Today, I pondered the structures at Belrose Silica I would like to model. Here are some drawings of what I would like to create. I'll try my best to scratchbuild this. This will be an ongoing project that will take quite some time to complete.
This evening, I worked on the layout. I have so many projects started now, I don't know which one to work on first. I want to do them all. I need a full day to get some serious progress done on the layout.
Blue Flag LED Project
I drilled the holes and installed all the blue flag LED lights in the benchwork. They are drying now. I cut the plexiglass to make the control boards (toggle switch attached to plexiglass) for the blue flag lights. I packed that up to work on tomorrow at lunch. Then, I just need to mount to the benchwork and connect the wires. It should be a simple install. I really like these blue flag LED lights. I know I could use a push pin for a similar effect, but these are permanent and small compared to a bulky push pin.
Clean-up
I vacuumed up the top of the layout where I was working on some projects.
Testing (i.e. Play Time)
I had issues with IR sensor on the WeighStation the other night. 8 out of 10 or so cars would traverse the scale fine with the weight ramping up to a random figure, and then down to zero between the cars. The other two the weight would stay the same and not ramp back down. I emailed Boulder Creek Engineering's support last night. They actually responded at 11pm. Jim provided me some tips which I tried today. It immediately corrected the problem. I then shoved 50 or 60 cars through the scale and never had any further issues. I did disable the buzzer. After about the 20 time, that was driving me crazy. I don't need any operators to lose their mind weighing sand. :-)
I ran cuts of cars back and forth through the yard testing high- and low-speed running. So far, everything seems to be running ok.
The bridge over the creek in Ottawa Yard bulges up some. I don't recall it being that high originally. Possibly the plastic warped up some underneath. I'll see how it goes, but if there are issues I might have to pull up the flex track in the area and rebuild the bridge. Since it wouldn't affect turnouts, it wouldn't be overly complicated to repair.
I ran the #217 Ottawa Local down into Ottawa/LOF. It's a very long train, but I think it will work well if it is thought through. There are a lot of places to store excess cars while moving the sand around. I could offer the crew to keep part of their train in the yard, but real estate is tight there and I don't want to handicap my yardmaster. I may have to put a cap on the train though to ensure it doesn't get too big. This first train is rolling out the yard with 31 cars! It's a monster!
Overall, I thoroughly enjoy running trains around on the layout. I'm really pleased with the revised layout. The hard part is staying focused to work on the layout and not so much "testing". :-)
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