What did you run today? (Worldwide models)

[ED75-775]

Having spent last week on leave from work, I spent a good part of that time stripping down my layout, vacuuming the dust and dead bugs up and cleaning the track sections with isopropyl alcohol before reassembling the layout and trying a few new arrangements of the track layout. In the end, I just rebuilt it as it was previously, because it turns out that works the best for what I want right now. And with everything back together, why not run a few trains? This was the view last Friday night:

 

 

Today's running started with the biggest diesel in my fleet: the Henschel DH 4000, better known as the DB class V 320. I'd paired it up with a brand-new carriage set (and an extra Umbaü coach with pickup shoe to power the internal lighting) the week before but it wouldn't couple to the baggage car despite some of my other locomotives being able to do so. I managed to 'persuade' it to behave for a little bit, but after leaving the garage for five minutes to attend to a pesky thrush raiding our plum tree (!), I returned to find it had... misbehaved. Yes, the coaches had come loose and 'donk' - the V 320 was pushing them around the layout!

 

 

I managed to make it 'behave' again for a short time to take this photo, but then the coupler popped open again and the train got left behind. Annoying! I may have to swap out the current-conducting coupler at one end for a normal one to resolve the issue, although at this stage it's just with this particular locomotive that I have issues so it might pay to check whether everything else is fine with it.

 

 

More nonsense, a brake van special! This loco was put away rather shortly afterwards as it shares the same address as another BR24, which means they can't be on the tracks at the same time, double-heading excepted of course. At some stage one or both will receive a new decoder to resolve that issue, as the factory ones can't be reset to a new address. If the latter, I might consider sound for them too.

 

 

Different 24 this time, same V 320. I had decided that since the 320 was out, why not mate it with my full coal train which now stretches to twelve four-wheelers not including the brake van. The 24 on the other hand had the 'van train', comprising nine wagons plus brake van. Both looked good ambling around the layout. I really should run things more often.

 

Alastair

[cteno4]

Alistair,

 

having fun is good!

 

might check out using non polar contact cleaners in place of isopropanol for the track cleaning.

 

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/mrhpub.com/2019-05-may/online/index.html?page=9

 

cheers

 

jeff

[serotta1972]

Pulled some trains from storage and got to run some them at the Hiller Aviation Museum's Trains and Planes Exhibit.  I joined the local Golden Gate Lionel Model Railroad Club so I can have opportunities like these to run my O Scale trains.  My train is the Hiawatha, it's a MTH Railking Model.  I was actually afraid that my train might not run because they have been in their boxes for over 5 years but they did thank goodness.  A little boy was so fascinated by it that he followed my train around the layout for a good 30 minutes and his mom was so thankful that I was blowing the horn and ringing the bells and I would stop at the station.  First train show for me since the pandemic and I am looking forward to more events.  Actually, 2 of our members are setting up the AsiaNRail modules tomorrow - @nscalestation and @Railtunes.  I hope to get out of work early and go check it out.  

[Giugiaro]

I was almost out of battery on my phone, while riding the Alfa back home.

Since I had the CV1 set and the RhB train in my briefcase, I did an experiment:
 

 

[cteno4]

Did other passengers get a chuckle of the train loop?!

 

jeff

[Giugiaro]

The ticket inspector was really impressed by it. 😂

[cteno4]

One of the forum members years back made a little briefcase layout to run on his train commute. 
 

does beg the question what scale speed is the model train actually running while running on a train. Sounds like a SAT math problem or something involving woodchucks…
 

jeff

[Giugiaro]

The JNR EF30 and the SNCF DEV Inox came out to welcome the recently arrived DB Silberlings.

 

[ED75-775]

With the family on holiday in Florida, I suddenly have more opportunities to run trains! I had a few running earlier tonight:

 

 

From left:

- Era II goods train behind my new BR24

- Era IV gondola train behind my very first locomotive, the BR216

- Era V Dutch goods train behind a Class 1700 - not quite the right type, but I don’t recall Märklin offering the general-purpose Class 1600 in recent years. The blue gondola behind the loco came from Popondetta Osaka, and is actually a late 1980s model which doesn’t look too out of place in a 1990s freight if you squint at it right. I finally got around to putting close couplers on it today too!

 

Alastair

[SL58654号]

@ED75-775 Man, I like that BR24. Looks very handsome in grey. That Dutch 🇳🇱 1700 doesn't look bad, either. 

[ED75-775]

Why does it smell like Kenosha in here?

 

 

Oops, guess I’ll be peeing in a cup then. Note to self, try not to get too clever when uncoupling stock. And if you bin it, don’t try dragging it back onto the track, lift it!

 

 

Having added a fourth (Trix) wagon to the panzer train following my Japan trip, I finally decided to get it running today along with a MDyg 986 baggage car I had brought in a set of two from Mandarake Nagano. It’s a nice little pairing.

 

 

And a post-operation photo: BR218 on the panzer train, BR216 with three “Umbauwagen”, and the NS 1700 which spent today parked up.

 

Alastair

[ED75-775]

This weekend just been, we held our annual Big Model Train Show at Cowles Stadium here in Christchurch. It's the highlight of the modelling year, and as it's the closest show to me it's automatically the one I go every year - the only other shows in our area are in either Timaru or Ashburton, the location alternates between the two each year, with this year having been Timaru (2hrs 30mins away) and next year, Ashburton (1hr 30mins away).

 

 

When you *only* have a little layout at home, big shows like this are a great opportunity to really cut loose and unleash some truly massive trains. This one from Saturday afternoon was all mine... all twenty-seven wagons of it, behind one locomotive! You can just see the last wagon, an articulated Sggrss 80 articulated container car, on the other side of the bridge. I did add an extra two four-wheel container cars on later to bring this up to twenty-nine wagons, but that didn't impress Club shunting guru Andrew who took my efforts as a challenge, and ran a thirty-eight hopper train the following day!

 

 

Slightly plausible, my BR094 0-10-0T got a workout pulling fourteen coal wagons and a brakevan. While the wagons are early-mid '60s and the locomotive looks as it did c.1969/70, it looked good anyway. In behind is the thirty-eight car monster that Andrew put together - wagons from the 1960s, 1980s, and 1990s, behind Andrew's Roco camera locomotive. Still nowhere near record-breaking length though, as according to Andrew himself the Club record for a single locomotive from a standing start is 104 four-wheel wagons.

 

 

The Bietsch Valley bridge module is quite popular with viewers, although it needs further fine-tuning due to the height differences between it and the adjacent return loop. Last but not least, here comes my BR24 across the bridge with a mixed goods train.

 

This year there was no Japanese stuff, unless you count an ancient Lima 103-series coach on the Garden City MRC second-hand stall. I'm eagerly awaiting the day that @Grant_T decides to bring his sublime Hamamachi Station to the show, but if and when that ever happens is up to Grant. We have had a couple of Japanese layouts in the past, there was a very well-known 1:80 scale layout that appeared at a couple of shows pre-pandemic and the owner selling it, and there was a modular one too which the owner preferred to run (mostly) European and American models on. Perhaps one day I'll also be able to fill the void in some with my own layout, though that's a distant prospect until I get some space to work with.

 

Alastair

[ED75-775]

Had a not very good day at work, but got home and what do we have but a train to quickly test before bed:

 

 

The 26360 set is absolutely gorgeous, next to my slightly older 39436 loco. Pairing the two S 3/6s side by side, I noticed that a few details have been changed since 2018, namely that the number plates and makers plates on the newer locomotive are now physical components rather than printed onto the locomotive body.

 

Tomorrow I’ll do some more testing and look into the smoke unit on my BR094. I put a smoke unit in it last year, but don’t think I got the contacts set right so the unit doesn’t work. I should be able to fix that though!

[ED75-775]

I haven't spent much time on my layout since my last post due to work and other things, but I did manage a trip to our Club President Bryan's layout on Thursday afternoon to see if we could identify a fault with my BR75.4. I wasn't able to get that rectified, but Bryan was able to assist me in getting the smoke unit in my BR094 working. It turned out to be a case of contacts not making contact, and after a bit of tinkering and smoke fluid, the locomotive belched forth a satisfying plume of oily smoke. Victory!

 

 

And then Smells Like Kenosha started intensifying...

 

 

"Dun... Oh my gosh, kAN! kAN! kAN! kAN! kAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNN!"

"Oh no... Does this mean I have to pee in a cup?"

 

Well, OK, I can't blame my favourite railroad YouTuber for this mess. The 094 being what it is, it didn't like some of Bryan's trackwork which isn't always as smooth as he'd like it to be. Transitioning out of a curve immediately into a right-hand set of points, the 094 with its long, semi-rigid wheelbase dropped into the gauge. No damage was done though, and in the immortal words of Mark 'Hyce' Huber: "It's fine! It's fine." . I do have to look into why the top headlight isn't as bright anymore post-tinkering, but that's an easy fix.

 

The little rant above, for those wondering why I had to include it, was one of the highlights from one of Mark's old 'let's play with a friend' videos about a game he used to be a developer on. I still laugh at it from time to time.

 

 

See you all next time!

Alastair

Edited February 27 by ED75-775

[ED75-775]

As always, my layout hasn't seen much use lately other than to test my new acquisitions as and when they arrive, so tonight it was a joy to be able to catch up with our Club tech guru Dion and check in on how he's gotten along with three project locomotives. Specifically, a BR80 tank loco, a BR01 express passenger loco and a BR50 freight locomotive, all of which needed some form of repairs or upgrading done. I'll start off with the exciting one, the return of the BR50:

 

 

The reason I say 'return' is that when I brought it, the decoder was not talking to either my controller or Dion's, so the decision was made to switch the original mfx decoder for a new Märklin mSD3-series steam sound decoder (item nr. 60975). I am pleased to report that this decoder is much more responsive than the old one, and Dion has made the first changes to it in order to programme the steam sounds for a BR50 instead of the original, as-programmed BR01.

 

When next I see it (it's still with Dion), it will have changed further as it will have been fitted with Witte small smoke deflectors; originally this had the larger Wagner deflectors but the originals were damaged when I tried to refit them, and since I couldn't get replacement Wagner deflectors, I was happy to settle for my preferred Witte ones. The boiler shell was common across all Märklin BR50 variants during its production lifetime (2000-12) so all that's left to do is drill out the pre-marked locator points, and Dion will be able to fit the new deflectors! There's also a little fine-tuning to do including allocating a decoder function to operate the Telex remote-controlled coupler on the tender, but that will happen in time - Dion's currently in the middle of kitchen and living room renovations so I'm happy to wait a little longer until he is free.

 

 

I was able to bring the BR01 (new deflector and headlamp) and BR80 (decoder install and motor upgrade) home, and couldn't resist parking the 01 next to the old-boiler BR01.10 I received last week. For some reason, 01 1088 looks larger than 01 147 even though they are actually the same height and width - maybe it's the feedwater heater on the smokebox of the 01.10 that does it. Anyway, I'm happy to have them back although I'm chagrined to note so far the BR80 appears to have maintained its analog status, so back it will go in two weeks' time when we host our running weekend!

 

Alastair

[ED75-775]

It’s been a while since anyone posted here - and it’s mostly my ramblings too, so I’m guessing that there’s little demand right now for an international ‘What did you run?’ thread.

 

Anyway, Friday night was Märklin club night, and although I did bring some H0 scale trains to run, my modern stuff didn’t really get much of a look in, because I ended up unleashing my 1950s-1960s era tinplate stuff. The club has an analog layout now, and since the analog stuff hasn’t been out in forever, that was the impetus to try it out.

 

 

And here’s two of my historic Märklin models on the layout, the 3005 BR23 and 3047 BR44. Both got a short run until they started squealing slightly - eek! - which suggests that they both need a service before they get to run again, possibly in two weeks’ time at our annual train show. The 3005 is a custom repaint I picked up a few years back, and looks very smart with my ‘blue train’ of Wagon-Lits coaches that I picked up in Nagoya in 2023, plus a dining car.

 

 

And this is the full layout! We picked it up from another local railway club for $200.00, plus they threw in three controllers to operate it, and three trains as well! The game plan is that we want it to be a self-drive layout for the kids at the upcoming show; when it’s at home the analog guys can play with it.

 

Alastair

[chadbag]

On 9/20/2023 at 7:16 AM, ED75-775 said:

With the family on holiday in Florida, I suddenly have more opportunities to run trains! I had a few running earlier tonight:

 

You sent them to Florida and stayed home?

 

[ED75-775]

On 10/1/2024 at 11:20 AM, chadbag said:

You sent them to Florida and stayed home?

Eh, not quite. One of my younger siblings interned at Walt Disney World some years ago, and so the family has made multiple holiday trips over there, even after my sibling returned home. This year they’re doing a week in Los Angeles - I could have gone on any of these trips if I’d wanted, but I have to admit I’m not interested in Disney theme parks the way they are.

 

Plus, this weekend is Train Show weekend here in Christchurch, and that means my personal economy is dead! But I now have more trains to play with, and a decent size layout to work with.

 

 

So far I’ve only taken two photos, both featuring my BR151 at the head of an expanded military train. Having acquired an extra six vehicles for it yesterday, I picked up another today with the result I now have an eleven-car train which looks good behind the big freight loco.

 

I did also reprise my container train from the previous year, running thirty-two wagons out of a possible thirty-four, again behind my BR187 freight loco. It’s the last time I’ll attempt it though, at least for the foreseeable future, as unboxing and re-boxing thirty-three different vehicles takes too long! If I can build a carry case, that may be a different story and I may reconsider taking it.

 

Alastair