I came in the hospital Friday with COVID. This is one of the sites I visit everyday and I have enjoyed being here. With me on oxygen already, it doesn't look so good.

I have always wondered about "Dinah". When I was a kid and we learned that song in school, the only Dinah I knew about was Dinah Shore. I didn't think she played a horn but I knew she sang about Chevy's and seeing the USA. I never gave it that much thought back then. Now I wonder about Dinah. Someone was in the kitchen with her playing the banjo. Was that while she was playing some type of horn? I assume the whistle is the train whistle. Was the singer already wealthy and didn't have anything to do all day so he thought he'd work for the railroad just to pass the time? When the singer says "blow" and "blowing" is he using the term for both the whistle and the horn? Why not "blow the whistle" and "toot the horn"? Another one of life's mysteries for me.

I was having trouble keeping track of my DCC addresses. I had a little notebook but I had to flip through pages until I get this all memorized.  I had the DC controller and the E-Z Command controller and was juggling those two when I had a DC loco running too. I have long cords on them so I can move around a little. I had a piece of bass wood that was the right size to fit both of them. I put velcro on the controllers and the board. Then, I made up a sheet with the address info and made it large enough so I don't nee my glasses to see it. I taped it to the board. This way, someone else could run the train, too.
NOTE: I modified it to include a small diagram on the board of the turnout addresses and program instructions. I removed the original pic here and replaced it with a new pic.

Why is it that when I turn on the power to my E-Z Command, some turnouts will switch as soon as I turn it on without me pressing any buttons? I align them the way I want them set before I turn it off. Not all of them change, just a few.

I figured out my missing wire problem. The instruction sheet that came with the booster listed the contents. It had three wires listed -  "E-Z Command signal input wire", "Universal signal input wire", and "Track output wire". I saw the three wires in the picture I took. There is no mention of four wires. This morning, I happened to look down by the shelf behind my chair and there is the wire I thought was missing. I guess it must have fallen out somehow. Had I known there were supposed to be four wires, I would have looked around more. The contents listed three wires and I had three wires. I am disappointed there isn't a way to plug the Bachmann track wire into the booster. I'll have to cut the plug off of the track wire connector (the end that goes into E-Z Command) strip those wires to connect the track to the booster.

It's supposed to look like "A" in figure 1. I guess "B" is the red wire.

With the Bachmann Power Booster, I've seen two part numbers - 44910 and 36-520. Are these the same thing? Is one a newer model?

Not that anyone was wondering but in case you were - The E-Z Command has enough power to throw three turnouts at the same time. It won't do four.
I wanted to see if I could control the four turnouts going into and out of the two exterior loops with one button. I can't. I redid my track plan again and programmed the turnouts for it. I was going to do the two on Bank 1 with the two on Bank 2 so I would only need 4 buttons for turnouts for the whole layout.
I got rid of the crossovers since my little 4-4-0's didn't like them. I just have two #4's and the rest are standard turnouts. I like this better because it adds a little more to it than just plain ovals.

While I was doing On30 for a few years, I didn't pay any attention to what Bachmann was doing in HO. Now that I'm back with HO for a while, I was looking at different HO passenger cars. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Bachmann came out with "new" old time passenger cars with a full clerestory like the On30 Jackson Sharp cars.
I just wanted to say that I really like them. Especially the ATSF colors. I bought the combine. Now I have to get the baggage and a few coaches. They will look nice behind my ATSF 4-4-0.

Here's a short video of different HO passenger cars from different eras. It took a little doing to get the earliest ones connected.
https://youtu.be/n9K6XOcslSc

Today is like Christmas but it has nothing to do with a stimulus.
For my Bachmann old time 4-4-0, I was hunting for another Santa Fe passenger car to go with my 4 Santa Fe shorties because I wanted at least a 5 car passenger train. I couldn't find another Santa Fe one anywhere.
I went out to the garage and brought in a box that had some Muir Model and other building kits. I removed those from the box that I brought in and, in the bottom of that box, I found 5 old time Concor Santa Fe passenger cars that I had never taken out of their boxes - Baggage, combine and 3 coaches. I didn't know I even had them. I now have my 5 car Santa Fe passenger train.

I was having issues with the new 4-4-0 derailing at times on turnouts. It was pretty bad on #5's. I took my #5 out and replaced it with #4 and it only derailed a couple times on the #4. These things are so light, it doesn't take much for them to get off track.
I took the stack off and removed the cap from it. I glued some split shot in there. A large one at the bottom of the cone and three smaller ones around the top. I had a stack from an older Bachmann 4-4-0 in which the cap had a metal screen instead of a solid piece of plastic like the new one. I colored that black and put the old cap on the new stack. I thought the old cap looked better. The original cap is on the left and the cap from the old loco is in place on the new loco.

I took the pony truck off and ground down a piece of weight to fit on it and glued it. I just ran it to make sure it wasn't interfering with movement anywhere. I colored the weight black so it isn't noticeable.

Between the weight in the stack and weight on the pony truck, it works great. Good solid tracking now.

Bachmann parts has tenders for sale for the 4-4-0 sound value locos. Does anyone know if "complete tender" includes the electronic stuff like speaker, decoder, pcb board, and connector? Or is it just the tender without the stuff inside? I emailed them a couple days ago and asked but haven't heard yet. Maybe I can buy a tender and switch bodies to get my sound back for my Santa Fe.
"COMPLETE TENDER (HO SCALE 4-4-0 DCC-SV) $76.70 UNION PACIFIC #119 Model: 00D01-52701"
https://estore.bachmanntrains.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=68_697&products_id=10397&zenid=as6i3e7js6ct29dk02tset38i1

Here's my latest project. It's almost done. I'm waiting for the new couplers to arrive. That one on there is just temporary. I wanted a car to go with my new Bachmann Santa Fe 4-4-0 and my four Overton Santa Fe passenger cars. I figured a car to carry spare wood and water would nice to have in case I was pulling a heavy load and started running low before I got to the next stop.

Does anyone know if a Tyco F7B body will fit on a newer Bachmann F7B chassis?
I have an old Tyco Warbonnet F7B unit that is missing a truck. Bachmann doesn't make the Warbonnets anymore and I don't know if they even made a B unit in that scheme. I haven't seen one in all my searching around.
The old Tyco one has horn hook couplers too. I thought if I could get a Bachmann F7B in a different road name and switch bodies, that would be perfect. I don't need a powered one but all I see are powered Bachmann F7B's.
The paint schemes aren't an exact match to my Bachmann F7A's but it won't be that noticeable. The Tyco stripes are "even width" black, yellow and red. The Bachmann stripes are thin black, wider yellow and even wider red.

I put it in the wrong place and it wouldn't let me delete my own topic so I changed it.

I was having trouble with one of my E-Z Track turnouts. It was a #4 right. I was running a Rivarossi 2-4-0 and it was doing a hippety-hop over the frog. I pushed it by hand to see exactly where it screwing up. It seems the grooves in the metal frog were too shallow. It occurs to me that maybe the Rivarossi flanges are deeper. It's a new/old loco.
It was also stalling on the turnout unless I kept it going fast. I didn't have any trouble with the standard turnouts with plastic frogs. I had a #5 left that I wasn't using so I had to do some reconfiguring to use that to replace the #4. The 2-4-0 still rises up a little going over the #5 but not as much as the #4. The stalling was still a problem.
This loco I just got recently. Many years ago, I bought an old Pocher 2-4-0 with the motor in the tender. I only got it because it was "Kansas City St. Louis and Chicago Railroad". I got the passenger cars back then, too.
When I recently got the old one out it was missing the drive shaft. I set it on the track and the motor wasn't turning anyway. (I wanted to have a KCSTL&C set to run because I'm a St. Louie guy and there aren't any other St. Louis anythings out there.)
I found a KCSTL&C 2-4-0 on Ebay but it was a newer one with the motor in the loco and no driveshaft needed. The old one had tender pick ups for one side of the track and the other side was loco pickup. The tender had four insulated wheel sets. The new loco only had loco pickups on both sides of the drivers and nothing in the tender.
I put my idea cap on and got out a set of two-wire connectors I had laying around. I took the motor out of the old tender and soldered wires to the pickups. I turned one of the trucks around so each truck would pick up a different rail. I took the body off the loco and soldered connector wires to those pick ups.
I put it all back together and it works great. I now have both tender and loco pick ups. I can slow crawl over turnouts without a problem. I got rid of the horn hook couplers and put a knuckler coupler on the loco and some long McHenry couplers on the cars. I'm happy everything worked out.
In the video, you can see it rise up and down going over the #5 turnout, too. It's the turnout on the outside loop closest to the camera.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHlbIuiVNjg

I can't remember if I ever posted this on here or not. This is a rolling track level that I made so I could tell where my track was level and where it wasn't. It came in handy when I was doing grades and bridges on my other layouts so I knew where the track actually leveled off and if the bridges were level. On my current layout, I added the wing so I wanted to see if the track stayed level when extending out on the wing. (I  did end up with bit of a dip.)
I don't even know if anyone makes a "level" car.
I used a Bachmann HO Bobber caboose (You could use any scale car to make one for whatever scale you have.) and a line level. The line level fit perfect on the caboose chassis.
I took the body off the caboose and glued the level to it. Before I glued it on, I used a regular level to make sure the table upon which I was working was level. I made sure the caboose chassis was level sitting on the table. I sat the line level on the chassis to make sure it would sit level. Then, I glued it on.
In the pic, the track has a little slant to it there.

Two Bachmann HO DCC F-7's with sound and seven Athearn passenger cars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C4SMSKex5A

I have both DCC E-Z Command and DC power supplies. I have both DCC and DC locos.  My On30 stuff is all DCC. When I want to use my HO DC stuff, I can unplug the E-Z Command and plug those wires into the Bachmann DC controller.
My question is about the turnouts - I know I won't be able to operate the turnouts without the DCC hooked up. Will they be ok in the layout if I hook up the DC for the DC trains and operate them manually? It won't mess them up will it?
I know I can run one of the DC locos on address #10.  I've been doing that but I worry about burning them out. I know that I can hook up a DC controller to the E-Z Command. That still has the power to the track all the time.
I figure I can just swap the wires and hook up the DC controller for those locos. That way, when I turn it off, the power to the track is off.

I find myself in need of enlightenment. I lost some of the wheels from my HO John Bull cars. I would like to buy some wheels. I want to know what size to buy.
Here's my issue. I used my digital dial caliper and measured the Bull cars' diameter and they .406". For reference, I also measured standard Bachmann HO freight car wheels. They are .0456" in diameter.
I used this conversion chart to determine what real life size I needed.
https://justin.vashonsd.org/Resources/ScaleConversionCalculator/ScaleConversionCalculator.html
Convert from Scale to Real-life
(For the Bull wheels)
Scale Factor - 87:1
Scale Size - .406 inches
       =    
Real Size - 35.32 inches
-------------------------------------
(For the standard wheels)
Scale Factor - 87:1
Scale Size - .456 inches
       =    
Real Size - 39.67 inches
------------------------------------
That comes out to about 35" for the Bull wheels and about 40" for the standard wheels.
The HO wheels Bachmann sells 33" and 36" wheels. The Bull wheels are smaller than the standard wheels.
The standard wheels would be 40" according the my measurements.
What am I doing wrong in the calculation?
I did make sure I zeroed the caliper before I measured.
---------------------------
The Bull wheels


Standard wheels