Freight train versus tornado: no contest

H/T to Craig Zeni, who said it was rather more excitement than he'd like to experience.

How can you not see a train in front of you?

More information here. H/T to Craig Zeni for the links.

Local industry gets early boost

Mid-afternoon Friday in Oshawa turned into an impromptu "Let's all leave our houses and get acquainted with evacuation protocols" event:

Oshawa resident Charlie Stacey was getting ready to take his dogs for a walk around 2:20 p.m. Friday when, "all of a sudden, the whole ground just went boom, boom, boom."

Stacey, whose Montrave Ave. home backs onto the CP rail tracks, didn't know it yet, but his house was on the fringe of a derailment that saw some 27 train cars leave the tracks and pile up near Park Rd., north of Hwy. 401, perilously close to area homes.

"I saw all the cars start piling up against the Park Road bridge and then one of the rails curved up 15 feet in the air," Stacey said. "That's what really freaked me out ... it was surreal."

Stacey was one of about 1,000 local residents and students evacuated from their homes and two area schools after the derailment. Police said residents were evacuated from a 10-square block area surrounding the wreckage.

It lacks the full entertainment value of the 1979 Mississauga evacuation, but they'll do their best. Full story here.

To dream the impossible dream . . .

The headline really caught my attention:

Canada considers selling Via Rail, CBC
As the nation grapples with a record deficit, two of Canada's most iconic companies may be up for grabs.

It's a summary of a report in the Globe and Mail, probably intentionally highlighting the things of most concern to their readership. I'd love to see the CBC privatized, but I doubt that the government will do that. VIA Rail wouldn't survive in the private sector — at least in its current form — as it's running too many uneconomical long-distance routes that don't come close to paying their way.

Industrial railway, Albanian style

H/T to Roger Henry. And as Den Lippert said "I've never thought of 'trolley pole' or 'pantograph' as an Occupation!"

If you say it with enough sincerity, maybe it'll become possible

Dave Demerjian reports on President Obama's latest high-speed rail (HSR) pronouncements:

President Obama delivered on a campaign promise Thursday when he announced a plan to lay the groundwork for a high-speed rail network that would serve 10 of the nation's busiest transportation corridors.

The president, joined by Vice President Joe Biden and Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood, argued improving the nation's rail system is an economic and environmental necessity. Our overburdened highways and air traffic control systems are stifling growth, he said, and it is time to embrace rail.

"What we need, then, is a smart transportation system equal to the needs of the 21st century," he said. "A system that reduces travel times and increases mobility, a system that reduces congestion and boosts productivity, a system that reduces destructive emissions and creates jobs.

"There's no reason we can't do this."

Well, actually . . . there are several reasons why you can't do this:

[. . .] what's often missing from reports like this (contrasting HSR in other countries with regular rail service in the US or Canada) is that all HSR solutions require separate, reserved rights-of-way that never see non-high speed traffic (that is, no freight trains). The cost of developing and building the locomotives, coaches, signals, and control infrastructure pale in comparison to buying the land anywhere in North America on which to build the new railway. Passenger rail service, to approach sustainability — let's ignore the whole notion of profitability — has to be located in densely populated corridors . . . exactly where the costs of acquiring land are going to be highest.

Yeah, I know, it's bad form to quote yourself . . . but even eight billion dollars won't buy you anywhere near enough for one of these proposed systems, never mind ten of them.

Update, 17 April: Nick Gillespie isn't a fan of HSR:

And now this morning, Obama was on the tube again, yapping about traffic jams. What the hell is going on here? The president of the freaking United States is talking about traffic jams? Then again, in grammar school we did all learn that part of George Washinton's Farewell Address where he warned against entangling alliances and the dread menace of highway jughandles and traffic circles. That Obama's big solution is, ta-da!, "high-speed rail" is simply one more sign that he is simply not serious about anything other than paying off 19th and 20th century legacy special interests. I look forward to tomorrow's press conference, when Obama trains his laser-beam brain on the question of whether Razzles is a candy or a gum. [. . .]

If you're the president of the United States and you're talking about goddamn traffic jams and you're proposing high-speed rail as anything other than an unapologetic boondoggle that will a) never get built and b) never get built to the gee-whiz specs it's supposed and c) be ridden by fewer people than commuted by zeppelin last year, you've got real problems, bub. And by extension, so do we all.

How to derail a train

A military film the OSS sponsored in 1944 shows that derailing a train isn't as easy as you'd think.

Compare how difficult it was to deliberately derail a train in 1944 with how readily the trains come off the tracks in 1974.

H/T to Ken Olson.

High Speed Rail: Japan ups the ante

Although it's only in the planning stages, the successor to the newest generation of Shinkansen "bullet" trains may achieve speeds of 310 mph, according to Wired:

Apparently 175 mph isn't fast enough for people in Japan, where rail companies are pouring money into a magnetic levitation train that will streak across the countryside at more than 310 mph. The train isn't expected to go into service until 2025, so in the meantime there's a plan to roll out a faster, sleeker version of the wildly successful Shinkansen bullet train.

Here in the U.S., the clickety-clack of Amtrak is the standard for rail and a proposed high-speed line linking Los Angeles and San Francisco would make the trip in about 2.5 hours. The system Japan is developing would cover that distance in an hour, which shows how far behind we are.

The new Shinkansen, called the E-5 Series and shown above, will hit the rails in 2011. It is based on the Fastech 360 prototype that JR East has been working on since 2002, and the company says it will do nearly 200 mph and offer greater comfort thanks to improved car-tilting and suspension mechanisms. Each E-5 will feature an 18 seat "Super Green Car" that JR East touts as something akin to a first class cabin on steroids.

Of course, what's often missing from reports like this (contrasting HSR in other countries with regular rail service in the US or Canada) is that all HSR solutions require separate, reserved rights-of-way that never see non-high speed traffic (that is, no freight trains). The cost of developing and building the locomotives, coaches, signals, and control infrastructure pale in comparison to buying the land anywhere in North America on which to build the new railway. Passenger rail service, to approach sustainability — let's ignore the whole notion of profitability — has to be located in densely populated corridors . . . exactly where the costs of acquiring land are going to be highest.

Don't expect $8 billion to buy much high speed rail service

In Europe and in Japan, high speed rail services are often touted as part of the solution to road congestion and increasing short-range air traffic problems. In Canada and the United States, high speed rail is also frequently proposed to address the same problems. Robert Poole explains why even $8 billion isn't even close to enough money to bring high speed rail links to North America:

It's unfortunate that President Obama has made inter-city high-speed rail his "signature issue" in transportation. The $8 billion inserted into the stimulus bill at the last minute has created expectations for Japanese-style bullet trains on 11 long-planned corridors, but those hopes are likely to go unrealized. Moreover, by promoting expanded passenger rail service in these corridors, this policy may hinder many people's hope of shifting more long-haul freight from truck to rail, as an energy-saving and greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction policy.

Let me explain the problem. True high speed rail (HSR) that goes 150-200 mph requires entirely separate rights of way with no grade crossings, shallow grades, very broad curves, and no 60 mph freight traffic. That's what Japan, France, Spain, Germany, and Italy are doing, and the taxpayer cost is many billions per line. Former Amtrak CEO Alex Kummant, in 2007 House testimony, estimated that an exclusive HSR corridor between New York and Washington would cost $10 billion — exclusive of new right of way (in some of the most expensive urban areas in the country). So it's laughable to think that $8 billion (even if supplemented by the $5 billion more the Administration proposes over the next five years) could provide more than a small down payment on 11 real HSR corridors, most of them far longer than the 200+ mile New York to Washington one. The proposed California HSR is estimated by its proponents to cost $50.2 billion, but a recent Reason Foundation "due diligence" report put the more likely cost at up to $81.4 billion.

So in fact, what the new federal funding will mostly be used for is upgrades to the existing shared passenger/freight tracks, aiming to get Amtrak trains up to speeds of 90 to 100 mph rather than today's 60 or 70 mph. But that raises the question of getting the best use out of America’s existing railroad infrastructure. While it's possible, with lots of passing sidings and expensive signaling systems, to operate both fast passenger trains and slower (and much longer) freight trains on the same trackage, the performance of both is hindered. U.S. freight railroads still have serious difficulties attracting time-sensitive freight, because rail freight takes so long (an intermodal trip from Tacoma to Columbus or Cincinnati takes 7 to 12 days) and is so uncertain (i.e., from 7 to 12 days!). Today's high-tech, just-in-time logistics system cannot operate with such long times or with large schedule uncertainty, which is why so much freight moves by truck instead of rail.

World's largest model railway

This is the Miniatur Wunderland attraction in Hamburg.

H/T to Jon, my virtual landlord.

Metrolink's texting engineer

A report in the LA Times has some disturbing revelations:

The engineer suspected of causing the Sept. 12 Metrolink catastrophe in Chatsworth not only allowed rail enthusiasts into the cab of moving trains but also let them sit at the controls, according to text messages released today at a hearing by federal investigators.

Two days before the crash, Metrolink engineer Robert M. Sanchez sent a cellphone text message arranging another ride-along and said, "this time I'm taking a picture of you @ da throttle!!!"

Planning for the evening ride-along on the day of the crash, Sanchez texted one of the rail enthusiasts: "yea . . . but I'm REALLY looking forward to getting you in the cab and showing you how to run a locomotive."

The recipient, identified as "Person A," responded: "Omg [oh, my God] dude me too. Running a locomotive. Having all of that in the palms of my hands. Its a great feeling. And ill do it so good from all my practice on the simulator."

Sanchez answered: "I'm gonna do all the radio talkin' . . . ur gonna run the locomotive & I'm gonna tell u how to do it."

Expect even more regulations banning non-authorized personnel from even being near locomotives in future . . . we all know railfans who shouldn't be allowed out without a keeper. That'll be how the legal system will view all railfans if this continues.

Loram's rail grinding train

I saw one of these trains going by late one evening, and they're quite a sight . . . until I got close enough, I thought it was some sort of brush fire along the rails. H/T to Dave Slater for the link.

Model railroad manufacturer closing the doors on model railroad club

You know times are tough when even having as knowledgeable landlord as a model railroad manufacturer/distributor isn't enough to keep the eviction notice from your door:

They were snapping photos Thursday night in the back room at the Wm. K. Walthers Inc. headquarters building, old club members and old model railroad enthusiasts, watching as the locomotives rolled down the track, past rail yards crammed with covered hoppers and red tankers, past smoke stacks made of old vacuum cleaner canisters and charcoal-covered cotton, past steep cliffs carved from old acoustic tiles set against a painted sky.

Thirty-two years they worked on this layout, built it by hand — 600 feet of mainline track — refined it, changed it, but never quite finished it.

But now, they're waiting for the final whistle, waiting to take apart the track and shut it all down.

"It was a labor of love," said Bob Sherman, 71, one of the last of the Milwaukee Model Railroad Engineers.

The club, founded in 1947, is down to two members. Walthers, a model railroad equipment firm, needs the space.

It's really a shame that of all possible landlords, Wm. K. Walthers would be the villain in this little drama. Walthers has been one of the longest-surviving firms in the model railroad business (founded in the 1930s, still going strong today). You'd think that Walthers would work to find some way of helping to keep the club alive, but with only two remaining members, it's possible that nothing would be enough to keep the club going.

It's hard to imagine any special interest group as space-sensitive as a model railroad club managing to carry on when membership had fallen that low . . .

Remnants of Soviet Railways

Ben Barby sent along a few links showing some of the abandoned railways of the former Soviet Union:

Abandoned passenger cars at the depot in Sukhumi, Abkhazia.

Stalin's Lost Railway, built deep in the heart of Northern Siberia, between the city of Salekhard and the town of Igarka, with no connection to the rest of the Soviet railway system.

More abandoned equipment in Brest, Belarus

Bud Light Ad Parody

H/T to Dave Slater.

The Peppercorn Pioneer

Maiden run for new steam locomotive Tornado.

Transporting the Vega to market, 70's style

In their first attempt to move into the small car market of the early 1970's (dominated by Honda, Toyota, and Datsun), GM produced the Chevy Vega. In spite of being named Motor Trend's Car of the Year for 1971, it wasn't a runaway success.

John DeLorean wrote disparagingly about the Vega:

[On A Clear Day You Can See General Motors] published by John DeLorean in 1979, who was president of Chevrolet at the time of development, indicated that the prototype car literally fell apart just eight miles (13 km) into its first road test. DeLorean criticized the Vega as a poor design developed by central corporate GM engineers rather than Chevrolet engineers and said that the car had been forced upon a disgruntled Chevrolet by GM management. He also criticized the engine saying that it was "a relatively large, noisy, top-heavy combination of aluminum and iron which cost far too much to build, (and) looked like it had been taken off a 1920 farm tractor..." and "Chevy engineers were ashamed of the engine."

Moving the Vega to market called on the railway industry to come up with some more creative ways of packaging the cars for safe transport from the factory to dealerships. From the Wikipedia article:

One innovation of the original Vega was that it was designed to be shipped vertically with its nose down. For example, the battery had fill caps at the back to prevent leakage during transit. Special rail cars known as "Vert-A-Pac" cars were built with hangers to carry the first Vegas to market in this vertical arrangement. One of the notable locations where these cars were unloaded was at the now defunct Sawtell Auto Ramps in Atlanta, Georgia, located on the former Southern, now Norfolk Southern mainline to Macon.

Frank Greene provided some photos of these unusual railcars:

He notes for this image that in the background "are Stac-Pac containers for loading Cadillacs, another idea that came and went in about the same 1970-1977 time frame."

A row of Vega hatchbacks ready to be backed off the doors.

Showing the specially equipped forklift operating the door/ramp.

Combining your hobby with your work

Dr. Joan Girona had a data collection problem. The solution included model trains:

Dr. Joan Girona of the Institute of Agroalimentary Research and Technology in Catalonia, Spain, studies irrigation and the water and nutrient needs of fruit trees. In a recent study, he wanted to measure the absorption of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) for use in analyzing growth and fruit production issues. Transpiration from fruit trees and overall evapotranspiration in orchards is closely related to absorption of solar radiation by the tree canopy, so this study would help researchers more accurately measure these processes.

The more measurements he could make, the truer Dr. Girona’s results would be, so he tried a few methods to accurately capture the needed data. First he set up a network of 32 sensors at various points on the ground around the fruit trees to measure light as it came from many angles. Dr. Girona and his co-researchers found that the values were too distant from each other for good modeling of sun movement. To get enough measurements in a net of this sort, they would need more than 1200 sensors, along with the associated dataloggers and multiplexers—impossible with the resources available.

As they thought about how to get measurements from so many points, they came up with a way to move the sensors around the measurement area precisely and quickly. They mounted the instruments [. . .] on small-scale model trains and ran the system on carefully laid-out tracks covering a large area around trees in an orchard. They placed metal markers every couple of inches along the track, and electromagnetic detectors on the train sensed these markers and signaled the datalogger to take a measurement at each point.

H/T to "Jeff the S", who thinks Dr. Girona should be nominated for a Nobel Prize for the "Best Use of Model Railroads in Agricultural Research".

The Indiana Railroad

A brief look at a long-gone interurban rail system. H/T to Eric Kirkland.

Historical font-fondling

For more than you ever wanted to know about the Helvetica font and the New York City subway system:

There is a commonly held belief that Helvetica is the signage typeface of the New York City subway system, a belief reinforced by Helvetica, Gary Hustwit’s popular 2007 documentary about the typeface. But it is not true — or rather, it is only somewhat true. Helvetica is the official typeface of the MTA today, but it was not the typeface specified by Unimark International when it created a new signage system at the end of the 1960s. Why was Helvetica not chosen originally? What was chosen in its place? Why is Helvetica used now, and when did the changeover occur? To answer those questions this essay explores several important histories: of the New York City subway system, transportation signage in the 1960s, Unimark International and, of course, Helvetica. These four strands are woven together, over nine pages, to tell a story that ultimately transcends the simple issue of Helvetica and the subway.

Penn Central's 1974 plea for federal help

This is a fascinating look at just how bad the American rail system had become in the early 1970s before deregulation:

Penn Central was created by a merger of the former Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central system in 1968, in an attempt to save both of those lines. Eventually, the federal government took over PC and other bankrupt northeastern railroads to form Conrail.

H/T to Jason A. Ciastko.

J.J. Hill, Rail Robber Baron

There's a good biography of Canadian rail magnate J.J. Hill over at Gods of the Copybook Headings:

Neil Reynolds at the Globe recounts the legend of James Jerome Hill (1838-1916), the Canadian who built an American transcontinental railroad, without government subsidies.

[. . .]

Hill also played a key role, until Sir John A Macdonald and his business allies at the Bank of Montreal muscled him out, in the early history of the CPR. He pushed for the appointment of Van Horne as General Manager of the CPR and argued, correctly, that the road's route was economic nonsense. For political reasons the transcontinental route was built through northern Ontario - this long before any significant natural resources had been discovered in the region. The more commercially viable route would have taken the road through Chicago and St Paul, thereby picking up traffic for the Pacific ports of Seattle and Vancouver. Eventually the CPR was forced to purchase the SOO Line to tap into the Chicago and St Paul markets.

Of course, the route taken by the Canadian Pacific had to be within Canada . . . the political realities of the day didn't allow mere economic facts to get in the way. Mistrust of the American government was nearly as bad then as it has been for the last 20 years (I kid, I kid).

One idiot survives this bout of idiocy

Watch this little video to see just how close the trucker got to being just another statistic.

H/T to "jtMc".

GO Transit's new (old-looking) locomotives

I don't pass near the GO Transit rail line along the lakeshore very often, so seeing a new locomotive on the end of a train was a mild surprise to me. What I originally thought when I saw it was that GO had somehow decided to rebuild the old Ontario Northland TEE trainsets:

The newly delivered locomotive on delivery in June 2007. Built by MotivePower Industries, formerly known as Morrison-Knudson.	The former TEE trainset used by Ontario Northland for their Northlander service.

The railway renaissance

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, American railways are enjoying a bit of a renaissance:

The upgrade is part of a railroad renaissance under way across much of the U.S. For the first time in nearly a century, railroads are making large investments in their networks — adding sets of tracks, straightening curves that force engines to slow and expanding tunnels for bigger trains. Their campaign is altering the corridors of American commerce, more so than any other development since interstate highways spread to the interior.

For decades, railroads spent little on expansion, even tore up surplus track and shrank routes. But since 2000 they've spent $10 billion to expand tracks, build freight yards and buy locomotives, and they have $12 billion more in upgrades planned.

The buildout comes as the industry transitions away from its chief role in recent decades of hauling coal, timber and other raw materials in manufacturing regions. Now, increasingly, railroads are moving finished consumer goods, often made in Asia, from ports to major cities. Their new higher-volume routes, called corridors, often serve the South, where the rail system is less developed and the population is rising.

Noticeably absent from the discussion are two of the largest surviving North American railways: CN and CP, each of whom own substantial networks south of the 49th parallel. That might just be because the article is focussed on US-based railways, or it might indicate another situation where Canadian business is failing to invest to keep up with their American competitors.

Government subsidies distort the market

In a post about shilling for environmentally friendly energy subsidies, Radley Balko touches on one of the biggest boondoggles of the 19th century, the building of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads:

In 1862, Congress justified passing the Pacific Railroad Act as a way to forestall a secessionist movement in California during the Civil War. The government subsidized the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads at $16,000 per mile over an easy grade and up to $48,000 in the mountains. In addition, the government offered substantial land grants along the right-of-way. Despite these government subsidies, both companies were bankrupt in the early 1870s.

As an example of how government subsidies distort incentives, both railroad construction crews worked past each other building an extra 200 miles of parallel rail lines grades (and some parallel tracks) instead of linking up so their companies could earn more subsidy payments and land grants. The fact that government subsidies were not necessary for building a transcontinental railroad was proved when James J. Hill built the highly profitable Great Northern Railway from Minnesota to Seattle completely without them or land grants.

The UP/CP are an excellent example of how injecting government money into what should be a private endeavour will seriously distort the market, creating a huge incentive to "game the system" to maximize the unearned profits from the government, rather than by serving the public by actually running a business.

If you've read any of the histories of the Union Pacific¹, you'll very quickly discover that the company spent far more time and effort lobbying for subsidy, manoevering against potential competitors (by legislation, bribery, and political obstruction, not by actually serving their customers), and hiding the mind-boggling levels of waste, corruption, and incompetence of their day-to-day operations.

That's not to minimize the difficulties of actually building and running the railroad, which cost the lives of many men (disproportionally immigrant Irish and Chinese labourers), but the fact is that the railroad itself was a very distant second to the government largess to be diverted for private profit by the executives of the two corporations. The excesses and criminality of the various officers of the company had an even more important legacy: after the scandal broke, leaving both companies bankrupt, successive governments felt totally justified in heavily regulating all railroads, introducing economic burdens which would cripple most of them for nearly a hundred years (some of the worst regulatory burdens weren't lifted until the 1980's²).

^1. Except for the sanitized versions produced for children, which only cover the engineering achievements, not the grubby reality of the UP & CP in their early years.

^2. See the Staggers Act for information on the deregulation which belatedly allowed the revitalization of the American railroad industry.

Studies of the rail industry showed dramatic benefits for both railroads and their users from this alteration in the regulatory system. According to the Department of Transportation's Freight Management and Operations section's studies, railroad industry costs and prices were halved over a ten year period, the railroads reversed their historic loss of traffic (as measured by ton-miles) to the trucking industry, and railroad industry profits began to recover after decades of low profits and widespread railroad insolvencies.

Road safety at a grade crossing

Here's what happens when a truck driver forgets how long his vehicle is and pulls into (but not through) a grade crossing: Boom.

Video taken last week in Salisbury, North Carolina.

"This is my railroad"

One of the most interesting railroad promotional films ever made: This Is My Railroad, Part 1 and Part2. It's portentious, hokey, and triumphal, yet tells more about both the Southern Pacific and the regions it served than anything I've ever seen. If you want to know why the 1940's and 50's were the golden age of railroads, this film will give you a bunch of clues.

One of thousands of public domain short films now available from the Prelinger collection at the National Archive.

H/T to Jeff Scarbrough.

When coming in to the office seems too much like work

. . . imagine coming in to a job like this every morning:

Frankly, I have to admit in general that push systems are to working steam railways what pornography is to real sex, both are great in moderation but neither is quite as good as the 'real thing'. The 300mm (!) gauge colliery railway at the top end of Sichuan's Shibanxi railway is, however, a little bit special. I make no claim to originality, others like Hiromi Masaki have been here before. Being extremely committed in other directions, I had not bothered to check their sites before I came, I just noted some advice from John Raby to check it out during my visit. Thanks are due to all concerned for pointing me in the right direction.

Makes the old 9-to-5 seem positively sybaritic, doesn't it?

Electrical gremlins

In part two of the saga of transferring my son's layout to Burlington, I discover that gremlins are real . . .

To recap (or you can read the original post): I took the original 4'x6' section of Victor's HO scale model train layout down to Burlington to install in my sister's basement. Part one went very well, the layout (aside from some scenery) arrived and co-operated when set up in the new space. Nephew's state: very happy. Some time passed, during which I was going to check that the second section, a 2'x4' module containing the turntable, was still operable.

That was delayed an extra couple of weeks, as I couldn't find my multimeter, and there clearly was an electrical issue with the section: no power appeared at track level when applied to the under-table wiring. This is where it got complicated: my nephew had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the turntable section and was very disappointed when it failed to show up on schedule. And I couldn't even diagnose what the problem was without having a meter to find out where the power was going (I had a brief urge to tell him that there was now a puddle of electrons on the floor underneath the layout, but common sense prevailed).

My meter has gone into hiding, and has not yet turned up, so I borrowed a meter from Jon (my virtual landlord, who, by happenstance, had just bought a new one . . . because his original multimeter had gone into hiding a few weeks earlier). Using Jon's new meter, I discovered the following:

• a loose connection to the turntable bridge track itself — a screw connector, easy to remedy
• a loose connection to one of the six turntable stub tracks — also a screw connection, fixed very easily
• otherwise excellent connectivity on all the rest of the track surrounding the turntable.

The turntable is one of the Atlas 9" models, and the switches controlling power to the stub tracks are all Atlas slide switches. In spite of the abuse they'd received during multiple moves, the turntable still works (manual, not powered), and the slide switches all still work fine. What doesn't add up is that tracks 2, 4, and 6 (counting clockwise) don't run. That is, the multimeter reads the same voltage on tracks 1 through 6, but a locomotive is only able to actually move if it's sitting on the turntable itself or on tracks 1, 3, or 5. There are no breaks in either the wiring or the actual physical rail to account for this. It's the same locomotive (a Kato NW2 — Kato has a very good reputation for product quality), yet it runs happily on 8 volts DC on one track, but refuses to acknowledge the same voltage on the adjacent track.

Gremlins are the only possible explanation.

Still, when my sister's family arrives later today, I'll at least be able to give my nephew a partially working turntable section, which is better than nothing. :-/

Update, two hours later: Apparently, Gremlins have nationality. . .

In first part of this post, I mentioned my frustrations with trying to troubleshoot the wiring. What I forgot to mention, because I'd completely forgotten about it, was that not all the track was Atlas. Some of the track was from one or another of my son's various train sets . . . no brass, but some steel and some nickel silver. It's all been painted and given the beginnings of weathering (but no ballast), so it wasn't immediately obvious which sections were Atlas code 100 (made with nickel silver) and which were Brand X code 96.733333 (made from the bones of imprisoned dissidents).

When I belatedly recalled that, it was a simple matter to swap out the (Japanese-made) Kato locomotive for a (Chinese-made) Bachmann. The original run of the Spectrum GE 44 ton diesel, to be precise. It had no problem running on any of the track . . . in other words the problem wasn't the track or the wiring: it was the frickin' locomotive. Kato NW2's don't condescend to run on mere "trainset quality" track. It has to be brand name or better before the Kato will stop sulking and actually run.

So, in addition to the turntable module, my nephew is also getting an old, noisy, but still serviceable GN 44-tonner. At least I know _that_ will run on the "new" section.

Public transit boondoggles

There's a post up at Hit and Run, talking about the problems with high-profile, low-return-on-investment projects like light rail:

A front-page story in yesterday's New York Times noted that politicians' transportation vanity projects drain money away from the sort of maintenance work that apparently was needed on the Interstate 35W bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis last week. I was pleasantly surprised to see the Times put light rail lines in the same category as boondoggles like Alaska's Bridge to Nowhere [. . .]

The scenario is very common — just about every city larger than 500,000 has probably built, planned to build, or been wined-and-dined by potential bidders for such projects. The projects are almost always economically ludicrous (but not as far-out as publicly funded sports venues for professional teams), basing their revenue projections on literally unattainable levels of use and minimizing or ignoring the crowding-out of other activities.

Light rail projects are very popular with politicians, because every politician wants to leave "a legacy" of their time in office. That means they want to spend as much of your money as possible to ensure their own "immortality". Light rail projects are popular with the public because they appear to offer a way to reduce congestion and speed up transit times . . . for other people . . . in other words, get some of those slowcoach commuters the heck out of my way by making them give up their cars and use a new light rail system instead.

Trains to Burlington

On Saturday, Victor and I took his old model train layout down to Burlington, to pass it on to Victor's cousin, who has recently become a model train fanatic. Below the break is the version of the story I sent to one of my model rail mailing lists:

Friday night and Saturday

It sounded like a good idea: my son hadn't really been interested for several years, and he was willing to donate the layout and some of his locomotives and rolling stock. My nephew, who is mildly autistic, is going to be over the moon. At least he will be once we get it transported down to his home and set up for him.

I cleverly anticipated this need when purchasing my current vehicle . . . a 4'x6' layout wouldn't have fit comfortably inside a Honda CR-V. I have a Toyota Tacoma pick-up now. Except . . . and here's where my plan had a critical flaw . . . it only has a 5' bed, so the layout won't be able to travel in relative comfort inside the bed with the cover down. I'll have to drop the tail and wrap the 1' of projecting layout to try to keep the (few remaining) trees, bushes, and clumps of ground foam from decorating a 1:1 scale road.

But before I can do that, I have to find a few key parts: some working locomotives and cars. Which were randomly packed up with my stuff when we moved into this house four years back. I've had to a) find all the boxes, which were not conveniently located in one spot; b) open each box to verify that what the label on the outside says has some relationship to what's actually in there; c) having located some (but not all) of the boxes filled with other boxes of the Athearn, MDC, Accurail, Kadee variety, then d) realize that the labels on the little boxes have no connection with the actual contents.

So I spent much of the afternoon opening all the little boxes inside the big boxes, sorting out my son's collection from my own. I thought it would be pretty easy: his stuff would all have X2F couplers (very unrealistic looking things: View image), while mine were all Kadee or other knuckle-type couplers (which both look more like real couplers, but also work better). That quaint notion was abandoned about the fifth box, when I discovered that I'd started converting some of Victor's collection over to using knuckle couplers round about the time we decided to incorporate his layout into my TH&B layout.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that I'd been generous with the packing material inside each of those little boxes. So it wasn't just a case of opening the lid . . . it then required further unpacking to actually see what was hidden within.

Two hours in, I had a horrible sinking feeling: we couldn't find any of his locomotives. A quick trip to the LHS was suddenly on the agenda.

All of you folks who are continuing to add to your marination stashes will laugh when I say I'd hoped to find a decent quality diesel in HO scale for around Cdn$50 or so. I seem to recall the Proto 1000 line having some models in that price range the last time I checked. The locos in stock started at nearly twice that price. But you guys already know that.

So do I, now.

Okay, so he's now got at least one working locomotive (others came to light . . . all together now . . . after I'd dropped a C-note at the LHS). He's got a variety of rolling stock (about 50/50 X2F and knuckle couplers), including a couple of passenger cars. And of course, he's got the layout. With five years of dust and crud and spider webs and mouse poop and other less easily identified things covering it.

Fortunately, I have an air compressor. Not one of those piddling little airbrush compressors: a real power-tool air compressor (insert Tim-the-Tool-Man-Taylor-style grunting here). Did you know you can peel entire strips of scenery off a model train layout and hurl them across the basement with an ill-judged gust of compressed air?

I do now.

I still have the leg assemblies and plenty of L-girders lying around (see here for what I'm talking about), so that'll be no problem. What I don't seem to have are any of the cross-braces to set between the legs and the girders. Oh, well, Pine 1"x2" is pretty cheap. I also couldn't find the gussets to secure the cross-braces to the legs . . . but I do have some roughly triangular cabinet-grade oak cut-offs which will probably do the trick. I'll just need to remember to take along some 1 1/2" screws instead of the 3/4" screws I'd normally use.

Sunday

Mission accomplished. All parties are satisfied with the relocation, ownership transfer, re-assembly, and initial operations on the layout.

Travel to Burlington was a bit more fraught than I'd expected: the layout was too wide to sit between the wheel wells in the back of the truck, so I had to set it up on a pair of cross-bearers . . . which put the top of the scenery too close to the bed cover for the cover to close. This meant I had to drive with the whole assembly in the open position for 150km . . . at highway speed:

Arriving in Burlington

I expected that the wind would finish off what my compressed air had begun yesterday, but to my surprise, only a few bits of scenery failed to arrive at the end of the journey still connected to the main layout. Even the Woodland Scenics plastic trees withstood the trauma (we had to replant three after setting up the layout, and it looked like another four or five had gotten off before the truck came to a complete stop. Other than that, the layout was in pretty good condition.

Victor helped me to re-assemble the benchwork in a cleared area of my sister's basement, and the layout was back in service within an hour of arriving. My nephew spent the rest of the day running trains and making up stories about the trains and their cargo. (Literally . . . my sister had to pry him away from the layout to come upstairs and say goodbye to us as we left).

All in all, a pretty good result, I think. ;-)