last week i laid a few feet of track. mainline from summit now leads downhill. the two sidings end and it is a two-track main again. turnouts installed but not yet wired. installed insulated rail joiners on the north end, the beginning of the "mountain sub". so the whole mainline uphill/summit/downhill is now a separate power district. if there should be a short somewhere only this part of the layout will be shut down. makes troubleshooting and operating a lot easier.
besides work i spent most of the time running trains. first a track cleaning train. two engines and 3 tomix track cleaning cars. a sander, a polisher and a vacuum cleaner. once the track was clean enough i set up a coal train. 3 engines in front, 60 cars trailing. smooth as silk. quickly found out the train has more than enough pulling power. so i removed one of the engines. still running smooth, but slowing down uphill. added another 10 cars. still no problem. 10 more cars making it a 80-car monster. was too much now. it seems like two engines (as4400cw and es44ac) are able to pull 76 cars up the 1-1.2% grade thru all the curves. quite amazing. guess if all coal cars would be equipped with steel wheels they will make 80 cars. unfortunately i ran out of steel wheels (what else).
today i started wiring. so far only the main power bus for the track and the secondary power bus for the turnouts are in place. big work of soldering all the feeders to the bus will start tomorrow.
sorry folks, no pics this week. instead i uploaded a video showing the two engines pulling 70 cars thru the winter scene. after a while you will see the train cross over itself. hope you enjoy it. it is really worth to spend 4 minutes. (yes, it takes 4 minutes for the train to pass by !!)
weekly work report..........12/06/2020
Posted - 12/06/2020 : 16:45:22
