Quick Update: NER Convention & Around the Layout Podcast

Wow - what a couple of weeks! After a huge flurry of activity to prepare for the layout tour during the NE Proto Meet (aka NERPM) - and of course the 'meet and tour itself - I've been a bit sidetracked catching up on some stuff that the Missus graciously let slide while I focused on railroad stuff.

At the risk of its being old news by the time I get around to it, I do plan to do at least a short post on the NERPM - especially since it was the first one I've been able to attend since 2018(!) - but before getting into that, I wanted to do a few quick things:

1) First off, a huge WELCOME! to any folks that are discovering this here blog for the first time, whether from the 'meet, from the tour, or elsewise. I wish I'd had a chance to post some more up-to-date content lately, but stay tuned - more is coming :^)

2) Speaking of content, be sure to check out the the Valley Local website where I've done my best to archive the most helpful content, and for the most up-to-the-minute goings on (like my daily posts of layout progress leading up to the NERPM %^) be sure to join the Valley Local Facebook Group. It's free and we welcome all passengers!

3) And at the risk of over-saturating the internets with Valley Local stuff, be on the lookout for Ray Arnott's Around the Layout podcast. He had me on recently and our discussion will post around July 5.

4) Last, but not least, be sure to make plans to attend this year's NMRA Northeast Regional Convention, which will be held in Windsor, CT September 15-18. It just so happens that the convention email that went out today (copied/pasted below) features a few items you may find familiar...

Now that the end of the (I must admit, very reasonable :^) honey-do list is on the horizon, I'm looking forward to getting back to some RR stuff. I've already started programming the SW-1 and hope to be converting that from a PRR unit to B&M very soon (click here for more on that strange story). And I'd like to get some more layout progress done in time for the NER.

So be sure to stay tuned and thanks again for coming along for the ride!

Friday Fun - October Update

(just a heads up - this is a LONG post, but there are lots of pictures and I think you'll enjoy catching up, especially if you make it all the way to the end...)

I've often said it - when you have enough time to blog, you seldom have enough to blog about. And the corollary is even more true: when you have a TON you could blog about, you don't have the time to write!

Thankfully, I've been more in the latter camp than the former - though the posts here have suffered as a result. But I've tried to keep y'all up to date a bit with the "Wordless Wednesday"s - letting pictures do the work of thousands of words. And I tend to post small, very quick, items on the Valley Local FB group, But as Randy reminded me last night, sometimes it's not enough to just post pictures and a few words - sometimes you have to provide a bit more...

The skinny is - October has been a VERY busy month!

Right after my last ops session at the end of September, we started a MAJOR home improvement project . . .

Don't want to clutter a nice hobby blog with home remodeling stuff, but we're residing most of the house and are totally gutting/redoing the master bed & bath. Thankfully, all I had to do was the demo - the contractors are doing the rest.

While taking a break from demolition (and prompted by BillS, who'd been a sometimes-confused Saybrook Tower operator at my last session), I finally got around to changing the Saybrook Control Panel to reflect the changes in trackwork I'd done literally years ago. . .

If you've been following the blog regularly, you've seen the pics. If you haven't, click here. :^) Suffice it to say, this project was a bit scary (which is why I'd put it off for so long) since any mistake would risk totally screwing up the board I'd worked so hard on. Thankfully, it all came out alright - though inelegantly - at the end. . .

Even the prototype has to make such changes from time to time, so I'm just gonna accept how it looks.

I've also been efforting some engines - trying to make a DEY-3 and a DEY-5 out of a P2k S-2 and an Atlas S-2 - and finishing some freight cars (I've been sessions have been strangely short of cars since Bill needed his returned) . . .

Speaking of locomotives, my first-ever product review came out partway through the month:

Model Railroad News, November, 2021

And speaking of Bill, I was able to attend his first shake-down ops session on Oct. 6:

For more pics and a full report, be sure to check out Randy's blog post about it.

Just a few days later, Pete and I attended the NMRA's annual Northeast Regional Convention in Lowell, MA:

That weekend-long trip really merits its own post - or posts! - so stay tuned for more later...

The next weekend, The Missus and I made our way up to the Worcester Union Station for dinner:

As you can see from the pics, it's been beautifully restored and the restaurant has a cool 1920s/gangster theme. It's definitely worth checking out if you're in the area!

Back to some model railroading though, I found some time to decal a freight car:

It's been a LONG time (almost 4yrs?!) since I've decaled anything, so I was feeling pretty rusty. But as you can see above, the car came out pretty great. Since I'm sure I'm not the only one to be intimidated by decaling, I'm planning a separate post to go over how I did this car.

Someone (irritatingly) has said - "Embrace the Fear and It'll Disappear." Well, I still have a long way to go in that department, especially when it comes to scenery (despite what follows below), but I must've been in the right frame of mind since around the same time I tackled decaling again, I opened up one of my brass steamers to replace the capacitor.  

Apparently, during my ill-fated Shorting Session, K-1b #278 decided to die - at least partially. It would run fine, but the stay-alive didn't work at all. Consequently, it would die going across most of my unpowered frogs.

This is what I found when I opened up the tender - an old NCE keep-alive with (count'em) SIX capacitors! And, apparently, not a one of them working.

Now, I have on-hand a few Loksound Power Paks (ESU's brand of capacitor), but they require three wires to allow them to be easily turned off for programming. Thanks to a recommendation by KayleeZ, I got one of the new TCS KA2 capacitors which have only two wires (just like what I was replacing) and is actually slightly smaller than the PowerPak!

So it ended up being just a matter of cutting the two wires of the old capacitor, matching the wires, and splicing/soldering in the new capacitor. Now the 278 is ready for its next assignment!

As if all that weren't enough to do during a very busy month, I took a little inspiration from the remodeling project and did a little painting...

One of my (growing list of) Canadian friends, DeanT, has been on me for at least 7 years to cover up the pink foam with some paint. And I've just put it off, figuring it'd be a waste of time since I'd take care of it when I did scenery in the area. Well, it's been 7 years and there's still no scenery in these areas. It only ended up taking me a couple of hours and a roller to make Essex to East Haddam look SO much nicer!

So, speaking of scenery. . . .

It's been since January that I started (re)working on the scenery in Dividend, including my first-ever rock cut. And now that my ops session electrical issues have (hopefully!) cleared up - and since I'm staring down ANOTHER ops session, this time with some first-timers - I thought it'd be good to have some actual progress to show...

Here's where I'd left off:

I'd reworked the track here (back in July 2020?!), and added foundations to and pavement around the Hartford Rayon buildings, but the only scenery (other than a nice cut and some rocks) was green and "burnt grass" Woodland Scenics groundfoam, outlines for a house and garage - and a photo backdrop, covered in cellophane to protect it from what was supposed to be imminent additional progress.

And it sat that way for another 10 months :^(

But again summoning whatever motivation has taken hold lately, I decided to get out the static grass applicator and make some progress. ANY progress. I still have a long way to go before this area is complete, but the results so far are encouraging...

Here's an overall view for comparison to the photo above... I stippled a heavy coat of white glue over the groundfoam where I wanted the static grass, and applied the grass liberally. I let it set for a few minutes, then went over it with a vacuum to "pull up" the fibers nice and straight - as many of them as possible anyway (a stocking over the nozzle helps you retain the excess grass). The Missus helped me modify the color of my "field grass" mix to more closely match the backdrop photo.

A closeup of the area with Harford Rayon temporarily placed for the time being.

Closer view of the house & garage. The backdrop is actually only 2" away from the house (which is HO scale, despite how the camera makes it look).

I used a variety of chalks to color the road, which started out as a light gray. This end needs more work, but as you go up the hill you see where I'm headed color-wise.

Closer view of the foreground field and how it blends into the backdrop. PRO (& admittedly accidental) TIP: This area originally had the subterrain (cardboard lattice & plaster cloth) glued to the masonite backdrop. When I later needed to add a photo backdrop, I discovered - OOPS! - that I needed to cut the subterrain away from the masonite to create a slot to slide the photo backdrop down into. This was a blessing in disguise since the resulting gap created a bit of a "lip" between the horizonal foreground scenery and the vertical photo backdrop. As you can see, that little "mistake" really helps fool the eye into blending everything together.

Speaking of blending, I tried the same trick here I did over in East Berlin... had The Missus help me with color matching (remember I'm somewhat colorblind) and just kept working those different colors of chalks into the road until it matched the road on the photo backdrop. Be sure to click on the image to enlarge - I think it came out pretty nice (I've since patched, smoothed, and painted the gotchas on the masonite).

I'm certainly no Tom Johnson or Marty McGuirk, and setting them as my standard more often frustrates me into doing nothing rather than make even incremental progress. All too often, my reach exceeds my grasp. But if there's one lesson I'm learning this month - and RElearning over and over again - it's that you have to at least do SOMETHING in order to get better at it. The road to skill & progress is paved with practice. And you'll never get to where you want to go if you don't get moving.

So that's what I've been doing this month - moving, though in a LOT of different directions at once. The house project continues, my locos are improving, I'm adding more freight cars to my fleet, and I'm even - surprisingly - making some progress with my scenery. I'm in one of those rare modes/moods where I'm seeing opportunities everywhere I look and have enough variety of things to do that I can Always Do Something. 

Long-time readers know my natural bent is to work only linearly - one project at a time. And, unfortunately, like a malfunctioning Roomba, if I hit a wall, I'll just keep banging against that wall - trying to get through it, wasting time. Thankfully, I've discovered with all these project that I can always pivot to something different. If I hit a wall, I just take a step back and go at something else. Roombas work better that way, and model railroaders make more progress that way too.

But it certainly makes life busy - I'm always doing something rather than just sitting around. Right now though, after going over everything that's happened these past few weeks, I just want a nap. And if you've made it this far, you probably need one too.

Till next time...

Friday Fun: NER Convention Ops Session

Way back in May, I was invited to participate in this year's NMRA/Northeast Region Convention operating sessions, which would entail me opening the layout to any convention attendees that wanted a chance to run on the Valley Line. Since my ops sessions had up to that point been limited to those that help build the layout and other close friends, the prospect of inviting "all and sundry" was a little intimidating at first. In fact, I even posted about my concerns here (and subsequently in Model Railroad Hobbyist magazine here).

But I needn't have worried at all. I'd already planned on having some of my regulars as "pilots" on the 4 locals, if only to provide helpful tips/hints to newbie operators along the way. And as it turned out, over 1/2 of the conventioneers that showed up were folks I already knew or was acquainted with. In fact, the only one I knew only by email was the guys responsible for organizing the NER sessions themselves. So I figured all would be well.

And it was. In fact, like most (if not all) of my sessions, it was a blast. Heh - at least *I* thought so. Getting to see the layout come to life is the goal of every session host; it's the operators that have the challenge of navigating the session that the host created.

This session was like my previous ones with a few new innovations. Now, instead of each crew having to report to the agent in each town to get their paperwork and go "on sheet," they sign a Train Register and get their paperwork from new boxes I've installed at each station.  Click here for more detail on that process and how it's evolved.

I also decided to try staggering the crew start times to reduce congestion, especially at Old Saybrook. When the railroad has two-man crews on the locals, I can easily require 11 people to operate the layout (8 on locals, 1 "mole" in each staging yard, 1 A/O). And with 2 locals in Saybrook at the same time, other locals waiting to get started, and mainline trains going through as well, it can get very crowded. I didn't want to reduce crew size (and limit the fun!), so this time I got the Valley Local started first (they have the longest day), got the Airline local out next (and out of the way), and just had PDX-1 (by far the shortest job) be the only train with a 1-man crew.

That did the trick - everybody staggered out nicely and didn't run into any congestion. Now, if I could just do something about the liftouts/duckunders.......

So with all that as prologue, here are some photos from a great afternoon running trains on the Valley Line:

Mike Redden, Randy Hammill & Pete Luchini - Randy is the head operator at New London/Fort Yard staging (representing "points east" to Boston) and is explaining why some changes are necessary. Mike is acting as Randy's apprentice, getting qualified to run the yard in the future. And Pete is sole-operator of PDX-1 in Old Saybrook.

Meanwhile, at the "other end of the line" in New Haven/Cedar Hill Yard staging (representing "points west" to New York), Tom Derwin is getting another eastbound train ready to go, while Dave Ramos and Al Oneto are on PDX-2, trying to figure out how to switch Essex.

Further up the Valley Line in Wethersfield, James Mayo acts as conductor on HDX-7 (The Valley Local) while Sudro Brown keeps a firm hand on the throttle.

Heading back down the Valley and banging a westward turn at Middletown, we find Bill Schneider and Howard Miller working the Airline local at Mill Hollow.

A better shot of Tom, Dave and Al - all smiles . . .

. . . . until they realize they're still not done switching Essex.

As typically happens - on the model railroad as well as on the prototype - the Airline local and the Valley local are in Middletown at the same time. Well, actually, in this case, they're in the "Middletown Aisle" at the same time - HDX-7 is actually still in Rocky Hill at this point.

After finishing Essex, Dave and Al discovered that the rest of the work goes pretty quickly. Here they are back at the south end of the Valley Line in Old Saybrook having already done their work up to East Haddam and back. They're waiting for permission from the dispatcher (um, who's taking the photo) to occupy Main Track 1 so they can  continue to Cedar Hill Yard and home.

Despite my initial misgivings - especially with regard to crew size/congestion - this was probably one of the most successful sessions to date - definitely since the Shore Line got into full operation. The layout ran well (with only a couple minor glitches at the beginning, despite having JUST tested everything an hour beforehand!), there were no major incidents, and everybody seemed to have a great time.

But - as is always the case with ops sessions - a few punch list items surfaced:

• Some couplers have developed issues - specifically, I need to (re)check the coupler heights on all the DER-1s (DL-109s) as well as the centering on the DERS-1b (RS-1) and a few freight cars.
• Even though I distinguished operating notes for the Shore Line trains (so the operators know clearly which notes pertain to them), I'm considering just creating separate sheets for each of the Shore Line operators to make the schedule easier to follow and the staging easier to execute.
• I need to check the trackwork at the east (left) end of the Saybrook station area, as well as tweak the Airline liftout. Seems about this time every year I have a similar issue, due to seasonal expansion/contraction. No derailments (thankfully), but any height-mismatched couplers would tend to disengage in these areas.
• And - a first for this session - the main power toggle switch got bumped and shut down the layout. So I'm considering putting a toggle guard around it to prevent future unintended shutdowns. %^)
• Finally, signing of the Train Registers in each town was spotty. So I'm considering returning to in-person reporting to the Agent. Then they'll HAVE to report in - if only to know what work they have to do in town >:^)

Comparing this list to previous punch lists, it's gratifying to see that the quirks are being worked out of the layout over time. That sort of improvement is one of the reasons to host regular operating sessions - but it's certainly not the most important reason.

THAT is to have a chance to have friends - and future friends - over to share in the love of railroading and help get the time machine we've created off the ground and running.

Thanks again to Mike, Randy, Pete, Dave, Al, Tom, Howard, Bill, Sudro, and James for making it such a great day! I'm already looking forward to the next session (as soon as I can get through the punch list...)