Bernhards Random Ramblings BACKUP

Friederike loves her swing set.

The farmers market is in town today, making Oma Kopper happy.

Schwester Maria has time.

Something is not right at track 4. Is it maybe that this Gs looks too new? Or did the van hit the loading ramp?

Let's go for a walk with Opa Helmut.

The overloading crane at track 4 stands ready but is not needed today.

Waiting for the Schienenbus to open the doors.

Hans Wagerl makes sure that the cars in the yard tracks are properly secured and hand brakes set.

Watching the trains from the market square.

Track 1a at the freight shed is empty. A good opportunity to take a photo of the activity on the loading ramp.

260 417, a rebuilt Maerklin 3065 , waits for its next assignment at the north end of track 3.

Yesterday I did some behind the scenes work to fix a long-standing problem with the panel. In fact, this problem has been there ever since I added the panel in 2012 (!) The buttons for the turnout into the Lokstation and the two lower buttons on the yard ladder were not connected to anything. This wasn't really much of an issue, the Lokstation turnout was used only a couple times during a session and could be actuated with a mouse click from JMRI.  The Yard ladder buttons are not strictly needed and operators just used the black buttons for the respective turnouts. The reason why they were not connected was that the Team Digital SRC16 stationary decoder driving this panel only has 16 inputs and I have 19 buttons. Since I now added the button for the route to Untergroeningen (on the far left in the picture above, compare to the panel in the post from 2012), I decided to clean up the other buttons, too. I have a couple Digitrax DS64 stationary decoders installed nearby, which have 4...

I put the Welztalbahn side of the extension connector back together, including cleaning up the wiring for lamps and feeders affected by the work. This took quite some time, since this undergound area of the layout is space-constrained and hard to reach. During the planning stage of the layout, I didn't really understand what I was building here, and how painful working in this area would become. Modular benchwork as I'm building now is much easier to deal with, but of course would not allow me to build the layout density I managed to accomplish here.

With the turnout motorized , I turned my attention to fixing up the scenery. I filled the edge I cut away in April with a piece of  pink foam that I cut to shape through trial and error. Next I used tinted Scuptamold to align the filler with the existing scenery. When I came back a day later, to my surprise the Scuptamold had turned white again. Oh well... I painted the filler earth brown and got out the grassinator, static grass fibers, and Scenic Express Super Turf to blend the corner with the existing scenery. Since I was already on a roll, I ballasted the track as far as I could reach from this side of the wall. Time to let everything dry. My back needs a rest ...

Back in April I installed this turnout in the south approach to Emsingen to connect the Welztalbahn to the modular extension I'm building out in the garage . The turnout has been manually operated since because I did not have a bright idea how to install an underfloor turnout motor for it. The turnout is located almost 3 ft from the layout edge, with tracks leading to staging right below it. Unless I remove tunnel portals, the underside of the turnout is accessible from the aisle only through a 5x3" opening on the side of the tunnel to staging, and barely reachable from underneath the layout. This weekend I attacked the problem. When drilling the hole for the throwbar rod, I accidentally hit a couple feeder wires that still need to be repaired. I made a remote actuator from piano wire that runs through brass tubes installed in wood blocks. The following photo shows  the path the actuator wire will take underneath the tracks from the edge of the second level to the turnout. I ...

In order to fit the new turnout into the existing track arrangement, I cut off the current-conducting tabs underneath the track on the two short track pieces. That way I limit hacking the track to cheap track pieces, instead of the turnouts. I also removed the rail joiners on that end of the track sections and replaced them with shortened Atlas Code 100 joiners. Before this new turnout, the whole curve was a detected section. I want to retain train detection in the area, but cover trains from either direction, so I moved the detected section to the two tracks sections between the turnouts, and soldered the cable to the rail joiner. The track fits perfectly. I'll leave it like this for tonight. Next up is building the embankment to the wall, and making sure that the new track performs properly before painting and ballasting.

As I'm building my first station module, I do need to connect it to the existing Welztalbahn. Here's the curve on the south end of Emsingen. When I built this section of the layout in 2010  I didn't really consider extending it, although the thought of doing so entered my mind every now and then since. Now I'm getting serious. Most of the layout is built with sectional track pieces. I need to remove one curved piece to fit the turnout. Since the track continuation on both sides is fixed, simply disconnecting the track pieces is not an option. Cutting the rails with the Dremel tool resolved that problem quickly. I used a wide artists spatula to gently lift the rails from the cork base and cut through the silicone caulk that held the rails in place until ballasting. Speaking of ballasting, I didn't do a particularly good job with this section 5 years ago , which made removing the ballast very easy. In the photo below I already marked where the track to the extension...

A work train came through Emsingen station on the main track this afternoon. Imagine the characteristic rumble of the V36 / BR 236 Diesel locomotives running in a pair for enough traction over "the hill". The locomotives are Maerklin 3346, a limited run edition known as "Doppeltes Lottchen". I have not yet converted them to digital operation. They look really nice with this train. The cars are from the Lima L149925-4 package and still have their DC wheel sets. The crane is the more-than-old Maerklin 315/2.  I need to build a boom support for the crane and mount it on the flat car, along with some boxes, wires, and other supplies. The materials car should probably go between the flat car and the workers car. Then I could use a Rungen flat car loaded with ties, rails, and more materials needed for on demand track maintenance. Nevertheless this train is capturing the look I've been after quite nicely. 

I'd like to do something about the edge where the grass hits the backdrop. One option is to add fencing to draw the eye away from the edge. I have two different styles of fencing that I'd consider using here. I'd build proper transitions between the horizontal sections, of course. To the right of this area is a bushy transition to the forest. To the left is the town of Emsingen. The grass area will get a couple apple trees at some point to suggest a "Streuobstwiese". Here's an overview shot of the current state. Any opinions of my dear readers? Does one fence work better than the other? Are they basically the same? Any other ideas to hide the transition?

This switch tower is from my Dad's layout, and I've played with it ... errrm, used it on layouts ... since I was a kid. Today it guards the north end of Emsingen. Thus I added the respective tower identification signs a while ago. As with so many articles from the 1950's, "121" is not some random house number, but rather the product number. Always useful to see that right up on the wall ...