me - the ready engine tracks.

A highlight for many that I've never captured - the food!

The crew debriefs after the session, while enjoying desert.

More photos from O. Wayland Moore can be found at richmond-terminal.org

January Op Session

The January 2024 Operating Session is in the books.

One major failure occurred, a single rear end collision. Many HO scale passengers were injured when their cars rolled over.

The engineer didn't seem upset.

Root cause was determined to be a signalling system failure where a clear aspect was given due to a occupied block not being checked.

A tragedy, and management regrets the incident.

Besides the one lamentable incident, the session proceeded well. All trains were run and a good time was enjoyed by all.

Keep your eyes open for the next session invite for February 2024.

More photos can be found at richmond-terminal.org