Late April Update

April has come and gone and now we are on the cusp of May and for that matter summer. This is the 101st post and I want to thank first and foremost my wife and also family and friends who have helped bring the layout from planning in 2009 to where it is today. Appreciate all of the followers and individuals who have added my blog as a link on their site or just stop through to see the on-goings of the layout.

Original room 2009 before layout

Current April 2015

OPS 04-Q2-15

 This past month I hosted the 4th operating session on the "Clair" and wanted to share some of the photos. During the session I hosted Dan Munson, Chris Palmieri, and Rich Duncan as operators. We added 3 new trains to the lineup this session: 1. Unit coal train that delivered to the Saginaw Valley Cogen at Upper Huron, 2. unit grain train from MAC terminal to Port Huron, and 3. operated the L-GLBU now that customer sidings were installed. Enjoy the pictures provided by Dan Munson. 

M-PHBA-10 pulling through the west end of Bay Yard to double over inbound tracks. A good portion of this train including power will symbol as the M-BAMC-10 and continue to Mackinaw City (West Staging).

Rich at the controls of M-PHBA-10 doubling over at Bay Yard.

Chris switching out boxcars of paper rolls at the Fort Mackinaw Corrugated Plant with Y-BA04-10. 

Rich reviewing his manifest and special handling cars at Bay Yard before departing the M-BAMC-10.

Rich admiring some of the scenery on the east end of Bay Yard heading up the helix between runs. I kept the guys busy the entire session, but we had a great time. 

Overview of layout room during operations session. As you can see Wi-Throttle is used and provides a great way to control trains and minimize cords. 

Speed Matching

Began the adventure last night of speed matching my Soundtraxx Sound equipped motors. Having a fantastic resource guide from Mike Confalone's Allagsh Story and Mr.DCC University made getting into this pretty straight forward. Additionally having Wi-Throttle and Decoder Pro really make the process painless to adjust cv - test and so on in ops programming mode.

After about 30 minutes the first two motors were complete and are from different manufacturers which is fantastic. The slow speed control is great and when consisted maintained good spacing.

MCIS 4059 and MCIS 2101 on the Quanicassee Creek bridge.

Speed Matched: 2 complete

MCIS 4059 SD40-2M (Athearn R-T-R)

MCIS 2101 3GS21B (Atlas Trainman)

View from the riverbed.

So with 101 posts where are we going? Well going to build upon what we already know works: Early, Mid, Late month updates and Wordless Wednesdays. Stay tuned as I am embarking on the test of video content via a youtube channel. This would bring another dimension to the blog. Also looking to add step-by-step posts on projects.... Just gotta remember to take photos as I work on them.

Thanks for stopping by!

GM