ABS Signal System (Three / Four Signal Aspect Demo)

Well my model content is going video now... Take a look at operation of the Azatrax TS2 Model Railroad Signal Circuit Controller in three and four aspect operation. Tomorrow evening I will be publishing on how I installed this circuit, sensors, and signals.

Readers: The signals and signal systems that I will be reviewing and installing in my Layout How To series were provided at no cost by Azatrax LLC. However the selection, installation, operation, and opinion of these signals and systems are 100% my own. 

Three Aspect Operation 

Four Aspect Operation

Video quality is ok - working on improving this with future videos. Luckily you can still see the signal aspects changing.

NMRA Lone Star Region Convention - MCIS Ops Session

With the Lone Star Region convention in Arlington, I had the opportunity today to host four guest operators for a MCIS St. Clair Sub operating session.

We operated 12 trains totaling around 140 car movements. Overall the session ran great regarding keeping the gremlins at bay allow my guest to enjoy the layout. Thanks to Robert, Melvin, Siva, and Raj for choosing to operate on the layout, I am very honored to have shared my operation. Special thanks to regular crew member Mike T. for assisting with setup, helping answer questions, and dispatching today.

Now on to tons photos - Enjoy!

         Crew of Ops Session "OPS07"

 Yardmaster Robert going through yard turnover before going on shift.

Raj operating the first train on layout during the session CN Overhead Z-BKPH-24

Z-BKPH-24 coming around curve at Grays where scenery ends and foam begins.... For how long...?

     Z coming past station at Gerhard. This area will be next to receive scenery.

Melvin handling the L-BAPB-25 "Sugar Turn" at Upper Huron to spot / pull Michigan Sugar / Saginaw Valley Co-Gen.

With the M-BAMC-25 and M-BAPH-25 departed, Bay Yard thins out considerably while the inbound M-PHBA-24 with 20 cars is sorted.

Y-BA01 "Bay Yard Job" on east yard lead

Siva checking paperwork on his M-BAPH-25 that would be making a local block setout at Grays Lake.

That darn "layout mole - superintendent" monitoring trains into east staging.

Bay Yard beginning to fill back up with local pulls and through connections.

Q-GRPH-24 coming around curve off Saginaw River bridge into Bay Yard to perform a block swap.

After the Q departed the Y-BA04-25 comes out on the main to spot local Bay City customers.

A few times we had a crowd with work on upper and lower levels occurring at once.

Bay Yard keeping current with work events.

R-GEGL-25 out on the main at Grays Lake working local block.

Mike T. issuing DTC authorities and train / consist cards.

Y-BA04-25 "Bay Industry Local" finishing up spotting customers on Bay Industry Spur.

Thanks again to the operators for a great event today!

GM

Mid June Update

With the amount of items happening around the layout this month, the hardest part is finding time to sit down and write the posts. That said let's get take a look at what's been going on around the St. Clair Sub since eart June.

Q-GRPH passing M-BAPH at Grays Siding

LSR OPS SESSION PREP

In little less than a week the NMRA Lone Star Convention will be in Arlington, TX. During the event I will be hosting a guest operations session with individuals that signed up to operate on the layout. Getting the layout in a "show ready" state takes around five to six evenings to complete. Task such as track cleaning, train staging, paper organization all have their place in my ops session task list. This session will host 12 trains with an additional 18 railcars added to the main roster since January's session. 

New asphalt / bitumen service 23,500 gallon tank cars added this past week.

    Railcar blocking cards being sorted

 Railcars on main 1 and 2 at Bay Yard. Cars on M1 will be placed at Michigan Sugar, they had been removed during Valiance modification. M2 cars are the new adds which will be added to trains coming out of staging or online.

Beyond the standard tasks of layout prep for an ops session, I attempt to get a small section of layout further along in scenery for the operators to enjoy. Between January and now the main focus has been the corn / soybean fields scene at Grays between Grays Lake and Gerhard.

    Field access road between fields

      Highway overpass at Grays

           Into the curve at Grays

     Local setout / pickup track at Grays

The scene turned out very well, it should be a great place to catch photos during the ops session. Post session scenery work will continue east towards Gerhard.

QUICK SUPERTREES 

While working on the field scenery, I realized that trees were a little sparse, especially for the highway embankment to field transition. Luckily a box of SuperTrees in the garage made quick work of needing trees. Following Tony Koester's 60 second tree article, I have had great luck with "quick" trees that hold up well.  

Laying out the material to size up trees properly and cut out the small leaves found on the stalk. After this its a shot of gray primer paint via spraycan and then a  spray of Rave Spray prior to adding leaves.

        Noch leaf flakes in three colors 

New Scenic Express products. The SuperLeaf adhere well and look great, the SuperTurf worked ok but would be much better for ground cover.

   Finished trees - dry, ready to plant!

AEI READERS

White Rose Hobbies has released their injection molded AEI Readers. These are a necessary detail for the modern modeller, and having a AEI site close to the house I can agree they got this product right.

I picked up four to start out with - AEI readers are in pairs to read each side of the car, in case of defective tag on one side or other.

The grey color they come molded in is a good base, and with a few sharpie markers to color the components and a quick dusting of pencil graphite you are ready to place them on layout.

          Above - Facing tracks

          Below - facing away from track

AEI reader pair sitting at the "BAY" reader site. 

As you can see they sit across from each other using around 8' from track center. Once planted ballast will cover around and up to the top of the base. Additonally a signal bungalow with BLMA N scale radio tower will be added to complete the AEI site.

PHOTOS AROUND "THE CLAIR"

I post photos of operations to Facebook model railroad sites weekly, in case you are not apart of those groups I wanted to bring those photos here for you to enjoy.

      Crew climbing off 4035 at Grays.

 Y-BA04 going on duty with 3830 at Bay Industrial Spur.

As you can see quite a bit happening on the layout these past few weeks, and there will be plenty to come in the next two weeks. I hope everyone had a great Fathers Day and will have a great week ahead. The late month update will recap the LSR Operating Session and future adds to the railroad.

Thank you for stopping by!

GM

Y-BA07-25 Special Switch

During some holidays local jobs are annulled during weekdays. Part of this is observance of the holiday such as Good Friday or customer closures.

In this case the normal Bay City Local (Y-BA04-XX) was not scheduled to work today. However Lakes Forest Products requested a special switch in order to receive a boxcar of lumber needed for a a large project starting next week. I happened to snap photos of the switch, so follow along as we watch the Y-BA07-21 extra switch complete its work. Why BA07 versus 04? The 07 denotes it as a special switch versus regularly scheduled.

Power for Y-BA07-21 is EMD GP38-2 "3830". This motor carries the 30th scheme for the railroad. 

Better shot of entire motor at DSF

It never fails the car needed for the switch was buried around 10 cars deep. After an hour of switching the car is on its  way down the east yard lead. Conductor Dan is riding point protecting the shove.

After shoving clear of the mainline switch and toning up the DTMF power switches to align over to Bay Main 2, we see the job pulling alongside Lakes Forest Products.

Aligning the switch into LFP the job comes to a stop to allow the conductor Dan to remove the derail (red tack) into the customer.

The all door boxcar on spot is empty so the job will go ahead and pull the empty then spot the load.

The job continues it work setting the empty all door boxcar on the Essexville Branch, then returning to spot the load.

Load spotted - conductor ratchets down the brake wheel on the boxcar before unloading can begin.

Work complete the job stops short of picking up the empty to reset the detail. 

Customer work complete the Y-BA07-25 returns to Bay Yard with one empty in tow which will be left on yard 6 for the yard job to classify for outbound departure on Sunday evening.

Have a great Easter Weekend!

GM

Mid January Update

Alot happening on the Michigan Interstate St.Clair Sub in the past week making preparations for and hosting the first session of 2016, 7th overall.

Saturday's session hosted 5 operators, lasted 4 hours, crewed 14 trains, and handled 125 car movements.

Our drive-in totals for trains included 4 manifests, 2 extended manifests, 2 local turns, 1 road turn, 1 CN haulage, 1 yard job, 1 coal train, 1 empty limestone train, and 1 HIWI special. So onward to the pictures and captions of the session. I made sure to post plenty of photos....

Bay Yard job Y-BA01-09 classifying a cut from the L-PBBA-09. This local left for Port Belle last session, went into staging, and returned to Bay City early in this session. The Chesepeake, Wheeling, and Erie hopper will return empty to Mountain State Carbon at Follansbee, WV. 

K-MYEX-07 bringing HIWI schnabel move across Saginaw River into Bay Yard. 

HIWI special seen again on Main 2 at Bay Yard. Once at Chessie Jct., train will head up Essexville Branch to Consumers Energy Karn Weadock power plant.

All quiet between trains in downtown Grays Lake, MI. For any of my normal readers, you will realize some structure placement changes here.

M-BAMC-09 departing westward from Bay Yard with EMD SD22ECO motors #2291 and 2290 on point.

Dean and Marshall coordinating moves for the Y-BA04-09 "Bay Local" while the M-BAMC-09 departs from track 2 in foreground.

Mike holding down the Dispatcher duties. During a lull in traffic Mike and Marshall swapped roles, letting everyone get a chance on the throttle or white board.

EMD GP38-2 #3828 at Grays Lake didn't make the local today, account mechanical issue. Luckily sister #3810 was on hand and took over duties for the R-GEGL-09.

M-MCBA-09 arriving at Bay Yard behind EMD SD40-2 #4052 and SD40-2M #4059. In the background you can see Y-BA04-09 switching the Michigan Agricultural Commodities terminal elevator.

Interesting steel load on M-MCBA-09 coming out of Essar Steel's Sault Ste. Marie plant.

CN overhead train Z-PHBK-09 idles on main 1 awaiting C-FWBA-08 in the foreground to clear off the main and into yard 1.

Bay Yard switcher (Y-BA01-09) and Bay local (Y-BA04-09) working the east end of Bay Yard.

Bay local pulling empty boxcar VMID1012 from Lakes Forest Products. This car will return to the Virginia Midland Railroad.

Work complete, empty pulled and load spotted.

While hybrid block cards are used instead of the traditional 4 cycle waybill cards, each of the locals does have a spot and pull sheet to help organize assigned work. The pulls page of the sheet is filled out prior to session. On the flip side is the spots page which is filled out when crew goes on duty.

Dispatching diagram for St. Clair Sub

Session wrapped up we see Bay Yard frozen in time with photos above and below.The amount of coal loads in the yard is directly related to the Sugar Beet plant coal train terminating at Bay Yard versus the plant. The Sugar Turn L-BAPB will take 5 of the 10 cars on the next northbound run. 

At Grays Lake we can see the outbound block of traffic for pick up on the next M-BAPH. Looking at the cars we see 2 empty plastic pellet hoppers, 3 loaded malted barley cars, and 3 loaded corn hoppers.

While 14 trains did operate the crew of the Bay Local did run "out of hours" after completing their customer switching on Bay Industrial Spur. The yardmaster will have to call a relief crew or use the evening yard crew to "dog catch" the local back to Bay Yard.

Wrapping up the session we see the Y-BA04-09 "Bay Local" tieing down with its engineer setting the hand brakes on NRE Genset 3GS21B #2101, while conductor dismounts to set brakes on the two boxcars adjacent to locomotive.

Thanks for stopping through, hope to have another update towards end of January showing project progress.

GM