Just a reminder to everyone that Bob Beise’s memorial service will be this Saturday, August 10th at 11:00 A.M. at St. Jude’s Church, 10526 166th Ave NE in Redmond. There will be a reception immediately following the service at the church.
One word of caution for those traveling to the service from the south: I-405 northbound will be closed all this weekend in Bellevue, so an optional route to Redmond is advised.
The 4D Board of Director’s meeting originally scheduled for Saturday, August 10th has been postponed to Saturday, August 17th. This is to accommodate anyone wishing to attend Bob Beise’s memorial service on the 10th. The meeting will still take place at Mitzel’s in Kent at 1:00 pm. Note we do not have the room before 1:00 for lunch like we normally do, so anyone wishing to eat before the meeting will have to do so in the main restaurant.
Like many people, I hate to fly. I’m on the tall side, and modern airplane seats are made for people the size of pre-schoolers, or residents of Munchkinland. Leg cramps are not my favorite way to start a vacation. And don’t even get me started on airport security, or flight attendants. As a result, I avoid NMRA national conventions unless I can drive, or ride the train.
Regional conventions are a good compromise, for those years when the national convention is too far to drive, and school break happens to fall at the right time. A chance to get away from home, meet new friends, and do some model railroading at the same time. All the advantages of a national convention without having to fly. Like a national convention, a regional offers the best of the best. I’ve been to lots of PNR conventions, and always had a good time.
The 2013 PNR convention was held at Boise, Idaho last month, and the Third Division put on an excellent event. I didn’t see a single face that wasn’t smiling the whole time. True, the temperature was in the high 90’s and low 100’s every day, combined with high humidity. But most participants spent the majority of their time inside, where it was air conditioned. Even the hotel pool was inside the atrium.
They called it Snake River Special, although I don’t know anybody who calls these things anything other than “the PNR convention.” Like any NMRA convention or mini-meet I’ve ever been to, there was a lot more to do than there was time to do it.
The fun started bright and early Thursday morning, with a tour of three club layouts. Because of limited parking at all three locations, this tour traveled by bus. That turned out to be a blessing in disguise, since several of the clubs were located in far-flung suburbs, or were hard to find. It allowed participants to begin getting acquainted during the long road miles.
The Caldwell club is located in a building with a pair of storefronts that they managed to buy two years ago. See, the Great Recession in real estate had some benefits, after all, the building was sitting vacant, plus they could afford it. One storefront holds a large HO scale layout that they only started when they bought the building. The main line is operational, but many sidings and branch lines, along with scenery, are still in the planning or construction phases. The other storefront holds an N scale layout that they were able to move from their previous location, plus an extensive collection of magazines, books, videos, artwork, and research material. This club also owns NMRA standard modules, in both HO and N scale, which are stored in their building.
The Nampa club is located in the basement of a commercial building. Their large HO layout has been there a good long time, and all trackwork is fully functional. Scenery, which is complete in one long leg of their U-shaped layout, depicts the surrounding Idaho countryside. They also have a large and comfortable lounge room, with a library.
The Old Boise club is located right in the middle of downtown, in the top level of a mini-mall. Their large N scale layout runs great and looks great, it puts the best face on the hobby from its location which is visible to the public all day every day. Emphasis is on industry, both heavy and light, and mainline operation. Their layout fills the entire space.
Thursday afternoon was just as hectic as the morning. First a clinic on improving cheap rolling stock. Cheap, they must have known I was coming. Next a break to “enjoy” the 100 degree heat, on the way to a home layout. It was an excellent HO layout of the Nickel Plate and Pennsylvania Railroads in Indiana. Multiple levels. Outstanding scenery. A video of the layout, being played in the family room, took a few minutes before you realized you were watching a video of a model, not the prototype. Then it was back to the hotel, for a couple more clinics. One by our own CJ Riley on believable rolling stock, the other an excellent clinic on how to improve your scenery.
One more evening home layout tour, of a freelanced HO line set in Idaho, with a stop for supper on the way back. Finally, a late night and an early morning caught up with me, and it was a self guided tour to the land of nod.
Friday morning started with a clinic on building craftsman kits. The remainder of the morning was spent examining the contest models, with plenty of time and no crowds, and window shopping in the silent auction room. Friday noon was the luncheon, a strictly social event to meet one another.
Next, back on the road for more home layout tours. What a combination. Southern Pacific in O scale, with excellent scenery and many brass locomotives, a real smooth runner. Canadian Pacific in proto-48 (“true O scale”), in its own building (“coach house”), all locomotives heavily modified, and pretty much all the rolling stock scratch build. Scenery consisted of many scratch and kit build structures and bridges. The Pennsylvania Railroad in HO, in the coal fields. The Union Pacific in HO, with a large hidden staging yard capable of holding many entire trains, emphasis is on mainline operation.
Friday evening wrapped up with an after supper clinic, again on craftsman kits, these of the laser cut variety.
Saturday morning started with voting for contest models, since I knew the contest rooms would be off limits in the afternoon. Then, a clinic on scratchbuilding a stockyard. Yes, there is a stockyard on my layout. There are stockyards in Illinois and Iowa, you know. The remainder of the morning was spent looking at the portable and modular layouts which had been let up at the convention hotel, and shopping at the swap meet.
Saturday afternoon saw more home layouts. Western Pacific in HO scale, which takes advantage of the mountain scenery by also modeling the HOn3 Rio Grande Southern on “the other side of the mountain.” Another freelanced HO layout set in Idaho. And the Santa Fe in HO scale, up and over RatonPass.
In all, there were 30 home layouts to choose from. Some were open multiple days. Add half a dozen club layouts, and even if someone had spent all day every day, they still couldn’t have seen them all.
A pause to rest up and clean up after the heat and all the running around, and there was nothing left but the Awards Banquet on Saturday evening. The food was better than expected for mass produced hotel food. The “right” contest models won (the ones I liked), concluding with the popular vote category. This triggered a long and thoughtful discussion at my table, of popular vote contests that went over well in the past, and some that didn’t. The main program was given by the Divas (wives and girlfriends), a welcome change from that cringe-inducing term the Railettes, on Boise history. The banquet was followed by an extended social hour.
The convention didn’t officially wrap up until Sunday, but the only thing on the agenda was the public show, portable and modular layouts, and swap meet, all of which I had already seen on Saturday. So I took advantage, and headed for the Rocky Mountains to go camping. Heck, I was already half way there.
There are a few openings available for OLY-OPS 2013, to be held Saturday, October 12th. If you’d like want to operate on some of the finest layouts in the 4th Division, sign up now!
Email Gregory Wright your name and the names of friends who will carpool with you. Tell him if you have special needs, such as “can’t do steps” or “no crawl-unders.”
Participants must be in Olympia by 8:15 A.M. and will operate on one layout in the morning and another layout in the afternoon. Everyone is invited to the no-host dinner following.
Please request a spot only if you are sure you can attend. No-shows destroy our schedule and eliminate those who could have attended.
Here is a chance to get some exercise and help the Snoqualmie Museum. I am recruiting a crew to help me disassemble steel shelving at a building in Kent over the weekend of August 3 and 4. The shelving is not particularly heavy or difficult to handle, I just want it to be handled carefully. It will be used in the new display hall at the museum.
If I get enough volunteers, it will get done in one day. So, if you can help part of either day, contact me at 425-228-7327 or russseg@gmail.com.
One the most coveted awards bestowed on any member in the NMRA is the Fellow Award. The Fellow of The NMRA Award recognizes those individuals in the NMRA who have fostered the organization and the hobby and have increased an advanced social interaction and the social benefits of the hobby. The Fellow Award is not awarded annually or at any set time period but is given on when recognition is due. Seldom are two fellows named in the same year and it is perhaps even less common that recipients are related.
This year, in recognition of over 50 years of sterling service to NMRA as personal ambassadors, mentors, and leaders who have made several divisions and regions much better by their presence, Gay and Ed Liesse have been recognized by NMRA and named NMRA Fellows. Because Gay and Rd were not available for a formal presentation at the annual NMRA Banquet, the presentation was made during the meeting of the NMRA Board of Directors. There can be no doubt that the Gay and Ed, who have meant so much to us in PNR and especially the PNR Fourth Division, as well as the members of PCR, are well deserving of the recognition. Gay and Ed have each also earned just about every other honor that we may bestow upon them, being recipients of the Golden Grab Iron, PNR President’s Award, and PCR President’s Award.
Our most sincere congratulations go out to both Gay and Ed. We are proud and lucky to know you and very honored to be able to serve alongside you.
It is with great sadness that we report the passing of Bob Beise on July 17, 2013, from cancer. Bob was a great model railroader who was a strong member of the 4th Division HO Modular Group. He was constantly building or changing his modules, all the way to the end. Even in the last few months, he was planning on building a layout at his house.
He held several critical positions within this group and was key in maintaining and increasing its membership. Bob was always willing to help new and old members in building their own modules and was a major contributor to the 4D modules, building corners, wye, yard, etc.
Bob was always the first to volunteer his time to help give clinics and man the modules during train shows throughout Puget Sound. He has been a member of NMRA since March 1989.
He will be especially missed by the HO Modular Group for his effort, equipment donations, knowledge, and skills. He always had a vision for the future and kept us moving ahead. He was the consummate example of a good member, attending most functions, constantly building, and contributing relentlessly. I know that one of Bob’s regrets was not earning the MMR, although he earned at least three merit awards in the last few years. He continued working on it right until the end. The model railroad community will miss him greatly.
His Memorial Service will be August 10th at 11:00 A.M. at St. Jude’s Church, 10526 166th Ave NE in Redmond. There will be a reception immediately following the service at the church. He will be interred at the Tahoma Military Cemetery in Tacoma
Send condolences to: Robert Beise Family, 12527 NE 148th St, Woodinville, WA 98072.
Thanks to Roger Heid and Ulrich Albrecht for this informative explanation.
In the old days, before the introduction of Personal Computers, electric model railroads were operated in the conventional mode. In the early 1980s, personal computers started to see increasing presence in common households. Subsequently, DCC was introduced to the world of model railroading.
DCC stands for Digital Command Control. The word digital implies the use or presence of a computer or a similar device. However, this did not result in the departure of conventional systems. They are still available. Be also advised that, for the purpose of this article, it does not matter whether you use a DC 2-rail or AC 3-rail system, although wiring the motors will be slightly different.
Now let us focus on the behavior of a conventional system. Chances are, when you were a kid, you received a starter kit for Christmas. Santa was kind, that year. Let us assume the locomotive that came with the kit had headlights, possibly even tail lights. You noticed that the brightness of these lights increased as you turned up the speed control of your power pack. They went out completely when you stopped the train. This probably annoyed you. In the real world, these lights are of constant brightness, no matter what.
In the world of analog model railroading, the power pack/speed control applies an increasing voltage to the track as you turn up the speed control. This explains why the lights behave the way they do. Not much you can do about this very easily.
This is not the end of the story. The following Christmas, Santa delivered another locomotive, because you had put in on your wish list. You were exhilarated. But then you noticed that, when both locomotives were on the track, they both ran simultaneously. That is not what you wanted.
In the meantime, a siding was added to your layout. Your plan was to park one loco on the siding while the other one was running around the track. Good luck with that. You wound up lifting the locomotive of the parked train off the track in order to allow the other train to run around the track. This was not a very desirable situation. You quickly figured out that an additional independent oval of tracks would solve the problem. By wiring an additional connection to your new track, you could now run both trains simultaneously, without collision. But you still could not stop one train while the other one was running. You quickly figured out you needed an additional power pack. Oh, Lord!
For the next Christmas, Santa brought the second power pack. You were in Seventh Heaven. You had separate control over your trains. Great! But now you wanted to be able to have the trains switch from one track to the other. You installed a couple of turnouts, in conjunction with short piece of straight track to connect the two hitherto independent tracks. You quickly learned it did not work that way. It caused problems. So you were forced to abandon that idea, unless you were willing to separate your layout into separately powered sections and install a multitude of switches that allowed you to turn off sections of track and/or connect them to different power packs.
The acquisition of a third locomotive required more tracks and a third power pack, along with more complicated panel switches and wiring. You then ran out of space to put in a fourth track, and so on.
At a later point, you heard about DCC. So, what is this all about?
DCC changes everything. In analog operations, you apply different voltages to your sections of track, and all locos on an individual section behave in the same way. Effectively, you operate your track, not the locos on it. With DCC, you “talk” to each locomotive individually, so you operate your locos, not your track!
First off, the term power pack/speed control changes to the term Control Station, which is a small computer. However, you do not need to know anything about computers to run it. No files, no commands! You now can address (talk to) an individual locomotive, not unlike making a phone call. You can tell it what to do. You can command one to run. Then you tell a running loco to stop, a third one slow down etc. With most Digital Systems you can control at least four locos, independently. This can vary by make and model of the system.
In addition to this, you no longer need to have electrically separated tracks. You can have all tracks connected in one contiguous circuit. You only need one control station and one transformer, usually two separate items.
Another benefit of DCC is how the lights behave, including those installed in a passenger car and EOT devices. Once track power is applied, they are all lit at a constant brightness, regardless what the loco does. How sweet it is!
In order to make all this possible, each locomotive needs to be equipped with a “Decoder”. This device receives the digital commands sent by the Control Station. It interprets the signal and will tell the loco what it is required to do, a decision you make, being the operator. Each decoder has its own address, similar to a phone number. All digitally equipped locomotives come with factory set addresses. They can be changed by the user, if needed. You need to know that no two locos on the track must have the same address. That is a No-Go!
Finally, another important issue needs to be addressed, namely the difference of track power behavior. There is a big difference between conventional (analog) systems and DCC. As explained earlier, in a conventional environment, the track voltage is increased as the speed control is turned up higher. When the speed control is turned all the way down, and the locomotive stands still, the track voltage is zero, which is why the lights go out.
In the DCC world, this is not so. Once the track power is turned on, which the operator does by pushing a button on the control station, the track power will immediately be at full voltage. This voltage depends on track scale and system. It will be somewhere between 12-18 Volts. The locomotive decoder needs the full voltage in order to function. At this point, the locomotive does not run, because it was not told to do so by the decoder, hence you, the operator.
The difference between DC 2-rail and AC 3-rail does not come into the picture here. All DCC systems behave very similar. The track power applied is a form of AC, but not a sine wave. It consists of a square wave. It is also not a 60 cycle affair, such as the common household current outlet provides. It is usually in the vicinity of 10 kHz (10,000 cycles). Newer decoder models actually step this frequency up to 15 kHz, to improve the locomotive’s running characteristics.
Then comes the next step. The decoder will send this raw track power through a bridge rectifier circuit to produce a smooth DC voltage to facilitate the proper functioning of the electronics contained on the decoder. The decoder then uses the data and the rectified voltage to produce a pulsating DC for the motor.
DCC systems, especially the more recent models, can also control functions other than locomotive speed and sound. This is another chapter in the book, geared for advanced users. Don’t let this scare you; it’s really quite easy.
By all this, it is necessary to keep your tracks clean and in good operating condition. DCC will not fix operating deficiencies caused by dirty tracks, pickup shoes and faulty track connections, leave alone locomotives in poor condition. In fact, such faults can seriously hamper smooth running on a DCC system. Furthermore, be prepared to spend a little more money than you may expect, at first glance, but usually less than a multi-cab analog set-up.
If you are serious about realistic train operation, the added expense is well worth it.
Jack Tingstad gazes approvingly at Dick Haines’ latest improvements to his layout
For the June 2013 Skagit/Whidbey Clinic, the meeting was held at the home of Dick Haines, just north of Oak Harbor. Twenty Eight folks showed up to see Dick’s wonderful layout and enjoy his hospitality, not to mention a lot of great socializing among attendees.
Dick’s layout is unique in a couple of ways. First, it is in his attic, but this isn’t your normal attic. When Dick had his house built, he had the attic insulated and constructed with no supporting beams or other obstructions, and it has a nice, tall ceiling too – no stooping over, as in most attics! But, as with most attics, access is somewhat limited, via a pull-down stairway/ladder.
The second unique feature of Dick’s layout is his day-to-night lighting system. He has developed a method to transition from “daylight” to dusk to nighttime operations and he has really done a convincing job in this regard. “Nighttime” features include lots of building interior illumination, plus several vehicles with illuminated head and tail lights. And, of course, those headlights on locomotives are a must!
A view from the other end of Dick Haines layout
Dick had rigged up a small camera on a flat car that transmitted signals down to a television in his “crew lounge” area (the floor below the railroad), so those that were not actually upstairs could still see the action. It worked very well.
After a lot of folks had departed, Steve Jaffray hit upon the idea of adding a small LED flashlight to the top of the camera/flat car, and a train was run around the layout in darkness, with the flashlight illuminating the way. And the loco was being controlled by a DCC throttle from the second floor (the floor below the layout). Of course, one person was needed in the layout room “just in case” and occasionally, a pair of fingers could be seen reaching down from the “sky” to throw a switch.
Vehicles with their headlights on at night on Dick Haines layout
If you were unable to attend the meeting at Dick’s and see his lighting effects first hand, you can read about it in the May-June issue of the Narrow Gauge and Short Line Gazette.
The next meeting for the group will be the annual August journey to Coupeville to see John Marshall’s garden layout, as we have done for the past couple of years. Watch for more details in a special, shortened edition of our newsletter.
Just where you’d expect to find G.O.P.H.E.R.S. On the lawn!
As per tradition, once a year the members of the Olympia monthly get-together become G.O.P.H.E.R.S. (Greater Olympia Prototype History & Engineering Research Society.) In previous years, members and their spouses and friends and grandchildren have journeyed to Longview to visit the inner workings of a paper mill, have traced old logging grade in Thurston County, and have helped fire up the last working narrow gauge locomotive in Washington at DuPont.
Wiener-Tongs Jim and Salad-Spoon Mary wield their BBQ tools
Welcoming several members of the Bellevue and Tacoma clinics to join us in the fun, we chose this year to visit the Ballard Locks to watch BNSF and Amtrak trains traverse the giant ex-GN bascule bridge, and to gaze up-close at the thousands of migrating salmon chased by hungry seals. Also per tradition, Jim and Mary Sabol fired up double grills to serve heaping helpings of humongously tasty kosher hot dogs (“Would you like two or three?”). Pitching in with condiments, salads, desserts, and soft drinks, Carol Beghin, Kathy Halliday, Michael Posner, Sheri Howe, Chuck Ricketts, Jim Elder, Jerry Julian, Jerry Barnes, Wendy Yadock, Linda Stickney, Scott Buckley, Greg Wright, and Ted Egglesgton made sure that no one went hungry. Topping it off, Robert Grove invited us to participate in the nationwide tribute to the late John Allen with ice cream and strawberry topping.
Our locomotive for a day, venerable Ballard Terminal RR #1
Now here’s the rich part: to summon ”our” locomotive after lunch, Jim Sabol simply dialed up the engineer’s cell phone per prior arrangement, and the next sound you hear is the locomotive on its way to a rendezvous with twenty-six well fed and eager model railroaders. (Do not try this at home; we have connections!) For the next two hours we enjoyed taking photos and riding on the Ballard Terminal Railroad, courtesy of General Manager and railfan-friendly Byron Cole. Engineer Aaron Gregory and Conductor Bryan Johnson patiently and safely piloted the ex-Milwaukee SW-1 back and forth from the Locks to the interchange until everyone had enjoyed a trip in the cab or on the “porch” of ancient but still capable diesel locomotive #1. “It’s a muracle!” exclaimed Ted Eggleston.
There’s no such thing as too much modeling fun. Watch the Grab Iron and join us next year! You’d like us. We’d like you.