Week 288

Sun, Feb 2, 2020 thru Sat, Feb 8, 2020

Sun, Feb 2, 2020

No Train Activity Today

Mon, Feb 3, 2020

Train Day!

with Rob Fair

6-7:45pm 1.75 hrs.

Rob Fair is working on connecting wires to a telephone jack for easy connections.

Since the LED lights stopped working in the Terminal we needed to figure out a way to make easy on/off connections.

Here's Rob's progress on adding LED lights to the cars in downtown Chicago.

More lighted cars.

Back to our telephone jack project.

Only one set of LED lights work in the Terminal.

The strip of lights you see on the ceiling should be lit up.
That's why we're working on the Telephone Jack easy hookup project.

Here's the wiring diagram for the telephone jack project.
This is the South section.

This wiring diagram is for the north section.

More closeup shots of the telephone jack project.

And finally the last shot of the night.
You can see the wires are disconnected to the terminal block and are now connected to the telephone cable and the jack.

Tue, Feb 4, 2020

On my way to the office today I was stopped in LaFox by the Troy Grove Daily...

Length: 00:00:32 sec.

Someone else was also train watching...

Taking a look at the couplers.

And finally the last car.

Later today...

SPECIAL GUESTS

Mabel, Charlie, and Ida Zielke!

Running the way freight.

Wed, Feb 5, 2020

Train Day!

w/Dean Hatzis, Cameron Passaglia and Jordan Osborn

4-5:30pm 1.5 hrs.

Getting an overview from the South Power District...

Length: 00:00:30 sec.

Cam's first order of business is eating his snack.
Note the new monitor Jordan brought over tonight right above Cam's head.

While Cam finishes his snack, Jordan & Dean check out the Train Simulator game - also on a new monitor.
Actually that is the monitor the new one replaced (the one above Cam's head in the previous picture).

Dean's new building put in place to see how it fits.
Fits perfectly!
The old monitor will be history soon.

We both forgot to check the planning pattern which should've had two track openings on both ends of the short building.

Checking for ceiling clearance.

Cam was working on car placement tonight.
He designed several "scenes" around the layout.

Here's another scene Cam put together at Oak Park Marion St./Lombard.

Thumbs up!

We were going to work on installing chain link fence posts.
But the paint smell was too much, so we'll work on something else.

Dean Hatzis removing the cork for the long building to sit flat on the surface.

I didn't realize how much Cam enjoyed painting.
I'll save painting projects for him.

Thu, Feb 6, 2020

Jan had Bible study tonight so I had some time to work on the RR...

First of all, here's the work Cam did yesterday, painting the wood cross walk at Geneva Station.
That's the project I'm going to work on tonight.

First, Step 1: I need to clear the space for the "fill" for the cross walk so I can get the crosswalk  up to even elevation.

Step 2: Glue down the cork base.

Step 3: Cork in place.

Step 4: Add the Atlas Track parts to make everything even with existing track pieces.
Note: I also had to clip the ends of the ties so the cross ties would fit in place.

Step 5: Glue those pieces in place.
No need to be neat since this is all covered up by the cross walk as you will see soon.

Step 6: Glue the remaining parts where the cross walk will be installed.

Step 7: Cross walk installed.
Now we need to put weights on top.

Step 8: First put some wood to make it even.

Step 9: Then the weight to secure the glue in place and not let it expand.

Take a look from a distance.
Materials used as shown.

Fri, Feb 7, 2020

Step 10: Let everything set up overnight and see what it looks like in the morning.
Here you go...

Finished project.
You like?

View from the east.

View from the south.

Friday Evening

I'm working hard to make progress on the telephone jack hookups so we can fix the terminal lights underground.
As you can see, the telephone jack is mounted and the phone line goes through the opening to the power source.
To remove the top, all I'll need to do is unplug the telephone jack and push the cable through the hole.
Done!

Here's another view of the south end underground wiring.

Here's the north end wiring progress.
Here you can see the telephone coupler that I'll use and the jack which will take the place of the terminal you see wired up in this picture.

Sat, Feb 8, 2020

Saturday afternoon...
Test Running Trains
Here is the 29 car Unit Coal Train led by "The CNW Twins"

Length: 00:00:30 sec.

And more wiring work underground...

Connecting wires to the telephone jack.

Jordan Osborn came to visit and run trains.
Here is his goodbye wave.

Here's the progress underground.
Note both telephone jacks are mounted.
I had to redo some of the cabling to the coupler, but should be good to go for now.

A look underneath the underground where we connect to the power source.
The far terminal block is for the south downtown area.
The near terminal block is for the north downtown area.