Bernhards Random Ramblings BACKUP

Tonight the first train ran under its own power from the Welztalbahn train room to Untergroeningen on the modular extension. I added a 4th power district and moved the existing PSXs to a larger mounting board. Of course I took a short video to celebrate the occasion of the first train entering the module under its own power.

STKX is accelerating eastbound out of Cumberland on the X-Main while the Williams Street switcher is waiting for its next assignment For tonight's ops session on the B&O I'm back at Williams Street Yard, which can be a very messy assignment if the Yardmaster is not careful with staging equipment for trains to be switched in Cumberland station. Now that I have some experience running this yard, I knew what to do, and even had some spare time towards the end of the session to take photos. View over the river track with Williams St on the left across the main line. Bolt & Forge has received some scrap gondolas on track that still needs to be built. Dave has several nice scenes in Cumberland, including these guys preparing for a furniture delivery.

For my commute this morning, I left the house at 6:20am, arrived at work at 7:09am with average fuel consumption of barely a quarter gallon for the 23 miles, i.e. 93 miles per gallon. It's amazing how slow-flowing traffic can help with fuel efficiency.

Success! Here is the first car to travel through the wall from the Welztalbahn to Untergroeningen.

While the Untergroeningen module is designed for the future Murrbahn project , I have made plans to use it in phase 1 of the Welztalbahn layout extension project  as a through station, just like the prototype station was originally designed. The first step is to go through the wall to the layout room to connect with the new turnout I installed in April . I used some flextrack to check alignment and get an idea about clearances. Just as planned, the track barely misses the storage cabinet on the right. Here's the view from inside the layout room. I used cardboard to create a template for cutting the track base board. I paid extra attention to align the edge that needs to be perfectly square and straight with the pre-cut edge of the plywood board and cut the rest with a jig saw. I fiddled for quite a while with the base board to get a good fit both inside the wall and with the Untergroeningen module. It took a few attempts to get things to line up, while avoiding a tight radius curve...

Today I finished up track and wiring for segments 1 and 2 of Untergroeningen. The dining table makes for a convenient work surface for the two segments, so that I can properly align the Raiffeisen track at the segment boundary. When I had it spiked almost all the way to the end, this is what the end of track looked. Huh. Why is the end of track so crooked? Oh! Because the end of track is at the segment boundary. Sigh. This looks terrible. What was I thinking? I pulled all the spikes, turned the track around and spiked it a second time. Much better now. Untergroeningen Segment 1 is ready for testing. I spent the rest of the day with installing switch machines and finish track wiring segment 2.

I spent some time today to work on segment 1 of Untergroeningen station, shaping the module frame towards the Fremo face place, closing up the openings next to the track with pink foam, and installing the puko strip for the Raiffeisen siding. Chester was watching and made sure I'm not doing anything silly. The Raiffeisen track is curved and needs to be perfectly aligned at the module boundary, so I decided to use the traditional puko strip installation method soldering the strip to screws on the track center line. I had already cut the track a few weeks ago and installed the turnout and respective stub on segment 2, so all that was left to do here was finding the center line, setting the screws, and soldering the puko strip. Just enough time between coming home from lunch and getting dinner before heading out to SVL to get this done.