I was watching Tale of Wells Fargo the other night and one scene was shot behind the Sierra Railroad roundhouse. This is from a 1957 episode.
The Sierra Railroad roundhouse is in the background. Jim Hardie (Dale Robertson) is talking to Belle Starr (Jeanne Cooper). Famous movie loco #3 is pulling the train.
(Some of you soap fans might recognize Jeanne as Mrs. Chancellor from The Young and the Restless.)

Someone on Facebook asked about wiring his layout for three separate loops using E-Z Command. I showed him how I did it using stereo "Y" connectors. Someone on here might benefit from this.

I'm still looking for a Bachmann On30 DCC 2-6-0 Mogul tender. I don't even need the body. Just the chassis with the PCB board and connector harness. Does anyone have one they want to part with?

I searched and searched online for this loco. I figured it would be in a museum somewhere or on a tourist railroad. It looks well preserved. A number of things to look for - Old style pointed cab roof instead of rounded. Old box headlight instead of newer rounded one. Radley & Hunter stack. Straight boiler with no hump in back. Three domes when most old locos have two. Star insignia on front of boiler. #1 on front dome.
The two pics look like the same loco.

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I've had this Digitrax PR4 decoder programmer for a few months. It looked like it was going to be a major ordeal to set it up so I shelved it for a while.
It involved changing computer settings and dealing with device manager and com ports and installing software. I was hesitant about doing all that on my everyday laptop because I didn't to be messing with all my settings.
A couple of weeks ago, I broke out my old Dell laptop that I hadn't used in at least a year. (It was very slow. That was why I had gotten a new HP one.) I got the Dell all up to date with all the Windows updates.
Today, I got the Digitrax stuff all uploaded to the Dell and got the PR4 to work. It was a major accomplishment and took a couple of hours to get everything right.
I just successfully changed some CV's on my F40PH to get it to start quicker and stop quicker. I had never done anything with decoder programming before.
Now, I have no reason to get rid of my E-Z Command and switch to something fancier.
I'm very pleased now.

Cool pic of Wabash and Gulf Mobile & Ohio backing into St. Louis Union Station - 1954
From a pic that John Fulmer posted on Facebook.

This is some of the most realistic model railroad scenery I've ever seen.

A train ride around the Christmas layout. I made it today. The date is off. At the very end, after I shut the video down, I tried to back the Mogul up and the camera caught on the corner of the tunnel. The loco and tender fell over and I broke some tender wires while trying to extract it.

I have a dilemma now. On my On30 DCC 2-6-0 Mogul, 4 of the wires broke from the tender connector that plugs into the loco.There's no way I can fix those.
Does anyone have a spare DCC Mogul tender I could buy? I don't need the body or decoder.
I would rather do that than try to solder little wires.
If not, I looked in the parts section.
There is an HO connector - Connector 6 plugs large ( HO Universal ) Model: CONNIE-10548 8".
Is this the same one used in the Mogul?
If so and I order it, how can I find which wires go where on the pcb board? The wires are all black. There are only two wires still connected on old one so I tell where they go.
What little soldering I have done hasn't been little bitty stuff.

I discovered copper tape last year. I didn't know it existed. Copper tape can used instead of wire for some things. It's flat and doesn't take up much room. I bought a couple of rolls and put it to good use.

Here my Mogul stops to pick up passengers on my layout.

Here's my Thomas Christmas train.

Here's one of my projects that I did a few months ago. Sport Utility Diesel.
Bachmann F7A body on a Walthers F40PH frame.

          I'm happy to see the forum back. I click my bookmarked link every day, hoping to see it up. I was so surprised when I just clicked it. Many thanks to the "powers that be" at Bachmann. I sure missed this place. I hope all the "old guys" return.

So you want to build a railroad bridge for your layout. London's Cannon Street Bridge.

https://www.google.com.br/maps/place/Cannon+Street+Bridge/@51.507788,-0.0954146,650m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x487603f03e9772d9:0x400c6eb7433457f7!8m2!3d51.5084599!4d-0.0918446

I'm fixing to jump into uncharted territory here and try to solder some little bitty wires. What do you guys use when soldering stuff to PCB boards? I have a Radio Shack soldering iron but I think it's too big. Like a little bitty tip maybe? Do they make those?  I have not done much soldering at all in my lifetime.
I took apart my wounded On30 Porter and I'm going to try to use the decoder, sound, and motor in my HO Lifelike Teakettle. I tried to put the Tea on the Porter chassis but that wasn't too good and this will work out better I hope.
Since I took the big motor out of the Tea, I should have room for the Porter motor and electric stuff. I'll cut the front of the boiler off the Porter so I'll have the headlight and wires intact and put that on the Tea chassis. I'm only using the old Tea body for now to see if it can be done. I have a new Tea to use if it can.

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This is one  big pic of most of my layouts over the years since 1999. There were a few along the way where I didn't get any pics. I don't how well this will load because it is big. You probably have to "view image" and enlarge it or download it and enlarge it. Some folks are content with one permanent layout. Some aren't

Since I had trouble with my On30 Porter, I had to find a different loco to pull my Bachmann On30 ore cars and their Santa load. I dug out my old Lifelike HO 0-4-0 Teakettle. This was the first steam loco I bought when I started playing with trains back around '97 or '98. I was going to do a layout named after my Grand kids and call it the Fort Michael and Shelby Canyon Railroad. That never came to pass because I had a 4 X 6 table and bigger and layouts were calling me. I did do some modifying on it back then. That was my very first loco project too. I cut the pilot off and put step boards on it. I put on a different stack. I filed down the coal load and wired in a rear light. I cut the doors out so it would be open. I put knuckle couplers on and added some decals. When I got it out recently to use with the ore cars, I wanted some figures so that big motor wouldn't be so visible. I got some Arttista "S" scale figures. The loco is somewhat oversized for HO and HO figures looked much too small. These S ones look pretty good. After all these years, the loco still runs great.
https://youtu.be/vvowQL-E-jM

I was looking for a better way to clean my track than the masonite pad on the bottom of a car. I looked into Woodland Scenics Tidy Track and bought it because I had a different idea on how to use it. Tidy track can be used for N, HO, On30, and O. My way won't work with 3 rail O because the base has to angled to cover all three rails.
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This is how it's supposed to work or you can use without the long handle.

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I unscrewed the handle attachment piece. I took the base and cut a notch in it to accommodate a  coupler pocket.

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I put a coupler and pocket where I had cut out the notch. (It's temporary for now so I could see if it was going to work. That's why it's just taped.)

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This is the underside with the pads attached.

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I used a sheet of weight and cut it down to smaller pieces and stacked them on it.

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It works great. I was wondering if there would be any issues on my 15" radius curves but there was no problem at all. It comes with four different type of pads - rescue, cleaning, maintenance, and finishing.

Bachmann F7 "A" units. The "B" unit body is Tyco that I put on a Bachmann gutted F7 chassis. It isn't powered. The six axle passenger cars are Athearn. The curves on the inner loop are mostly 15" with a few 18".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTYvV9wNpVE