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Messages - trainman203

#46
General Discussion / Re: Bachmann 0-6-0
August 28, 2024, 12:02:48 PM
Sound value decoders are not tsunamis.  Far from it. 
#47
General Discussion / Re: Sanborn Maps
August 26, 2024, 08:31:52 PM
That's great, Len!

😎😎😎
#48
General Discussion / Re: Railroading 80 years ago
August 25, 2024, 05:29:27 PM
Not offended at all.  Early diesel can get me going.  But once they started chopping the noses, I lost interest. 

The mid 60s were a wave of wiping out the trappings of the mighty railroad that had built and run the country for so long.  That's when depots And roundhouses started dropping like flies, roof walks and ladders on box cars went away, and peculiar looking (to me) freight cars begin to appear.  The railroad mail contracts went away, the few remaining passenger trains were dropping like flies as well, or reduced to a Locomotive and a single car where the railroad was forced to keep it running. Maintenance of every kind went away, track deteriorated and grew up in weeds, buildings didn't get painted, and freight cars begin to look like hell between the weathering and the rust. Considering what a mighty Empire America's railroad system was at the end of World War II, it didn't take long for it to nearly collapse.  For those like me that went through it, it was a time of unbelievable melancholy to see our railroads Quickly going down the drain.
#49
General Discussion / Re: Basic power question Z
August 24, 2024, 01:36:51 PM
Great. To quote the late editor of Model Railroad magazine Linn Westcott, "Model railroading is fun."
#50
General Discussion / Re: Steam near Raleigh NC??
August 22, 2024, 09:17:41 AM
Last night at the distance, I heard a deep-toned CSX airhorn that could've been an Illinois Central steamboat whistle ..... at a distance.  It sounded like nothing I'd ever heard before on the railroad here.
#51
General Discussion / Re: Basic power question Z
August 21, 2024, 09:23:25 PM
The whole time I was trying to help you, I forgot that you are inZ scale, which is so small it's unbelievable.  At that featherweight size, if a gnat shirts on the rail it will stall your train.  Before you do anything, assiduously and surgically clean your rail.  There are 1 million different ways to clean rail and everyone thinks their method is best, but one thing is true, and that is that it's best not to use abrasives while cleaning track.  The little scratches it creates on the railhead will collect dirt and oxide, and the grit is guaranteed to get up in your locomotive.  A small rag soaked with isopropyl alcohol is good, and a pink pencil eraser is actually pretty good too, its abrasive content is pretty low.

Report back and let us know how it goes.

#52
General Discussion / Re: Steam near Raleigh NC??
August 21, 2024, 07:36:34 PM
Also,, I'm not sure when diesel airhorns started being operated by push buttons instead of a whistle cord, but when they had whistle cords, an inspired hogger might sometimes try to emulate the steam whistle artistry whippoorwill sounds of old. 

In our south Mississippi area there once was one particular old L&N hogger now long deceased who had run steam early in his career.  He was known for whistle artistry sounds, the younger engineers he trained tried to do it too, and you'd hear them passing quite often.  That was a long time ago, and those young guys have all retired now as well, but every now and then I think I hear it on the CSX passing.
#53
General Discussion / Re: Steam near Raleigh NC??
August 21, 2024, 07:27:30 PM
This anywhere near you?

https://www.triangletrain.com/
#54
General Discussion / Re: Steam near Raleigh NC??
August 21, 2024, 03:13:08 PM
Some of those Nathan horn clusters can fool you.  I've heard a few lately that at a distance with the right resonance and echo could easily have been a steam engine.
#55
General Discussion / Re: Basic power question Z
August 18, 2024, 09:28:01 PM
One thing I forgot to mention, you said you were doing scenery.  If this includes putting ballast on the track using a diluted white glue of sorts, the glue may have seeped into the joints, This commonly happens.

If that's the case, a more radical solution might be required, but let's try the stuff in my first post first.
#56
General Discussion / Re: Basic power question Z
August 18, 2024, 09:16:28 PM
The lightbulb draws hardly any of your current as all.  It sounds like you have one or more loose track connectors between sections of track (called "rail joiners.")

Since you are very new at all of this, you certainly don't have the multimeter that experienced model railroaders have, but don't despair!  There is, what we call down here in Mississippi, a "Southern Engineering" testing method to locate the problem!

Run the train to the location where it stalls, and leaving the power on, systematically start pushing a knife blade point in successive cracks between the two rails.  I would put good money on the train jumping to life when you hit the right one.

When you find it, you'll need to probably tighten the joint up with pliers, but be very careful, it doesn't take much to make it so tight that you can't put the track back together again. Not much more pressure than the weight of a gnat will probably be enough.

There's always the possibility that the injection of some electronic contact cleaner from the hardware store into the joint might work too, in fact I would try that first.

Since you are certainly running on an oval  of track, there's going to be two of these places that create a dead stretch somewhere between them. Fixing one will deliver power into the dead zone. But it fails, you may need to go find the other one and fix it.

Hope this helps.  Try this and report back so we can see how you did.  There's a bunch of us here with long years of experience with these trains. I've been at it over 60 years, but I still occasionally find problems and issues that I have to figure out even after all this time.
#57
General Discussion / Re: Sanborn Maps
August 16, 2024, 06:04:43 PM
The Sanborn maps are really in towns and cities since their actual focus is fire protection.  But combine them with historical topographical maps that Jeffrey is describing, and you can really put together a complete historical picture of selected periods in time.

Here are two samples, the T&NO division point 20 miles west of my hometown in 1940.  The first one is the west end, the second is the car shops on the east end.  I know it's pretty small compared to some much bigger railroads, but it actually is of a scale that could fit a Model Railroad fairly well with a little compression.

Nothing is left of this complex today except for the passenger station, and it is actually a complete rebuild within the exterior brick walls, the only thing that survived a mid-1980's fire.


https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4014lm.g033451949/?sp=25

https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4014lm.g033451949/?sp=24






#58
General Discussion / Sanborn Maps
August 15, 2024, 03:54:23 PM
I discussed these maps lately in another thread, fire insurance maps updated periodically for very many communities that happen to show railroad trackwork existing at the time.

I am fascinated by these maps and saddened also because nearly all the trackwork shown in these maps circa 1950 is gone today, graphically documenting the decline in rail traffic and its  everyday importance to local commerce.

These maps are great resources in designing layout switching facilities and types of industries.  Nothing quite as good as looking at the prototype! 

Has anyone else consulted these maps? What have you found?  I found in looking at 1909 maps of my hometown that lumber-related facilities like sawmills and planing mills were once a major player for the railroads there at the time. Their disappearance coincided with the nearly complete logging out of virgin Cypress Forest in the area in the 1920's.  The 1909 maps explain to me for the first time why there were a couple of spurs that, when I was living there 50 years later,  were abandoned and had no explanation for their existence.  I also now have a very strong reason to believe that Cypress lumber was a big reason that the (later) Missouri Pacific branch was built at all in that very same year.
#59
General Discussion / Re: Railroading 80 years ago
August 14, 2024, 11:22:46 AM
Jeffrey, you also came close to losing the Alco PA units as well.  I saw one almost every day on SP Train five, the westbound mail train that had once been the name train called the Argonaut.  In the early 1960s I did not know that those elegant units were running out their last miles on plug runs like No.5.  I only took a couple of photographs of them, but that really didn't matter since I lost all my photographs in a fire 20 years ago.

Today the GP30's, the SD 40s, and their rebuilds are the existing historic engines, and I have to remind myself when I see one go by on a local every now and then that those things are 50 years old now, like the SP moguls were when I was a kid.

But about the preserved steam engines today.  There was no orchestrated attempt to save a representative sample at all.  In multiple cases, the railroad just pulled the last one off the scrap line that was easy to get to, or chose one that could be easily be gotten into a park, explaining why so many preserved steam engines are medium sized and smaller.  And some railroads didn't save anything at all or only a couple.  The Missouri Pacific and the KCS only have one preserved steam locomotive each. Historicity didn't mean anything, not one New York Central Hudson was saved despite many, many pleas while there were still some around. The MP In 1950 had been in receivership for years and every ounce of scrap metal from a locomotive got them towards profitability. They came out of it the year after the last steam engine was retired and that probably had something to do with it. 

Historians are saying now that, despite there still being a good number of existing steam locomotives inparks, very few are being properly cared for, are deteriorating, and in the relatively foreseeable future most of them will be scrapped instead of saved.
#60
General Discussion / Re: Railroading 80 years ago
August 14, 2024, 11:02:07 AM
If anyone is interested, here are the Sanborn maps of my home town in 1952, The year I started paying attention to trains.

https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn03375_011/

Map 1 is the entire town at that time.  It's actually pretty easy to follow since the SP is the main spine top to bottom and is all still there.
The Missouri Pacific is called either the New Iberia and Northern or the Gulf Coast Lines, its two earlier names before the MP acquired it in 1924.  All of it is gone today, the last train was in 1982.

Map 12 shows the engine house, water tank, and telegraph office.  To the right out of the city limits is the 3 track yard, a major sugar mill customer, and the line 50 miles north to the main.

Following maps 6,8,2 and 3 in succession you can see the street running down Fulton street to the freight house and a couple of bayou side warehouses just past.

Starting on map 12,and going through 11,7,9,10,17,13,11,19 you can see the eastbound branch to Franklin Louisiana than did street running down Pershing street for blocks, passing my high school, before finally recrossing the SP on the east end of town.

On these maps, the top is actually westbound, the right is north.

On map 1, only the major tracks are shown.  The individual maps show all the trackwork that was present at the time of the mapmaking.

Sandborn maps were and still are a product of the insurance industry to show fire risks.  The buildings are actually the main focus and you can see lots of buildings present in the year the map was made that aren't there anymore.  They are made for nearly every major community, they certainly exist for your town, and you can take a similar dive back into your own town in time and see what used to be there railroadwise, which I can tell you will probably be a lot that's gone now.

All of that trackwork on these maps in new Iberia was still there in the early 60s when I was railfanning on my bicycle.  I knew it all like the back of my hand, and I mourn its passing. To ponder these maps in detail is a trip back into my young days with lots of pleasant memories.