***CRIMSON RED DAILY THREAD***

[Coach Hank Crisp]

I've got my own personal train set if you want to play.

Click here for link

We all grew up around and working summers around these trains. I can drive, fire, and brake these trains (but not at the same time). I've never been on the mainline, but I've moved cars around in the yard with these Shay Engines. They have airbrakes but we still use the mechanical brakes, mostly for the tourist's benefit.

I have 6 of these MTH HO scale SD70ACe diesels. They are DCC command control with sound and lights. They have two 1" speakers mounted in fuel tank. Have 28 functions. My DCC system is Digitrax.

Digitrax - Digital Command Control. 12VDC on rails constantly. Then the throttle sends digital signals to locomotive decoder you want to run. Each engine has a decoder with operating sound, lights, and MU functions to let it talk to it with the throttle.Turn on lights, sound, different functions when you are running multi-units.

 Set the address to each loco ( locomotive road number XXXX )and it is stored in walkaround throttle. When running the throttle you pick which diesel, or diesels in my case you want to run by road number. MU them together.


I have 3 Union Pacific and  3 BNSF ( Burlington Nothern Santa Fe) roadnames.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vknouq3uTJQ" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vknouq3uTJQ</a>

[SUPERCOACH]

I've got my own personal train set if you want to play.

Click here for link

We all grew up around and working summers around these trains. I can drive, fire, and brake these trains (but not at the same time). I've never been on the mainline, but I've moved cars around in the yard with these Shay Engines. They have airbrakes but we still use the mechanical brakes, mostly for the tourist's benefit.

I have 6 of these MTH HO scale SD70ACe diesels. They are DCC command control with sound and lights. They have two 1" speakers mounted in fuel tank. Have 28 functions. My DCC system is Digitrax.

Digitrax - Digital Command Control. 12VDC on rails constantly. Then the throttle sends digital signals to locomotive decoder you want to run. Each engine has a decoder with operating sound, lights, and MU functions to let it talk to it with the throttle.Turn on lights, sound, different functions when you are running multi-units.

 Set the address to each loco ( locomotive road number XXXX )and it is stored in walkaround throttle. When running the throttle you pick which diesel, or diesels in my case you want to run by road number. MU them together.


I have 3 Union Pacific and  3 BNSF ( Burlington Nothern Santa Fe) roadnames.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vknouq3uTJQ" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vknouq3uTJQ</a>

I have 2 of these on a 4 x 8 layout I am building for the kids (OK it is for me as much as them).

[Coach Hank Crisp]

I've got my own personal train set if you want to play.

Click here for link

We all grew up around and working summers around these trains. I can drive, fire, and brake these trains (but not at the same time). I've never been on the mainline, but I've moved cars around in the yard with these Shay Engines. They have airbrakes but we still use the mechanical brakes, mostly for the tourist's benefit.

Nestled in the mountains of West Virginia, Cass Scenic Railroad State Park offers excursions that transport you back in time to relive an era when steam-driven locomotives were an essential part of everyday life.

That's cool WV. I have never seen an operational shay locomotive.

I am a member of NMRA ( National Model Railroad Association). HQ's in Chattanogga TN. They held the Southeast Regional Model RR Convention in Chattanogga on Memorial Day weekend  in 1992. We traveled up there and stayed at the Chattanogga Choo Choo Hotel where rooms are rr cars. Went to MNRA HQ's on Saturday. They had steam excursions from the HQ's making a small trip and back to HQ's.

I have been wanting to do it again. Norfolk and Southern is getting back in the steam excursion business and will have some trips this summer. They retired their steam program back in 1995, and are restarting it this coming year.

We want to go to Steamtown in Pa.

Click here for link

Yeah. Those Shays are special. They work harder now than when they were a working logging operation because the load in the old days only came DOWN the mountain. They say we have a maximum grade of 14% on the state park track but I think they'll handle much more. I've seen pictures where the number plates were pushing snow!

I have a picture of a shay ( Warrior Gulf Navigation Company's ) pulling cars in Holt working the tracks to "Empire Coke Company"  near the Nucor Steel's Tuscaloosa plant now. I have picture on another computer. If I use that one tomorrow I will post it.

[BAMAWV]

I've watched "Unstoppable" about 10 times. People that don't know trains miss a lot. I could spend a week watching train movies. Train music in-between features. I could spend a week looking at caboose (no fat girls please) pictures,--the ones that have been remodeled. There is one at the state park that has wood stove (coal), double bunks with leather mattresses, large view windows. It's a great place to spend the day.

[BAMAWV]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BMikA_s4Og" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BMikA_s4Og</a>&feature=related

Johnny Cash-- "Life is like a Mountain Railway"

[Coach Hank Crisp]

I've got my own personal train set if you want to play.

Click here for link

We all grew up around and working summers around these trains. I can drive, fire, and brake these trains (but not at the same time). I've never been on the mainline, but I've moved cars around in the yard with these Shay Engines. They have airbrakes but we still use the mechanical brakes, mostly for the tourist's benefit.

I have 6 of these MTH HO scale SD70ACe diesels. They are DCC command control with sound and lights. They have two 1" speakers mounted in fuel tank. Have 28 functions. My DCC system is Digitrax.

Digitrax - Digital Command Control. 12VDC on rails constantly. Then the throttle sends digital signals to locomotive decoder you want to run. Each engine has a decoder with operating sound, lights, and MU functions to let it talk to it with the throttle.Turn on lights, sound, different functions when you are running multi-units.

 Set the address to each loco ( locomotive road number XXXX )and it is stored in walkaround throttle. When running the throttle you pick which diesel, or diesels in my case you want to run by road number. MU them together.


I have 3 Union Pacific and  3 BNSF ( Burlington Nothern Santa Fe) roadnames.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vknouq3uTJQ" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vknouq3uTJQ</a>

I have 2 of these on a 4 x 8 layout I am building for the kids (OK it is for me as much as them).

Cool SC. I have the Digitrax Chief system with the RM400? throttle. I have a muli-level layout, I am going to buy another Digitrax booster and that will give two power zones, lower level and upper level. I think those boosters are 8 amp a piece.

[Coach Hank Crisp]

I've watched "Unstoppable" about 10 times. People that don't know trains miss a lot. I could spend a week watching train movies. Train music in-between features. I could spend a week looking at caboose (no fat girls please) pictures,--the ones that have been remodeled. There is one at the state park that has wood stove (coal), double bunks with leather mattresses, large view windows. It's a great place to spend the day.

I haven't seen "Unstoppable" yet. The movie has Denzel Washington and Chris ( Pine?) Captain in last Star Track movie. At theatre, no one wanted to go set it with me. To boring!

 

[SUPERCOACH]

I'm taking the kids to ride the North Pole Limited in a couple of weeks.  It is at the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in Chattanooga, right behind the NMRA headquarters.  We go every year.

Click here for link

We are members at the museum, which entitles us to ride the Missionary Ridge Local any time we want for free.  They have about 3 miles of track that originally belonged to Southern Railway but was abandoned when the pre-civil war Missionary Ridge tunnel become a bottle neck and the main line was relocated to bypass Missionary Ridge.

We go several times each year.  It never gets old.  When the kids get a little older they will be able to ride in the engine.

[BAMAWV]

So y'all can throw switches electronically? Just like the big boys. Track status gives "same track" alerts?

[SUPERCOACH]

I've got my own personal train set if you want to play.

Click here for link

We all grew up around and working summers around these trains. I can drive, fire, and brake these trains (but not at the same time). I've never been on the mainline, but I've moved cars around in the yard with these Shay Engines. They have airbrakes but we still use the mechanical brakes, mostly for the tourist's benefit.

I have 6 of these MTH HO scale SD70ACe diesels. They are DCC command control with sound and lights. They have two 1" speakers mounted in fuel tank. Have 28 functions. My DCC system is Digitrax.

Digitrax - Digital Command Control. 12VDC on rails constantly. Then the throttle sends digital signals to locomotive decoder you want to run. Each engine has a decoder with operating sound, lights, and MU functions to let it talk to it with the throttle.Turn on lights, sound, different functions when you are running multi-units.

 Set the address to each loco ( locomotive road number XXXX )and it is stored in walkaround throttle. When running the throttle you pick which diesel, or diesels in my case you want to run by road number. MU them together.


I have 3 Union Pacific and  3 BNSF ( Burlington Nothern Santa Fe) roadnames.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vknouq3uTJQ" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vknouq3uTJQ</a>

I have 2 of these on a 4 x 8 layout I am building for the kids (OK it is for me as much as them).

Cool SC. I have the Digitrax Chief system with the RM400? throttle. I have a muli-level layout, I am going to buy another Digitrax booster and that will give two power zones, lower level and upper level. I think those boosters are 8 amp a piece.

The units I have will also serve as boosters if I ever build a big layout.  I want to some day, but I plan to move one more time so I am waiting until the next house before I start on it.

[SUPERCOACH]

So y'all can throw switches electronically? Just like the big boys. Track status gives "same track" alerts?

When I get it all wired up, yes.  Right now I flip them manually though.  The coolest thing about DCC though is the fact that you can run multiple trains at the same time, all going different speeds or directions, or some of them not moving at all.  It isn't like the trains we had as kids where you turn up the dial on the transformer and all the engines do the same thing.

The 4x8 I am building is going to be really nice, like a piece of furniture with a model train on top of it.  The table itself is built out of oak.  I am making the oak table so that we can just lay a 4x8 sheet in there.  We can later take the 4x8 sheet out and stick a different one in there if we decide we want a new layout.  This is the first layout I have ever tried to build with scenery, so I'm thinking we might want a do-over once we figure out what we are doing and our skills improve.  I won't need a do-over on the table though, I have been building stuff like that all my life.

I am going to make a little control station on the side of the table that I sit the two Digitrax controllers on.  In between them I will have a switch board that has an exact scale map of the track layout with a toggle switch at each track switch on the map, with some LED indicator lights to see which path is active.  I want it to be simple enough that the little guy can operate it (4 years old).

[BAMAWV]

I'm taking the kids to ride the North Pole Limited in a couple of weeks.  It is at the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in Chattanooga, right behind the NMRA headquarters.  We go every year.

Click here for link

We are members at the museum, which entitles us to ride the Missionary Ridge Local any time we want for free.  They have about 3 miles of track that originally belonged to Southern Railway but was abandoned when the pre-civil war Missionary Ridge tunnel become a bottle neck and the main line was relocated to bypass Missionary Ridge.

We go several times each year.  It never gets old.  When the kids get a little older they will be able to ride in the engine.

We give cab rides pretty often but the guys are careful who they pick. Plus it is a little different inside a coal fired cab.

[SUPERCOACH]

So y'all can throw switches electronically? Just like the big boys. Track status gives "same track" alerts?

Track status is just a little red light that indicates you have power turned on to the track.  If you have a short circuit on the track the unit will kill the power to the track and the track status light will blink.  This happens sometimes if you derail going through a switch.  You can also turn off the power to the track separately from the control unit while you are tinkering with it.

[Coach Hank Crisp]

So y'all can throw switches electronically? Just like the big boys. Track status gives "same track" alerts?

DCC controls anything you have the wiring bus running to and a decoder.  Decoders are around $10.00 15.00 for cheaper ones with not many functions. For switches, if your using Tortoise motorized swsitches, bring the wiring carrying the signal and voltage to them and they will operate from your throttle with a stationary decoder in place to receive the digitrax command signal.

The switch motor decoders would be addressed in your throttle just like the decoder in your locomotives, so you would save that address in memory and then open or close your switched using your hand held walk around throttle using that address you assigned to them.

They make all kinds of decoders and systems. Digitrax is just one brand from Norcross Georgia. NMRA set down standards back in the 1990 so companies would make systems that each part is universal to another.

My system will work with other systems. Those MTH locos have a decoder already installed in them, so when people buy them they can talk to them with whatever brand throttle they have. Other new locos are the same with DCC installed.

[SUPERCOACH]

I'm taking the kids to ride the North Pole Limited in a couple of weeks.  It is at the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in Chattanooga, right behind the NMRA headquarters.  We go every year.

Click here for link

We are members at the museum, which entitles us to ride the Missionary Ridge Local any time we want for free.  They have about 3 miles of track that originally belonged to Southern Railway but was abandoned when the pre-civil war Missionary Ridge tunnel become a bottle neck and the main line was relocated to bypass Missionary Ridge.

We go several times each year.  It never gets old.  When the kids get a little older they will be able to ride in the engine.

We give cab rides pretty often but the guys are careful who they pick. Plus it is a little different inside a coal fired cab.

This is coal fired.  I forget how old you have to be before they will let you ride in the cab though.  I think they will let you ride in their diesel cab at 12, but you have to be older for the steam engine.  They aren't picky, they will take anybody that will pony up the cash and sign the waivers.

This museum is the home of Southern #4501, as seen in the movie October Sky (one of my favorite movies btw).  #4501 is pretty famous.  They have been restoring it for several years now, and it will be running again real soon (i.e. months), if not already.

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