Saturday, September 27, 2014

Op Session #2

Our second ops session is in the books. The two Tims ("Sr"/TimHar47 & "Jr"/Model Railcast Show) again handled the Pavonia / Millvile/Penns Grove yard (Brown tower).

"Sr." aligning turnouts
"Jr": Ooooh, we just missed it by that much!
Following a couple of commuter runs (RDCs & a Geep with two P70 coaches), they handled both a coal & a merchandise transfer from Philadelphia, made up the Millville local and sent it to Bob (Ntrainz1 in Red Oak tower) so he could switch Westville & Woodbury.

The Millville local entering Westville.
Dropping a load of sand at Buzby Bros. cement facility.
Picking up 3 reefers from the south Woodbury icing facility
...and leaving one to be iced.
Since "Jr" took a lot of aggravation (Conrail98) from his yard duty last op session, he wanted me to display this picture of the empty Pavonia yard.:

What he did not want me to tell you was that two trains were stacked up waiting to get into the yard!:

Anyway we had a great time together and raised the laugh quotient at least 10%!

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Things That Should Be Illegal To Give Rick!

There are certain things that should be illegal to place into my hands. A soldering iron/pencil is one of them. (Believe me, I'm much safer with a gun!)

Since I have another operating session coming up this Saturday and we experienced a couple of electrical continuity issues in the yard ladders during the last op session, brilliant me decided to solder many of the electrical joints and rail joiners. That was probably a mistake!

Even though I attempted to heat from the inside of the rail and solder the outside I ended up with multiple blobs on the inside track surface. Hours later of filing I still needed to do something about the shininess.

Since Woodland Scenics' brown paint pen won't cover metal, I started by painting with some of the black blob acrylic paint I use on my river surfaces. When that dried, I then covered it with the brown paint pen. When that dried I  then scraped the rail surface and tested everything.

With the exception of electrical issues with some of the Peco points (a problem that will continually require tweaking) everything now runs. My only concern is one turnout where the heat loosened the frog rail joint. I am really good at trading one problem for another!

The op session should be interesting!

Solder Blobs:

Black Gook:

Tie Brown:

Cleaned & Ready To Go: