My layout assignment on the last day of Soundrail was the Olympic Model Railroad Society (OMRS). This club layout is located in the basement of a building on the Thurston Country fair grounds and open to the public on occasion.
There are many really neat scenes on this layout. The scenery is very well done and looks great. I'm showing a selection below.
Canoes on the river near Marvin's Bluff
Effective use of forced perspective in Marvin's Bluff.
From the upper level trains take a helix down to the main level.
The double-track main line has remote controlled turnouts and is fully signaled. Unfortunately, there were some gremlins in the detection logic which messed up signal indication at times. Seems like every layout that deploys signals has this kind of problem sooner or later. Seeing the signals in operation at OMRS reminded me of the pending signals project at Silicon Valley Lines.
Signal bridge at South Shops near Seaport
South Shops roundhouse
Diesel servicing facility
Seaport Union Station and the associated freight and industry tracks occupy a good amount of space on the lower level.
The rear end of my train is waiting in the foreground for clearance to get into Halfmoon Yard.
The saw mall in Hill City is under construction, but already looks very nice
Diner in Post Falls near the steel mill
After lunch I took over the dispatcher seat and spent the next couple hours guiding trains on the main line to and from their respective destinations. Verbal track warrants and signal indications were the tools of the trade.
A big Thank you to the OMRS members that hosted us and made for an enjoyable day.
[ FREMO posts ] This is the bar to meet when modeling an apple harvest. Unbelievable attention to detail and lively scenes. Over the course of the meet I came back to "the curve" several times to take another look. Very inspiring.
Generator 5 was installed in the underground cavity of plant 1 at Snoqualmie Falls in 1905. It has a generation capacity of 5600 kilowatts. It uses a Francis turbine, which is more efficient than the Pelton wheels used in the other 4 generators installed at plant 1. The water enters the turbine from the sides and then falls straight down from the center of the turbine into a draft tube. The energy of the flowing water is transferred to the shaft of the turbine in form of torque. The shaft is connected to the generator, visible in the rear in the photo at the top of this post. In 2011 the plant was modernized and generator 5 was moved from plant 1 to the hydropower museum. "Wow!" The shops building was moved here from its original site and has various artifacts and equipment that was removed from the plant's underground cavity and control room. Control panel. Knife switches.
[ Three Tunnels and Winter ] Kandersteg station has the control tower right on the platform at track 1. However, it appears the big control table is no longer in use. Instead, everything's controlled via computers in a back room. Here's the line diagram schedule. This photo was taken through two windows and blinds, so unfortunately it's hard to make out train indications. However, I believe the rather tight column of red lines in the middle of the screen represents the auto transport trains traversing through the Loetschberg tunnel. As soon as the sun disappears behind the mountains, it gets cold. I didn't want to stand here for another 30 minutes until the RegioExpress to Bern was due, so I decided to take the RE 4275 through the Loetschberg tunnel to Goppenstein, where I'd have about 5 minutes to get to the other platform for the return trip and on to Bern. While waiting for the RegioExpress, this KLV train with double-header DB class 185 barrels through the stat...
Comments
Post a Comment