Subject:
|
Re: Lego Train Operating Weekend
|
Newsgroups:
|
lugnet.trains
|
Date:
|
Tue, 4 Feb 2003 01:16:15 GMT
|
Highlighted:
|
(details)
|
Viewed:
|
814 times
|
| |
|
|
James Powell wrote in message ...
> Ah. It is over. 2 walk on Ferry trips for me, 416 pieces of straight • track,
> 20 or so DCC equipped motors, 8 Canadians= one loooong weekend. A good • time
> was had by all- expect further posts as we come up with them (not
tonight!).
Here's a further post :-)
Well, that was *almost* enough train fun for me! I am still getting over
being around people for the entire weekend (lone wolf type here).
Once the pics are available I plan to put together a page with the Track
Designer plan, pictures, wiring details, train timetable, rolling stock
lists, etc, but for now just a short report.
We started 5pm Friday at Shiloh United Church in New Westminster, BC. The
church kindly allowed us to use a large basement room (about 50 ft square)
for the whole weekend, along with their fifteen 8ft x 32" folding tables. We
added eight of our own club tables and set them all up in an "E" shape which
covered an area 31'6" x 24'6" according to Track Designer. Track layout went
pretty quickly, suing about 860 straights, 160 curves and 26 each right and
left switches. I had to adjust the plan slightly to even out the switch
numbers since we didn't have quite enough right handers!
James Powell from Victoria and a new VLC member, Rob Woods, spent the next
couple of hours wiring for DCC, and that's all I'm going to say about that -
I hope that James will be able to give more technical details on the DCC
wiring and setup later on. The result of all the hard work was a layout that
operated completely on DCC. We frequently had 6 or even more trains running
at once later on.
On Saturday morning we finished the DCC setup of the layout, added
DCC-decoder-fitted motors to a selection of existing locomotives, set up
view-blocking screens along the centers of the tables (to hide the yards and
"HOG" (Hand of God) shunting going on behind the scenes) and experimented.
Towards lunchtime I set out all the trains needed for the timetable I had
written up, in the correct locations, and after lunch we had a quick "how to
use a DCC controller" lesson, and a "how the timetable works" lesson, and
dived in.
Chaos ensued :-)
Actually it wasn't quite that bad. Partly we were all working out how to use
the controllers, and trying to do things too quickly. We did manage to get
all our trains from one yard to the other eventually, passing each other at
passing loops etc.
The evening was spent running trains for fun and with the DCC this was a lot
of fun as many trains could be running at once. There were a number of head
on, rear and sideswipe collisions, some quite spectacular! Dean was the
king of collisions, although Robin and Rob followed him pretty close.
Saturday finished up a little earlier than Friday as all were tired, then
Sunday morning we ran trains again. Unfortunately Dean's CN "ran away" at a
bad location and dived to the floor, with wires hanging out and pieces
flying everywhere. It was very sad and we hope he' ll be able to resurrect
the poor beast. We had visits from several groups of Sunday school kids and
adults from the several congregations who use the church.
Sunday afternoon we tried the timetable again and this time it worked much
better - everyone had a better idea of what we were doing. The way freights
managed to do some switching without clogging everything up and it felt much
less chaotic.
More details later!
Kevin
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW Grey Heritage Facade kit! http://www.lionsgatemodels.com/cat-gfac.htm
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
LEGO TOWN PLANNING information:
http://www.lionsgatemodels.com/COntent/Townplan/townplan.htm
BrickLink Lego parts store: http://www.bricklink.com/store.asp?p=Kevinw1
The Guild of Bricksmiths(TM): http://www.bricksmiths.com
Personal Lego Web page:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/kwilson_tccs/lego.html
|
|
Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Lego Train Operating Weekend
|
| Hi fellas, So, anything further on this by any chance? Of particular interest at the moment would be just how much gear you had on hand.. boosters, throttles, jack panels, that sort of thing. Specifically how much boosted power was available? Also, (...) (22 years ago, 10-Apr-03, to lugnet.trains)
|
Message is in Reply To:
| | Lego Train Operating Weekend
|
| Ah. It is over. 2 walk on Ferry trips for me, 416 pieces of straight track, 20 or so DCC equipped motors, 8 Canadians= one loooong weekend. A good time was had by all- expect further posts as we come up with them (not tonight!). some quick notes: (...) (22 years ago, 3-Feb-03, to lugnet.trains)
|
4 Messages in This Thread:
 
- Entire Thread on One Page:
- Nested:
All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:
All | Brief | Compact
This Message and its Replies on One Page:
- Nested:
All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:
All | Brief | Compact
|
|
|
|
