Bytown Bobber on schedule!

You may have noticed that the postings are not as frequent or regular as they have been in seasons past. A large contingent of FNG-ers are NMRA - St Lawrence Division members, and are helping with the NMRA - Niagara Frontier Region convention, due to arrive in Ottawa on April 25, 2008.

Visit the convention website at www.bytownbobber.org

A number of layouts that have appeared here on the blog will be included in tours available through the convention, so you'll be able to meet some of the boys in person! In the meantime, the FNG will continue with a reduced operating schedule in favour of getting some of the layouts ready for visitors.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The LVN Meltdown

Well it was 14 December and the FNGers were over in force. From Left to right you have: John, Fred, Mike, Bob, Paul (From Montreal), Stan, Joel, Jim and Ron. By the smiles on their faces, it looks like they had a good time running trains and kabitzing.

An hour and a half into the session, we had a melt down and the loco net started to send out random signals. It got to the point that the five operations came to a halt and we went to digitrax diagnosis. We purged the system, Had to re-address half the power and reconsist everything.

By then the boys were into coffee, tea, pop, beer, cheese curds and cake. Conversations were enthusiastic about railroading in the Kettle Valley and I got unsolicited offers for a book of ink sketches from that area. Not for sale:)

After we got things up and running again, a few of the boys began to operate some more as the challenge of the Richmond yard time saver got them pack to the puzzle. And Jim had to get back to his local freight in Shelby.

Mike Hamer brought over a few of his new craftsman structures. Karl from Surrey Custom Models produced a great kit called "Morty's Market" . He placed it along with the Bar Mills Shackpack in among the scenes so we could all appreciate the work and learn from his mistakes...Ha Ha ...I mean his great work.

All in all it was a great learning experience and I gleaned a lot about digitrax issues. I had added four new plug in terminals since the last running session and I think it stretched the loconet power supply to the max. Ron had provided valuable insight into specific wiring upgrades to fix the problem and I will work with him over the holidays to improve the situation before the next full operating session.

Another Visit to the Sunny Southwest

A couple of inches of snow falling on Ottawa last evening made our visit to Bill Scobie's expanding Rio Grande Southern's layout that much more enjoyable. Bill had nine trains set up for us, and it took until 11 o'clock before the last freight pulled into Ridgeway.

Two of Bill's friends - Don from upstate New York and Joe from Pennsylvania - had made the trip for this operating session. Here we see Bill explaining a few of the changes since their last visit.


As well, Bill Meridith and his son Jason joined our Friday Night gang in enjoying this marvellous depiction of narrow gauge railroading.















Suspecting I might be the only one to think of it, I brought my camera to document some of the happy faces as they made their way through this great scenery; unfortunately, I forgot to bring the tripods, so some of the pictures may be a bit blurry. As I am just getting the scenic part of my own layout going (see the previous blog entry), I concentrated on that aspect of Bill's railroad.

Scenic details such as the dead trees and other litter oddly bring the layout to life. Remembering their effect, I have started to collect lots of modelling litter before the snow hides it entirely. The Spirea will be showing for the winter, but the two or three feet of snow covering the ground around it is likely to discourage foraging until the Spring. Leaves to be ground up in the blender are completely out of the question.

I've also remembered how good the track looked at Bill's with the ballast brought right up to the tops of the ties.












This curved switch appealed to me ...














As did this bucolic scene.

















My evening started with a train from the new trackage at Teluride to Vance Junction. You can see my train cooling down at the station after completing its run.










Here's the view in the opposite direction. Both are on the upper level.















It was hot in the cab, so I took a break before checking on the other activities.












Back out on the layout, David was pulling his train into Placerville ...











Mike and Bob were filling up the tender with a bit more water ...

Fred's train was escaping ...

Stanley was struggling up the grade ...











Ron was finishing up his run ...













and both Tom and Chris were having a serious discussion.











Here are a few more shots from a very satisfying
evening.