Bernhards Random Ramblings BACKUP

[ Murrbahn posts ] Quelle:  Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg (PL 723 Bü 55) . Used with permission. North of the freight shed is the freight yard of Gaildorf/West. These tracks are used for cars going to and from the weg branch line, local customers, as well as for layover of weg passenger equipment between runs as needed. Bahnhofsstrasse extends past the freight shed and turns into the access road for a team track to facilitate trans-loading between trucks and freight cars. This is used primarily for loading wood onto R-cars. There is a track to the freight shed platform and a storage track next to it. A very unique and peculiar feature of the freight area is the branch line track from track 1 cutting across all yard tracks and continuing on the street side of the station building. weg trains departed from the street side of the station until 1967, afterwards the line starts at track 1at the station building. The main line tracks extend past the passenger platforms near the station build...

[ Murrbahn posts ] Quelle:  Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg (PL 723 Bü 55) . Used with permission. Moving along to the passenger area, the tracks straighten out. There are 3 platforms and no over- or undercrossing. Hence passengers need to cross the tracks at grade to reach their respective platform. The platform for track 3 is generously wide at roughly 7 meters, while it's only about 3.5 meters for track 2. The plan indicates track center distances at 11 meters and 5.5 meters respectively. Track 1 has a wide platform in front of the station building. To the left of the station building is a small news stand, including a room for firewood storage. It appears that the platform fence is still in place. To the right of the station building appears to be the platform gate . Platform gates started to get abolished in Germany in 1965, and opened up everywhere in 1974. Thus it's feasible that platform access at Gaildorf/West was still limited in 1971. To the right of the station building i...

[ Murrbahn posts ] Quelle:  Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg (PL 723 Bü 55) . Used with permission. The space I have available for Gaildorf/West is 470 cm long. I need to fit the station and the approach tracks. Let's take a look at the prototype plan in more detail and start with the south end of the station. The main line from Stuttgart exits the Kappelesbergtunnel and curves into the station area. Switching movements are allowed right up to the tunnel portal, but not into the tunnel. The weg branch line (short-dashed line) curves away to the bottom of the plan. There is a third track between the two that runs towards a maintenance of way building and storage area. I have several photos with cars or locomotives stored on this track, but it could just as well be still in operation to park MoW equipment, so I'd like to retain this track. I have space to represent the MoW building, as well as one of the two storage areas indicated in the plan. The storage area is crossed by a 20kV powe...

[ Murrbahn posts ] Quelle:  Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg (PL 723 Bü 55) . Used with permission.   With just over 1000 meters track length (a bit over 3000ft) between first and last turnout and 2 sidings, Gaildorf/West is not a particularly large station. However, in HO this would still be 11.5 meters in a straight line, plus the approaches on either side of the station. Building Gaildorf/West with some gentle length compression as a set of segments with FREMO end plates would be a lot of fun, but I don't have regular FREMO modular meets in gym-sized sport halls within traveling distance, so that's not an option. Instead, I considered what functions this station will need to fill if I were to use a representation of Gaildorf/West as the northern-most modeled station for my Murrbahn project: Scheduled and unscheduled meets of northbound and southbound trains, as well as higher priority trains passing lower priority trains on this single-track main line. Regular passenger service st...

Enjoying the Christmas decorations in the neighborhood.

Before After Delicious

Sunday. Good weather. Nice waves.  Surfin' time! Lots of folks in the water today. Even more folks watching. It's now winter. The light starts fading in the middle of the afternoon. Time to head home.

Capitola is a small town just south of Santa Cruz. The village and beach area has a unique vibe, and on a nice day like today quite a few people joined us hanging out. At Soquel Creek Capitola Wharf Photo Opportunity

Every year Vasona County Park puts on a drive-through holiday lights show . This feels like a typical American thing to do, and we've never been here before. It's time. A large portion of the park has been transformed into a sea of light displays. This show is super-popular. As expected, the line of cars waiting to get into the park was quite long. Nevertheless, with christmas music in the car and family, it was a very enjoyable way to spend the time.

Hera and Zeus were hibernating the last two months and, just like last year , woke up in time not to miss Christmas.

The ground is still wet from yesterday's "OMG WINTER STORM", known elsewhere as "rain". Nevertheless, I wussed out and didn't take the bike to the shuttle stop today. Still nice clouds today, and it's amazing what software can get out of a smart phone camera sensor ...

The last early morning start into the weekend this year.

... and a couple weeks later this turns green.

Been here for an hour. Still waiting ...

The shipment had a circle of large radius K-track which I'm planning to use in the helix for the Murrbahn project. I had some concerns about clearance in the helix with long passenger cars, but as we can see this will work just fine, even for exact 1:87 scale cars. The cars shown in the photo are 1:93 scale length-reduced. The double track is 55.3cm and 61.8cm radius respectively. I also got some curves at 90cm radius as used with the large radius Marklin turnouts. The cars look really nice with this large radius. I originally planned to use 90cm as the minimum radius on visible track when planning the Murrbahn project. Even though the room is quite spacious, doing so has been challenging. Since the crew is on the inside of most curves, I can go a bit tighter while still mostly maintain this nice look. We'll see how this will all play out once I get to that stage. Meanwhile these cars are safely packed away since they look terrible on the tight radiuses used on the Welztalbahn...

The table saw got a workout today. I cut the necessary pieces to build the frames for the Untergroeningen module set. Those modules are sized and shaped to fit with the the future Murrbahn project, but for now I'm planning to attach the module to my existing Welztalbahn layout. Even though this is a rather low-end table saw, the cuts are much more accurate than with the jig saw, or portable circular saw . The frame and cross ties will be built from 3/4" plywood. Admittedly that's overkill and heavier than desired. However, I hope that the modules will be more dimensionally stable. All pieces cut and arranged. The angled segment will take some effort to get right.

The fridge at work is stocked with season-appropriate beverage.

I'm back at Williams Street Yard.  This time I was prepared. I knew what I was getting myself into. I had experienced tower operators at Virginia Street and Viaduct. I had most cars in the yard identified with their respective car cards. When the session started, I was ready to go. I made the moves I had planned for BO11, the train that started my slide downhill the last time. Only that this time BO11 didn't arrive at Williams Street until almost the very end of the session. I even got to service BO29, the mail train. The afternoon session today apparently had run very slowly and everybody was well behind schedule. BO29 normally gets switched on the West-bound main. We tried it on the freight siding instead, which worked well and opens the possibility for additional switching moves the B&O did to this train in 1953 at Williams Street, while at the same time not blocking the main tracks. The photo below has the Western Maryland Ridgley Yard on the right, the River Interchang...

Niederegger Marzipan is hands-down the best marzipan on the planet. It's no surprise that in early December there are lots of freight trains bringing the good stuff everywhere. The Marzibahn trains of course get priority over any other traffic. There's even a video.