Troubleshooting the BLI T1

As mentioned in a previous post, I have a large number of steamers out of service due to decoder issues. My Broadway Limited T1 was one of them, or at least that's what I thought. See, for the past few years, I can put this locomotive on the rails, give it some throttle and it just sits there and goes "chug-chug...chug-chug" and doesn't budge.

I tried everything I could decoder wise. I tried resetting by setting CV8 to 008 and no change. I tried the reset button on the decoder (something unique to BLI) and no change. I finally fired off an e-mail to BLI explaining the situation and that the locomotive was out of warranty.

A few days later, BLI responded by asking me what happened if I started the locomotive and muted the sound. Specifically they wanted to know if the motor hummed. I went ahead, muted the sound, gave the locomotive throttle and it moved!

Excited, I hooked up the Broadway Limited cars and sent her around the layout. She was running like a champ! But, I celebrated too soon. The locomotive made it from Cassandra to Altoona and then, it stopped and "chug-chug...chug-chug."

Discouraging for sure, but I got scientific. I muted the sound and put my ear to the locomotives boiler, The motor was indeed humming. The problem is mechanical and not the decoder. I suspected the problem could be a broken link in the drive shafts. I removed the shell and performed a visual check of the drive train and everything looked okay. I manually rotated the motor and all the gears turned properly.

I found after rotating the drive train manually, the locomotive would run. However, it inevitably locks up again. Now I know what the issue is, I'm just not sure how to fix it.

 

The Great Digitrax Decoder Die Off

 

After returning to model railroading after a long hiatus, I was frustrated to find a large number of my locomotives simply will not run. This includes my Kato L1 2-8-2, my brass I1sa 2-10-0, my Minitrix B6 and all my Norfolk Southern diesels. I can put them on the programming track, address them but then no response

The common denominator is that all the affected locomotives are equipped with Digitrax decoders, specifically DN136 or DZ136s. I'm at a loss as to what's happening here. The only thing I did was let them sit for a while. It's looking like I may have a lot of decoder replacement in my future!

The Hippo is Back

 I'm happy to report my Key Imports I1 is back in service. All it took was a new tender truck from Bachmann. As previously mentioned in this blog, I converted the tender pickup from drawing current from rail to both. Unfortunately one of the trucks fell apart. Replacement at about a fifteen-minute job. 

The locomotive was a bit herky-jerky on her test run. But, considering she sat for the better part of two years, that's to be expected.

A note about the real I1s class, they were nicknamed hippos by the PRR crews due to their girth. They were commonly used to haul iron ore to the steel mills of Pittsburgh and other heavy-haul trains.

Full Steam Ahead!

 

 

 Today was a productive day on the layout. First and foremost, I decided to try and return my I1 to service. It had stopped responding to the throttle and then one of it's tender trucks fell apart. I put it on the programing track, addressed the decoder and, when tested, the locomotive moved! Thank God! with ongoing chip shortage (damn pandemic) getting a replacement may be a tall (and not to mention costly) order.

After the I1, only my T1 and Alco FB remain out of service.

 

 

 

 Next on my list was ballasting. Now, all but about ten feet of main line are ballasted. That just leaves the yard and a few tracks in the Juniata Shop. That will have to wait until I get to the hobby shop.

Another project, painting the fascia burnt umber. It looks so much better in a neutral color.

 

 

I finally started laying track in the Pittsburgh staging yard. About damn time! The track is the old Atlas code 80 stuff.

 

 

Lastly, I added some turf to a small area near Altoona with some help from  Victor.

This is about all I can do until all the stuff I ordered arrives. I swear waiting is the hardest part. Didn't Tom Petty write a song to that effect?

Back From the Dead Line

 

You recall a few months ago I was lamenting the large number of locomotives I had out of service with various issues. I am happy to report four of them are repaired and back in action. It's amazing how doing one small thing can get my juices flowing and I'm finding myself excited to work on the layout for the first time in a good long while. 

My Atlas Trainmaster was the first locomotive outshopped. It'd sucked a piece of ballast into its gears. The repair was dead simple. Pull the bad truck, carefully rotate the gears until the bind, then back off till you find the offending piece of ballast. The whole deal took maybe five minutes.

Next up was the Broadway Limited Centipedes. The loco also swallowed some ballast. I was dreading taking the trucks apart and just kind of let them sit for a while. Turns out, the trucks aren't that bad. So again, another five-minute repair. Since one centipede can't run without the other, both units were returned to service.

Last but not least was my Broadway Limited E7. These were out of service for years. Some time ago, the derailed, shorted, and cooked their decoder. But, they were warrantied and I got a free replacement. I put it in, but the locos would barely creep with the throttle wide open. I knew it was a decoder problem, so I plopped the A unit onto the programming track. I started by setting CV8 to 008, a factory reset. That did it! All I had to do was re-address the locomotive and that was, as they say, that. 

Four locomotives still await repair, the I1 needs a new tender truck and decoder, the T1 may need to go back to BLI, my Atlas GP7 has a decoder issue and my Lifelike Alco FB needs a complete rebuild. The A unit is useless without the B.

So that's that. I have some cool ideas for finishing Johnstown but I need to look at some lighting options. Stay tunned.

Team Steam is Back!

I finally got around to getting two of my mainline steamers up and running again. For the past two years, my Kato/GHQ L1 has been sitting idle in the Altoona locomotive shop. The darn just didn't run right after conversion to DCC.  After a little detective work, I found the problem lay with the tender. Its wheels provide most of the power pickup and they weren't making good contact with the rails.

The solution turned out to be dead simple. I went to Hobby Lobby, bought some Pinewood Derby car weights and packed as many of them as humanly possible into the tender. And that was the ticket! The locomotive ran smooth as silk after that.

You may recall that a few months ago I ran my brass I1 into a turnout set the wrong way, shorted it out and cooked the decoder. I purchased a new decoder back in August and over the past few days have been working on installing it.

Now, as delivered, the locomotive's drivers pick up the right rail current and the tender wheels picked up the left. This arrangement was okay but not optimal. There were a handful of turnouts on my layout that were impassible obstacles for this loco. My solution was to swap out the stock tender trucks with Bachmann trucks, which draw current from all eight wheels. This would prove far easier said than done.

The tender chassis had to be modified to accommodate the new trucks.  For the forward trucks, I fired up my Dremmel and proceeded to cut two slits in the chassis. Believe me, taking power tools to a $400 brass locomotive is not for the faint of heart! I successfully cut said slits but in the process obliterated the screw holes for holding the shell on. What's worse, I cut right through the end of the chassis! Once that happened, I knew it was time to fight my Greek genes, go downstairs and take a break. After having some lunch and taking some time to cool down and think rationally, I arrived at a solution. I reinforced the front of the tender with a piece of styrene.

For the rear trucks, I decided cutting slits wasn't the way to go.  Instead, I opted to cut off the vertical tab on each truck contact. Using a pin vise, I enlarged the holes on each side of the bolster to accommodate the wires. This worked beautifully.  With that done, I soldered the wires to the truck contacts and the decoder.

The final hurdle was mounting the trucks. The mounting holes on the Bachmann trucks are considerably larger than those of the stock trucks. After scavenging the local hardware store for washers, I came up empty-handed. My solution was to take two small pieces of styrene and drill small holes in them. These act as retention plates for the trucks.

With the decoder installed, I put the loco on the tracks and it ran perfectly. It moved through the turnout that had once stopped it dead with total confidence. So, the effort paid off. That said, I would sooner endure a root canal without novocaine than do that again!

While we're on the subject of steam, Broadway Limited delivered their long-awaited T1 shortly before Thanksgiving. While not quite as good as their M1, it is a fine locomotive. In terms of steam, we sure have come a long way in the last five years.

Looking Back...

 

It's 2018 and the layout is in the midst of its fifth year of construction. A lot has changed to say the least. It's hard to believe most of the layout is sceniced already. But there's still a ways to go.

Let's start with motive power. Five years ago, there wasn't a lot in the way of road specific power available. In terms of steam, all you had were the Minitrix K4, B6 and 2-10-0 (which needed some bashing to become an I1). All of them required a lot of tinkering to get them to run well. You also had the GHQ L1 conversion kit for the Kato Mikado. They weren't great, but unless you wanted to spend plutocrat money on brass, that was all you had. Of course Broadway Limited was taking preorders for their M1, but it appeared destined to be vaporware forever.

But then, in 2015, Bachmann came out with their K4 with DCC and sound. It was the first piece of road-specific PRR steam released since the 1970s. Of course, they did it right after I'd dropped a few Benjamins to have Max Magliaro remotor my Minitirx K4!

If that weren't enough, a few months after the Bachmann K4's debut, Broadway Limited finally delivered their long-awaited Centipede and M1 models. If that's not enough, they've announced a T1. I preordered one and hopefully I get it before my 3-year-old leaves for college. So in terms of motive power, we're getting there. What I'd really love to see are some H class 2-8-0s and maybe an E6 Atlantic.

Speaking of E6 Atlantics, one was produced way back in the early 1990s by Black River Locomotive works. According to Spookshow (link) only a few hundred were ever produced and in five years of modeling the Pennsy, I've yet to see one on eBay.

That's enough about motive power, now let's talk about DCC. When I started, I was using an MRC Tech 4 to run the layout. I kidded myself about using DC cab control to operate the layout. But then, one night, I had some friends over to run some trains and the shortcomings of this idea were laid bare. I bought an MRC Tech 6, which allows one to run both DCC and analog. Honestly I don't think I've run an analog locomotive on the layout since 2015!

Looking back at Horseshoe Curve, I have to say I'm not all that happy with how it turned out. Here's the deal, I had gotten the layout to the point of being operational back in February of 2014 and started on the scenery. But that summer, my wife said "honey, I'm pregnant!" Knowing that once the baby arrived, time for modeling would be nonexistent, I plowed full throttle into scenery. Through the fall of 2014 and into the winter of 2015, I spent every spare moment working on the layout. I wanted to at least have the curve finished before my son was born.

Ultimately, I fell short of this goal. And to top it off, the sense of "beat the clock" over-urgency caused the scenery to look a bit slapdash. I slowed down and took my time on the rest of the layout. But that only makes this section look even worse.  So, if you're wondering what I'm going to do when the layout is finished, I'll tell you: rip out and redo the scenery at the Curve. Specifically, the lake and the road. I may even remove these entirely, which brings me to my next point.

Through the eyes of 20/20 hindsight, I realize I made the center peninsula far too wide. While it gives amazing depths to both the Curve and Gallitzin, it makes them both really, really hard to access. This is especially true of the curve. There is an access hatch, but even still parts of the track are out of reach. This makes cleaning and/or rescuing stalled trains a very difficult proposition. So, I'm torn between redoing the scenery or simply removing the lake and road to create an aisle. Either way, this is a few years off.

The Altoona Shop complex was another victim of my pre-baby modeling scramble. And the more I look at it, the less I like it. The real PRR Juniata Shop complex was (and still is) massive. As a result, I would probably need the entire train room to recreate it accurately. The whole thing looks really kluged in where it is. I think the shops ultimately belong inside the Altoona yard loop. And the cheap-looking Atlas turntable? Yeah, that has to go.

The space where the shops currently sit could be better used for a few more rail-served industries. There should be enough space there to keep a local crew busy for a while.

So yeah, a whole lot of blather. In fact, I'm kind of impressed you read all the way to the bottom. But, when you get this far into a layout, you start to realize what you like and don't like about it. The good news is there's a lot more of the former than the latter. The better news is the things that fall into the latter category are correctable. That's certainly good news as I aven't the time, money or energy to start over at this point.

H16-44 Repaint

Enough blather about hobby, it's time for a post about an actual modeling project. Once of the first locomotives to join my fleet was an Atlas Fairbanks Morse H16-44. I started out life as an undercoated shell. Long story short, I was never happy with how it turned out. It had wrong handrails and looked like it was lettered by a bunch of drunks.

Vis a vis:

 

At any rate, I decided I'd lived with it ling enough and chucked the shell into bath of 91% propyl alcohol. About a day later, all the paint was stripped off. Once the body was completely dry, I installed the correct handrails, which was no easy task. I'd get one end seated, the other would pop out. But I persevered. On the subject of handrails, I managed to lose one despite my best efforts.

I repainted the body, much more carefully and patiently this time, Floquil "Brunswick Green." The ends of the handrails and edges of the steps got Testors' yellow. The decals are all Micorscale. The last bit will be Dulcote and weathering.

Thises and Thats

 

I've been piddling a away on a few little odds and ends as of late. First and foremost, I took my son up to Day Out with Thomas at the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer last weekend. Anytime I go up to Spencer, I stop in at the Little Choo Choo shop. I spied the Conerstone Municipal Water Tower on the shelf and picked it up. The stock colors were spot on perfect so all I did was use some Woodland Scenics dry transfers to add "Gallitzin" to the side of the tank. Now, rather than apply the letter directly, I applied them to some clear decal paper and then put the lettering on just like a regular decal. I then added the "Welcomes You" decal that came with the tower, did some weathering and called it done.

 

Next on my list was this small farm scene located between  Gallitzin and Cassandra. The Farmhouse and Barn are American Model Builders structures. I built these years ago and honestly don't remember the colors I used. The windmill is a Conerstone Van Dyke Farms Windmill. The uprights are painted Floquil "Rust" and the blades are Testors white.

I also went ahead I put in a gravel driveway, turf and some details. All that remains for this area is trees, both background and foreground and ballast. 

 

The last thing I took care of is a project I've been dragging my feet on for a while and that's putting a new decoder into my L1 Mike. Originally I'd used a Digitrax DZ123. It did the job but cause the shell to sit too high. This looked really stupid. After living with it for a while, I pulled the decoder out and stuck it in my Model Power mogul. While in Spencer, I went ahead and picked up a DZ126T. This is the same practically microscopic decoder I used in my Minitrix B6. This decoder is a perfect fit. All that remains is to use some fiber optic to get the headlight working. 

The Digitrax DZ126T is a much better fit

The Wait is Over

Okay normally a new locomotive wouldn't warrant it's own post, but this particular locomotive is the Broadway Limited Imports M1a. That's right, it's finally here! I preordered mine two years ago and I know others have waited even longer. But was it ever worth the wait. The locomotive is superbly detailed, runs like a Swiss watch and has phenomenal sound. I'm hoping this opens the door for even more Pennsy steam.

Sound-Equipped Locomotives

Up until just recently, the idea of sound-equipped locomotives never much appealed to me. Admittedly, my previous experience with them was in O-Gauge and they made such racket that the novelty wore off pretty quickly. Also, when I started converting my fleet to DCC, I decided to splurge and add a sound decoder to my N&W J. I have to say, I way pretty underwhelmed. I mean how much sound could you really get out of a dime-sized speaker?

Then, a couple of weeks ago Bachmann surprised us all when they announced a sound value K4. Needless to say I snapped one up. Unlike my J, the sound on this loco was impressive. It's just loud enough to be heard but not deafeningly so. Just yesterday, I finally took delivery of my Broadway Limited E7s, which also are equipped with sound. These two are impressive with sound at just the right volume. Suffice to say, I'm hooked. I can't wait for my BLI M1 to get here so I can further increase my stable of sound-equipped locos.

Here are the BLI E7s leaving Johnstown:

The K4 Rounding Horseshoe Curve:

In other news, I haven't done much of anything on the layout itself lately. But I really need to get myself motivated to finish Horseshoe Curve and move on.

The Bachmann K4 Has Landed

I took delivery of my Bachmann K4 Pacific today. All I can say is wow, this locomotive is awesome. The paintwork is crisp, the detailing is incredible. It makes my Minitrix K4 look pretty crude by comparison.

My K4 Pacific fleet. The new Bachmann model (right) makes the old Minitrix (left) look completely dated.

If looks weren't enough, the model also comes with a factory-installed Soundtraxx decoder. Up until this point, I've been pretty underwhelmed by N Scale sound. I mean come on, what kind of sound are you going to get out of a dime-sized speaker? Well, I can tell you the sound on this loco is amazing. I could hear clearly anywhere in the train room and even down the stairs!

My only minor annoyances with this loco are the whistle, a very high-pitched European-sounding one. This "banshee" whistle may be accurate for PRR freight steamers, but passenger engines had a much deeper three-chime whistle. The another annoyance was the trailing truck was out of gauge and would consistently hop the rails on a few turnouts.

Hell Freezes Over

If you've been following this blog since its inception, you're no doubt aware that the lack of Pennsy steam in N Scale has been a perennial favorite topic for rants. So imagion my surprise when I log onto Facebook and see this posted in the PRR N Scale Modeling Group:

That's right, Bachmann has announced a K4 Pacific in N Scale with DCC and sound less! Now how can I pass that up? If anything it makes me feel a little but foolish having spent all that time and money to upgrade my old Minitirx engine, but oh well, two K4s are better than one right?

If that weren't enough, Broadway Limited, no doubt feeling some heat from the recently-lit fire under their fannies released this:

Yup, that's a painted prepoduction model of BLI's much-anticipated M1a. While still scheduled for a November 2015 delivery, it's somewhat reassuring to see them update their delivery schedule and not push this thing back another two months.

Finished Model Power's "The Sullivan's" Again

I bought another bunch of Model Power house kits at the last train show I attended. They'll help populate Gallitizin. Now, I've already built this kit once. But most houses in a given area are usually built to similar designs so I figured I could get away with repeating myself as long as I painted them different colors.

Anyway, assembly didn't exactly go smoothly this time around. First off, I decided to paint the walls Floquil "Coach Green," which is usually a big pain in the nuts to work with. It's quite watery and runny and as such, you have to slather on coat after coat to get it somewhat opaque. The result being the walls took nearly two days to dry thoroughly. 

This kit also comes with a bright red roof. Since this is a house in a small Pennsylvania town and not a pet-friendly budget motel, that had to go. So I used, you guessed it, Floquil "Grimy Black." I finished things off by painting the foundation Floquil "Concrete." The windows and shutters stayed in their stock colors s did the porch and chimneys.

Let's talk about the windows and shutters for a second, all 26 and 52 of them respectively. What a tedious slog these things are to put on, especially the shutters! In fact I damned near left them off and think I'll do just that on subsequent houses. Not only will it speed assembly but also differentiate them further.

Things really started getting hair when I started assembling the walls. This house is essentially two perpendicular rectangles. You glue one to the other, slightly off center. The roof of one rectangle has a cutout to accommodate the roof of the other. Being an idiot, I glued the one rectangle in the wrong spot relative to the cutout and had to pull the whole thing apart, leaving a nice bit of glue schmootz all over the wall. 

All in all, this house didn't turn out too bad, Wicked Witch of the West color scheme aside.

In other news, I got my two Pennsy geeps equiped with DCC decoders. Being older models, they required TCS "CN GP" decoders. These are basically two small PC boards interconnected with wires. They're actually kind of a pain to install, requiring complete dis-assembly of the mechanism. No, not terrible, but kind of a pain. But that said, it is nice to have another key piece of road power back. That just leaves my L1 mike and my PAs and the entire PRR road fleet is DCC.

I1 Upgrade Complete

I finished upgrade ding my I1sa by adding a white LED for the headlight. Running the wires and getting the shell back on proved to be a bit of a challenge. But, other than some light leakage around the smokebox, I think the project turned out pretty well. 

DCC Doings and Train Show Haul

This past weekend was a productive one. On Saturday, my wife, son and I attend a train show up in Charlotte. Among the items in the haul were five decoders, enabling me to upgrade my K4, I1sa, H16-44, Trainmaster and C628. With DCC installed in these locos, I've been running DCC on one loop, DC on the other and running five trains at once. 

More good news is my little one seemed to really be intrigued by the O-Gauge layout they had set up at the show. Hopefully I got him hooked early.

Also in the haul was about eight freight cars and two Bowser N5 cabin cars.. Combine that with the four Broadway Limited PRR H32 covered hoppers I received for Father's Day and I've got enough to run several good-sized trains.

If that weren't enough, I also picked up some structure kits and heavyweight passenger cars.

Upgraded my Mike

One of my best-running steamers has always been my L1 2-8-2. It's a Kato mechanism with a GHQ pewter shell. Unfortunately one of its few shortcomings was pulling power. Even with the heavy pewter shell, 13 cars was all I could ever get this thing to pull up the 2% grades on my layout. Thankfully Kato made a replacement driver set with traction tires. I purchased one of eBay and installed it tonight. Now the locomotive can easily pull 18 cars. installation was dead simple. All I had to do was remove the bottom plate, remove one drive axle and install the replacement.

One Layout, Three, wait..make that Four Eras

 

The real Pennsylvania Railroad main line that I'm modeling has changed hands a number of times over the past 47 years. As you all know I have multiples eras represented on this layout. I'm sure you've noticed an era is missing, Penn Central. Well that all changed this weekend. 

Without getting into too much history, the Penn Central Transportation company existed from 1968 to 1976. It was formed out of the merger of the Pennsy and its arch rival the New York Central. The New Haven was added in 1969 at the insistence of the ICC. The merger was not successful and the company was bankrupt by 1970 and merged into Conrail along with seven other bankrupt northeastern railroads.

At any rate I had a Life Like GP20 and an Atlas/Kato GP30 painted and lettered for my old Cherokee Foothills railroad. These were among the last engines still wearing CFRR paint. I been wondering what to do with them for some time and decided to paint them up for Penn Central.

The paint job was each, Floquil Engine Black from stem stern followed by Microscale decals. I don;t know if the decals were old or just a bad batch but it was a knock-down drag-out fight to get them applied. They needed to soak far  longer than the instructions called for and broke apart during application.But all in all I think the equipment turned out nicely.

In other news, I also made some more progress at the curve. The reservoir's intake structure is painted and installed. Glenwhite Road is paved and painted up to the bottom of the lake and the water is coming along nicely.

Finished the Mountains and Ballasting Between Altoona and the Gallitzin Tunnels And the Train Show Haul

Today was quite a productive day on the Pittsburgh Division. The mountains on both sides of the tracks are now constructed from Altoona all the way to the east portals of the tunnels. This required constructing the mountainside in front of the tracks. I started by gluing a trip of cardboard along the top of the risers to give the edge of the paper towels something to rest on. Then I wadded up some newspaper and stared laying the plaster-soaked paper towels over them.

Now, usually when I build the mountains in front of the tracks, I simply have them slope down and away from the right-of-way. However, as you can see in the above photo, I built I small ridge on front of the curve. This ridge happens to be on the opposite side of Horseshoe Curve from Kittanning Point station. It acts as a view block, at least for the camera anyway, and helps give the illusion of distance.

I also ballasted the remaining track between the curve and the tunnels. As usual this job was about as much fun as getting audited. It wasn't the complete cluster *&^% that I had last time but still not pleasant. I have come to learn that it spreads better with a soft brush rather than a stiff one. Although, after ballasting a stiff one always does seem like great idea if you catch my drift.

In other news, I attended the Central Railroad Model and Historical Association's annual train show. Unfortunately there was very little in the way of N Scale but there were a few good buys. Namely these Life Like PAs:

And this Bachmann Crane and Boom, which unforuntaly will not clear the tunnel portals right now.

Bachmann Crane and Boom car, perfect for retrieving the smoldering wreckage of derailed trains.

Humpty Dumpty is Back Together Again

Well, after being out of service for the past few months, my I1sa is back in action. Back in August, a certain klutz who shall remain nameless accidentally bumped the layout and knocked the engine off. It fell the floor and broke the crank on the fireman's side valve gear. Given that the Minitrix 2-10-0 has been out of production for years, parts are no longer available. It was looking very uncertain if she would ever run again.

Fast forward to last Sunday when I posted a query to the PRR N Scale Modeling Facebook group about obtaining a replacement crank. Member Chris Broughton very graciously offered to provide a replacement set of cylinders, cross heads, main rods and valve gear that he'd stripped off a junker. The parts arrived in the mail today.

Since the whole assembly is riveted together, I had to replace the whole thing, which really isn't that bad of a job. It was just a simple matter of removing two screws, removing the old assembly, replacing it with the new and reconnecting the side rods. I did have to clean a bit of CA out of the hole the vale gear crank connects two on the fireman's side. It was there from my botched first repair attempt. Other than that, it was pretty painless.