Trainmeister Ruben MacBlue at the Fillmore Station
Rock City Railroad News!
February, 1998
Well, El Nino has been raining cats & dogs, and Rock City Railroad garage roof sprung a leak. Tomorrow I've got to fix it before the next storm arrives.
The control panel of the layout has been taking up all my time for the past month. Thousands of soldering joints and tracing wires. It's pretty complicated, but not nearly as those books on wiring at the train stores. I'm drawing up my own "wiring made easy" page for future model railroad builders that might run across this site.
Anyway, I've put blue and amber "grain of wheat" light bulbs in for every block so you can see at a glance which control is for which line. I put red and green bulbs in for each turnout, and an on-off switch for each set of lights so they can be turned off without getting to the back of the panel. I used "double pole double throw" for most of the blocks, but now wish I would have gotten "triple pole double throw" switches so I could use the extra pole to control another set of lights, lights that brighten and dim with the control of the train. This would mean adding two more light bulbs to each turnout hole, but it can be done. 4 of these bulbs will fill a small panel hole perfectly. Someday I've got to tear up the old switches and put in new ones so I can do this. Another month of work. Remember the song "I've been working on the Railroad, All the live long day . . ."
Eventually, I need to get the bulbs to blink when the train is in that section of track. more on this soon.
Meanwhile every turnout requires about a days work to get it wired up properly with lights and all, and with 40 turnouts, it's taking a long time. You do feel good when you get one done and it works.
I finally got "Phantom Blue" lettering on the Big Boy and "Natasha" on the boat in honor of Mark Dawson, manager of the all girl band "Phantom Blue."