Southern Pacific Shasta Route, Black Butte Subdivision

Operating an HO Model Railroad of the Southern Pacific Shasta Route, Black Butte Subdivision in 1952 era. Layout owner is Otis McGee. Website. What a delight to be able to run on this layout. I will re-record these videos in higher quality next operating session, if Otis invites me back. See links below to photo gallery and videos. Links will open a new browser page.

Some still photos here.

Video - Operating "The Scoot" local passenger train.

Video - running North Coast Periishable train from Dunsmuir to Klamath.."Up the hill"...

Video - Dunsmuir yard engine terminal

Hinton, West Virginia - Andy Schnur's MRR

I took this video with my digital camera in August at Andy Schnur's Chesapeake and Ohio HO model Railroad in Bay Area of California. This layout is based upon the C&O prototype where main yard is Hinton, West Virginia. You will see a coal drag coming into Hinton Yard, where a helper engine is added to the end of train in front of caboose, and then the train going up the hill to other end of layout. Steam engines using Tsunami sound decoders and Digital system is NCE. (I taped this at 320 with 15 FPS and will record it again at higher resolution someday)

Pesky short discovered and eliminated

for the past 4 days, I have been searching down a short causing half the layout to be down. As a result I redesigned my power sections and added 4 new ones (see previous post). While implementing this I also discovered numerous little issues such as the DB105 booster was not correctly wired to layout. I also rerouted numerous bus wires and generally cleaned up and further documented the power zone wiring, while also labeling a lot of things.

Finally found the short in West Pasco.

You see I use Caboose Industries 220S ground throws for industrial spurs and branch lines. These require 3 holes to be drilled close together and the 3 bare wire leads dropped through sub-roadbed then wired to power the frogs. Turns out the middle lead and one of the rail leads were touching and so when the switch was thrown one way it didn't short but did when thrown the other way...sigh..Thought I had looked at that earlier..Grr...must have jiggled it when I was rerouting the light cord underneath Pasco and above Walla Walla. Now all is well. Dropped some other leads down where I double gapped the power zones to ensure reliable track power.

Trains running again. Now time to go celebrate by seeing a movie and taking wife to dinner!!

Short in Pasco Power zone - No Ops session

About a week ago, an occasional gremlin short in Pasco power zone became a full blown gremlin!! I have spent several hours tracking it down and have eliminated most of the easy ones. Still not working. I canceled the June 30 op session...sigh...

I am pretty sure it lives in the common rail wiring. Next week I will begin to disconnect all the leads and rebuild the bus.

My plan will be to add another (3rd) Digitrax PM42 power zone circuit board and subdivide Pasco zone into 4 Zones thus further dividing power zones:

Reversing PM 42:

• Short detection for reversing sections
• Biggs OS to Troutdale OS
• Balloon Track in Portland
• Open

Second PM42 will have

• Portland Yard including Eugene
• Seattle Yard
• West Half of Main
• La Grande and Spokane Yard Staging

New PM42

• Pasco yard
• West Pasco and Walla Walla
• East half of Mainline around Pasco
• Aberdeen and Helix
  

then re-attach leads to separate bus wires. Hope that does it.
I have spare PM 42 and am ordering more TAP 3M connectors from Mouser.
Hope to start work this week.

Rumors of the OWNRy layout demise are premature

Last fall, I sent an email to many freinds advising them that my layout might very well be torn down and that I would be holding one last operating session. Since then, the situation has changed and the layout for the forseeable future will remain. As you can see below, however, the layout room contains a 50 inch HDTV which can be used to monitor for my N scale camera car as it proceeds around the layout. The image on the screen, however, is not of my layout but one from the "Tracks Ahead" HDTV program. The Screen lives under the Pendleton switch and is very watchable while I work on the layout or work on a small project at my workbench to the right. It does not interfere with operating sessions.
2 full all day operating session will be held this year. One was already held in April and the other one will be October 27. Periodic 2-3 hour "fun runs"' will be held as interest is determined. Let me know if you want to stop by. Next fun run is Saturday June 30 from 9AM-Noon and August 25 from 9 AM until Noon.

I am adding 4 new trains to the lineup. 2 Grain trains and 2 reefer block trains. All are blocks of cars which should add operating interest in the Portland and Seattle yards due to the amount of handling necessary. Seen below are some diesels in Portland Yard. The SP diesels are pulling the Shasta Daylight. The UP diesels pulling a grain train and the NP diesels arrived with a block of empty reefers bound for California. The head end power and caboose will need to be swapped with SP power and caboose prior to departure.

meanwhile, an SP GP-9 and Santa Fe GP-9 are arriving from Eugene with a full block of produce which will need to be iced and get new power before heading east through Pasco and Spokane to destinations on the Northern Pacfic Route.

New SP&S NW-2 switcher waits on yard tracks for action in Portland.

Photos From Operating Session in April 2007

City of Portland rounding the Bend

John Benny brought his new Athearn 4-6-6-4 PCM steam which sounds great!!


Coach Yard near Portland Engine facility

Railfanning with Friends = Portola, Proto 48, Clio Trestle

This past weekend several friends came down from the Pacific Northwest area and we had a lot of fun. We toured a local Proto 48 layout where we also rode Gordon's larger train he has in his back yard. Then we ran trains on my layout on Friday.

On Saturday, we went up to the high part of the Feather River canyon. First stop we watched a train across Clio Trestle. (5 minutes). I had never seen one there before.

We visited Portola and the Western Pacific Rail museum where we operated a real Southern Pacific GP9 diesel engine.

Later we toured Williams loop and Keddie Wye but saw now trains. Just missed BNSF train . Will H. took some photos of it.

We passed Blairsden on way home and stopped for a coffee but the shop was closed. However we saw a green signal so stayed around for a while. Here is the footage of the auto train we saw.

Coming home over the high pass (6500 feet), we just got through as the snow descended upon us. The Mini Coopers did well. See photo slide show.

Sunday we toured Binney Junction in Marysville, then headed south to Roseville yard to watch the action. Later Jim and John headed home and the rest of us went over to see the new UPRR trestle. No trains there. Greg and I headed home and caught one last train going up over Donner. We found it in Auburn, then again at Cape Horn up past Colfax. The rainbow was incredible. A perfect ending to a really fun weekend.

You can view the videos on my mini Blog also

Running the Merced Local on the Yosemite Valley RR circa 1939

I was able to attend Bay Rails last week and ran on several layouts. WIll be posting some photos.
You can see videos on my tumblog

Check out this YouTube Video I filmed while running on Jack Burgess' Yosemite Valley RR.

YouTube video of OWNRy Northcoast Limited

I finally was able to do some editing of the very rough video we made last Spring during an Operating session. We used my camera car pushed on top of a flat car (it wobbles a bit) and I had to compress 30 minutes of running to below 10 minutes. It was recorded onto VHS tape then Ray transfered it for me to a CD and sent it to me. I edited it in iMovie then uploaded it to YouTube. The video quality suffers because it was recorded on VHS then transfered. There is no Audio

Click here to access YouTube Video

This will open up a new page and leave this one in tact.

It runs about 10 minutes and in the last part, you will see the North Coast Limited passing through Pasco Yard


Let me know what you think. Not great but I will do better next time.--Kent

Crew for OWNRy OP session Dec 4

On A wintery Saturday 11 crew members converged from Puget Sound, Bay Area, Sacramento and Oroville for this all day OPS. Local dispatching was done via FRS radios.
We began with orientation at 0930 and then the "serious" fun began. Below Bob is bringing up an Eastbound train from Walla Walla into the Pasco Yard while Tom works fast to ready the pickups



Jim (who came from Seattle area) works the westyard switcher while Portland Yardmaster Andy (from Bay Area) works the east end


Then there are the "non-serious" fun loving playful crew members... had to kick them out around 5 PM...