Summer Vacation Series- Bob Chase

I did a little railfanning over at Bob Chase's B&A last week. Above shiny new C-Liners wait by an interlocking.

An old workhorse is spotting a car at the freight house.

A couple of Alco's chug up hill above the little town of Roberts Bank.

A long freight headed by a Geep 30, glides downhill under tale tails near the town of Onderdonk.

Onto to the new stuff, above the work bench, a new industrial area will be built.

Wrapping around the walls 18" deep above the work benches a main and passing siding will head to hidden and open staging.

In the east corner tracks will pass through the wall into hidden staging and branch off to the open staging yard to the left.

We see the open staging yard, behind the door to the train room. Bob moved the display cabinets under the bench work.

Summer Vacation Series- Rob Dennis

Well my summer looked a lot like the photo above. Waiting for Montreal bound Amtrak 69 to pass at Rockland, CPC 150. The engineer gives a friendly wave in the cool shade on a humid August day in the middle the of the beautiful Adirondack mountains.

I did however find time to start preparing the new train room. First I had to find out what I had and inventory it! I have a plan and maybe we can start to build this fall!

Summer Vacation Series- Chris and Rich

For all his hard work and dedication Chris Rittner has had a locomotive named after him by the Mohawk Central! Richard Eriksen had the model done by John Bezuyen of Southern Tier Modelworks. Pretty Sharp!

A nice matching trailer for the fleet too!

Summer Vacation Series- Randy Epstein

Randy says he been keeping the trains running over the summer, and added a few additions to the locomotive fleet......here are a few shots!

Summer Vacation Series- John "Cully" Cullinan

Channel 13 hires freelance mobile TV cameraman ( Tony Bucca) at the east portal last Friday, chasing the Pan Am slurry train. Cully says,"I didn't mean to wake him up, he was "oogling" the female kayakers and rafters. He claims the van has all the comforts of home, but it seems to be missing a "bidet". Caught him fluffing his pillow and warned him about the approaching slurry train!".

VRS 301-303 at North Hoosick Bridge with slurry train

. Pan Am 380 with the slurry train through Zoar, MA.

Summer Vacation Series- Mark Oliviere

We have been very busy over the summer working on my layout. Every Tuesday night we meet between 6:00 and 9:00 PM. The first picture is the beginning of the railroad yard that will be located under a mountain. We used the same technique for the roadbed that we used on the first yard. A piece of 1/4" plywood with a cork border.

The Second shows the yard nearly completed. Once completed the tracks will be adjusted so they are all straight. If you look closely you can see the jumper wires for the tracks.

The third is the beginning of the logging line that will run through the mountain When the initial logging line is built it will have 4 switchbacks.

The fourth is a close up of the approximate location of the trestle bridge for the logging line. The bridge was on my previous layout for the logging line. This bridge was built from a 2x4. The 2x4 was cut down on a large table saw then cut to size on my hobby table saw. The ties on the bridge were leftovers from the large trestle bridge that I built on my previous layout.

This is part of the mountain that is located over the second railroad yard. You can see the location of some of the switchbacks for the logging line and a small river bed next to the 2 main lines. Each section of the mountain is constructed to be modular, with sections overlapping at the joints of each module. Plastic is placed between the overlapping sections so they do not stick together.

Both main lines are up and running. Each has been tested with up to an 80 car freight. The main lines have been wired for half of the layout. On the section that is wires the train runs at a steady pace. Jumpers are places approximately every 6 foot. On the section that is not wired yet the trains slow down due to voltage drop. The section that is wired has been calculated to have a voltage drop of only 1/4 volt with 4 diesel locomotives drawing 1/2 amp each. The wire size I used to achieve this is #10 AWG. That is the same size of wire used for household dryers. The jumpers to the track are #16 AWG stranded wire (speaker wire).The DCC power pack has an output of 3.5 amps at 18 volts AC. We have had up to 5 power units running at the same time without any speed lose on the wired half of the layout. I will send you more photos later. We should have the logging line up and running by October.

Mark