Upon seeing this, the rivet counters would ban me for life I took my Porter apart to try to clean the wheels and get some of the crud and little threads from around the axles. I guess I got it twisted too much and the little rivet that holds the linkage together popped out, bounced on the table and disappeared into the carpet. The short search I did seemed hopeless. Maybe I'll get a big magnet later. I had a bread twist tie on the table, so I stripped the coating off of it and poked it through the holes. I twisted it with pliers and cut it off. It works fine.
I'm still having issues with my Porter but this is not one of them. It will run six or eight feet and just stop. Sometimes it 's only for a few seconds and it goes again. Sometimes it doesn't go at all after it stops until I go give it a push. It does the same in forward and reverse. When it stops, all sound stops, too, so it's electrical and not mechanical. I've used my John Allen type track cleaner but I might have to do something different like an eraser to get the inside of the rails. The other locos do ok on the track.

The first one with the "night lights".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgnRsgKCD-o
The second one with the big lights on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEAh6i6eTZQ

Be careful crossing the street. Tower Grove and Vandeventer St. in St. Louis somewhere around the 1920's.

I put a follow up on the original Nevada Northern post since it wouldn't let me delete this one because I didn't mean to start a second topic.

Travel channel is doing a ghost investigation special at the Nevada Northern Railroad right now.

Abandoned Places
https://www.facebook.com/Abandoned-Places-109837027265297/·
Train tracks disappearing into the waters of Lake Tahoe, CA

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.