Sorry, RAM, but the old URL had to change when @Home went out of business and my internet provider, Shaw, took over hosting the website.

Lanny, I am glad you caught that!  It appealed to my sense of humour as well.  And thanks for the suggestion.  I have posted a few (very few) photos of my layout, and they are mostly 10 years old or older.  Time to update.

I had a strange thought when I first heard about this accident.  I wondered about the swaying and the way "it felt like the... service was being battered by heavy winds before her carriage flipped."  Could that have been the tilt control computer acting up?  Did the train crash because the computer did?

Lanny, I am sorry to say that when it comes to Macs, I suffer from gross ignorance.  I am glad Kevin came along with information I could not give you.

Thanks for the comment about the photo.  It is my home layout, taken during one of our operating sessions.

Dr EMD is indeed correct.  It is Russian.  I found it on this website.

http://www.parovoz.com/newgallery/

They also had this "Russian RS-1"

Only problem, Rich, is that the bottom brush holder is connected to the motor frame.  If you leave the motor frame connected to the locomotive frame, all the tape in the world under the brush holder will not save the decoder from a smokey death.

Quote from: scottychaos on February 24, 2007, 08:45:47 PM
as for the "main problem" with images on this forum..namely that they all get resixed to 500 pixels wide..its still not fixed.
Scot

What is the problem with resizing to 500 pixels?  As I see it, this helps keep images down to a workable size.  Some of the images posted on the old board were a couple of thousand pixels wide and not only did they take a long time to download, you had to shrink them in order to see the whole image at once.  You still have the option to see the full size image if you want.  Just right click on it and choose "View Image."  Or if you use Internet Explorer, right click on the image, choose "copy," then paste the image into Windows Paint or the image program of your choice.  Try it on the image below.

Bill, I may be a little late offering this suggestion but I stopped to take the photos.  The first photo shows the smaller of two "lift bridges" on our group's museum display layout.  The lift out table is hinged on both ends, allowing it to be swung up either way or taken out completely.  In normall use, the hinges have their pins in place.  To ease removal, we welded rings on the ends of the pins.  The hinges are indicated by red arrows.  The green arrows indicate the tapered ends of the bridge section, which gives room for it to swing upward.  Please note that the centerlines of the hinge pins are above the tops of the rails.  Otherwise, no swing would be possible.



The second photo shows how we keep the tracks aligned.  The ends of the bridges and the ends of the tables next to them are framed with 2 x 4 to give purchase for the 1-1/2" screws we used.  The ends of the rails are soldered to circuit board ties which in turn are firmly glued and nailed to the table top.  Note that printed circuit board ties must be gapped to keep from shorting the rails.  One of these gaps is indicated by a red arrow.



There is a third consideration when installing lift bridges and that has to do with expansion and contraction of the abutting tables as well as the lift bridge itself.  No matter how well you build the bridge, the abutting tables will pull it out of exact alignment if the abutting tables are all firmly fixed to the walls of the train room.  Our solution to that problem was to keep all the tables to the left of this bridge "floating."  You can easily do this by having those tables sit on frames or brackets attached to the wall, but not attaching the tables to the frames or brackets.  We used a somewhat different method of floaing our tables, one that is unique to the situation.  The lift bridge shown is on the short wall of the room.  The floating tables are from the left end of the bridge to the long wall on its left, plus all the tables along the long wall.  The tables along the long wall were set 1/2" or so from the wall because we did not where in the expansion/contraction cycle we might be.  The lift bridge shown is not on public display.  It looks like it is getting a little dirty - it has been about two years since we cleaned the track.

I guess I can say this worked for us.  The two bridges have been in business for 12 years now, and have had almost half a million trains cross them.  Multiply that by two bridges and again by 2 sets of gaps per bridge, and we have had about 2 million crossing of gaps.  And we have never had a derailment from any of these gaps.

For more information on these lift bridges, see the link below:

http://members.shaw.ca/sask.rail/model-book/liftout/liftout.html

I have never heard a Lenz owner complain.  MRC I tend to shy away from because of their history of introducing new systems that are totally incompatible with their old ones. 

Personally, I use Digitrax, both the Zephyr and the Super Chief.  The Zephyr, along with an MRC 8 amp booster, runs my large scale outdoor layout while my Chief runs my indoor H0.  Why Digitrax?  My dealer has been selling Digitrax since the beginning and is my Guru.  Having a Guru availble is just as important when starting out with DCC as it is when starting out with a computer (remember those days when you had to have someone show you how to turn the computer on??)  If you do not run more than 5 H0 locomotives at any one time, the Zephyr is a great unit.  I only went to the Chief because I was running short of power. 

I guess TOC and Stan were both a little confused by traindude 109's "gardes" for "grades"  in his first posting on this thread.

Well, I'm off to install decoders in all my light switches, leaving TOC to have the last word.

And the lucky winner of the "who was first to mention grades" contest was??

Barry, I have an Aristo RS-3 that came with traction tires.  Traction was little better than other RS-3s without the tires.  But power pickup ... well, lets just say that I swapped trucks with another Aristo Alco that was battery R/C and pickup didn't matter.  Fortunately, Aristo had the good sense to go back to all metal wheels on the next batch.  But whether  New Meat has large scale, H0, or something else again, it is hard to tell.

TOC, who was the first to mention grades in regard to this?  On this thread, it was traindude 109, except he mistyped it.  But earlier than that, on the old board, I dimly remember someone explaining to traindude 109 and others that trains going up grades took more power than on the level, and that had to be taken into account when figuring how many trains would run on a given booster.  Was that you?  Or me?  Or one of the others with actual working experience with DCC outdoors?

Just to explain to others where TOC is coming from - he has a major investment in battery r/c operation and it would be as cost prohibitive for him to switch to DCC as it would be for me to suddenly switch to all battery r/c.  TOC started out with battery r/c and stayed with it.  If I had a large railroad with 1400 feet of track, I might have stayed with battery r/c too.  But on my smaller layout squeezed into a suburban backyard, I found battery r/c too limiting and too expensive so I switched to DCC.  I like DCC because I can add another locomotive to my roster. then get it running on DCC for less than $50.  TOC likes battery r/c because he can add another hundred yards of track and not have to buy another booster.  Who is right?  I guess we both are.  And I also guess this paragraph has ended up being as much about where I am coming from as about where TOC is coming from.

There are even things TOC and I agree on.  One is the use of aluminum rail.  We both like the price, the low profiles, and the ease of installation.  But TOC sees is as useful only for battery r/c whereas I see it as a wonderfully conductive metal that carries electricity well and willingly transfers it to locomotive wheels if you know how to treat it properly.  Of course I have to clean it, usually once in the spring and maybe one or two more times during the summer, at ten minutes a time for my 300 feet of track and half a dozen turnouts.  Other than that, it is just a quick walk around the layout, picking up twigs, branches, and dog crXp.  I imagine TOC has to do the same, unless he lives in an area with no trees, no bushes and no dogs.  At least I don't think that is the kind of crXp he is talking about building up on his wheels, pickups and track.

Quote from: Lucas1969 on February 21, 2007, 08:42:35 AM
Tank's to every one, these to decoder will work with Bachmann ez command.

Luc, is that a question?  If so, then the answer is yes, the two decoders mentioned will work just fine Bachmann E-Z Command.

To David
How did you ever manage to hide a Bachmann decoder in the Saddle Tanker?  I could barely get a DZ123 in the smoke box and couldn't see anywhere else for a decoder, except maybe the cab.

I hope I have emphasized enough that I run on DCC and the battery life results I get are based on DCC.  If you are running on dc, this circuit still works when the train in running at medium to higher speeds.  But during station stops, for example, the battery will be powering the lights full time as the track voltage on dc would then be zero.

If anyone is intersted, I think I could redesign another circuit, one that I developed originally for charging Soundtraxx Sierra batteries, to work for lighting.  That would require a rechargable battery and would be charged from the rails by either dc or DCC.