Modelling what might have been in southeast BC and northwest Wasington
Continuing my tradition of hanging old calendars that match the current year in order to enhance the period feel around the layout, I present the equivalents for 2021.
Full year:
1909, 1915, 1926, 1937, 1943, 1954, 1965, 1971, 1982, 1993, 1999, and 2010
If that is not enough, you can also match the first two months or the last 10 using leap-year calendars:
January-February only:
1904, 1932, 1960, 1988, and 2016
March-December only:
1920, 1948, 1976, and 2004
I have decided to remove the email subscription feature from my blog, and instead simply post links to future updates on my Facebook feed. The idea of email notifications is a good one, however the facility in WordPress for doing this will work only for those emails that have been explicitly set up with WordPress. This is OK for many people, as they already have such a subscription from following other WordPress blogs, but it is an added step for those that do not, and may be something they are not interested in doing. Also, there was a grand total of seven people subscribed, so this change will not affect many people, and most of them are already friends on Facebook.
There are other options, such as MailChimp, but that service requires exposing too much personal information that I am not willing to do.
So, in the interests of keeping everything as simple as possible, I will simply post a link on my Facebook feed to all new blog posts on the website. If you are not friends with me on Facebook, you can either send me a friend request, or simply check the web site every so often.
I could dispense with the blog altogether and just post content directly to Facebook, however I want to maintain control of the content by having it hosted on my own web site with just links to it from elsewhere.
This post should go out to the existing email subscribers, and after it has been sent I will disable the email subscription feature.
I ran across a copy of the timetable (program) from the 1965 NMRA National convention that was held in Vancouver, BC, Canada. I believe it was the first one outside of the US. I did not attend as I was just a bit too young.
I have scanned it into a PDF file and posted it in case anyone is interested. Note that the file is 41 MB in size.
I like to hang up old calendars that match the current year in order to enhance the period feel around the layout.
2020 is a leap-year, so there are far fewer calendars that will match it exactly, as they also must be leap-years. This is a good year for just matching January – February, and then changing again for March – December.
So, for 2020, the matches are:
Full year:
1908, 1936, 1964, and 1992
January-February:
1902, 1908, 1913, 1919, 1930, 1936, 1941, 1947, 1958, 1964, 1969, 1975, 1986, 1992, 1997, 2003, and 2014
March-December:
1903, 1908, 1914, 1925, 1931, 1936, 1942, 1953, 1959, 1964, 1970, 1981, 1987, 1992, 1998, 2009, and 2015
Many years ago Atlas sold a variety of locomotives in the so-called “Yellow Boxes”. A number of these were made by Kato for Atlas, and have proven to be some of the best running locomotives of all time. They are still worth picking up at swap meets. In this series there were two numbers for Canadian Pacific in the block lettering scheme, and many of us have acquired these over the years. They of course need to be converted to DCC, but fortunately a number of the DCC vendors make drop-in boards that snap on to the mounting points perfectly. The lighting, however, is another story.
The original design used a single incandescent bulb sitting up above the motor, so that the light would shine in both directions through clear plastic light guides, and out the end headlights and number boards. With DCC, we can now control each light independently, so we need two LEDs. The first photo shows the new DCC decoder mounted, but still with the original light guides in the shell.
I control my track switches with a simple homemade toggle switch mechanism plus micro switches for the frog power. These are operated as simple push-pull using wooden dowels. The front end of the dowel passes through a plastic PVC pipe end cap, so that they are flush with the fascia. I got the idea from Jim Petro in Reno Nevada a number of years back when I operated on his layout during a PCR convention.
The end caps need a bit of work to prepare them for mounting. They have raised lettering on the face that I like to smooth off, and they need a hole drilled in the middle. Plus, I like to roughen up the outer surface using sandpaper so that the glue will stick better. All three operations are easily done on the lathe.
As we extended the fascia arouund through to Carson, I needed a bunch more of these prepared for installation. So, over to my trusty lathe. I used it to clean up about four or five of the caps without a problem, but half-way through the next one, it just stopped suddenly with the belt slipping. Huh, what happened? A quick check with the power off showed the the spindle had frozen solid and simply would not turn. Oh, oh.
Many years ago I was very fortunate to buy the 10″ metal lathe from a friend’s father who had worked for Boeing as a machinist. His hobby had been home-built aircraft of his own design, and he had designed his house with enough room in the basement to assemble them, but I digress….
Just after I purchased the lathe, I disassembled, cleaned, lubricated, and reassembled everything on it except the headstock, as I could see no easy way to do so and everything seemed to be running fine. Some years later, I was able to buy a copy of the user manual for the lathe and it included instructions on how to remove the spindle, only “if it was absolutely necessary”. Well, it now was and I really had nothing to lose, so I gave it a shot. It came out very easily, once you know what to do, which way to unscrew things, and where to apply pressure. The problem was immediately obvious in that the very old grease had simply solidified and jammed the ball bearings. The manual said the the spindle bearings were factory lubed with grease that was supposed to last the life of the machine, but I doubt they were thinking 73 years back then! (It was made in 1946.)
This is the place where I will post progress updates on the layout, my car forwarding software project, plus anything else that interests me. It also serves as a repository of some of my thoughts about the hobby, computing, and other things.
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