Hello Folks!

When i became aquainted with the themes of Intermodal and TOFC, some examples were purchased. One oth this were a pair of Walthers 32 foot trailers of an venerable age.


One of the devices i was missing, were the endsills and the bumper bars. Here i made them out of styrene "C" profile and 2 short pieces of an smaller "C" profile became the fixature for the bars. The bar itself was made of an piece of squared profile. Two little red "dots" represent the tail lights.
The loose axle bearing were eliminated by glueing the wheels into place. These trailers are for static display only, so the wheels need'nt to roll.
2 Pieces of black styrene sheet became the splash guards.





Looks some better, but the black rims were not a real gem. Tires and rims were cast as one piece, so it is all black.





A felt-tipn pen with silver ink eliminated this. It took about 15 seconds to paint one rim, that was 1 minute for the trailer.





My opinion is it looks much better now.
It is a rather quick work. The profiles can be cut to the desired lenght in series and are glued quick onto. So why not get serial with trailer upgrading?


Cheers Lutz

A pair of SD40-2s head up WPMA-61.

Bruce

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Hi Guys, I am looking to replace the under frame and floor of a pair of old AHM HO boxcars, that I am using as part of a kit bashing project. Has anyone done this before? I'm looking to same a little time by asking if anyone has done and what did you use? Thanks - Dave

All's quiet at the Mannheim Yard this July 4th.

Bruce

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Friday evening July 1st one of the newer Silverliner V cars was seen leaning as compared to her sister car. SEPTA cars always travel in pairs or more linked together. This was a good thing, since it was noticed early.

After a few hours of trail and error, it was found (early Saturday morning) that the Equalizer Beam Plate on one truck had a crack that failed and the 2 pieces fortunately wedged together. This could have caused a derailment at high speeds.

They immediately began inspecting all the "bends" in all the trucks of all the cars that were in the shops for normal service.... they found more stress cracks. They ordered all the remaining Silverliner V cars to operate at reduced speed and to report to the repair shops. There are 8 of these bends (Where the springs rest) on the trucks, 4 per truck, 8 per car. It takes 1/2 hour to 45 minutes to visually inspect each car. They have worked around the clock and have inspected approximately 100 cars as of 2:00 Sunday July 3rd.

Most have stress cracks!! They are still under warranty and SEPTA is petitioning Hyundai (lowest bidder out of 4) to investigate the manufacturing process and honor the warranty. They are also asking NJ Transit and Amtrak for help in borrowing cars and rail clearance for rush hours beginning Tuesday the 5th.

This is 1/3 of the SEPTA fleet and it will have a huge impact on travel in Philadelphia and the surrounding suburbs. Here is a link to the story:

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://6abc.com/traffic/septa-1-3-of-regional-rail-fleet-going-out-of-service-/1411365/">http://6abc.com/traffic/septa-1-3-of-re ... -/1411365/</a><!-- m -->

Technical items:
~~ The cracks are supposedly due to a weld between 2 sections that were manufactured at 2 different places and brought together for assembly where they were welded.
~~ They are trying to determine what could have caused the fractures.
~~ The actual fractures are cumulative stress fractures at the weld.
~~ They are small, hairline cracks on either side of the beam. So they can start anywhere near the weld and progressively grow since these are weight (spring) bearing beams.
~~ NTSB and the Railroad Safety Board of the Federal Railroad Administration have been notified (as per regulations)
~~ The SEPTA Board of Directors are fully supportive of the decision to sideline all 120 cars.
~~ Some of the trucks are being switched around so that some cars have 2 good trucks so they could be put into service Tuesday, but this is a very low number of cars.

More to come as the news gets updated!!!!!
(Some of the above information was from a press conference held at 2:00 pm today)

Have a "What-I-Did" to alleviate the stalling with the New Tooling Oldtime Bachmann 4-4-0:

http://www.chainsawjunction.com/1879/nt_440/wipers/



Thank you if you visit
Harold

Hello Folks!

Last week i had a little bit of time to made some testing with speakers.
And a word before, here i can only describe my own (and subjective) impressions of sound.

The candidates.

Right side from above:
- conventional 28mm speaker with PP-membrane in Soundtraxx baffle kit
- 28 x 28mm High Bass 2W speaker with metal membrane
- 30 x 40mm speaker witn conventional membrane
All have an impedance of 8 Ohm

In the middle one of those astoning tiny sugar cubes Reinhard told me of.

Left side from above; alle were sugar cubes of the Knowles Dumbo 1W; 8 Ohm type, but in different enclosures from Zimo:
- 13 x 18 x 13mm
- 40 x 20 x 9mm
- 40 x 22 x 9mm; two Dumbos wired in serial; 16 Ohm
- 50 x 15 x 14mm; in effect intended for G-Scale; 16 Ohm

Alle speakers were equipped with wires and plugs, so that a quick change of the speakers is possible. The speakers without baffles or boxes got a special "hand" created baffle.




The stage.

Decoder tester from Zimo, here for all tests a Soundtraxx Econami ECO-100 Steam sound decoder was plugged to get equal preconditions. The sound volume was turned down to low volume and the adjustments were for all tests the same.
It is not my intention to make loud noise or simply a certain level of noise, but to get a certain quality of sound without a tympanum (eardrum) perforation. :hey:
The stage is set, the candidates are prepared and in near future i will narrate my impressions.

Cheers Lutz

Madison County Historical Society
On Monday July 25, 2016 at 7pm
Retired Engineer, Maurice Lewman, to Speak

Maurice (pronounced Morris) Lewman will be the speaker at the Society Meeting on July 25th at 7pm. He is a retired railroader who started his railroad career in Markleville in 1947 as a Section Gang worker until August of 1950.

In 1950 he started firing on steam engines and then moved into the Engineer duties. He transferred to diesels and stayed there as an engineer as he worked his way on the Michigan Division From Louisville to Benton Harbor until 1981.

From 1981 to 1992 Maurice worked the Big Four Bee Line Main. He has worked for the New York Central, Penn Central and then Conrail retiring before the railroad became CSX.

Maurice said, "I had the pleasure of working with C. C. Staley and Ron Buser many times." Buser contributed the Control Board from Gridley tower to us, and Maurice donated the 1/4 scale mock up of the Baker Valve Gear on a Steam Locomotive.

The Madison County Historical Society is at 11W 11th Street in Anderson Indiana. That is the double door entry.

If you are near to Indiana, come out and enjoy the talk by Maurice.