Bernhards Random Ramblings BACKUP

The things you find while idle browsing EBay ... When I planned the passenger trains for my Welztalbahn to connect Stuttgart to Freiburg via Freudenstadt and Hausach, I had no idea that there actually used to be through passenger trains operating this route from Stuttgart all the way to Hausach and back. My schedule book (Kursbuch) from 1978 does not have this route, and the best connection requires passengers to transfer between trains in Eutingen, so I have no idea when this was route operated.

The town of Ballard in the foreground. Santa Rosalia with end of the line in the back I've been following Tony Thompson's blog "Modeling the SP" for a couple years and I've referenced it a couple times from this blog. It was great to experience the layout and Tony's flavor of prototype paperwork in an operations session today. I was paired with an knowledgeable operator and off we went. The layout atmosphere is decidedly 1950's California with palm trees, the Southern Pacific, and lots of era- and location-appropriate details. View down Nipomo Street in Ballard This team started out on the Ballard side of the layout with the local having just arrived in front of the depot in Ballard. For the next 1 1/2 hours we were busy switching Ballard and taking a trip down the branch to Santa Rosalia. Thick oil hoses for unloading tank cars, made from wire. Simple, yet effective. We were early on our return trip to Shumala, and waited at yard limits until the team sw...

It's the weekend of the PCR NMRA LD/Ops SIG meet . Tonight the Welztalbahn is on the list of layouts open for tours by meet participants. The trains are running. Ready for receiving guests. Update 22:00: Wow. I did not expect this. For most of the time the layout was open there were visitors chatting, watching trains run, looking at the layout, browsing, ... I made a posterboard with background information about the layout, some of the car card prototype, as well as Murrbahn station plans. This sparked great discussions. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and had kind words. Thank you to all the visitors who came down tonight. I had a blast.

As in previous years , on the last weekend of January the Layout Design and Operations SIGs of Pacific Coast Region of the NMRA put up a small conference program complete with layout tours, presentations and operations sessions. The program this year was superb with topics from operations over layout design to a real world application of LCC. Dave Adams' train pockets I was intrigued by the concept of train pockets mentioned in Dave Adams' talk, combining a place to keep car cards with the schedule, train instructions, and a cheat sheet to TT&TO on the reverse. Interesting. On Friday evening, Silicon Valley Lines was open for visitors and hosting an operations session. Since the yards were covered I was even able to run a train. Passing Vampire's Rest near Silicon The mirror on the upper deck in Tracy The Welztalbahn was on the layout tour Saturday evening, so I left the meet a bit early to get the layout ready . Sunday I was invited to operate on Tony Thompson's S...

Taking the train to the city for shopping and ice cream.

Niederegger Marzipan Hands-down the best marzipan, and sadly all that's left of the Christmas sweets attack .

I built this railroad crossing sign, "Andreaskreuz" in German, from strips of 1/16 inch styrene sheet. There are two layers glued together. Each of the two arms is 4 feet long, which works out to 90% of prototype size, so I scaled down the width accordingly to keep the correct proportions as specified in the EBO, Anlage 5 .

Talheim station just before the last train of the day is scheduled to arrive.

After walking the dog tonight in wind and rain to the end of the street, we decided this is not the evening for walking the dog any more than the bare minimum.

I'm experimenting with making car cards that closely resemble actual prototype paperwork. It turns out that I can replicate the look and feel in the roughly 2.5 x 2.75 inch space I have available. The plastic sleeve has information pertinent to the car as explained in a post from last week . Additional sheets stacked in the sleeve represent the paperwork attached to the freight car ("Hauptzettel"), which was used by the switching crews to determine where a car is going. There was a large number of variations of Hauptzettels based on the kind of freight, purpose, and urgency. I'm missing a few bits of information for my railroad (primarily schedule and train numbers) to completely fill in the required information. Since I have been unable to find a table linking the various yards and freight stations in Germany to their respective routing number ("Richteinheit") for now I'm trying to make up somewhat plausible numbers as I go. This is primarily relevant f...

While driving over the hill I joined a gazillion others stopping at the dam to take a look at Lexington Reservoir. The sun was already very low on the horizon. The reservoir is full. All along the edge of the lake trees are standing in water. The water level is about a foot below the edge of the spillway. I suspect it will spill again later this week when the forecasted rains arrive.

[ Talheim posts ] The script for automated running successfully completed a 2 hour run today with no accidents and no derailments. I call that good enough. A few mechanical issues were found along the way as expected and mostly taken care of on the spot. While trains were running I played with various building arrangements for Werner & Soehne. I decided pretty quickly that rectangular building shapes are not going to cut it here (contrary to earlier plans ), so a more substantial kitbash of the well-known Kibri factory will be needed to fill the triangle between the two tracks serving the factory. The short wall on the right will be reduced to only two columns so that the building can slide closer to the turnout. The cut-off column will be used to fill the gap between the other short wall and the administration tower. The large loading ramp will move from the rear to the aisle side of the building giving me an opportunity for lots of detailing work at some point in the future. I...

Huh! The rail bus picked up an unexpected passenger in the tunnel.

The system for routing cars on the Welztalbahn keeps evolving. I started out with switchlists printed by the JMRI Operations module, and pretty quickly moved over to the MicroMark 4-cycle car card & waybill system . I used that successfully for several years and that's what I'm still using on the layout. The latest iteration started off with inspiration from Tony Thompson and Tony Koester to more faithfully replicate the actual paperwork used on the prototype, mixed with ideas from FREMO, as well as some prototype paperwork images found on the Internet. The topic of how railroad freight was routed in early 70's Germany consumed many hours of research mostly in online forums. Talking to people that know how this stuff worked 40 years ago in person is a lot harder if you live 5000 miles away. Nevertheless, this topic became fascinating enough , that I bought more prototype paperwork extending the small collection I already have. Here and here are some good examples of w...

Sometimes it's the little things. (seen near my desk at work)

I'm not awake yet.

[ Emsingen posts ] With all the rain this weekend, I spent quite a bit of time in the train room working with JMRI and my custom scripting to update the automated running machinery. I originally wanted to integrate with the newish dispatcher functionality built into the newer JMRI versions, but eventually gave up and just tweaked the script I've been using since JMRI 2.x days. My layout panel needs work to function properly with the Dispatcher module. JMRI on the layout computer needs updating, which implies updating Java, which implies updating Ubuntu, which in combination implies a giant time sink I didn't plan for. I will do that eventually, but not now. The scripting for automatic running is working properly now with 5 trains for some diversity, including opposing traffic on the single track main line. The platform lights in Emsingen are now powered up. I need to add some passengers, plus workmen at the freight shed, and then the scene is mostly done. I really like the pe...

Well, the rain has come in real good now. Yesterday's freeway drive over the hill to Santa Cruz was a bit messy, and there were low-hanging clouds at the summit. Nevertheless, eldest daughter arrived safely at her college dorm, and I made it back in one piece, too. It rained nonstop this Sunday, various parts of San Jose and Morgan Hill are under flood advisory. Coyote Creek has started to flood the trail again. We're certainly getting some badly needed water.

6 o'clock on a cold Tuesday morning. We're ready to roll. This is it. The break is over. I took 3 months of personal leave from work, plus 2 weeks of vacation over the end of year holidays. The intention was to disconnect from work, do some hobby projects, and recharge my batteries. As you can tell from the avalanche of blog posts over the last 3+ months: Mission Accomplished.  I finished two major model railroading scenery projects: The Hallelujah paper mill at Silicon Valley Lines is operational and mostly scenicked. It's a lot more fun to operate an industry with buildings and recognizable loading areas, adding icing on the cake of a large operations-oriented layout. The Emsingen station area is finished on the street side, and very close on the track side, closing a large scenery gap on the Welztalbahn. I refined my techniques and gained confidence in what I'm doing.  Both projects likely would not have happened (or much, much slower) if I had not been able to pu...

I'm prepping for an update of my automated running script, which requires that all track used by automated trains is serviced and working well. The Welztalbahn hasn't run for quite a while and especially the M-track in staging had issues with dirt, dust, and a bit corrosion. In the past WD-40 has always been useful in helping to resolve these. This time around I gave my Centerline cleaning car a workout too. The cleaning train is pulled by 151 104 (Maerklin 3058), a very heavy 6-axle locomotive with powerful motor, excellent traction and power pickup. I weighed down the rear of the Centerline car to reduce the likelihood of the rear truck climbing up over the rails at turnouts that are thrown against the train, as is common in my staging tracks. Regular cars don't have any issues with this, but the cleaning roller is putting enough strain on the car that every bit helps to keep it on the rails. Bringing up the rear is a container flat car with two Noch "Reinigungszwerg...